21. Chapter 21
AMARIA
Eryndor hadn't looked at me all morning.
Not the usual avoidance—the careful six-foot dance we'd perfected. This was different. Every time I got close, he adjusted. Sped up. Put his back to me like eye contact alone could strike him dead.
I'd woken to find him already packed. Already armed. Already gone behind whatever wall he'd built in the night.
"Sleep well?" Serenya had asked.
"Enough." One word. Ice-edged.
That was three hours ago. He hadn't offered another.
The path wound through rocky highlands, the terrain rising in waves of grey stone and stubborn scrub. The Sensorium sat dark on the southern horizon. Ahead, standing stones dotted the hills—ancient, patient, watching.
I should have been watching them. Should have been scanning the terrain, calculating exits, doing all the things that kept people like me alive.
Instead, I kept looking at his back. At the rigid line of his spine. At the way his hands stayed fisted at his sides.
The tether hummed between us. Quieter than usual. Almost... guilty.
I didn't know what that meant. I wasn't sure I wanted to.
Liraeth was close. I could feel it in my soul.
But I wasn’t thinking about Liraeth. I was thinking about the tracks.
I saw them first.
A footprint pressed into a patch of soft earth between two boulders. Then another, ten paces ahead. Then a third, where the ground gave way to stone—and the stone was cracked, fractured by the weight of a body that shouldn't have been able to mark rock at all.
"Stop."
Everyone stopped.
I crouched beside the nearest print. The same mechanical precision. The same impossible depth. The same stride that had circled the Sensorium's edge for days.
"He's ahead of us now," Dreadscale said. He'd moved up beside me, studying the tracks with narrowed eyes. "Circled around. Probably during the night."
"He's herding us." Eryndor's tone was hard with focus. "Keeping us on a specific path."
"Toward Liraeth?" Serenya asked.
"Or something else."
Something worse, he meant. A trap. An ambush. Whatever waited at the end of a trail held by something that didn't need to sleep.
I stared at the tracks. At the evidence of something patient, something relentless, something that had been hunting us since the Dead Zone.
Anger stirred in my chest. Hot. Welcome.
No.
"We're done."
Everyone looked at me.
"Done with what?" Maxx asked.
"Being prey." I stood. "Being herded like livestock toward whatever he's got waiting. We find him first. We end this."
"Amaria—" Eryndor started.
"He wants us scared. Wants us looking over our shoulders instead of ahead." I met his eyes for the first time all morning. "I don't run from things that hunt me. I hunt them back."
"That's exactly what he wants," Maxx said quietly. "You realize that, right? He's been leaving these tracks for us to find. He wants us to follow."
"Then let's not disappoint him."
I went after the trail without waiting for agreement. Behind me, I heard the rustle of clothes, the others exchanging glances. Eryndor’s disapproval radiated through the tether like heat from a forge.
I didn't care.
I was done running.
The tracks led us through a narrow pass between two standing stones, then up a steep incline where the scrub gave way to bare rock. The wind picked up as we climbed, carrying the smell of rain and a metallic tang that made my Griefweaver mark pulse.
Pain.
The Hunter. The Mark flared—a sharp spike behind my sternum that made me stumble. I caught myself on a boulder, breathing hard.
"Amaria." Eryndor was beside me. "What is it?"
"Nothing. I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're—"
"I said I'm fine."
But I wasn't. The pain was getting stronger—not constant, but pulsing in waves that seemed to come from a specific direction. Northwest. Toward a ridge that rose against the grey sky like a broken tooth.
He's there.
"The tracks disappear here," Dreadscale called from ahead. He was crouched at the edge of a rocky outcropping, studying the ground. "Stone's too hard. No more prints."
"I don't need the tracks." The words came out before I'd decided to say them. "I can feel him."
Everyone went still.
"What do you mean, you can feel him?" Maxx asked.
The Griefweaver Mark pulsed again. Harder. I clutched my chest, willing it to stop.
It didn't stop. It got worse.
"My Griefweaver," I managed. "Every time we get close to signs of him—the tracks, the camp—it flares. Like it's… reacting to something."
Another pulse. A spike of agony that drove the air from my lungs.
"I can find him." I looked at each of them in turn. Ended on Eryndor. "But I have to let it hurt."
His jaw set. "No."
"It's not your choice."
"You don't know what you're opening yourself to. If that Mark is connected to whatever's hunting us—"
"Then I'll have a direct line to exactly where he is." I straightened. Met his eyes.
"Amaria—"
I dropped all resistance.
The pain hit like a wave.
I doubled over, gasping, my vision graying at the edges. It wasn't just pain—it was misery. Crushing and bottomless. I was drowning in it, choking on it, cutting through like a signal through static—
—priority conflict. Abort. Environment hostile. Hunt state active.—
A direction. A pull. A magnetic north of pure suffering.
I raised a trembling hand. Pointed toward the broken-tooth ridge.
"There," I whispered. "He's there."
"Amaria." Eryndor's hands were on my shoulders. When had he—? "Close it. Close the connection. Now."
I tried. Couldn't remember how.
The sorrow kept coming. Waves of it, each one worse than the last. I was going to drown. I was going to—
His hand found mine. Squeezed hard.
"Focus on me. On the tether. Let it anchor you."
I grabbed the bond between us like a lifeline. Pulled myself along it, hand over hand, until the grief receded and I was back in my own body, my own skin, my own shuddering breath.
The Mark went quiet. Not silent—humming, still, like a tuning fork after being struck—but manageable.
"I'm okay." I wasn't. I was shaking so hard my teeth were chattering. "I'm okay. I found him."
"You almost lost yourself."
"But I didn't." I pulled my hand from his. Missed the warmth immediately. "I didn't. And now we know where he is."
Eryndor looked at me for a long moment, giving nothing away in his expression.
Then he turned toward the ridge.
"Let's proceed. Carefully."
We approached the ridge in silence.
The terrain grew rougher as we climbed—loose scree that shifted under our boots, boulders that required climbing rather than walking, drops that appeared without warning. The wind was constant now, cold and sharp, carrying the smell of rain that never seemed to arrive.
Eryndor stayed close. Closer than he'd been all day. The tether hummed between us, content with the proximity even as his face remained stone.
When we reached a narrow passage between two outcroppings, he stopped me with a hand on my arm.
"Wait."
He moved behind me. I felt his hands at my hips—adjusting the daggers there, shifting the angle of the sheath.
Then the blade harnessed at my elbow, the one at my knee, the edges seated at my wrists.
His fingers brushed the vambrace at my forearm last, thumbing the throwing stars to make sure they sat flush.
The hilt check. He'd done it before—on the horse, after the Dead Zone. But this felt different.
He wasn't checking to disarm me.
He was making sure I could reach every blade faster.
His thumb pressed against the hilt of the dagger at my hip. Held there for a moment. A silent message I couldn't quite read.
You are lethal. I trust you with this.
Then he stepped back. Nodded once.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
We advanced through the passage together.