Chapter 20 #2
My eyes drifted shut. Sleep pulled at me, heavy and warm.
And just before I let it take me, a flash of color on Serenya's desk—just visible in the dim light. A small bouquet of pale flowers. Cavern blooms, delicate and white.
The same flowers I'd seen Maxx picking yesterday.
I gave her a long, slow look. She suddenly became very interested in organizing her prophecy notes.
"Don't," she said without looking up.
"I didn't say anything."
"Your face is saying plenty."
I let my eyes close again, a small smile tugging at my mouth despite everything.
Some mysteries could wait until morning.
But, morning came with the weight of a thousand eyes I hadn't yet faced.
I was still pulling on my boots when Serenya spoke, her voice carrying that careful neutrality she used when delivering news she knew I wouldn't like.
"The Seer Twins had a vision last night. About you. About what happened in the ring."
My fingers stilled on the laces. "And?"
"And people found out." She didn't look at me. "Everyone knows about the prophecy."
Of course they did. Because privacy was apparently a luxury the fates had decided I didn't deserve.
I finished with my boots and stood, rolling the tension out of my shoulders. It didn't help. Nothing was going to help except getting through this day one breath at a time.
"Let's just go eat," I muttered. "Get it over with."
Serenya nodded and pulled back the cloth that served as our door.
Dreadscale was waiting on the other side.
He stood against the opposite wall, arms crossed, those unsettling tattoos shifting along his skin in the dim torchlight. We locked eyes and nodded to each other—he pushed off from the stone and fell into step beside me as we started toward the mess hall.
He moved with a silent, steady presence that asked nothing and offered everything.
I understood what it meant. After yesterday—after the collision, the fracture, the way my marks had nearly torn reality apart—he knew I was ready. Ready to stop running. Ready to learn. And Dreadscale had never been the type to let someone lie to themselves comfortably.
The walk to the mess hall felt longer than usual. Or maybe that was just the dread pooling in my stomach.
The noise hit me first—the familiar clatter of tin plates, rough laughter echoing off stone. Normal sounds. Safe sounds.
They died the moment I stepped through the entrance.
Heads turned. Conversations stuttered and stopped. The laughter cut off mid-breath. In the silence, every sound in the cavern sharpened—water dripping deep in the rock, the hiss of fat in the cook-fire, a spoon hitting the floor and no one bending to pick it up.
Then the whispers started.
I grabbed a plate from the stack and kept moving, jaw set, shoulders back. Porridge. A heel of bread. My hands steady because I made them steady.
The whispers followed me like shadows—hushed and edged, slithering between the tables, impossible to escape.
"—tethered to the Veil's fracture—"
"—saw the whole cavern flicker, like reality itself was—"
"—what she chooses, the world becomes—"
The Seer Twins' words, passed from mouth to mouth until they'd become gospel. I didn't know what they meant. I wasn't sure I wanted to.
Brannick stood near the cook-fires, his broad back turned toward me. One hand gripped his mug like he was trying to strangle it—knuckles white.
He started to turn. I saw the beginning of it—that familiar instinct to find me, to grin, to call out.
But, he turned his back on me instead and rejoined the group he was with. One of the rebels gestured toward me. Brannick shook his head, murmuring. The rebel glanced my way, then quickly found the floor.
I kept walking. Pretended I hadn't noticed.
My stomach clenched. I'd secured both Keys. I'd passed their missions. I'd bled for this cause, lied for it, nearly died for it.
And still, all they saw was the monster.
Serenya walked close at my shoulder, a quiet anchor. Dreadscale at my back.
I found an empty spot at the end of a long table and sat, staring at my plate without seeing it. The whispers hadn't stopped. If anything, they'd grown louder now that I wasn't moving.
"—did you see Eryndor after? He couldn't even—"
Then Maxx sauntered towards us with a ravaged apple in one hand, that infuriating smirk firmly in place. His eyes held no fear. Just that strange, defiant amusement I was starting to recognize as his armor against a world that took itself too seriously.
"You could level the palace, Flameheart, and I'd still ask you for fashion advice."
Dreadscale grunted and I snickered at the juxtaposition of the two.
Maxx slid onto the bench beside me without waiting for an invitation, bumping my shoulder.
I tried to eat. Tried to focus on the tasteless porridge, the scrape of my spoon against tin, anything but the eyes I could feel crawling across my skin.
It didn't work.
My gaze kept drifting. Scanning the tables. The entrances. The shadows where a male in dark armor might stand, watching without being seen.
Nothing.
I checked again. The corridor leading to the training grounds. The alcove near the back where he sometimes took his meals alone.
Empty. All of it.
Eryndor was gone.
Had he left? Slipped out in the night, back to the King who held his leash? Or was he just hiding somewhere, nursing wounds I'd carved into him, deciding whether the cost of staying was worth what I might do to him next?
Maxx took a bite of his apple and gestured toward Dreadscale with it.
"You know, for someone who's supposed to be teaching her the mysteries of the Shadow, you're remarkably terrible at small talk.
" He leaned back, studying the Dragonborn with exaggerated interest. "Do you practice being this intimidating, or is it a natural gift? I'm genuinely curious."
Dreadscale didn't blink. Didn't move. Just sat there like a statue carved from volcanic rock.
"See, that." Maxx pointed the apple at him. "That right there. Most people at least twitch. You're unsettling, friend. Deeply unsettling."
