Chapter 16
AMARIA
I needed to get the feel of him off my skin.
That was the only reason I was in the ring at this hour, driving Brannick back with a ferocity that bordered on reckless.
I needed to sweat out the memory of the alcove—the phantom weight of Eryndor's chest against my back, the humiliating fact that my hands had stopped shaking the moment he took control.
The cavern air felt charged, thick with the scent of exertion.
It tasted like iron and rot—the Nullatheon's calling card.
The hairs on my arms stood up and my breath came out thinner than it should have underground.
My muscles screamed. Good. Pain was honest. Pain didn't pretend to be something it wasn't. Unlike certain Crownforged soldiers I could name.
Movement in my peripheral.
My guard dropped a fraction. Brannick lunged for the gap but I was already gone—pulled sideways by something at the edge of my vision.
Eryndor.
He'd entered through the far tunnel, silent as a shadow. Now he moved through the empty space with that brutal, economical grace. He wasn't looking at me. Wasn't looking at anything, really. Just running drills of his own, blade cutting the air in patterns I didn't recognize.
"Hey." Brannick's voice, low. "You still with me?"
I forced my eyes back to him. "Yes. Harder," I snarled, blocking Brannick's practice blade and shoving him back. "Stop coddling me."
"I'm not coddling, I'm surviving." But he grinned and came at me again, matching my intensity.
His Fervor radiated outward—his Mark made everyone around him fight harder, feel braver, as long as his faith held.
Right now, it wrapped around my exhaustion like a hand hauling me back to my feet.
"There she is. The little flame I've been waiting for. "
I didn't smile back. Couldn't. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt his hands on my hips. That grip around my wrist, pulling me up from the ledge I'd been too reckless to clear. The way he'd looked at me after—not angry or smug, just knowing.
Like he'd seen exactly what I was trying to prove and wasn't impressed.
And Eryndor drifted closer.
He wasn't sparring anymore. He was circling. Moving through the ring with apparent casualness, but always ending up within earshot. Within correcting distance.
"Higher guard, Scar-Bearer," the Crownforged said, his words slipping through Brannick's cheerful instruction.
Two exchanges later: "Too much weight on your back foot."
I shifted. Said nothing. Kept my eyes on Brannick.
Brannick shot me a look—you okay?—but I shook my head and pressed on. Ignored the shadow at my periphery. Focused on the drill.
Thrust. Parry. Reset.
"Your elbow—"
"I know."
The words came out sharper than I intended. Brannick's blade paused mid-swing. Across the ring, Maxx's sprawl became suddenly attentive.
Eryndor stepped closer. Close enough that I could smell the faint metallic tang of old sweat. His hand hovered near my shoulder—not touching, just there—as he adjusted his stance to demonstrate a correction I hadn't asked for.
"If you drop it any lower, you'll—"
"I don't need your leash, Crownforged."
The words ripped through the training ring, brutal and final.
Everything stopped.
Brannick's eyes went wide. Maxx didn't bother hiding his smirk. Even Ryla and Torin paused their synchronized dance, glancing over with carefully neutral expressions.
Eryndor's face went rigid. And then—a stutter. Small, involuntary, his hand twitching toward his chest before he corrected himself.
Kaelen's voice echoed in my memory: We know every tell. Every sign that the King's chain is still wrapped around your throat.
Was I watching that chain tighten?
His face went stone cold again.
"Understood." His voice came out flat. Controlled.
He turned, pulled a throwing blade from the rack, and crossed to the targets on the far wall. Each throw landed with the same dead accuracy—mechanical, punishing, aimed at nothing and everything.
I turned back to Brannick. "Again."
He raised his practice blade without question.
My Shadowmark writhed through my skin, restless and hungry. I swallowed it down, forced it into something useful, reached for the fusion Kaelen demanded—the balance Dreadscale insisted was possible.
I lunged. Brannick parried and came back hard, and for a few exchanges it was just steel and sweat and the clean simplicity of a fight that made sense.
Then my blade dragged. Not much—a fraction of a second, like the air around it had thickened. I adjusted my hold and came again.
Brannick's shadow fell wrong. I caught it between exchanges—stretching left when the torchlight said it should stretch right. He didn't notice. I almost didn't.
I pressed harder. He met me, but his feet stuttered on the next pass—a half-step correction that didn't match the strike. His brow creased. "Something feels—"
He didn't finish. A practice dummy behind him rocked on its base. No one had touched it.
