Vesryn turned Serenna back around, jade gaze boring into hers. “You lost control of your power.” His hands tightened against her. “That can’t happen. Even if you’re terrified.” Serenna flinched, the prince’s sharp words cutting like a blade. “You need to stay in control.”
Shame scalded Serenna’s cheeks, her ineptitude on display once again. She swallowed, her words broken. “Why am I here?”
Vesryn seized the front of her leathers, drawing her up to her toes. “Because,” he snarled in her face, more vicious than the monster in the chamber. “You need to master your power to protect yourself. You almost died,” he raged, shaking her. “I felt it!” The prince’s word ricocheted off the stone walls, slamming against her. “And there wasn’t anything I could do!”
The heat of his fury scorched Serenna through their connection, stinging her worse than a slap. He’d never raised his voice like that—so inflamed. The intensity of his ranting had her blinking back startled tears, helpless against the crash of his anger surging through the bond.
“I couldn’t portal without risking a horde of wraith coming through with me, and I couldn’t rend them all fast enough to reach you.” Vesryn’s fists trembled against her leathers. He yanked in ragged breaths, eyes unhinged. “Thank the stars you managed to defend yourself.”
Releasing her, the prince crossed his arms, staring up at the ceiling. Serenna sensed him collecting himself, leashing his emotions, but the rapid rise and fall of his shoulders didn’t abate.
He drew a hand over his face, shaking his head. “I can’t afford to have you be my weakness.” Vesryn sounded like he was talking more to himself than her.
Serenna flinched, his words rattling her like thunder. Her heart skidded to a halt. So he’s finally figured out what this connection between us means—a weakness because of my incompetence. Imagining the likely possibility of him rejecting the bond instead of accepting it fully, disappointment cleaved her chest. He’s giving me one more chance to prove myself, and all I’ve done is demonstrate that he shouldn’t have wasted his time.
Restraining her hands from reaching out, Serenna folded them across her middle. The reassurance of touch would’ve only been for her benefit anyway. She knew she wouldn’t find any until she honed her abilities to the prince’s standards.
Her voice cracked, on the verge of breaking. “What do I have to do?”
Vesryn gathered his power. The radiance of his magic shimmered around them like the sun glinting off of the ocean’s waves. Flicking a hand, the stone door screeched against the floor, ramming shut. Locking them in with the wraith.
The prince jerked his head toward the snarling monster. “You’ve killed them before.” It wasn’t a question, but Serenna nodded anyway. “You need to do it again. Every time.”
“What?” Serenna’s brows jumped up her face. She glanced at the defenseless wraith thrashing against its magical restraints. Her horrified revelation came out as a whisper. “You want me to kill it?”
“No, I don’t want you to kill it,” Vesryn snapped. “Yet.” He scowled at the creature. “I have another use for it. Gather your power,” he ordered, implying she didn’t have any choice.
He grabbed her arm. Serenna tensed, tracking a splinter of darkness spinning from the prince’s palm, aimed at the wraith. When the rending restraining the creature unraveled, Vesryn shoved her in the monster’s direction.
Serenna didn’t even have time to scream before the wraith charged her.
CHAPTER 7
LYKOR
“Stop!”
A taloned claw seized Lykor’s wrist, wrenching him away from the prisoner slumped in chains.
Concentration disrupted, Lykor staggered back from the intoxicating rush of magic, blinking rapidly to reorient himself in the interrogation chamber. His eyes slowly came into focus in the dim torchlight.
Essence boiled under his skin, scalding his Well. His senses crackled like a lightning-charged tempest, chest pounding with an ocean’s worth of power. He sucked in a breath against the overwhelming surge of magic threatening to burst through his ribs.
Baring his teeth at the intrusion, Lykor ripped his arm out of Kal’s grasp. Lykor’s power ignited alongside his rage. Shadows blasted around the room, the darkness disintegrating where the magic touched the gold woven into the walls.
Fenn, one of Kal’s brood—and one of Lykor’s lieutenants—drew Lykor’s attention with his colossal height as he shifted nervously behind his father’s shoulder. Claws shoved into his cloak pockets, Fenn’s crimson eyes volleyed between them. The pair must’ve heard the screams when the elf roused in the middle of the siphoning.
Ice clung to their fur overcoats. Lykor presumed they’d recently finished a patrol shift on the tundra’s surface. Favoring the customs of the wraith’s younger generation—those born in their fortress—Fenn wore his frivolously long hair tied back, decorated with intermittent strands of thin obsidian braids. Rings and studs trimmed the points of his ears, designating his rank. As Fenn’s eyes widened, Lykor followed the lieutenant’s gaze.
The female rider was dead.
