Chapter 20
AMARIA
I woke to the smell of herbs and the taste of blood sitting stale on my tongue.
My body came back to me in pieces—the leaden weight of my limbs, then the rough wool of the bedroll scratching my shoulders.
Our quarters. A single candle burned down on the crate beside me, wax pooled at its base.
Beyond the curtain, the camp hummed—muffled voices, the scrape of someone dragging a bench across stone.
"Easy." Serenya's face swam into focus above me. "You've been out for an hour."
An hour. The Mark collision. Eryndor's scream. The way reality had fractured into dual timelines before Dreadscale tore us apart—
I tried to sit up. My arms gave out.
"I said easy." Serenya pushed me back down, her hand cool against my forehead. "Your marks are still settling. The surge took more out of you than you realize."
The surge. I could still feel the echo of it—that snag above my core, the way my Light and Shadow had reached for him like starving things. The way his thread had answered.
"Is he—" I didn't want to ask it. Didn't want to care.
"Alive. Kaelen has him in one of the back chambers." Serenya's mouth thinned. "He's not talking to anyone."
Fine. It didn't matter.
I forced myself upright, ignoring the room tilting beneath me. My body felt excavated—like the scaffolding holding my center together had been scraped out, leaving a cold, ringing draft in its place.
Serenya watched me with that healer's gaze—cataloguing symptoms I didn't want named.
"You're getting weaker." Not a question. "The dizziness. The shallow breathing. That tremor in your hands you think I haven't noticed." She paused. "The Veil is unraveling, Amaria. And so are you."
I grunted. She wasn't wrong. I'd felt it for days now—the deep-set thrum in my spine that never quite faded, my Marks syncing with the bleeding wound in reality, a mimicry that felt like a death sentence. Like we were connected. Like whatever was killing the Veil was killing me too.
"I'm fine," I said anyway.
Serenya didn't dignify that with a response. Her palm was cool against my forehead. Her own Mark pulsed faintly at her heart—I'd seen that glow before. It meant she had more work to do.
"Let me finish," she murmured. "You're not all the way back yet."
Immediately my eyes wanted to close. My body wanted to sink. I fought both.
"Let me in," she said softly. "Just breathe."
The Old Tongue came soft and low—not words exactly, but sounds that lived beneath language. I knew this ritual. Had felt it a hundred times in childhood, when nightmares clawed too close and Serenya would weave me back together with thread-light and true memory.
The world frayed then softened.
I let myself drift.
And then I wasn't in our quarters anymore.
Rough-hewn walls. A narrow cot pushed against the corner, blankets untouched. Eryndor's quarters—I recognized the sparse discipline of it, the absence of anything personal. The Crownforged lived like he was already a ghost and just hadn't filed the paperwork.
He sat on the edge of the cot, alone.
His cuirass lay discarded on the floor, shirt unlaced. His hand flew to his Mark. Right where his Command-Rune had blistered and burned. Even from here, I could see the angry red of damaged skin, the dark veins still spidering outward.
His lips moved.
A hum escaped him—tuneless, almost unconscious. A melody I knew. A melody I'd heard children singing in an alley not two weeks ago.
"Turn once for Light, turn once for Shade." His voice was rough. Barely audible. "Bind the thread or all shall fade."
Serenya's fingers dug into my arm. I felt it from far away—her shock bleeding through the weave.
That's not possible. How is he—
The vision fractured. Shifted.
Not the stone walls anymore. Somewhere warm. Firelit. A nursery with the faint sweet scent of milk-soaked cloth. Soft furs on the floor, firelight pooling orange across the stone.
A boy—barely more than a baby, toddling on shaky legs. His torso bare, a Luminar Mark glowing faint and new against his skin. A caretaker knelt beside him, kind-eyed, her voice soft as she sang.
"Turn once for Light, turn once for Shade..."
She took his tiny hand. Pressed it to his heart.
"Bind the thread or all shall fade."
The baby laughed. Didn't understand the words. But his Soulbinder Mark kindled once, a crimson light that didn't fade. It expanded, bleeding out of the memory, twisting into a thread that hung in the air of our room. Answering the song like it recognized a perennial melody.
Eryndor. That baby was Eryndor.
The vision fractured again and shifted.
I knew this place.
A forest clearing, wild and green, sunlight streaming through the canopy.
Girls in a circle—seven, maybe eight of them—their voices high and clear as they chanted.
I was one of them. Small. Five years old, maybe six.
Dancing with the others, barefoot in the moss, not knowing what the words meant.
