4. Chapter 4
AMARIA
The first time I felt the pull, I thought I was dying.
We had been walking for maybe an hour since the storm.
Maxx and I at the front of the litter, Dreadscale behind, Serenya hovering near Eryndor's head like she could will him back to health.
The tether hummed low in my chest—a constant, irritating presence, like a splinter lodged too deep to dig out.
Then the bond latched and yanked.
My knees buckled. I slammed into the side of the litter, my vision swam. For one horrible second, the grey world turned black, and I was back at the altar. The Codex open beneath my hands. Magic ripping out of me in sheets, feeding some vast, hungry thing—
"Amaria."
Serenya's voice. Far away.
I blinked. The altar was gone. There was only ash and the litter handle cutting into my palm.
And Eryndor.
His eyes were open. Clearer than they'd been since the storm. The black veins on his throat had receded—just an inch, but enough to notice. His skin, which had been the color of wet slate, suddenly had a flush of fae warmth.
My warmth.
"I felt that." His voice raw. "What did I—"
He looked at his hands. They weren't shaking anymore. Then he looked at me. At the way I was gripping the litter like it was the only thing keeping me upright. At the sweat beading on my forehead despite the cold.
Understanding drained the color from his face.
"No."
"It's fine." I forced my legs to straighten. Forced my voice to stay flat. "Keep moving."
"It is not fine." He pushed himself up. The movement was fluid this time—too fluid for a dying male. He collapsed back not from weakness, but from horror. "I'm feeding on you. I can feel it. Every time the bond pulls, I'm—"
"Staying alive." I turned my back to him. "That's what you're doing. Staying alive."
"I am a parasite." The word was a snarl, directed entirely at himself. "I am draining your essence to sustain my own."
"Then don't waste it."
I started walking. The others fell into step, though I saw Dreadscale watching us, his dark eyes tracking the exchange.
The tether pulsed again—gentler this time, a slow, hydraulic siphon rather than a yank—and I watched Eryndor’s breathing ease. Watched the tension drain out of him as he absorbed what I was losing.
My own body felt heavier. My own lungs worked harder.
This is what you deserve, a voice whispered. It sounded like Brannick. You broke the world. Now carry the weight of it.
The cave wasn't much. A hollow in the rock face, barely deep enough to shield us from the caustic winds that had started an hour ago. But it had walls. A ceiling. Something solid between us and the hungry void sky.
The quiet hit first. After hours of wind scraping across open nothing, the stillness in here felt thick. Pressurized. My own breathing echoed back at me—a sound I'd forgotten existed.
Maxx had managed a fire somehow—scraps of dead wood pulled from somewhere, coaxed into reluctant flame. It burned low and palid, more smoke than heat, but it was something.
We set the litter down. Eryndor's eyes were closed, but his chest rose and fell in a rhythm I'd started counting without meaning to. Still breathing. Still alive.
Still draining me.
I slumped against the cave wall. It was cold—biting through my leathers with a dampness the ash-waste couldn’t mimic. It smelled like minerals and old water—nothing like the iron-and-char we'd been breathing for hours. I didn't have the energy to care.
Then Dreadscale spoke.
"Three days to the border. She has one."
Maxx looked up from the fire. He'd been feeding it — the flames had climbed since we'd sat down, throwing unsteady heat against the cave walls. "What?"
"The tether." Dreadscale's eyes moved to me. Then to Eryndor. Then back. "The rate of transfer. The distance to the border."
The air suddenly felt too thin to breathe.
"She's fading faster than she should." Serenya's voice was quiet. Clinical. She'd been watching me for the past hour with that careful, assessing look. "The veins on her wrists—they're starting to show. And her breathing has shallowed."
"I'm fine."
"You're dying." Dreadscale pinned me with his stare. "At the current rate of drain, you have one day perhaps two before your body gives out. The border is three days' walk."
The numbers hung in the air. Cold and absolute.