I swung harder. Faster. Trying to outrun the thing building in me.
Then it came.
A surge—stark and vast, blooming from my core like black water breaking through a dam. My vision blurred. The cavern walls stretched and warped, angles going wrong.
Beside the training mat, a camp lantern flickered.
I watched, frozen, as the flame coiled in on itself. Shrank. The wick un-burned, wax crawling back up the taper like time had forgotten which direction it was supposed to flow. Then it snapped forward again—a fresh flame, a jarring pop—and started the whole twisted loop over.
Five seconds. Maybe less. A stutter in the fabric of reality, playing out inches from where I stood.
"Ah, the sweet scent of impending doom." Maxx's voice cut through the chaos. He'd dodged back from a practice blade that flickered in and out of existence, his usual smirk stretched thin.
"Reminds me of family dinners."
I couldn't answer. Couldn't move. The Shadow was still surging, still pulling, and I didn't know how to stop it—
Hands clamped around my wrists.
Not gentle. Not the subtle steadying touch from the patrol. This was steel and force and desperation, a body rammed into mine with enough momentum to break my stance. Eryndor. His grip was iron, his chest a wall against my back, containing the wild magic even as my fury exploded.
I bucked against him. Snarled. Shame and rage crashed together. He was trying to bind me. Control me—
"Stop it, Amaria!" His voice was raw. "Contain it. You're tearing the Veil!"
The words struck like a slap.
I looked at the lantern. At the loop still stuttering through its sick little cycle.
Me. This is me.
I stopped fighting his grip. Stopped fighting everything.
Just... went still, letting his containment hold while I wrestled the Shadowmark back down, shoving it into the darkest corner of myself where I didn't have to look at it.
The loop stuttered. Stabilized. The lantern's flame flickered once more, then settled back to normal.
The cavern went quiet.
Then Eryndor made a sound.
A strangled, guttural rasp tore out of him. His grip on my wrists spasmed, then released entirely as he lurched back.
I spun around.
His hand was pressed to his Mark, fingers clawing at the spot just above his heart. Through the gap in his cuirass, I saw it—black veins spidering along his skin, surging outward from a source that glowed with a sickening, dark heat. His jaw was clenched so hard the muscles jumped.
"Damn it—" The words came out bitten off. "Too close."
He wasn't looking at me. His eyes were fixed on the ground, on the wall, on anything that wasn't my face as he wrenched another step back, putting distance between us like proximity itself was poison.
Brannick hadn't moved. His practice blade hung loose at his side, and when I looked at him, I caught it—a flash in his eyes that wasn't warmth or encouragement or any of the reliable things I'd come to expect from him. It was fear.
The rebels who hadn't already fled were pressing to the far wall. The lantern's wax had pooled in the wrong direction on the stone.
Nothing clears a room like accidentally breaking reality.
I turned and walked out.
If I stayed one more second, everyone in that room would see my knees buckle, and I was not going to break in front of a male who was already breaking because of me.
Maxx reached me before I'd made it ten steps into the tunnel. A flask hit my palm, still warm. "Drink," he said, falling into step beside me. "You look like the last page of a tragedy." A pause. "The kind where everyone dies and the dog doesn't make it either."
I stared at the flask. "What is it?"
"Tea. Possibly. Don't ask follow-up questions."
My trust in Maxx's beverages ranked somewhere between my trust in Kaelen's praise and my trust in him to have my back.
Maxx sighed, "Serenya prepared that. Drink.
" Fuck it. I drank. It burned going down—definitely not just tea—but the heat gave me something to focus on besides the tremor in my hands.
We walked in silence. Maxx kept pace beside me, present, but far enough to give me room to fall apart without an audience. Kind, but unsettling.
I looked at my shaking hands and then kept walking.
Lethal, something whispered. You're lethal to everything you are near.
Eryndor's face flashed behind my eyes—that mask of agony, those black veins crawling through his skin. He'd contained me. Held me together when I was flying apart. And it had hurt him. Whatever lived in his chest, whatever that dark light had been, my power had made it worse.
I took another sip. Let the burn chase the thought down.
I was dangerous. Not just to enemies. To everyone.
The second key. The Codex vault. Thirty heartbeats of sustained fusion, Kaelen had said. Thirty heartbeats without tearing reality apart or destroying myself or killing the people foolish enough to stand too close.
I couldn't hold three without bleeding.
How the hell was I supposed to be ready in time?