The Binding (Heirs of the Shattered Veil #3)

1. Chapter 1

AMARIA

My brother's face.

I'd dreamed of it for years. Carved it into the dark behind my eyelids every night since the river took me from him. Held onto it like a lifeline in the dark. Fought for it. Bled for it. Burned down everything I touched trying to reach it.

And now he stood four feet away, and I couldn't feel anything at all.

Rain slicked down his cheeks. Or maybe tears—hard to tell in this muted nightmare we'd stumbled into.

The lacerations where Caden's armor had fused to his flesh caught the distant torchlight from the palace windows.

His eyes were empty as he stared at the walls like he'd forgotten which side of them he belonged on.

But he was here.

Free.

Alive.

I waited for the relief to hit. The joy. The sob that should have torn itself from my chest and dropped me to my knees. Nothing.

Just rain on my face. Cold seeping through the thin grey sack the King had given us—the glamour Maxx had spun for the ball long since dissolved, leaving nothing but rough fabric plastered to my skin. Mud squelched between my bare toes, sucking at my feet like the earth itself wanted to swallow me.

Behind us, the palace blazed with light.

Music drifted through the windows—strings and laughter and the clink of goblets raised in celebration.

The wedding feast. They were still dancing in there.

Still toasting the union of their golden prince and his perfect, lying bride while the world rotted at the edges.

Eryndor was in there.

Married.

The thought should have gutted me. Should have sent me clawing at the gates, screaming his name, ripping the doors off their hinges with my bare hands.

Instead, I just stood in the rain and felt the silence in my chest where the bond used to live.

Gone.

The tether that had screamed and sung and pulled me toward him like a hook embedded in my soul—gone. Ripped out at the root. What remained was a scar, jagged and white, throbbing in time with my pulse. A graveyard where something vital used to grow.

I clenched the note Eryndor had given me in my fist. I couldn't let go. Like if I stopped touching it, the words might disappear.

Then I screamed. The sound ripped out of the empty place where the tether used to live—raw and void of dignity.

I'd thought he'd let me go.

You stupid, stubborn, self-sacrificing—

Caden’s hands clamped onto my shoulders. His fingers dug into the muscle, bruising, precise. Like he was securing an unstable asset. Not holding me. Securing me. Like I was a package that might fall off a cart.

What did they do to you?

I grabbed his wrist. Held on. Let my brother anchor me to a world I wasn't sure I wanted to exist in anymore.

"He gave up everything," I choked out. "For you. For me. And I—I left him there—"

Caden didn't look at me. He was scanning the perimeter, his eyes jerking from the treeline to the castle walls. Still on watch. Still assessing threats. Even now—even free—he couldn't stop being the weapon they'd made him. My heart cracked along a new fault line.

"He calculated the cost," Caden said. His voice was flat and grating. "One for one. The exchange was accepted."

The words hit me like a slap. Exchange. Accepted. He was talking about himself like cargo. Like a line item in a ledger. This was my brother. My brother. And they'd hollowed him out until love sounded like arithmetic.

"But you're here," I said. The words felt distant. Like I was testing whether they were true.

He finally looked down. His pupils were blown wide, shaking with the effort to focus on my face instead of the threat.

"Target secure," he whispered. Then he blinked, a long, painful shutter. "I am... here."

Serenya appeared at my side and wrapped her arms around me.

The rain kept falling.

Her arms tightened around me, but the cold had roots now.

It wasn't going anywhere. Somewhere near her feet, a small shape whimpered—the Princess's dog, still wearing its ridiculous velvet cape from the ball, somehow still intact, now sodden and dragging in the mud.

It pressed against Serenya's ankle and shivered.

I pulled back. Wiped my face with the heel of my hand, though it didn't matter. The rain replaced everything I cleared away.

"I'm going back for him," I said.

Maxx stared at me. Caden's jaw tightened. But Serenya reached up and brushed the hair from my eyes, then tilted my chin up until I met her gaze.“Of course you are. Just not tonight.”

Tears burned my eyes. I just nodded and let her wrap an arm around my shoulder.

"It's time to go," Maxx said softly. He reached his hand out for mine and I looked at the palace one more time. At the lights. The music. The walls between me and everything that mattered.

I'm coming back for you. I vowed.

I took Maxx's hand, with Serenya’s arm around my shoulder and my brother leading the way, and let them guide me into the dark.

The stairs to the loft were exactly as I remembered—crumbling, narrow, the third rung of the ladder still missing.

Some things survive the end of the world.

Maxx went first, testing each step with his weight before committing. Caden followed—too slow, too careful, like he'd forgotten how to climb. I watched him grip the rungs with hands that kept flexing and releasing, flexing and releasing. Checking that they still worked.

Serenya leaned on me as we waited. The dog had given up on walking and was tucked under her arm, its velvet cape dripping a steady stream onto my boots.

The trapdoor was gone. Splintered off its hinges and never replaced. We climbed through the hole it left behind.

The smell hit first: dust and mildew, with the stale trace of cardamom and clove still clinging to the air from the spice merchant below.

The rafters were bare. No herbs hanging to dry.

No medicine chest in the corner. Just shadows and the wan light filtering through a crack in the roof where the tiles had finally given up.

I stood in the center of the room and tried to remember what it felt like to call this place home.

Nothing.

Maxx tore a handful of loose laths from the wall, the dry wood snapping like bone in the quiet room.

He piled the splinters over soot-stained, rat-chewed scraps scrounged from the corners and built a fire in the old grate, his hands moving with old, thoughtless skill while the rest of him seemed far away.

I'd seen Maxx smirk through torture, laugh in the face of death, crack jokes while bleeding out. That Maxx wasn't here.

