32. Chapter 32
AMARIA
The weeks had changed me.
It was in the way I moved now—fluid where I'd once been rigid, certain where I'd once been hesitant. The Grove had become mine. Something I knew intimately, and loved. Every root, every shadow, every shift of light through the canopy. I could have walked it blind.
The Crownforged stood beside me at the edge of the clearing. The tether between us steady and strong—a circuit we'd learned to maintain without thinking, the way you maintain balance when you walk.
Across the Grove, Dreadscale and Cormac waited.
They weren't holding back today. It was visible in the set of Dreadscale's shoulders, the way Cormac was bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. This wasn't practice. This was a test.
"Ready?" Thessaly called from the treeline.
I didn't answer. Just settled into my stance and let the world narrow down to what mattered.
Cormac moved first.
He came at me fast—faster than he'd ever pushed before—a blur of muscle and precision. Eryndor shifted behind me. The circuit flared as he fed energy into the bond without being asked. Not carrying me. Amplifying.
I sidestepped Cormac's strike and caught his wrist. Twisted. He went down hard, rolled, came up grinning.
"Better," he said. "But that was the warm-up."
Dreadscale didn't give me time to respond.
He slammed his foot into the earth, and the ground cracked. Fissures raced toward me like hungry things. Behind him, Cormac was already circling, cutting off my retreat.
I didn't retreat.
I spread my fingers wide, palm facing the oncoming fissures like a command. The Ancestral Way wasn't about force anymore. It was about being. I didn't reach for the earth—I became it, just for a moment. Felt its weight. Its patience. Its willingness to reshape.
The fissures stopped three inches from my feet. Sealed themselves shut with a snap.
Cormac whistled. "That's new."
"Keep going," I said.
They did.
Sweat dripped down my spine. My lungs burned. And they kept coming.
Dreadscale and Cormac worked in tandem—boulders rolled, spears thrown, the environment itself turned against me. They weren't trying to hurt me. They were trying to break my focus. Trying to find the cracks in my control.
They didn't find any.
Eryndor moved with me like a shadow. No words needed. When I drew from the bond, he was there. When I needed more power, he gave it. When I pushed too hard, he steadied me. We'd practiced this until it was muscle memory, until the circuit between us sang.
A boulder the size of a cart came hurtling toward us.
In the old days, I would have dodged. Run. Let Eryndor take the hit.
Today, I stepped forward. I waited until the boulder was fifteen feet away. Ten feet away, barreling straight toward my face.
Eryndor's hand found the small of my back. The circuit flared.
Five feet away. I slammed my palm into the earth.
The ground rippled, like cloth shaken by an invisible hand.
The boulder hit the wave and halted mid-tumble.
One foot away, the wind from its force blowing my loose hair back, razors clinking faintly.
Then it liquefied—solid stone becoming thick grey mud in the span of a heartbeat, flowing around my boots, parting like water around a stone.
I wasn't done.
I clenched my fist. The mud flash-hardened into obsidian—black glass spikes erupting from the earth in a perfect arc in front of me. Dreadscale and Cormac, mid-charge, had to throw themselves sideways to avoid being impaled.
Silence.
I stood in the center of the Grove, breathing hard, surrounded by a crown of black glass that caught the light like frozen lightning. The tether pulsed between me and Eryndor. Satisfied. Pleased.
"Well," Cormac said from where he'd landed. "I think we're done holding back."
Dreadscale picked himself up. Studied the obsidian spikes. Ran a finger along one edge, testing its sharpness.
"Adequate," he said.
From Dreadscale, that was practically a standing ovation.
I stood in the wreckage of our sparring—cracked earth, scattered stones, obsidian spikes still gleaming—when Thessaly dismissed us.
Eryndor walked back through Liraeth at my side, the tether humming between us, my blood still singing with power.
The refugees we passed looked at us differently now.
The shift had happened over the past week—in the way eyes lingered, in the way conversations quieted. Not fear, exactly. Respect. Wariness.
I was the reason half of them were here. The least I could do was become something worth hoping for.
"You're getting stronger." Eryndor's voice was quiet. Neutral.
Somewhere behind us, I heard Maxx's laugh carry through the trees—followed by Serenya's voice, low and chiding, and a rumble that might have been Dreadscale. The sound loosened a knot in my chest I hadn't known was tight.
"We're getting stronger," I corrected.
He made a noncommittal sound. We walked in silence for a few more paces.
I wasn't the girl who'd fled from the King anymore. That girl had been running on fumes and spite, barely one step ahead of the noose.
I wasn't prey anymore.
I was the storm.
And storms didn't hide. They made landfall.