23. Chapter 23
AMARIA
The eastern ledge defied the mountain’s brutal logic.
High above the valley where the Mist-Walkers coiled in their nests, the granite face gave way to a shelf of stubborn earth.
Moonlight bleached the stone to bone, casting the valley below into shadow.
It was a secluded pocket of green clinging to the edge of the world, sheltered from the biting wind that scoured the peaks.
A weeping willow anchored the soil, its roots knitting the ground together, its long, pale branches trailing over the precipice like fingers dragging through water.
Eryndor sat with his back against the trunk. Knees drawn up. Head tipped back against the bark.
He looked as wrecked as I felt.
I almost turned around. Almost walked back down the path, back to the room where I was supposed to be sleeping, back to the careful distance we'd been maintaining for everyone else's benefit.
I shouldn't be here. The thought was clear and correct and I ignored it completely.
My boots scraped against stone. His head turned.
"Amaria."
"Couldn't sleep."
"Neither could I." He patted the earth next to him. "Sit."
I crossed to the patch of living earth. The grass was thick here, holding the day’s warmth against the mountain chill. I settled into the coil of willow roots, close enough to talk but far enough that the marks stayed quiet. The armor helped. The distance helped more.
I pulled my knees to my chest. The cold seeped through my clothes, sharp and immediate. Beside me, Eryndor’s breathing was slow and steady; I matched mine to it before I realized what I was doing. The willow branches swayed in a breeze I couldn't feel, their tips whispering against the rock.
"I keep seeing her face," I said finally. "When she couldn't remember. The way she looked at me. Like I was a stranger who might have answers." My throat worked. "Like everything we'd been through together had just... evaporated."
The words hung in the cold air. I hadn't meant to say them. Hadn't meant to say anything at all. The dark made it easier. The exhaustion made it inevitable.
We’d been holding ourselves together all day—for Serenya, for the others—performing a strength we didn't feel. But here, the act was too heavy to carry. I let it drop.
"She won't remember bonding with Veyra." My voice came out rough. "The most important moment of her life, and it's just... gone."
"The Mist-Walker will remember for her."
"That's not the same."
“No," he sighed. "It's not. But it's what she has."
By this time tomorrow, we'd be airborne. Flying south toward the King's caravan route, toward the narrow pass where Dreadscale said he'd be most exposed.
By this time tomorrow, we'd either be dead or the King would be.
And then—if we survived the killing—we'd join the Marks. Seal the Veil. And fulfill the part of the prophecy nobody talked about.
I dug my fingers into the dirt around the roots of the willow.
One more night. That's all we get.
The willow branches stirred. Somewhere below, mist swallowed a peak whole.
"I used to think memory was everything," I said. "Who we are. What we survived. But watching her lose pieces—it's not just the memories disappearing. It's like she's disappearing. And there's nothing I can do."
Eryndor shifted against the tree. I heard the scrape of bark against armor.
"When I was bound to Vivienne," he said slowly, "there were times I couldn't remember who I'd been before. It was similar to the Oath-stone... it doesn't just chain your body. It rewrites your mind. I'd wake up and not recognize my own thoughts."
I turned to look at him. His profile was stark against the stars—jaw tight, eyes fixed on some distant point in the darkness.
He never talked about this. Never.
"How did you survive it?"
"I held onto one thing." His throat worked. "Just one. A single memory I refused to let it take."
"What memory?"
A dragon shrieked from the valley floor, the sound echoing off the peaks until it dissolved into the wind. The silence rushed back in, heavy and waiting.
"You," he said roughly. "The way you looked at me in the ring. When you had the knife to my throat and every reason to kill me. But you didn't."
My chest ached.
"That's what you held onto? Me trying to murder you?"
"You seeing me." He finally looked at me. His eyes were dark, unguarded. "Everyone else saw the Crown Prince. The enemy. The monster. You saw... something else. I don't know what. But it was enough."
The armor suddenly felt like the cruelest joke in the world. Three feet between us and it might as well have been miles.
"I'm scared," I said. "Not of dying. I've made peace with that. But of what comes before."
"Before?"
"Watching everyone I love break apart. Serenya forgetting. Caden still healing from wounds I can't see. Maxx pretending he's fine when he's terrified." I wrapped my arms around my knees. "What if we win and there's no one left? What if we save the world and lose everyone in it?"
Eryndor was quiet for a long moment.
"My father once told me that love was a weakness," he said finally. "That caring for anyone gave your enemies a blade to use against you. I believed him for a long time. It was easier. Safer."
"And now?"
"Now I think he was a coward," he said. "He was afraid of exactly what you just described. Loving people and losing them. So he chose to love nothing at all. Built an empire on cruelty because cruelty doesn't require courage."
