SIX
THE WEIGHT OF SILENCE
The word curse carries weight—more than we often acknowledge.
Especially when it comes to generational curses, which require immense magical power.
Yet even then, belief itself can act as a fuel, strengthening the curse’s effects.
What makes a curse a curse, rather than a blessing?
Is it the outcome—or merely the perception of it?
One person’s punishment may be another’s salvation.
—VALEN’S JOURNAL
AMARA
The night presses in, still and heavy. The warmth between us lingers, but beneath it I feel the thing he has not named yet: his father, waiting somewhere inside the silence.
I hesitate, my fingers tracing idle circles against his back.
Maybe I shouldn’t ask. Maybe this moment should remain untouched by the past. But I feel the sadness that still lingers in the bond, softer now, but there.
“Can you tell me more about your father?” I ask gently.
Thane stills. He pulls back just enough to look at me, the space between us feeling colder than the air.
I hesitate. “Sorry. I’m pushing. You don’t have to answer.”
His eyes meet mine, something raw flickering behind them.
“No,” he says softly. “I want to tell you.”
He drags a hand through his hair, gaze drifting toward the city, searching for something not there.
“He watched the woman he loved die long before she ever threw herself from that tower.” His voice turns ragged. “And when she did, he never came back from it.”
The words gut me. I swallow, forcing the grief down.
“He was never the same. I don’t know if he even wanted to be.”
Something unguarded flickers across his face. Hollow. Heavy with years of silence.
I don’t interrupt.
Thane’s gaze drifts, unfocused.
“There were moments . . . ”
His fingers flex at his sides, like the memory lives in them.
“He’d go still. Completely still. Like he was listening.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, as if trying to erase the image from his mind. When he opens them again, they look haunted.
“Or . . . answering something like my mother had when the madness took her.”
He swallows, shaking his head slightly.
“But there were other times he was lucid. Fully himself. He knew who we were. Knew where he was.”
His voice roughens.
“He just . . . couldn’t speak.”
A beat.
“Like the words were there, but something wouldn’t let them out.”
His hand curls into a fist.
“He’d try. Gods, he’d try. You could see it—like he was fighting for the words. For control.”
His gaze drops.
“But they never came.”
He fills his lungs with cool air, searching for the control that has never failed him.
“And the shadows . . . ” He shakes his head again. “They never came from him like my mother. Not once.”
His voice quiets.
“The healers called it sadness of the heart,” he says.
“But you don’t believe that, do you?” I ask, hearing the tension in his words.
His hands clench at his sides. “No.”
The word is quiet, but there’s something underneath it. Something I don’t think he’s ever said out loud.
“Then what do you think it is?”
“I don’t know.”
His fingers flex and shadows, absent just a moment ago, flicker between them like restless ink.
“He wasn’t of Warden blood. He shouldn’t have—” He breaks off, shaking his head, the words catching on something deeper.
I reach for him, taking his hands gently in mine. His fingers twitch at the contact. The shadows flicker again, but they don’t scare me.
The bond pulses.
At the same time, the shadows shudder—like something stirring awake.
I feel it inside me too.
Strange. Quiet . . . and familiar.
I push the thought aside and glance down.
Carefully, I turn Thane’s hands over, my thumbs brushing across his palms. They’re strong, calloused from years of fighting, of wielding a blade. Hands shaped by years of holding too much.
I lower my head, pressing a soft kiss into the center of each palm.
The moment my lips touch his skin, the shadows shift—then retract. Curling inward, like something lulled back to sleep.
Thane inhales sharply, like he doesn’t trust what just happened.
I still.
Because that doesn’t seem right. Curses don’t answer. They take and consume like a parasite. They hollow out until there’s nothing left. This—
This appears to . . . to listen.
I think of how they unfurled from Thane’s hands in his study when he first told us he was a descendant of the Shadow Warden.
Gods, was that only yesterday? It feels like months ago.
The shadows brushed along my skin like silk. Soothing, like balm over a burn. They curled around me. Not Valen.
Me.
And when they did, I felt . . . held. Then what have they been calling a curse?
Thane starts to pull his hands away, but I tighten my grip on them. For a moment, Thane’s fingers tense in mine like the same thought I’m having brushes his mind. His gaze drops to where our hands are joined.
I don’t think he even realizes it, but I feel it through our connection.
The bond pulses again. And something in the shadows shifts with it. Pulsing in time with the bond . . . aligning.
A chill moves through me, something unraveling in the back of my mind.