Caden lowered himself against the far wall. Slid down until he was sitting with his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. He stared at the fire taking shape but didn't seem to see it.

Serenya crossed to the far corner. Stopped. Her hand lifted toward the empty space where the medicine chest used to sit—the same gesture I'd watched her make a thousand times, reaching for yarrow, for willow bark, for the salve she kept in the blue jar.

Her fingers closed on nothing.

"It's gone," I said it gently, hating that I had to remind her. "The Enforcers took everything after we ran."

She didn't look at me. Just lowered her hand. Pressed it flat against her thigh like she was anchoring herself to something solid.

"Yes," she said softly. "I remember."

Maybe she did. Maybe she didn't. I wasn't going to make her prove it.

The fire caught. Maxx fed it a broken chair leg, then another. Warmth crept into the room, but none of us moved toward it.

The dog wriggled free... and flopped down on the warped floorboards with a contented groan. Caden watched it, his head tilting in a sharp, bird-like jerk.

"Exposed," he murmured. The word scraped out of his throat. "Belly up. Throat open. No defense check."

"It's a dog," Maxx said. First words since we'd climbed up. Caden blinked, slow and heavy.

"Reckless. It assumes... safety." He looked at me then, eyes wide and static. "Why does it assume safety?"

No one answered.

I crossed to him slowly—the way you'd approach something feral—and laid a hand on his shoulder. He flinched, then stilled.

"Because it's too stupid to know better," I said quietly. "And because we're here. That's enough for now."

He didn't respond. But he didn't pull away either.

I squeezed once—I'm here—then let go.

The fire crackled. Caden's eyes drifted back to the dog.

“We should eat,” Maxx said, flat enough to make it clear he didn’t care whether any of us did.

He reached into his coat and pulled out a cloth-wrapped bundle—half a loaf of dark bread, a wedge of hard cheese, two bruised pears gone soft from being crushed against his side. Things he must have swept from the wedding tables on the way out. He set them on the floor between us without ceremony.

The dog’s ears perked. It padded over and sniffed at the bundle hopefully.

None of us moved.

Maxx had finally stopped pretending to tend the fire and let exhaustion drag him under, slumped against the wall with one hand still resting on his boot knife.

Serenya lay curled against him, her head in his lap, one hand tangled in the dog’s damp fur where it had tucked itself against her side.

Her breathing was slow and even for the first time in hours.

Caden hadn't moved from his corner. I crossed the room and lowered myself beside him, close enough to touch but not quite daring to.

For a long moment, we sat in silence with the rain ticking over broken tiles, the embers sinking lower in the grate, and Maxx snoring hard enough to wake the dead—which, at least, meant he was alive.

"You're staring," Caden said.

"I spent years thinking you were dead. I'll stare if I want."

His mouth twitched.

I pulled my knees up, mirroring his position, and for a moment we looked like two kids sitting in the dark again, just like we used to before the river took everything.

Back then, the storm was a game. We’d sit on the roof soaked to the bone, making bets on which tree the lightning would strike next.

He always won, and I always claimed the thunder cheated.

We weren’t hiding then. We were proving we were untouchable.

I wondered if either of us still believed that now.

"Do you remember the cellar?" The words came out before I could stop them. "When the floods came and Mother made us—"

"Cease."

I stopped. Caden's jaw worked. His hands had started that flexing thing again—open, closed, open, closed. Testing the hinges.

"I can't." His voice was rough. "The before.”

"Okay," I said softly.

"Later. I will try. Later—"

"Caden, it’s okay," I promised.

He exhaled. Long and slow, like he'd been holding it for years. Smoke wafted through the loft from the smoldering coals.

"What was it like?" I asked. Then immediately: "You don't have to—"

"Dark," he stated.

I held very still. If I moved, I would scream. If I screamed, I would never stop.

Let me burn this wretched Kingdom to bedrock—find every hand that has touched him and cut it off—

"It was dark. And then it wasn't. And then it was again." He was looking at his hands now. At the scars tracing his knuckles where the armor had fused and been ripped away. "No time. No weeks. Just... Standby. Then the Order. Then the Kill. Then... nothing."

He stopped. I waited.

"Total casualty count," he said. The voice wasn't his. "Forty-seven."

The number hung between us.

“I executed forty-seven targets, sister."

"I understand."

"No. You don't." He finally looked at me... "I cannot delete the logs. The King… I see them. Every face. When I blink. When I sleep. The records persist."

Bile rose in my throat. I reached for him—and he flinched. The motion was small, but it gutted me anyway. My hand froze in the air between us.

“Sorry.” He breathed the word. “People do not initiate contact with me. Unsafe.”

“I’m not people.”

“I know.” He stared at my hand like it was something dangerous. Something precious. “I know you’re not.”

Slowly, cautiously, he uncurled his fingers and placed his palm against mine. His hand was freezing. Calloused in all the wrong places. But solid. Real. I laced my fingers through his and held on.

“I’m going to fix this,” I said. “I’m going to find a way to—”

“You can’t.”

“Caden—”

“Amaria.” He squeezed my hand, holding me there. “Some things don’t get fixed. They get carried.”

I wanted to argue. Wanted to promise him healers and magic and time. Wanted to swear I’d kill the King and find whoever helped break him and break them worse.

But promises were just pretty lies you told people when the truth was too ugly.

I couldn’t fix him.

I couldn’t fix Eryndor.

I couldn’t fix the bond or the Veil or any of the thousand shattered things I’d left scattered in my wake.

So I just held his hand. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I had.

Outside, the rain kept falling. Inside, the fire burned down to coals.

Somewhere in the dark, the dog snuffled in its sleep and kicked its little legs, chasing something it would never catch.

Same, mutt. Same.