6. Chapter 6
AMARIA
I woke up to birdsong.
For a long moment, I just lay there, convinced I was dead. Dead people heard birdsong, right? Harps and choirs and whatever else the gods used to welcome you home?
But dead people probably didn't feel sunlight on their face. Warm, golden, actual sunlight—not the grey static that had passed for sky in the Dead Zone. And dead people definitely didn't smell grass. Real grass. Green and alive and so aggressively present that it made my eyes water.
I sat up.
Color. Everywhere, color. The moss beneath me was emerald. The trees above were a dozen shades of brown and gold and rust. The sky—gods, the sky—was blue. Painfully, impossibly, beautifully blue.
"She lives."
Maxx's voice. I turned and found him sprawled against a tree trunk, apple in hand, grinning like a cat who'd gotten into the cream.
"How long?" My voice came out rusty. Unused.
"Two days." Serenya appeared at my side, wedging the cold leather of a waterskin into my hands. Her eyes were red-rimmed but clear. Present. Herself. "You collapsed the moment we crossed the border. We thought—" She stopped. Swallowed. "We weren't sure you'd wake up."
Two days. I'd been unconscious for two days.
I flexed my fingers. Rolled my shoulders. Took stock of the body I'd nearly drained to a husk.
I felt... good.
Better than good. Two days ago I'd been a corpse being carried through ash, hallucinating dead men, too empty for the tether to take anything more.
Now my hands obeyed when I flexed them. Even my lungs worked properly again—full breaths that didn't cost me anything, air that actually had something in it.
Magic. The ambient hum of the Veil was back, threading through everything, and my body was drinking it in like water after a drought.
I laughed.
It came out cracked and wild and probably a little unhinged, but I couldn't stop it. We'd made it. We'd actually fucking made it. I'd dragged myself through hell on a tether made of spite and desperation, and here I was—alive, breathing, surrounded by color and sound and life.
Movement at the edge of my vision. Eryndor, rising from where he'd been sitting a few feet away. He looked... different. Rested. The black veins were gone. His color was back. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read.
"There's food," he said. "I'll get you—"
But I was already moving.
A lake. Through the trees—a lake. Blue and clear and sparkling, nothing like the grey sludge of the Dead Zone. I could still feel the ash ground into my scalp, my skin, my teeth. Days of filth and death coating me like a shroud.
I didn't think. Just ran. Already tugging at my leathers, already imagining the water closing over my head, washing it all away—
Ten feet. Fifteen. My arms spread wide. My face tilted up. The sun was warm on my skin and my Marks were humming and I was alive—
The tether detonated.
A searing pain that started in my chest and blasted through every nerve ending I possessed.
Behind me—twenty feet back—I heard Eryndor make a noise like someone had driven a fist into his face.
The world snapped.
One second I was running gleefully. The next I was flying—yanked backward like a fish on a hook, my body completely outside my control. I caught a glimpse of Eryndor hurtling toward me, his face a mask of shock, and then—
Impact.
We collided mid-air. His chest slammed into mine, our Marks meeting with a crack that echoed through the trees. We went down in a tangle of limbs and curses, rolling across the moss until we finally skidded to a stop.
I was on top of him, our faces inches apart, both of us panting like we’d sprinted a mile. His back was pressed into the ground, my knees braced on either side of his hips.
"What," I gasped, "the fuck—"
"You ran," he snarled. He held on to my arms like he meant to keep me exactly where I was. "You reckless—"
"I was celebrating—"
"You were triggering the bond—"
"How was I supposed to know it would—"
"Because we're tethered, you impossible—"
From somewhere to our left, a sound.
Applause.
Slow, deliberate applause.
I turned my head. Maxx was standing now, apple forgotten, clapping with the measured appreciation of a male watching his favorite play.
"Oh," he said, his grin threatening to split his face in half. "Oh, this is magnificent."
"Shut up, Maxx."
"No, no—" He was circling us now, eyes bright with unholy glee. "Let me make sure I understand. In the Dead Zone, you couldn't feel the leash because there was no magic to power it. But now that we're back in the land of the living—"
"It's not a leash—"
"You're on a leash." He crouched down to our level, examining us like specimens. "How far did you get? Twenty feet? Thirty?"