Just loving the rhythm. The power of it.
"Touch hand to heart and heart to hand."
Our voices braided together—the girls in the clearing, the nanny in the nursery, Eryndor alone in the ruins. Layering. Building. Threading across years, across lives.
"Mend the sky, and heal the land."
The sound swelled until it wasn't sound anymore. Until it was vibration, pressure, a weight against me that felt like the whole world leaning in to listen.
Then—light.
Blinding. Searing. Cracking the vision apart like glass.
I gasped back into my body, back into our quarters, Serenya's hand still pressed to my forehead. She was shaking. Her eyes were wide and glassed over.
"You saw it," she whispered. "You saw him. The same song. The same—"
"That doesn't mean anything." The words came out trembling with a defensiveness I couldn't quite hide. "It's a children's rhyme. Half the realm probably knows it."
"Amaria." Her voice splintered. "His nanny sang it to him. Over his Binding Mark. The same words, the same melody, pressed to his heart just like the prophecy says—"
"Stop."
But she didn't stop. She snatched up her prophecy notes and pressed a finger to one of the symbols.
"It's the same. The same threading pattern, the same binding sequence. It's all in here." Her eyes were too bright. Too certain. "Let me show you."
She laid her palm flat against my Marks.
"Close your eyes."
"Serenya—"
"Trust me."
I closed my eyes.
The Memory-Weaving took hold—gentler this time, a soft current instead of a flood. And then I saw it.
My Marks. Hovering in the dark behind my eyelids, rendered in thread-light. The silver spiral of my Luminar. The ink-black slash of my Shadow. Both glowing, pulsing, familiar.
And then—a third shape. A red circle, weaving itself between them, binding them together. A new glyph. A symbol I'd never seen before.
My eyes snapped open.
"What the hell was that?"
Serenya was pale, her hand trembling where it still rested against me.
"That's the prophecy symbol, Amaria. I've been staring at it for weeks, trying to understand what it meant.
" She pulled the parchment into my line of sight, pointing to a faded drawing.
"Look. Your Light sigil. Your Shadow sigil.
And a third ring, overlapping them both. "
I looked.
She was right. The symbol on the page matched exactly what I'd just seen—my Marks, bound by something else. Something red. Something that looked like—
His thread.
"No." The word came out hoarse. "That doesn't mean anything. It's just—"
"Read the verse."
"Serenya—"
"Read it."
Her finger jabbed at the Old Tongue script below the symbol. I didn't want to. Didn't want to give this power over me. But her eyes were fierce, unyielding, and I'd never been able to refuse her when she looked at me like that.
I read.
"When Light no longer denies Shadow, and the sundered soul binds its warring halves, then shall the scar mend, and the Veil be made whole again."
The words settled into me like stones dropped into still water.
The sundered soul.
"It's you," Serenya whispered. "You're the sundered soul. The one destined to heal the Veil—not by fighting your duality, but by embracing both marks."
"That's insane."
"Is it?" She gestured at my Marks, still raw, with that exposed ache. "You have two marks, Amaria. You're the only fae in recorded history to carry both Light and Shadow. You're the sundered soul."
"We almost died, Serenya."
"Because of that thing in his chest." Her voice was urgent now, pressing. "The Command-Rune—it fought its natural purpose. The King's magic, trying to tear apart what your marks were doing. That's why he—" She broke off, swallowing. "But don't you see?”
She grabbed my hand.
"The prophecy isn't about him, Amaria. It's about you. Your two halves, learning to harmonize instead of war. His Soulbinder was just trying to heal a sundered soul. But it catalyzed something—even the King couldn’t stop— woke something up, gave us this vision.
But the work? The healing?" Her eyes held mine.
"That's yours. That's always been yours. "
I wasn't sure about any of it. But if the fates were handing me a weapon, I'd take it. I'd been handed worse and made it work.
I let my body sink back onto the bedroll. Exhaustion pulled me under, but my mind kept turning.
Harmonize instead of war.
I'd spent so long caging my Shadow. Treating it as a shameful weapon to be hidden and controlled and never, ever let loose. And my Light—I'd leaned on it like a crutch, the "safe" Mark, the one that didn't make people flinch.
But safe hadn't healed the Veil. Safe hadn't stopped the fractures, the glitches, the bleeding wound in reality that was killing us both.
Maybe it was time to stop being safe.
Dreadscale. I'd have to go to him. Swallow my pride and ask for the training I'd been avoiding. Learn to wield my Shadow with the same intention I gave my Light. Learn to make them work together.
Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow, I start.