13. Chapter 13
AMARIA
The laughter faded slowly, the way fires burn down to embers. Maxx wiped his eyes. Serenya touched a hand to her heart like it ached. Even I had to catch my breath, my cheeks sore from smiling—actually smiling—for the first time in days.
Eryndor stayed where the forest had put him. Knee grazing mine. He hadn't tried to move again.
I probably should have found that alarming.
The resignation. The acceptance. Instead, I found myself...
not minding. The warmth of him against my side.
The steady rhythm of his breathing. The way the tether had gone quiet and content between us, like a creature that had finally stopped pacing its cage.
Don't, I told myself. Don't get used to this.
But I didn't pull away either.
The Sensorium settled around us as night deepened.
The bioluminescent fungi brightened, casting the hollow in soft blues and silvers.
Somewhere in the canopy, an unseen creature sang—not a bird, not quite, but close enough to feel almost normal.
The air had cooled, carrying that strange sweetness the Wood exhaled after dark.
Maxx stretched out on his bedding, arms behind his head, staring up at the glowing branches. Then he squinted. Pointed.
"Is that—"
A shadow passed over the canopy. Massive. Blotting out the stars for a long, slow moment before drifting on.
"My mirror-fire," Dreadscale confirmed. His whetstone never stopped. Shhhk, shhhk, shhhk. "She'll meet us at Liraeth."
Maxx watched the shadow disappear. "Good to know someone's keeping an eye on us."
Serenya was making tea. She'd found some kind of mint-adjacent herb that Dreadscale had deemed "not poisonous, probably.
" It wasn't good tea—nothing out here was good anything—but it was warm, and the ritual of it had become a comfort.
The clink of tin cups against stone, the careful pour from her canteen, the steam rising like small ghosts into the silver-lit dark.
I watched her move through the familiar motions. Watched the way the glow caught in her hair, the careful steadiness of her hands. She looked better tonight. More present. The Wood seemed to agree with her now, or at least wasn't fighting her the way it fought the rest of us.
She filled the first cup. Handed it to Eryndor. Second to Dreadscale. Third to me. Fourth to Maxx.
Then she filled a fifth, her spare. My stomach plummeted before my brain caught up. Don't. Don't say his name. Don't—
"Brannick likes his hot." She held it out toward the space beside Maxx, already turning back to the pot. "Tell him to come get it before—"She stopped.
Her eyes went wide, then dark. Confusion giving way to understanding, understanding giving way to horror.
"He's not." She blinked. Set the cup down too carefully, like it might shatter. "He's not here."
"Serenya—" Maxx reached for her.
"I knew that." Her voice had gone thin. Bewildered. "I know that. Why did I—"
She looked at her hands. At the fifth cup. At me.
"I'm the one who remembers," she whispered. "That's what I do."
I should say something. Comfort her. Tell her it wasn't her fault. But my throat had closed around the words that wanted out instead: It's my fault he's gone. I'm the reason you're reaching for a ghost.
Maxx caught her hands before they could start twisting together.
"Hey. Look at me." He waited until her eyes found his. "You've been holding everyone's memories together your entire life. You're allowed to drop one."
"But I—"
"It's a wound, Starlight. From the void storm." His thumb brushed across her knuckles. "Wounds heal. Even this one."
Dreadscale's voice came from the shadows, low and certain. "The mind protects itself. Forgetting isn't failure. It's survival."
Serenya looked between them. Her face crumbled.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Don't be. I was thirsty anyway." Maxx snagged the fifth cup and drained it in one go. "Brannick would be honored you remembered him at all. That brain of yours is held together with spite and stubbornness—the fact it's still working is a miracle."
A wet laugh escaped her. Barely.
The silence that followed was different than before. Heavier. The Sensorium pressed in around us, amplifying everything—the grief, the guilt, the weight of a name no one had spoken aloud in days.
Finally, Maxx exhaled.
"He'd hate this, you know. The silence." His voice was lighter than it should be—the performance sliding back into place, but cracked at the edges. "He'd be three drinks in by now, telling us about the time he wrestled a goat."
"It was a pig," Serenya said quietly. She was staring at the empty cup. "And he lost."
Maxx laughed—short, surprised out of him.
"He absolutely lost. The pig bit him somewhere undignified." He shook his head. "Limped for a week. Wouldn't tell anyone where it got him, but he couldn’t sit properly for a month."
"He blamed the pig for holding a grudge," Serenya added. Her mouth twitched.
I watched them. This family stitching itself back together around a wound I'd carved.
He betrayed us. He would have let Kaelen burn everything.
But he also taught me to smile among strangers.
Called me little flame like it meant something.
Smiled like the world wasn't ending. Both things were true. I didn't know what to do with that.
My fault. The words rose on cue. Familiar as breathing.
But Brannick had walked toward that knife long before I held it—chosen Kaelen, chosen silence, chosen to let us burn while he called me little flame like it cost him nothing.
I'd killed him and I missed him and I was so angry my teeth ached and the grief sat right next to the anger, head to head, neither one moving over.
My fault didn't have room for all of that.
"The pig was right to hold a grudge. Brannick started it."
Dreadscale's whetstone never stopped. Shhhk. Shhhk. Shhhk. But I saw the corner of his mouth shift.
Eryndor said nothing. But his posture had loosened.
I stayed quiet. Watching them settle around the space he left—the shape of broad shoulders, bad jokes, advice that cut as deep as any blade.
Kill false hope before it kills the ones you love.
His voice in my head. His knife in my hand.
I wanted to hate him. It would be easier than grief and rage and the worst part—missing him anyway.