5. Chapter 5
AMARIA
"We don't stop," Dreadscale said. "We don't sleep. If we stop, she doesn't wake up."
It was simple. Three days of distance. One day of life. The only variable we could change was speed.
My legs had stopped holding me somewhere in the last hour.
I hadn't noticed the exact moment—just realized I was leaning on Serenya, then leaning harder, then not standing at all.
The tether had taken too much. Given Eryndor too much.
He stood steady now, the black veins retreated, his color almost fae.
I looked like the corpse he should have been.
"Get her on the litter." Eryndor's voice. Clipped. Commanding. The soldier back in his skin. "Maxx, take the rear handles. Dreadscale, front. We run."
"I can walk—"
"You can barely breathe." He crouched beside me, and his hands were steady when they gripped my arms. My strength, living in his body now. "Save what's left for staying alive."
They lifted me onto the litter, the taut cloth catching my weight. Above me, the sky was a wash of grey static, swimming at the edges.
Maxx uncorked a vial. It smelled acrid and herbal. "Alchemical stimulant," he muttered, tipping it against my lips.
"It'll keep your heart beating even if your brain wants to quit. It's going to hurt, Flameheart."
"Good," I rasped.
I swallowed and everything lurched. Then they started running.
24 HOURS REMAINING
The world came in flashes. Grey sky. Maxx's jaw, clenched tight. The jarring rhythm of footsteps pounding through the litter and into my spine.
Behind us, Dreadscale ran with Serenya at his shoulder. I caught it in fragments—his hand at her elbow when she stumbled, the low rumble of his voice when her eyes went vacant. He hadn't left her side since the cave.
I couldn't feel my hands anymore. They lay at my sides, pale and waxy, like they belonged to someone else. My lips had cracked. When I tried to swallow, my throat clicked dry.
The stimulant was doing its job—my heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird—but the rest of me was shutting down. The tether was a wide-open channel now, my strength draining without restraint into Eryndor.
I turned my head. Found him.
He was at the front of the litter, shoulders squared, legs eating ground in long, steady strides. The grey pallor was gone from his skin. The tremor had left his hands. He looked... strong.
He looked like he was running on my heartbeat.
He caught me watching. His lips pressed in a thin line. He knew. Every step he took was bought with my blood.
"Do not look at me like that," he said. Not a request.
"Like what?"
"Like you're calculating how much longer you can keep me alive."
I tried to smile. My face didn't cooperate. "Someone has to do the math."
His grip on the litter handles tightened. I watched his knuckles go white.
"Eyes closed. Now," he ordered. "Save your strength."
"I'm fine."
"I can feel your heartbeat through the bond." His mouth tightened. "It is not strong enough for the both of us." A pause. His grip on the litter shifted. "Close your eyes, little fox." Quieter now. "I will tell you when to open them."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him I didn't need carrying, didn't need saving, didn't need him to feel guilty for surviving on what I was losing.
But my eyelids were so heavy. And the litter kept rocking. And somewhere underneath the fury and the fear, being held felt almost like safety—even if the holding was killing me.
I closed my eyes.
They kept running.
12 HOURS REMAINING
The world had dissolved.
There was no sky. No ground. Just the rhythmic thud-hiss, thud-hiss of sprinting boots punishing the ash.
Cinnamon, warm and sweet, drifted past like a hand brushing my cheek. I turned my head toward it—but there was nothing. The smell was gone before I could hold it.
I was hallucinating. I saw Brannick walking in the ash ahead of us. He was smiling. Kill false hope, he whispered. Just lie down, Amaria. It’s so quiet here.
"Brannick," I mumbled.
"Brannick is dead. You are not." His thumb held against my pulse point. "Feel our tether. Follow it back."
I tried. I really tried. But his face was swimming.
"I'm tired," I whispered. "Eryndor, I'm so..."
My arm swung loose, my knuckles dragging through the passing ash like a dead weight.
That's mine, I thought. That's my hand.
It didn't feel like my hand.
Somewhere far away, bells rang. Three strikes. Sharp. Exact. I flinched before I remembered: there were no bells here. There was nothing here.
"Halt!" The litter jerked to a stop. "She's slipping," Eryndor said. He sounded awfully far away.
Then hands. Warm. Solid. Lifting.
Crownforged.
The word floated up from somewhere. Didn't stick.
Chest. Heartbeat. Arms like a cage I couldn't climb out of.
He was running. I felt it in my teeth. Each impact rattled through him into me.
Strong. When did he get so strong?
Oh. Right.
That's mine. That's my life making his legs move.
Funny. In a way that wasn't funny at all.
"I have you."
I know, I wanted to say. That's the problem.
The thought dissolved before I could hold it.
0 HOURS REMAINING
"There!" Serenya's scream cut through the fog. "The tree line! I see green!"
Green? I didn't know what that word meant.
I was floating. Darkness was creeping in from the edges of my vision, soft and inviting. The tether was silent now—there was nothing left to take.
I smelled blood. Heard the sound of steel slicing through flesh.
That wasn't here either. But my brain had stopped caring what was real.
One day, perhaps two, Dreadscale had said. We had pushed it to three.
"Amaria, stay awake!" Eryndor was sprinting now. I could feel the impact of his boots against the earth, the way his chest heaved against my cheek. "Do not close your eyes. Do you hear me? That is an order!"
"You're loud," I slurred.
"We're almost there. Ten yards. Five."
The air changed.
It wasn't a subtle shift. It was a violence.
We hit the barrier—the invisible line where the Dead Zone ended and the living world began.
It felt like hitting a wall of solid oxygen.
Color exploded behind my eyelids. The smell of pine, damp earth, and life slammed into me so hard I gagged. The hum—the ambient magic of the world—rushed back into my blood like a dam breaking over a parched valley.
Eryndor stumbled. He fell to his knees, taking the impact on his own shins to keep me from hitting the ground. We rolled onto something soft.
Grass.
Real, wet, living grass.
"She's crashing!" Maxx's voice. Panic.
"Get the water," Serenya yelled. "Dreadscale, secure the perimeter!"
"Amaria." Eryndor was shaking me. His hands were on my face, warm and calloused. "Open your eyes. Look at the color. Look at it."
I forced my lids up.
Green. So much green. Canopy overhead. Sunlight filtering through leaves. It was so bright it burned.
I looked at Eryndor. He was hovering over me, terrified, his face framed by living leaves.
"We made it," he breathed.
"You made it," I corrected softly.
And then the darkness finally took me.