He turned to face me fully. The starlight caught the planes of his face, the shadows under his eyes.
"I would rather lose everyone I love than never have loved them." His voice dropped. "I would rather die beside you than live a thousand years without you."
The Marks hummed beneath the armor. Wanting. Always wanting.
I didn't have words for that. So I just looked at him, weighing his words carefully. Eryndor's gaze drifted to the willow tree. To the long, slender branches that trailed over the ledge, swaying in the night air.
He reached up. His fingers closed around one of the branches and pulled it toward him.
I watched, not understanding. He turned the branch over in his hands. Tested its length. Its flexibility. The way the pale bark caught the starlight.
Then he looked at me.
"Don't move." He shifted closer. Not close enough to trigger the Marks—the armor still hummed its quiet protection between us—but close enough to track the sharp bob of his throat. He stared at me with a reckless, singular focus.
He raised the branch.
The slender tendril touched my forehead.
I stopped breathing.
Slowly—so slowly—he drew it down. Tracing the line of my brow. The curve of my temple. The dip beneath my earlobe.
The leaves were cool against my skin. Dry and smooth. Nothing like the heat of his hand.
But he was touching me.
My eyes burned. I didn't blink. Couldn't blink. If I blinked I might shatter into pieces and never find my way back together.
The tendril traced the bridge of my nose. Feather-light. Following the outline of me like he was learning it. Memorizing it. Like he'd been starving for the shape of me and this was the only way he'd ever get it.
It caught on my lower lip.
I heard his breath hitch. He didn't pull away. My lips parted and I tilted my head back. He gently dragged it back and forth over my lower lip. Then teased the upper lip before dragging it down my throat.
I leaned back, offering him more.
The foliage trailed down the dip of my collarbone. Traced along the edge of the armor that kept us apart.
"Eryndor," I murmured.
"I know." His voice cracked. "I know."
He brought the branch back up. Slower this time. Reverent. Along the other side of my neck. Behind my ear. Into my hair.
My eyes closed.
He traced the shell of my ear. The line of my hairline. The furrow between my brows that appeared when I was trying not to cry.
I was trying not to cry. I was failing.
A tear slipped down my cheek. The leaves caught it. Drew a line through the wetness, following it back up to its source.
"Look at me." Barely audible.
I opened my eyes.
He was closer than I'd realized. Close enough that I could see the way his pupils were dilated. Close enough to see the tear tracks on his own face, mirroring mine.
The branch hovered between us. Trembling. Because his hand was trembling.
"I would give anything," he said. "Anything. To do this with my hands."
"I know."
"It's not enough. This isn't enough."
I reached up. Wrapped my fingers around the other end of the branch. "But it's what we have."
The weight of everything we'd already shared pressed down—the bath, the commands and healing, the armor burning through. All of it present. None of it enough.
"I'm running out of ways to reach you," he said. "Every time I find a new one, it just reminds me of everything I can't do."
"Eryndor—"
"I have mapped every inch of you with my voice. With my eyes. With soap and a gods-damned willow branch." His grip tightened on his end of the bark. "And I still don't know what your skin feels like under my palms without something burning between us."
The branch trembled.
"When this is over—" I started.
"Don't." The word came out strained and desperate. He stopped. Inhaled deeply through his nose. When he spoke again, his voice steadied. "If I think about after right now, I will cross this distance. And I won't stop."
I held his gaze. Saw the war behind his eyes—want against will. Hunger against duty.
"Then don't think," I said quietly. "Just hold on."
He closed his eyes. His grip on the branch tightened until his knuckles went white.
I watched his chest expand—one long, deliberate breath.
Then another. The same way he'd taught me to breathe in the bath.
The same steadying rhythm he'd used to pull me back from the edge a dozen times. Now he was using it on himself.
When his eyes opened, the wildness was still there. But leashed. Chained down by something stronger.
"I've got you." The words came out like a vow. "I'm not letting go."
We stayed like that. The moon climbed higher. The world reduced itself to bark and breath and two people too stubborn to break.
Eventually the adrenaline bled out of us. I slumped against the rock. He mirrored me. Our boots touched—the only point of contact the armor would allow.
"Don't let go," I mumbled. Sleep pulling at the edges of everything.
"Never."
The night stretched around us—vast and cold and strangely gentle. The mist rose and fell in the valley below. Dragons called to each other across the peaks, their voices threading through the dark like lullabies in a language we'd never learned.
The stars wheeled overhead. Slow. Primordial. Indifferent to the small tragedy of two people who couldn't touch, sitting inches apart on a ledge at the edge of everything.
I watched them move. Watched the constellations trace their patient arcs across the sky. Watched the world keep turning despite everything trying to break it.
My eyes grew heavy until I finally fell asleep with the willow branch digging into my palm and his hand anchoring the other end.