51. Chapter 51
AMARIA
The Suppressor was getting careless. Or maybe I was getting better at slipping out from under his notice. Either way, when I ducked into the servant’s corridor behind the kitchens, he didn’t follow.
His presence faded like smoke behind me—that constant pressure on my chest lifting inch by inch as I moved deeper into the castle's bones.
Let the King think I was cowering in my room. I had work to do. Maxx was tracking the void-iron network. Serenya was resting. Dreadscale was gone, chasing dying dragons across the realm. Everyone had a role.
Mine was this. Following the pain that had been building behind my Griefweaver since the healing ceremony. The ache that shouldn't exist—not through suppression this heavy. Not unless the source was catastrophic.
The Hunter was down here somewhere. The King's monster. The creature who’d hunted us since the dead zone.
And I was going to end him.
I knew these dungeons. The spiral stairs and the rough-hewn stone. The torches guttering in their iron brackets, throwing shadows that moved like living things. I'd been a prisoner here once—had memorized every dripping wall, every locked door, every echo that bounced through the subterranean dark.
This time I wasn't locked in a cell.
This time I was hunting.
Voidbringer and Dawnrender rode hidden at my hips—Maxx's doing, smuggled back to me under a kitchen tray and a borrowed face. The weight of them was the only honest thing in this castle.
The Griefweaver pulsed stronger with every step.
Close. Closer.
I pressed my palm against my breast, trying to muffle the sensation. It didn't help. The pain bled through anyway—waves of it, cresting and falling like a tide of broken glass.
How is anyone surviving this?
My Suppressor was long behind me now. Distant. And without that weight pressing down on my Marks, the Griefweaver woke hungry.
It hit me like a collapsing wall.
I staggered. Caught myself on the stone. The pain wasn't mine but it was—flooding through my chest, my spine, my skull, until I couldn't tell where I ended and the suffering began. Years of it. Layers of it. Agony compressed into something so dense it had its own gravity.
Gods.
My knees buckled. I forced them straight.
Who or what is down here? What have they done to it?
The Griefweaver keened inside me—not a warning anymore. A scream. Whatever was ahead, whatever was generating this much anguish, it had been hurting for a very, very long time.
I made myself keep walking. I needed to put an end to its pain.
A door. Iron-reinforced. Void-iron runes carved into the frame.
The pain was coming from behind it.
I eased the door open.
The room beyond was circular. Small. Lit by a single torch that painted everything in shades of rust and shadow.
And in the center—
Him.
The Hunter hung from chains bolted to the ceiling. Black metal sheathed every inch of him—not armor exactly, but something closer to skin. A second body grown over the first, seamless and dark.
Or it had been seamless once.
Now it was ruin. The metal was caved in at the solar plexus, crumpled like parchment, edges digging into the flesh beneath.
Blood seeped through the cracks—old blood, dried black, and new blood, still glistening.
His shoulder was wrong, the metal buckled inward where something heavy had struck again and again.
The mask remained intact, featureless, but the skull beneath had clearly taken blows—dents warped the surface, one side caved so deep the metal must have been pressing into bone.
He wasn't moving. Wasn't breathing that I could see.
A void-iron rod ran the length of his spine, humming faintly, connected to a web of runes that spread across the floor like a spider's design.
How is he still alive?
His head hung forward, chin to chest. No sign of breath. No sign of life. Just a broken shape suspended in the dark, absorbing pain no body was built to hold.
A pain-sink.
This was where the princess's "miracles" went. This was the cost of every healing ceremony—the corruption wasn’t destroyed, just displaced. Funneled through the void-iron network into this room, into this body, into a single creature designed to suffer so the court could celebrate.
Mercy.
You must end this suffering.
I unsheathed Voidbringer and Dawnrender.
The blades whispered free—one dark, one bright, both hungry. I moved forward on silent feet, circling until I could see the sliver of exposed flesh between his gorget and mask.
One strike. Clean. Quick.
He wouldn't even feel it. After everything they'd done to him, death would be a kindness. The only kindness anyone could offer.
I raised the blade.
I'm sorry.
The thought was foolish. He was a monster. The King's weapon. The creature who'd hunted us through the forest with killing intent.
But I was sorry anyway.
I drew back my arm—
And he started to sing.
Cracked. Broken. More breath than voice. But the melody was unmistakable.
"But pain too vast will crack the glass"
"And love can break the brave—"
Everything in me seized. I knew that song. I knew that song. It lived in my bones, in the earliest memories I possessed—a voice in the dark, a hand stroking my hair, the smell of woodsmoke and safety.
"His soul split thrice,"
"and with its fall, He tore the sky like wave.”
No. The blade trembled in my grip.
My mother’s song.
No, no, no—
My hands moved without permission. Voidbringer clattered to the floor. I reached for his mask—fingers clumsy, shaking—and wrenched it free.
