Chapter 13 #2
I'd never seen Maxx's face like that. The sparkle, the lazy amusement, all of it stripped away to reveal a clinical frost.
He stopped in front of Eryndor. The silence between them stretched taut as a bowstring.
Then he smacked the kit down onto the crate.
The clatter echoed through the mess hall. A few heads turned. Most turned back. Whatever this was, they'd decided it wasn't their business.
"Your pride just cost us five minutes of blood we couldn't spare," Maxx spat.
Eryndor's needle paused. A bead of blood welled from the wound, trembled, slid down his forearm in a thin red line.
He didn't look up.
"Either trust us, Soulbinder." Maxx leaned in, his eyes flat and unforgiving. "Or watch us die neat and tidy while you do everything yourself."
The muscle in Eryndor's jaw twitched. Once. His hand stayed secure on the needle, his gaze fixed on the wound like Maxx hadn't spoken at all. Control. Absolute and unyielding, even now—especially now.
But I saw the way his shoulders stiffened. The way his breathing had gone shallow and measured, the rhythm of a male subduing something that wanted out.
Maxx waited.
Eryndor said nothing.
After a long moment, Maxx exhaled—a sigh between disgust and resignation—and straightened.
"Fine." He stepped back, hands raised in mock surrender. "Bleed alone, then. You're good at it."
He took off, disappearing into the chaos of the triage without looking back.
Eryndor's needle resumed its work. Pierce. Pull. Pierce. Pull. Mechanical. Unhesitating.
From the shadows I watched a warrior stitch himself closed while everything he refused to let others carry bled out onto the floor around him.
Maxx stalked over and threw himself down beside me hard enough to shake the bench.
"The Soulbinder," Maxx ground out. "He doesn't care about anyone." A pause. "Not even himself."
I watched Eryndor work the needle through his own skin, unerring as a statue, surrounded by healers he refused to let touch him.
"You sound almost sorry for him," I said.
Maxx snorted. "I sound like someone who recognizes the type.
" He picked up a pebble, turned it over in his fingers.
"The ones who've convinced themselves they don't need anything.
Don't want anything. Just purpose and pain and the next mission.
" He flicked the pebble into the shadows.
"They're the most dangerous kind. Because they've got nothing left to lose. "
I thought about the sparring ring. The way he'd pinned me without breaking a sweat, then waited for me to pick up my blade like he was doing me a favor. All that meticulousness. All that emptiness behind it.
"You think he's a threat?"
"I think he's a tragedy." Maxx stood, brushing dirt from his leathers. "But tragedies have a way of taking everyone else down with them when they finally break."
He glanced toward the stretchers, where Serenya was elbow-deep in someone's field dressing. His jaw set. "I'm going to see if your healer needs another pair of hands before she conscripts them."
He left before I could respond. Typical Maxx—deliver the gut punch, then vanish before you could return it.
I was still watching Eryndor's corner when a shadow fell across my bowl.
Kaelen. He didn't sit. Just stood there, hands clasped behind his back, that appraising gaze sweeping over me.
"What happened this morning in that ring wasn't a sparring match, Amaria. It was a detonation," he stated. "Your marks reached for his. The Veil rupture weakened further because of it. Half the camp felt it. The other half saw it."
I started to protest. His expression didn't change, and somehow that was worse than being told to shut up.
"You have two marks that want to tear each other apart, and today they nearly tore him apart in the process.
That thread—" He let the word hang. "Whatever that was, it tells me your power is escalating faster than your control.
And uncontrolled power in this stronghold doesn't just endanger you.
It endangers everyone sleeping within these walls. "
The wounded rebels flickered through my mind. The female on the stretcher, gray-faced and slack. The blood blooming through the bandage on the male's thigh. They'd come back from a raid already half-dead. They didn't need me cracking reality on top of it.
Kaelen read it on my face. He always did.
"Dreadscale has agreed to train you. Starting tonight." He held my gaze. "This isn't optional. The Codex vault requires thirty heartbeats of sustained fusion to breach. You can barely hold three." His tone didn't change. It didn't need to. The math was damning enough.
I couldn’t look at him any longer. I stared at the floor, shame heating my neck.
The worst part wasn't the order. It was that I couldn't argue with it.
I'd felt what my marks did to Eryndor. Felt the Veil shudder like I'd kicked a wound open.
And every rebel in stitches was proof of what happened when the people around me paid for things I couldn't control.
Kaelen read my silence. His mouth thinned.
"The next time your marks surge—and they will—you won't just crack the stones beneath your feet. You'll crack the people standing on them." He straightened, already turning away. Already done with me. "One hour. The eastern passage. Don't be late."