23. Chapter 23
AMARIA
The ridge waited ahead of us, cutting across the horizon like a scar that never healed.
Getting there was another matter. The path had turned steep and rocky, switchbacking up the mountainside in a series of punishing climbs that left my thighs burning and my breath coming short.
The sun was starting its descent, painting everything in shades of amber and shadow, and the wind up here was relentless—cold fingers prying at our collars, tugging at our hair, finding every gap.
The Crownforged walked ahead of me. His shoulder was bound tight with Serenya's work—clean bandages and some kind of poultice.
The bleeding had stopped but the damage was done.
He moved stiffly, each step a little too deliberate, his face tight beneath the grime.
Fae healed fast—he'd be fine by nightfall—but right now he was running on stubbornness and nothing else.
The attack had stolen our words along with our energy, leaving nothing but the crunch of boots on stone and the whistle of wind through the rocks.
Dreadscale had said Liraeth lay just beyond the ridge. Half a day's travel. Maybe less.
It felt like a lifetime away.
I kept my eyes forward. Kept my feet moving. Tried not to think about the Hunter, the Nullatheon, the unanswered questions.
Did it take him? Or did he use it?
I was falling behind.
I didn't realize it until the gap between me and the others had stretched to ten paces, then fifteen. My legs had stopped cooperating—heavy, stupid things, refusing to do what I told them. The Griefweaver's aftermath had scraped me hollow.
My boot caught on a loose stone. I didn't stumble. I dropped. Knees hitting dirt, the impact rattling my teeth.
"Amaria."
Eryndor was there before the dust settled. I hadn't even heard him turn back.
"I'm fine." The word came out wheezy. I tried to push myself up. My arms shook and buckled. "Tripped."
"You're not fine. You're shaking." He dropped to one knee, blocking the wind, and blocking the view of the others. His presence was sudden and overwhelming, smelling of steel and thunderstorms.
"Get up," I said, without much force behind it. "They'll see."
"Let them look." He didn't pull me up. Instead, his hand slid around to the nape of my neck, his thumb pressing into the pulse point. His other hand flattened against my lower back, holding me steady.
Oh.
That was... a lot of hand. A lot of him. Close enough for the heat from his chest to find me. Close enough that my stupid, traitorous body forgot it was supposed to be dying.
"Breathe," he ordered.
Trying. Hard to breathe when you're—
"I can't..."
"Breathe." His hand settled against my back. And the tether snapped open.
It was not a gentle thing. Warmth crashed into me from where his hands touched my skin.
It wasn’t the constant heat and grating sensation from the tether.
It felt like liquid gold and poured into me, filling the hollow places, and knitting the frayed edges of my exhaustion back together.
It felt like drinking wine on an empty stomach—a rush of heady, dizzying life.
My eyes flew open. Eryndor was staring at me, his pupils blown wide, his jaw slack.
He was pouring his own vitality into me, but instead of draining him, it was singing.
The trembling in my limbs stopped. The cold in my marrow dissolved.
The fog at the edges of my thoughts burned away.
I drew a breath, and it came easy—the first easy breath I'd taken since the Mark had torn me open.
For a long moment, neither of us moved. We were locked together in the dirt, his hand on my neck, mine clutching his forearms, the magic cycling between us in a rhythm that felt terrifyingly like a heartbeat.
I looked at him. The shock on his face was total.
He looked at his own hand against my neck like it belonged to a stranger.
"What..." I said. "What was that?"
He snatched his hands back. The loss of contact was a sudden cold snap that made me gasp. He stared at his palms. Flexed his fingers. Then looked at me with a devastation I didn't understand.
"That's not possible," he whispered.
"You healed me." I sat up. Tested my arms. The weakness was gone.
"I don't heal." His voice was rough and fractured. "I break. I bind. I destroy. That is what I was made for."
There it was. The exact lie, word for word, just wearing his voice instead of mine.
I'd said it about myself so many times it had stopped feeling like a choice and started feeling like a fact. Rupture. Destroyer. Too much. And here he was, saying the same thing with the same certainty, like someone had handed us both the same script at birth and told us to learn it by heart.
The rage came fast and it wasn't at him.
"Well." I flexed my fingers. Steady. "You definitely didn't destroy me."
"I should have." He looked at the color back in my face, the steadiness of my hands, and his expression shuttered.
"My Mark takes," he said. "It dominates. It binds. It has never—"
He stopped. Swallowed.
"It has never given."
He stood up abruptly, putting distance between us, turning his back so I couldn't see his eyes.
"We're losing light," he said. His voice was clipped. Military. "Can you walk?"
"Eryndor—"
"Can you walk, Amaria?"
"Yes."
"Then move."
He started walking, his strides long and angry, putting as much space between us as the tether would allow. I stood there for a heartbeat, the phantom warmth of his hands still burning on my skin, watching him run from the one thing he couldn't fight.
He healed me. And it scared him more than the monster ever could.
I caught up to him near the front of the group.
"We need to talk about what just happened."
"No." He maintained his pace, staring straight ahead. "We don't."
"Your Mark just did something it's never done. It healed."