The face beneath was ruined.
Gaunt. Scarred. Years of torture carved into every line. But the bones were the same. The shape of the jaw. The curve of the brow. I would have known him anywhere. The boy who'd held my hand when the soldiers came. The boy who vowed to protect me.
The eyes that opened—slowly, painfully—and found mine.
"Amaria."
My brother's voice. Broken. But his.
"You came."
I couldn't breathe.
Couldn't think. I couldn't do anything but stare at the ghost in front of me, wearing my brother's face, speaking with my brother's voice.
He's dead. He's been dead for years. I mourned him. I buried the grief so deep it became part of my bones.
But he was here. Alive. Chained in the dark beneath a palace of lies, absorbing the kingdom's rot so the princess could play healer.
"Caden."
His name came out shattered.
"Caden, I—how—"
"The first vow." His voice scraped out, rough and uneven. "Cannot override. They tried. Over and over." He was getting weaker. “Year after… year.” Talking was taking too much energy. "Must protect her.” His head sagged to one side.
The tears came then. I couldn't stop them.
"I'm getting you out."
I reached for the chains.
The moment my fingers touched the metal, the world turned red.
The runes on the floor flared to life—violent, hungry, pulsing with a light that hurt to look at. Caden screamed.
I yanked my hands back.
The light faded. The screaming stopped. But Caden was shaking now, trembling in his chains, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
"Don't." The word scarcely audible. "Don't touch... the bindings."
"I have to get you out—"
"You can't." His eyes locked on mine. Clearer now, despite the pain. “I am the circuit.” A breath. Shallow. “If the chains break—” A shudder went through him. “Everything they forced out returns. At once.” He swallowed, speaking with effort. “Into me.”
I understood.
The King hadn't just imprisoned my brother. He'd made him into a bomb. A living vessel for every ounce of corruption the princess had swept under the rug. If I freed him—if I so much as loosened a single shackle—the accumulated poison of an entire kingdom would flood back into him.
He would die. Or worse.
"There has to be a way."
"The Soulbinder." Caden's voice was fading. "He's already... trying."
My breath stopped.
"What?"
"Comes at night." A swallow. Effort behind every syllable. "When the guards rotate. Sits there." His eyes drifted to the floor beside me—a specific spot, like he'd memorized the shape of someone who'd knelt there before. "Hands on the runes. Trying to... untie the knot. Without breaking it."
The dungeon tilted.
"He can't do it yet." Caden's jaw tightened against a wave of pain. "The network's... too deep. Woven into the foundation. He says he needs more time to map the... anchor points." A breath that cost him. "But he comes back. Every night."
Every night.
While I lay on the other side of a wall hating him for his silence. While I catalogued every cold word, every turned shoulder, every absence as proof he'd chosen his father's throne over us. He was down here. In the dark. On his knees beside my brother.
"He talks to me." He licked his lips, gathering enough energy to speak again. "Doesn't have to. I can barely... answer. But he talks anyway."
My throat closed.
"About what?"
Caden's eyes found mine. Held.
"You."
I almost laughed. Almost screamed. A lifetime of searching for my brother, and the male keeping him breathing in the dark was the prince I'd thrown at a king's feet and called enemy.
I couldn't speak. Could only nod.
Caden swallowed. His eyes drifted shut, then forced themselves back open. "Brings something. Bitter. Under the tongue." He took in a slow, stuttering breath. "The pain goes quiet for a while after."
Wraith Root.
Eryndor was smuggling pain suppressant into the dungeon. Numbing what he could. Carrying what he couldn't fix.
And still—
"The Soulbinder doesn't know."
I held my breath.
"What the healings do—"
His eyes closed. Opened. The effort of staying present was enormous.
"He'd stop. Or break. Or go to the King... and lose every piece he's built." A breath that sounded like it was scraped from the bottom of him. "Can’t lose him…"
Caden was slipping.
His eyes were closing. His breath shallow. The void-iron rod hummed behind him, already pulling more pain into his body—an endless tide of suffering that would never stop, never ease, never let him rest.
I couldn't leave him like this.
But I couldn't free him either.
Think. Think!
My Griefweaver pulsed. The Mark that absorbed grief. That took pain and made it bearable.
I can't take all of it. But maybe...
I pressed my palm to his chest.
His agony crashed into me.
I gasped—nearly buckled—but held on. Let the Griefweaver do what it was designed to do. Pull. Absorb. Share the weight.
Just a fraction. Just enough to give him relief.
Caden's breathing steadied. His trembling eased. When his eyes opened again, there was recognition in them and a quiet peace.
"Amaria."
"I'm coming back." The words were a vow. Sacred as anything our bloodline had ever spoken. "I swear on our blood, Caden. I am coming back. With Eryndor. With a way to free you."
He tried to smile. It broke my heart.
"I know."