A drip echoed somewhere deeper in the cave. The sound bounced off the walls, multiplied, faded.
"So we move faster," I said.
"Moving faster increases the drain." Serenya shook her head. "Exertion pulls more from the tether. You'd burn through your reserves in two days instead of three."
"Then we—"
"You stop."
Eryndor's voice. Final.
I turned. He'd pushed himself up on one elbow, his face drawn tight with effort. The black veins on his neck had retreated further—because he'd been feeding on me, because my life was pouring into him drop by drop—and the sight of his improved health made my stomach lurch.
"You sever the connection," he said. "Now. Before it kills you."
"No."
"That wasn't a request." His jaw tightened. "You are the ship. I am the anchor. You cut the anchor to save the ship."
"I'm not cutting anything."
"Then you're a fool." He pushed himself higher. His arms shook. Sweat beaded on his forehead. "The mission is the Veil. The mission is saving what's left of the world. I am a tactical liability draining resources from the only asset capable of completing that mission."
Asset. Liability. Resource.
He was talking about himself like he was a line item in a ledger. Like his life was a number to be weighed against other numbers, and found wanting.
"You're not a liability—"
"I'm a corpse that hasn't stopped walking yet." His eyes met mine. Dark. Steady. Absolutely certain. "And every step I take is stealing breath from your lungs. That is the reality. Sentiment doesn't change arithmetic."
I opened my mouth to argue—
And he moved.
He reached up to the dressing on the wound over his heart. His fingers hooked into the heavy, blood-crusted fabric Serenya had packed deep into the hollow of the gash.
"No," I breathed.
He didn't hesitate. With a wet, sucking sound, he ripped the packing free.
The result was immediate. Dark, arterial blood pulsed out, hot and fast, soaking his tunic in seconds.
"What are you doing!"
"Balancing... the ledger," he wheezed. His face blanched as the pressure dropped. "If I bleed out... the tether snaps. You have... enough to reach... the line."
He wasn't bluffing. He was exsanguinating himself to save me.
"Stop it!" I lunged toward him, my knees skidding through the silt.
He tried to turn away, to keep the wound open, but his strength was leaving him with the blood. I slammed into his chest. I jammed my palm directly over the open wound, pressing down with every ounce of my weight.
"Let go," he gasped, his blood hot and slick against my fingers. "Amaria, let... go."
"Shut up." I pressed harder, feeling the frantic kick of his pulse against my skin. "You don't get to do this. You don't get to make me the survivor again."
I felt his edges blurring. I felt the cold creeping into his limbs through the bond.
"Serenya!" I screamed, not looking away from his eyes. "My dagger—in the fire. Now!"
A scramble of movement behind me. The scrape of steel against stone.
"How long?" Serenya called.
"Until it glows." Blood welled between my fingers, too fast, too much. "We're cauterizing this. He doesn't get to bleed out because he's too stubborn to live."
Eryndor's eyes widened. "You can't—"
"Watch me."
Eryndor convulsed. His hands flew up, shoving at my shoulders, trying to break the contact. "Stop—you're wasting—I don't want—"
"I don't care what you want."
"Serenya!" I yelled.
Silence.
"Serenya!"
"I—" Her voice, behind me. Distant. Confused. "What am I... why is there a knife in my hand?"
My blood went cold.
"Maxx!" I screamed.
He surged forward—snatched the glowing blade from Serenya's slack fingers, and dropped to his knees beside me. His face was grey, but his hands were steady.
"I've got it. Tell me where."
I threw my weight across Eryndor's chest, pinning his shoulders to the stone. He bucked beneath me—not from pain, not yet—but from fury. From the desperate, animal need to finish what he'd started.
"Let me go—"
"Not a chance." I locked my forearms against his collarbones, felt his muscles strain against mine. He was weak—weaker than he'd ever been, weaker than me for the first time—but dying males fight with something beyond strength.
His elbow caught my nose. Stars burst across my vision. I held on anyway.