Dreadscale quirked an eyebrow at Maxx. "Shallow waters are easily disturbed," he deadpanned.
Maxx staggered back, hand over his heart like he'd been struck. "He speaks! Mark the day, Flameheart. We've witnessed a miracle."
I pressed my lips together suppressing a smile.
Then the air shifted.
A figure stepped from the milling rebels. She crossed the stone floor without a sound, Nyra. One of the Seer Twins. Her veiled face gave nothing away as she glided past our table, close enough that I could have reached out and touched her.
She didn't stop or look at us.
But her voice—resonant, meant for my ears alone—threaded through the noise like smoke through a keyhole.
"One thread pulled. Two marks flicker. Bind or bleed, little twin-star."
My breath stilled.
Aerys stepped from the shadows behind her sister. Her veiled gaze fixed on me—or so it felt, even through the silk. She moved past without pausing, but a small, talisman clattered to the floor at my feet.
A bone token. Carved and worn smooth by countless caresses. I looked down. The symbol etched into its surface made my stomach drop.
A circle with two opposing glyphs on either side, the Unravel and Griefweaver mirrored. My marks, rendered in bone. The prophecy symbol Serenya had shown me, given physical form.
I blinked—
The token was gone. Just the rough stone floor beneath my boot, as if it had never existed at all.
The twins had already vanished into the crowd.
I sat there, pulse loud in my ears, the echo of Nyra's words still reverberating in my mind. Bind or bleed.
"She's right," I said. My voice came out raw, “If I'm a monster, then I'll be a whole one." I met Dreadscale's gaze, letting him see the burn. "Teach me to wield them properly. If I'm going to be dangerous, I want to be dangerous on purpose."
Dreadscale studied me for a long moment. No judgment. No encouragement. Just that patient, pitiless assessment I was starting to recognize.
"After breakfast," he said finally. "The eastern cavern."
Dreadscale rose silently, his shadow sliding off the bench like water. He gave me one look—don't be late—and then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
I was still staring after him when a different kind of shadow fell across our table.
Kaelen.
His eyes swept over Maxx, over Serenya and back to me, missing nothing.
"May I join you?"
It wasn't really a question. I nodded anyway.
He lowered onto the bench across from us. He smelled like ink and candle smoke. For a moment he simply watched me.
"The twins have informed me the prophecy has updated," he said. "You saw it, Amaria. The pathways. You glimpsed what could be."
I said nothing. Waited.
"They call your power a wound. I call it a scalpel. 'The sundered soul binds its warring halves'—that is not a lullaby, Amaria. It is an instruction. The scar mends only when the infection is cut out. You were not born to play their game. You were born to annihilate it."
Annihilate.
The word landed wrong, my throat went dry and I couldn't swallow. I tore the bread on my plate in half. Then in quarters. My fingers worked without permission.
"This Veil ritual is the only way to mend it," Kaelen pressed on, “You are the key. The steps are simple: Mastery. The Codex. The Rupture. We train. We retrieve the Codex. And then we tether you to the wound itself, at the site of the Veil rupture.” His voice dropped, soft as a blade being drawn “Do not mistake this for a burden.
It is a privilege. And we will ensure you survive long enough to bear it. "
Maxx raised a hand, looking bored. "Quick question from the cheap seats. When you say 'tether,' are we talking about a surgical procedure to stitch the sky back together? Or are we just throwing her into the hole and hoping she acts like a very expensive cork?"
Kaelen stared at him. The silence stretched just long enough to be insulting.
"We tether her to the rupture in the veil wall so she can reach it, Maxx," he said, his voice flat. "She heals it with her fused light and shadow power. The tether is merely the energetic bridge. If I wanted a cork, I would have sent a rock."
I caught Kaelen's eye.
"Annihilate the game?" I said quietly. "The prophecy speaks of mending. I am not a hammer to shatter the world against, Kaelen." I leaned forward, matching his posture. "I am the forge."
He considered me. The only sound was the scrape of someone clearing plates at the far end of the hall. He didn't look offended; he looked like someone re-evaluating the weight of a coin.
"The game," he said finally, "is the King's board.
His hierarchy of Marks, if you heal the veil you take away his hierarchy, because you take away Marks.
Remember. Fae only started being born with Marks after the veil tore.
" His voice stayed level. "The game exists for one reason—for the King to win it. Of course I want to annihilate it."
My shoulders dropped. Just a fraction.
That I could understand. Not his grand chess match. Not his surgical little metaphors. But burning down a system that caged Shadowmarked children and called it natural order? I'd light that match myself.
"Toppling the King's caste-rigged game?" I met his stare. "I'm all in."
Maxx slapped both hands on the table, breaking the stare-down. "I take it that's a yes, then?"
I didn't answer him. I looked to Serenya instead—her dark eyes steady, holding mine in that silent conversation we'd been having since we were children. She squeezed my hand once more under the table. I'm with you. Whatever you decide.
"Well," I said, pushing back from the bench to meet Dreadscale. "If I'm going to save the world, I should probably learn how to stop breaking it first."
Maxx raised my abandoned bread in a mock toast. "That's the spirit. Low expectations, high drama. You're learning."
Serenya gave my hand one last squeeze and I turned toward the deeper shadows of the cavern. The noise of the mess hall thinned behind me with every step—laughter, tin scraping tin, all of it fading until there was just my boots on wet stone and the air biting against my skin.