"It's an anomaly. A side effect of the tether. It doesn't mean anything."
"Doesn't mean—" I grabbed his arm. Forced him to stop. "You've spent your whole life thinking you only break things. And you just fixed one."
"The Soulbinder fixed you," he snapped, stopping so suddenly I almost collided with his chest. "Because it needs you functional. Don't mistake maintenance for a miracle."
The lie was so thin it was insulting.
"Drop it, Amaria."
"No." I stepped in front of him. Blocked his path. "You don't get to do that. Give me something like that and then pretend it didn't happen."
"What do you want me to say?" He growled.
"That I'm suddenly cured? That touching you fixed whatever's broken in me?
" He laughed—a hollow, horrible sound. "I'm still draining you just by existing.
Every moment this tether holds, I'm taking from you.
The healing doesn't change that. It just makes it worse. "
"Then why does it scare you so much?"
"Because it felt good."
The words ripped out of him.
"It felt right," he snarled, stepping closer, looming over me. "To touch you. To push power into you instead of ripping it out. It felt like the first breath I’ve taken in years."
He stopped. Pulse flaring at his temple. Eyes burning with something dark and terrified.
"And that," he whispered, "is why we stop. Right now."
"Because it felt good?"
"Because I liked it too much." His gaze dropped to my mouth. Then away—like looking hurt. "You don't know what it's like to starve your whole life. If I let myself feed on this—on you—I won't stop. I'll consume you until there's nothing left."
"I'm not that easy to consume."
"Everyone breaks eventually."
"I don't." I stepped into his space. Into the six-foot radius that usually felt like a cage. Now it felt like a ring. "I am the Rupture. I survived the Void. I survived you."
"You survived because I held back."
"Then stop holding back."
The challenge hung between us.
Your move, Crownforged.
His eyes snapped to mine. Dark. Burning. The control he wore like armor was cracking, and I could see the male beneath it—starving, desperate, and terrified of his own hunger.
"You don't know what you're asking," he rasped.
"Yes, I do." I grabbed the front of his tunic. "I'm asking you to stop deciding for me. Stop treating me like something you need to protect from yourself."
"I am protecting you."
"I don't need your protection!" I shouted it this time. "I need you to look at me! Not at the victim you think I am. Not at the ghost you're afraid I'll become. Look at me!"
He looked.
And for once, he didn't look away.
The tether screamed between us. A physical, undeniable pull that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the fact that we were two broken things trying to fit our fractured pieces together.
"We can't do this," he breathed. His hands came up, hovering near my waist, afraid to land. "When we get to Liraeth... they'll sever the bond. You'll be free."
Free.
Should've sounded like a promise. Sounded like a threat.
"Can't wait." The lie came out flat. "To be free of you."
"Mutual."
"Good."
"Good."
Neither of us moved.
He was looking at my mouth like it was a shrine he was about to desecrate.
You break everything you touch, something whispered. So break this.
I hauled him forward.
It was a collision—fury meeting hunger. I kissed him like I was trying to crack him open. Like I was daring him to be the monster he kept warning me about.
Show me, I thought. Show me the thing you're so afraid of.
His mouth opened against mine and I tasted the sound he made—low and feral.
His hands slammed onto my waist. Like he'd been holding them back with chains and the chains had finally snapped.
His fingers dug into the curve of my hips—bruising, possessing, pulling me against him until I felt every hard line of his body pressed to mine.
I felt the moment he stopped being careful.
It was like watching a dam break. One second he was holding back, the next he was devouring me. Hands pulling my hair, bruising my waist, fangs piercing my skin. The years of starving had finally caught up and he was going to take and take and take until there was nothing left of either of us.
His hand slid up my back and fisted in my hair and pulled. My head tipped back and his mouth dragged down my jaw, my throat, the place where my pulse was hammering against my skin.
"You’re mine, Little Fox," he snarled into my mouth.
The tether sang.
The world dissolved. There was no ridge, no path, no war. There was only—him.
I gasped against his mouth and he swallowed the sound. His teeth grazed my bottom lip. I shuddered. His grip tightened—one hand in my hair, one gripping my ass like I might come apart at the seams without his force.
Told you I'm not that easy to destroy.
He made a sound—half growl, half groan—and took me deeper.
He kissed me like wanting me was a sin he was done repenting for.
I kissed him back like the challenge I was.
I wrapped my legs around his waist and ground into him, desperate to feel his hard cock pressing against me. I bit into his neck in frustration and growled.
Break me if you can.
Then the tether overloaded. Too much power hit a bond that had never been made cleanly in the first place.
A spark of electricity slammed down it and threw us apart.
Eryndor hit the ground and I caught myself on a tree.
For a moment, we just stared at each other. Breathing hard. Saying nothing.
Then the wall slammed back down.
"That was dangerous. We shouldn’t—"
"Don't." I sprung to my feet and unsheathed my dagger. "Don't you dare say it was a mistake." I snarled.
"Amaria—"
I threw the dagger.
It buried itself in the tree an inch from his ear.
"Next time," I said, "I won't miss."
I walked away.