35. Chapter 35
AMARIA
I didn't want to die without saying goodbye.
That was it. That was the whole stupid, selfish thing dragging my boots up Dreadscale's steps when they should've been pointed toward the front line.
Below me, the mountain shook with the sound of people preparing to bleed—straps yanked tight, armor clanging against dragon-scale, orders cracking down corridors that had been silent twelve hours ago.
An army running out of clock and pretending it wasn't.
I tuned it out. The war could have me in an hour. It could have every last drop and every broken thing I'd been hiding under my ribs since the day I took a rock to the face for a girl in a ravine.
But not yet.
Not before I climbed these stairs. Not before I looked at her face one more time and memorized whatever was left of her to memorize—even if she couldn't do the same for me.
When I reached the top, she was already there.
She sat in the wide archway, legs dangling over the edge, wind lifting her hair. Her ceremonial dagger lay across her knees. Her thumb moved along the flat of the blade in slow, absent strokes—the same motion I'd watched her make a thousand times.
The Mist-Walker nestled on the ledge—protective, waiting, loyal to a connection that had gone painfully one-sided.
The space was beautiful. The view endless. The light soft and golden, where the clouds drifted below and the world felt distant enough to forget.
I stopped in the archway, and Serenya turned toward me.
Her smile was warm. Open. The smile you give a stranger who's wandered into your space.
"Oh, hello." She shifted, making room on the stone ledge. "Are you one of the warriors?"
The words landed like a blade between my ribs, and I bit down hard enough to taste blood.
Veyra's massive head swung toward me. Her silver eyes locked onto mine, and the Mist-Walker let out a soft, aching rumble.
Serenya didn't even seem to notice.
"The battle's coming soon, isn't it?" She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "Everyone seems so busy. I've been watching the dragons from up here—they're beautiful when they fly in formation."
Her other hand moved in her lap as she spoke—her thumb absently worked slow circles over something tucked against her palm. I caught the edge of it between her fingers. Black. Veined with a thread of orange that still held warmth, even up here in the thin mountain air.
Umbra's scale. The one Dreadscale had gifted her in the grave-moss.
She didn't remember him giving it to her. Didn't remember him at all, not really—just a tall quiet presence who brought her tea and kept vigil. But she carried the scale anyway.
Whatever she'd lost, her body remembered. Remembered that this small warm thing meant safe. That the male who gave it to her was someone who had stayed.
I made my face do something. I didn't know what. Smile, maybe. The muscles obeyed but the rest of me was somewhere far away, watching this happen to someone else.
Her eyes met mine. Polite. Empty. No flicker of recognition. No buried awareness fighting to surface. No "I know I should know you" struggling behind her gaze.
Just a stranger being kind to a stranger. My throat closed. I tried to breathe. Tried again.
"Good luck out there." Her voice was gentle. Sincere. "I hope you come back safe."
My nails bit into my palms. The pain helped.
I stood in that archway with decades of friendship in my chest and nowhere to put it.
"You don't know how to stop loving the wrong things, Amaria. But one day, that will save us."
The girl sitting on the ledge had her eyes, her mouth, her hands. Everything but the part of her that used to reach back.
All of it existed now only in my memory. I was the sole keeper of a history that used to live in two people.
"Thank you," I whispered. My chest was caving in and my Marks were screaming beneath my skin and somehow the words came out like nothing was wrong. Like this was just a conversation. Like I wasn't being unmade standing up.
Serenya smiled again. Warm. Kind. Empty.
I turned and walked away before my face could break.
I stepped back through the archway, letting the biting wind mask my tears. The stone stairs plunged straight back into the ringing anvils of the stronghold. I kept my head down, each step carrying me further from a best friend waiting for a battle she wouldn't remember.
I didn't look back. There was nothing to look back for.
I walked for a long time.
Not toward anything. Just away. Through corridors I didn't track, past warriors I didn't see, down stairways that took me deeper into the mountain's belly where the heat pressed up through the stone and the noise of preparation was muffled into a low, distant hum.
I let my feet choose and my mind go blank, because the alternative was standing still and feeling the full weight of what had just happened in that archway.
I ended up in our room. Sat on the edge of the bed. Stared at the wall until the shadows moved and the light through the arrow slit shifted from gold to grey.