Thane believes the curse took his mother because she was the strongest Warden left. But if the curse was only meant to take those of Warden blood, why did it touch his father at all?
I hesitate, my thoughts catching, turning.
Of course they didn’t question it. It was easier to believe that the strongest man in the realm had been undone by grief than to consider something no one understood.
No one knew what to look for. Because no one had ever seen this.
No one has ever felt what I can feel because of the bond Thane and I share.
I swallow, my pulse loud in my ears.
“Thane.” My voice is barely more than a whisper. “What if it wasn’t grief?”
He looks at me, his brow tightening. “What do you mean?”
Doubt creeps in, but it doesn’t stop me.
“You said your father isn’t of Warden blood. That the curse shouldn’t have touched him.”
His fingers curl more firmly around my wrists this time, grounding himself.
“Yes,” he answers warily.
“But you also said it was like he was fighting something.”
Through the bond, I feel his pulse quicken, like he senses where I’m going.
“I did.”
In the darkness, I can’t see the golden flecks that spark in his eyes when he’s anxious, but I know they are there.
“Then why would he fight grief?” I whisper, scanning his face.
“And why would grief fight back?”
Thane pulls his hands free from mine and takes a step back.
“What are you getting at, Amara?”
There’s a chill in his voice, but it doesn’t stop me. The bond pulses, warmth moving through me in gentle waves. I know I am on the right path.
I take a breath, holding his gaze.
“When your shadows moved just now . . . they didn’t lash out. Just like in your study yesterday.”
I shake my head slightly.
“They don’t feel like dark magics.”
I glance around the balcony, searching for the right word.
“They feel like . . . a caress.”
A beat.
“Like home.”
Thane scoffs, his expression twisting with disgust.
My fingers twitch at my sides, remembering it.
“I know it sounds insane,” I say, bracing myself. “But the shadows answered. To me. To the bond. I felt it—here.”
I tap my breastbone with two fingers.
“That’s not what a curse does, Thane.”
My voice lowers.
“You said your father would . . . what? Go still? Like he was listening? Like he was trying to communicate with you when he was lucid?”
I step closer.
“That’s not someone losing themselves. That’s someone . . . aware.”
My pulse pounds harder.
“Or holding it back.”
My voice softens, but the certainty doesn’t waver.
“What if your father wasn’t breaking? What if he was reacting to something no one else could see?”
Something shifts in Thane’s expression, small, but unmistakable. Recognition.
Or fear of it.
“No,” he says under his breath. “That’s not—”
But the thought is already there and it doesn’t let go.
“What if he didn’t succumb to grief?” I press, quieter now. “What if he was resisting something else?”
Silence stretches between us.
“Something no one knew was there?” I venture.
Thane exhales sharply. “You think the curse took him . . . differently.”
I don’t answer. I don’t know yet. But I feel it—the contradiction. The shadow element shouldn’t behave like this. It shouldn’t feel . . . safe. We were taught it was evil. And yet, it’s reacting to the bond. Not resisting it.
A sharp inhale pulls me back to the present. Thane’s chest moves up and down, his breath coming fast. His eyes dart, unfocused, like he’s chasing something just out of reach.
“What is it?”
“Rowena took notes on all of our mother’s ramblings, what she drew on walls.
The rest of us dismissed it as random ravings of a sick mind—none of it made any sense.
Most of it wasn’t legible—just markings.
Sometimes she did write words that we could read, but the sentences were broken and didn’t make sense. ”
He covers his mouth with his hand, brows furrowing, as the memories come flooding back.
“By all the Elemental Gods,” he breathes. “During her last few days before she took her life, she wrote, ‘all is not as it seems, help him.’ Do you think she meant my father?!”
I think of his father. Going still. Listening. Trying to speak. Not fully lost like his mother, but maybe fighting.
My pulse stutters. This isn’t random.
The bond surges—tightening, sharpening—until there’s no space left between what I feel and what’s his.
Thane’s eyes widen, searching my face as something shifts between us. And for the first time, he sees it too.
The air between us hangs heavy, like a storm waiting to break.
Then the shadows move.
Darkness spills outward, swallowing the torches, the city lights—even the stars.
Everything.
The shadows hold us, cradling, like they know us.
My breath stutters, a soft tremor in the void around us. I can barely make out his face, though he stands inches from me.
“Thane—”
He lifts his hands, staring at them in horror.
“I don’t—” His voice breaks. “This has never happened without me wielding it. Amara, I’m not doing this.”