19. Chapter 19
ERYNDOR
I heard her before I saw her.
The melody cut through the camp noise—Dreadscale stacking stones for the fire ring, Maxx complaining about the firewood, Serenya's quiet responses. A voice, low and half-formed, drifting from the cliff's edge where she'd gone.
My hands stilled on the strap I'd been adjusting.
"In the dawn when stars could speak, and shadow drank the light..."
The song was old. I felt it more than recognized it—something in the melody that pulled at places I kept locked.
"The Veil was spun from sacred thread—to keep all things as one."
She was silhouetted against the last of the light, legs hanging over the canyon edge, fingers tapping three beats against her thigh.
She didn't know anyone was listening.
I should have returned to the perimeter check. Should have finished cataloguing the western approach, noted the defensible positions, filed my report with Dreadscale.
I watched her instead.
"One soul heard the weeping world, and tried to mend the seam..."
The tether stirred. Not the hum of proximity. Not the purr of contact.
It was a deeper pull behind my sternum, sharp and sudden, like a door being shouldered open from the inside.
I had time to think wrong—
And then I wasn't standing at the edge of camp anymore.
Her.
Small. I am small.
Arms around me. Warm. Safe. A heartbeat against my ear and a voice singing—this voice, this song, but younger. Rougher. Desperate.
"He drank the dark, embraced the light, and dreamed a healing dream..."
The arms are shaking. Why are the arms shaking?
Screaming. Somewhere behind us. Metal on metal. A male's voice—my father's voice?—shouting something I can't understand. A crash. A cry cut short.
The arms tighten. Too tight. Crushing.
"But pain too vast will crack the glass, and love can break the brave—"
Water. I smell water. We're running—she's running, carrying me, and there's water ahead and the screaming behind is getting closer and—
"I love you. I love you. Remember that. Remember—"
Cold. Falling. The arms are gone and I'm falling and the water hits like a fist and I can't breathe can't see can't find her—
The water takes me under. The song fades. The arms are gone.
And in their place—cold. Silence. Absence.
I came back to myself on my knees.
Hands in the dirt. Chest heaving. The taste of river water in my mouth—phantom, impossible, but I was choking on it anyway.
Her mother's arms. The way they shook. The way they tightened—too tight, crushing—because she knew. She knew what was coming and she held on anyway, sang anyway, loved her anyway right up until the moment she had to choose.
Amaria had to watch. She watched because the river had already taken her and there was nothing she could do except drown and survive and carry that forever.
The Soulbinder lunged against its cage.
Who took them.
The thoughts came with the clarity of a kill order.
Who were they. What house. What colors. Are they still breathing.
I didn’t realize my hands were fists until my nails bit deep enough to hurt and the tremors had already climbed into my shoulders.
I wanted to find them.
I wanted to find whoever had dragged that boy away from his mother and his sister and I wanted to—
Stop.
I forced my hands open. Forced the breath in. Out. In.
This wasn't mine. This grief, this rage, this choking need to unmake whoever had touched her—it wasn't mine. The tether had stolen it. Ripped it out of her chest while she sang her mother's song and shoved it into me without her consent.
She didn't know.
She was still on the cliff's edge. Still singing. Voice cracking on the verses her mother never finished, and she had no idea I was kneeling in the dirt behind her, drowning in a river I'd never seen, holding a wound she'd never offered.
I knew too much now. The architecture of her. The way she'd built herself around the absence—mother, father, brother, Brannick. Layer after layer of loss, and she'd let each one become load-bearing. Let the grief hold her up because it was the only thing that stayed.
I knew that shape. I had lived inside it for years.
The training room. The child's face. Eight years old and looking at me like I'd hung the stars, right up until my Soulbinder “gift” tore him apart from the inside.
It's not your fault.
His voice. The last thing he'd said. The lie I'd let him die believing.
My hands started shaking, I dug them into the dirt to still them.
She collected ghosts the same way I did. Carried them like personal sentinels. Let them whisper your fault, your fault, your fault until the words became a heartbeat.
And now the tether had welded us together, and I was one more ghost waiting to happen.
I stood. My legs didn't want to hold me. I made them.
I would not be the next name on her list. I would not be another wound she built herself around. The kindest thing I could do—the only useful thing—was to make sure she never let me close enough to break her.
I could be cold. I could be the Crownforged. I could be the monster she'd hated from the start.
I could keep her safe from the one threat she wasn't watching for.