I became suddenly, horribly aware that I was still on top of Eryndor, his warmth solid beneath me, his heart hammering almost as fast as mine. And his hands—
His hands were still on my waist.
I scrambled off him so fast I nearly ate dirt. Made it about six feet before the tether gave a warning pulse—not agony, but a clear threat of what would happen if I pushed further.
Six feet. That was my radius. Six goddamn feet.
"Can you piss alone?" Maxx asked, delighted. "Or does he have to hold your hand?"
"MAXX."
"What about bathing? Oh gods, what about sleeping—"
Serenya—bless her, bless her forever—put a hand on his arm. "Maxx. Maybe give them a moment."
"A moment?" He looked at her like she'd suggested we all set ourselves on fire. "Serenya, they're going to have every moment. Together. Forever."
I wanted the ground to open up and swallow me. I wanted to go back to the Dead Zone where at least I could suffer in peace. I wanted to be literally anywhere except standing six feet from Eryndor, watching Maxx catalogue every horrifying implication of our situation with visible joy.
Eryndor had gone statue-still. That particular blankness on his face that meant he was suppressing something volcanic. A thin, violent pulse throbbed at his temple.
"There appears to be a... proximity requirement." The words came out like he was chewing glass. "The magic here is enforcing—"
"A leash," Maxx finished, delighted.
"If you say that word one more time, I will remove your tongue."
"Worth it."
Dreadscale emerged from the trees like a mountain deciding to relocate. His gaze flicked between me and Eryndor.
Not impressed.
"So," he said flatly. "You eat together. You walk together. You sleep together. You do everything within six feet of each other until we find a way to sever that bond." He paused. "Welcome to your new life."
I looked at Eryndor. Imagined days—weeks—months of this. Every meal, every step, every moment of privacy gone.
Eryndor looked at the road. I felt his dread through the bond—his own horror at the same mental image.
We both opened our mouths to argue.
The tether pulsed. A warning. A promise of what would happen if we tried to do this separately.
We shut up.
"I hate this," I said.
"Noted," Eryndor replied.
"I hate you."
"Also noted."
Maxx was already walking ahead, pack slung over his shoulder, practically skipping with satisfaction. He glanced back over his shoulder, grin still firmly in place.
"For what it's worth," he called, "I think you two will make a beautiful chain gang."
The tether hummed between us. Warm. Content. Like it was pleased with this arrangement.
I was going to find a way to sever this thing if it was the last thing I did.
Eryndor met my eyes. For once, we were in complete agreement.
Later, his expression said. We figure this out later. For now, we survive.
I nodded. Took exactly six feet of distance. And started walking.
The forest floor was uneven beneath my boots—roots and soft earth and patches of fallen leaves that crackled when I stepped wrong. After days of flat ash, my ankles kept expecting ground that wasn't there.
The tether had settled into a bearable thrum—a low hum instead of a scream—but I could feel the boundary like a physical wall. Take one step too far left, and the warning pulse started. Drift too far right, and my chest tightened with that awful, yearning pull.
We moved like two prisoners shackled at the ankle. Which, apparently, we were.
"The lake," I said. My voice was flat. "I need to wash this off."
I didn't specify what "this" meant. The smell of the Dead Zone clung to me like a second skin—copper, dust, and an acrid char that reminded me of burnt offerings.
Three days of death. I wanted it off.
We walked in silence. The path—if it was a path—wound between trunks thick with lichen. Light shifted through the canopy, going from green-gold to a brighter, warmer glow. I heard the life around the water before I saw it.
The ground sloped downward. Pebbles rolled under my boots. The air changed—cooler, damper, carrying that mineral smell of water and wet stone.
And then—
The lake. Thank the gods.
It stretched out before us, ringed by moss-covered stones and the trailing fingers of willow trees. Near the shore, the rocky bottom showed through beneath the surface, darkening to blue-green further out. Late afternoon sunlight scattered gold across the surface.
I stopped at the edge. The water lapped against the stones—soft, rhythmic—and something in my chest unclenched.
I began unlacing my boots.
Then I stopped.
I looked at Eryndor. He was standing at the tree line, arms crossed, very deliberately not looking at the water. Or at me.
The tether hummed between us. Patient. Waiting.
Oh, this is going to be a problem.