And she was no longer an elf. The warrior hadn’t survived the transformation to wraith.
Dispelling his shadows, displeasure churned through Lykor. Reaping her power too hastily, he’d squandered the opportunity to harvest information.
Kal’s voice dropped to a shaken whisper. “What have you done?”
Ignoring his captain, Lykor swiped disheveled hair out of his eyes. Torchlight glinted off the silver strands. Lykor stilled. Silver instead of black. Back to Aesar’s original hue.
Mind ablaze with curiosity, Lykor tried to elongate his fangs. Nothing happened. He ran his tongue along even teeth, detecting no trace of his sharpened canines.
Assessing the power in his Well, Lykor inhaled sharply, snared by surprise. His only intention had been to siphon the elf’s magic, augmenting his current abilities in the process. He didn’t consider that she might possess the innate talents that the king had severed from Aesar.
With all eight abilities returned, they were an arch elf. No longer reduced, their form unchained from the suspension between elf and wraith. Lykor glanced up at his captain, now standing a head shorter than Kal and Fenn—restored to Aesar’s elven height.
Lykor idly wondered if he’d have to maintain an illusion to distort his appearance in front of mirrors. If he saw Vesryn looking back, he could only guess that the coercion would trigger him to kill himself. I DOUBT THE KING ANTICIPATED THIS.
Inspecting his fingers, Lykor released a disgusted scoff. Despite reversing to an arch elf’s body, the skeletal claw stubbornly refused to shift back into an elven hand. He’d somehow known he’d never escape the reminders of the dungeon’s horrors.
Kal’s talons clacked as his claws clenched at his sides. “This isn’t the way.”
Lykor barked out a laugh, an expulsion of air at the useless objection. “The wraith have no advantages.” Yanking a burst of force from his Well, he snatched his gauntlet from the ground and shoved the armor back onto his fucking claw. “I won’t hesitate to drain Essence from every stars-cursed elf.”
“You’d be turning innocents into wraith.” Kal’s scarlet glare blazed with fury. “That crime would make you no better than the king.”
“And what gave you the impression that I care? Perhaps I’ll redistribute power like Galaeryn always spoke about.” Lykor took an aggressive step closer to his captain, driving a gauntleted finger into Kal’s chest. “Except I’ll give the elves’ magic back to the wraith.”
Before Kal could argue, Lykor diverted him with a sarcastic taunt. “Don’t you prefer gazing upon this elven form, anyway?” Sneering, Lykor gestured to his moonbeam complexion, plucking at his hair, silver like frosted starlight. “Isn’t this how you remember Aesar?”
Kal retreated a step, landing next to Fenn. “Aesar would never steal power.”
Fenn placed a claw on his father’s shoulder, talons tensing against Kal’s cloak. A warning. Possessing more sense than the captain, the young lieutenant averted his gaze, keeping silent.
“Perhaps Aesar’s weakness was why he fractured in the dungeons.” Lykor rolled his shoulders, haunted by the impression of those golden spikes Galaeryn had impaled into his spine so long ago. “None of us would be here if I didn’t suffer all that fucking torture on his behalf.”
Glancing around the interrogation chamber, irritatingly dim now due to loss of his wraith sight, Lykor seized Essence. Angling his awareness toward Aesar’s sleeping presence, he tapped into Aesar’s knowledge. Rummaging through his memories, Lykor flicked his wrist, igniting the room with white illumination, a talent he hadn’t had at his disposal before. Fenn cringed, shielding his eyes from the sudden wave of blinding light.
“Let me talk to him,” Kal demanded, his pupils swallowed by his crimson glower.
Shadows combusted from Lykor, answering his fury. They all wanted their prince. Even the elders, Kyansari’s citizens who Lykor had delivered from the prisons after the king had reduced them all to wraith. No one wanted him, the one who’d survived for them. Protected them. Endured all the torments for them.
A chain of darkness lashed out, wrapping around Kal. Lykor yanked his captain to him, reaching up to snatch Kal’s throat.
“Do you know where your precious Aesar is?” Lykor hissed in Kal’s face, dragging him down to eye level. “He’s drifting. Thinking he’s still plunging to his death. Taking the coward’s way out.” Lykor squeezed, the metal joints in his gauntlet squealing. Shadows mobbed like ravens, spinning in a gale. “He won’t be coming back.”
Lykor’s eyes flicked to Fenn, who was nervously chewing on a lip ring in the same aggravating habit as his father. He eyed the rending but didn’t retreat, scaled boots scraping against the stone floor as he shifted his weight.
Kal gritted his teeth, fangs elongating. “Aesar was trying to save us from you,” he gasped in a strangled breath.