"You're killing yourself." His voice cracked. Broke. "You're killing yourself for nothing. I'm not worth—"
"Shut up."
Footsteps. Dreadscale appeared on Eryndor's other side. His hands locked around Eryndor’s shoulders, forcing him back against the stone.
"Stop—you can't afford this—you can't afford me—"
"I said shut up," I snarled. I grabbed the white-hot blade from Maxx and jammed it deep, searing the vessel shut. Eryndor’s back bowed off the stone.
A sound tore out of him—a guttural scream that shook his whole frame.
Dreadscale leaned his full weight onto Eryndor, keeping him pinned as his body tried to thrash away from the agony. I held the blade steady.
“The bleeding,” Maxx choked out. “It stopped.”
I didn't look up. "Not finished." The arterial flow was gone, but the wound was still a gaping mouth. "Maxx—hold the edges together."
He leaned in and pressed the ragged skin inward, fingertips slick with blood. I turned the dagger, pressing the flat of the white-hot steel against the seam, searing the flesh together.
This time, Eryndor didn't move. He had gone limp, passed out from the pain. Good. I sealed him shut. Left a blackened, ugly scar where the hole used to be.
After, the tether sang between us—agony and intimacy, connection and violation. I could feel his shame through the bond. His fury. His desperate, clawing need to protect me from himself.
And underneath it all, so faint I almost missed it: gratitude.
He hated that he was grateful. Hated that some part of him wanted to live. Wanted me to keep his heart beating even as he begged me to stop.
"You want to die for me?" I grabbed his face, forced his eyes to mine. "Try it again. I'll make you watch me bleed out first. See how your arithmetic handles that."
He stopped breathing.
For three full seconds, nothing moved. Not his chest. Not his hands. Just his eyes—locked on mine, something furious and terrified radiating through the flat mask he'd been wearing.
Then his hand came up. Slow. Shaking with effort or emotion, I couldn't tell which.
His fingers closed around my wrist, gripped it.
Like I'd just told him I was the one dying, and he was trying to keep me from slipping away.
"You're a fool," he whispered.
"Yeah." My arms ached from the effort of holding him down. The tether was still pulling, still draining, still killing me one drop at a time. "I know."
Quiet settled over the cave, broken only by the crack and sigh of the fire, but neither of us let go.
You can't afford this—you can't afford me—
My mother had said nothing. That was the part I'd never been able to get past—no words, no explanation, no chance to argue.
Just her arms around me and then the cold and the current, and when I'd broken the surface screaming she was already turned away.
Walking back toward the blades like I wasn't there anymore.
Like the decision had been made so cleanly it didn't require her to witness what it cost me.
I'd spent years being furious at her for that. For the efficiency of it.
Now Eryndor was doing it with his own blood, and I recognized the logic. I'd inherited it. You survive. I cover the exit. I'd built my whole life on being the one who made that call.
The problem was I was always supposed to be the one holding the blade. Not the one being thrown in the river.
My father hadn't said anything either. Just—stillness. The kind of stillness that meant a decision had already been made before the soldiers arrived, probably years before I was born, and I wasn't part of it.
And now this male with his hand around my wrist and a hole in his chest I'd had to burn shut to keep him from emptying himself out on the cave floor.
The pattern wasn't subtle anymore.
I was so tired of being the cargo. So tired of people picking me up and throwing me toward a future they'd decided I deserved more than they did.
Every single one of them so certain. So clean about it.
Like my survival was a fact they'd accepted long before the moment came and all they had to do was execute.
Like I didn't have to live without them afterward.
You're a fool.
It felt like an accusation. Like my refusal to let him die was the irrational thing.
And the worst of it, the thing sitting hot and airless in the center of my chest, was that I understood the logic completely.
I'd used that logic. I'd been that logic.
Standing between people I loved and whatever was coming and doing the assessments and deciding, without asking, that my life was the reasonable price.
I knew exactly what he thought he was doing. Because I'd have done the same thing.