The grief didn't crest. It just sat in my chest like a stone I'd swallowed, too heavy to cough up, too solid to dissolve. Serenya was alive. Breathing. Smiling. And she'd wished me good luck like I was a stranger passing through.
I pressed my palms against my eyes until I saw sparks.
Then I got up, splashed water on my face, and went to find something else to do with my hands before they started shaking.
I was halfway to the armory when his voice found me.
"Nobody is dying on an empty stomach!"
Maxx's voice echoed down the corridor, bouncing off the stone walls with all its usual refusal to be ignored. "Get your asses to the east hall. Now! That's an order. I don't care if you outrank me. I outrank everyone when it comes to pre-battle feasting."
The east hall had been claimed for the occasion—a smaller chamber off the main corridor, crowded now with mismatched chairs and a table groaning under the weight of stolen food.
Roasted meat. Bread still steaming. A wheel of cheese with a knife stuck in it at a jaunty angle.
Three bottles of a strong amber brew. Maxx stood at the head of the table, arms spread wide.
"Welcome to the Last Supper of Idiots Who Keep Cheating Death." He gestured grandly at the spread. "I liberated this from the kitchens. The cooks were very understanding once I explained that we might all be erased from existence tomorrow and therefore deserved the good cheese."
Caden sat near the window, the Mirror-Fire visible on a ledge outside, obsidian scales catching the last of the daylight. He looked better—clearer—the sharpness of the training pit softened here, among people who weren't enemies.
Dreadscale had claimed a corner. A cup in his hand, untouched.
Serenya perched on a chair near the fire, the baby dragon curled in her lap, copper scales gleaming.
The dog had planted itself at her feet, tongue lolling.
She was stroking the hatchling's spine with absent fingers, watching the room with the pleasant curiosity of someone attending a party where she didn't know anyone.
Eryndor stood near the door. Arms crossed. Looking profoundly uncomfortable with the entire concept of casual group gathering.
"Sit down," Maxx commanded, pointing at him. "You're making me nervous hovering like that. You look like you're about to arrest someone."
"I don't hover."
"You absolutely hover. You're the most hovering person I've ever met. You hover with intent." Maxx shoved a chair toward him with his foot. "Sit. Eat. Pretend to be a person who experiences joy."
Eryndor sat. The chair was next to mine. Close enough that our shoulders almost touched—the metal chest pieces doing their job, keeping the Marks quiet. Just two people sharing a meal. Almost normal.
His arm brushed mine as he reached for his cup. His gaze dropped to my plate. Empty. Not because I'd eaten—because I hadn't taken anything.
"Don't," I warned.
"You need to eat."
"You need to mind your own business." He put a piece of bread on my plate without looking at me.
I shoved it off. He put it back.
I left it there because fighting over bread in front of Maxx would end me.
Maxx poured drinks, passing them out with easy familiarity born in taverns, camps, and all the dark places where people gathered before walking into worse ones.
"To not dying," he announced, raising his cup. "Again. For the—what is this, the fifth time? Sixth? I've lost count. We're very bad at staying dead."
"You've never actually died," Caden pointed out.
"I've come close! Multiple times! Just last week parts of me were literally dissolving into void-stuff. That counts."
"That's not dying."
"It's dying adjacent. Dying curious. Death was flirting with me and I said 'not today, handsome.'" Maxx took a long drink. "Point is, we keep surviving things that should kill us, and I think that deserves acknowledgment."
Serenya laughed.
The sound was right. Bright and warm, the same laugh I'd known for years. She didn't remember why these people were funny, but she knew they were, and that was enough for her.
My chest ached.
"So." Maxx dropped into his chair and tore off a chunk of bread. "Since this might be our last chance for meaningful conversation before someone tries to erase us from reality—let's go around the table. Worst fear. Go."
"Pass," Dreadscale said from his corner.
"You can't pass."
"I just did."
"That's not how this works—"
"I've been alive for hundreds of years. My worst fears have all already happened." He took a sip of his drink. "Next question."
Maxx stared at him with delighted outrage. "You can't just—that's cheating. That's emotional cheating."
"My worst fear is Maxx making us do team-building exercises the night before battle," I said, smirking.
"Excuse me, this is bonding, not team-building. There's a difference."
"Is there?"
"Yes! Team-building is organized and has goals. Bonding is chaotic and has alcohol." Maxx gestured at the bottles. "See? Alcohol. Therefore bonding."
Eryndor shifted beside me. "I don't understand the distinction."