33. Chapter 33
ERYNDOR
She was burning.
It started at dinner—the flush across her cheekbones, the way her hands trembled when she reached for her cup. She'd dismissed it as exhaustion. Pushed through the meal with that stubborn set to her jaw that meant arguing was pointless.
Now she was asleep, and her skin was on fire.
I sat against the wall that divided our rooms, close enough that the tether stayed quiet. Her breathing came through the wall—ragged, uneven. The restless shift of blankets. A soft sound that might have been a whimper.
The tether pulsed, hot and overloaded.
It was the same effect as soldiers who pushed too hard, too fast. The body couldn't bear what the mind demanded.
Energy with nowhere to go turned inward, became fever, became delirium.
She'd drawn so much power today—more than I'd ever seen her wield.
The Ancestral Way didn't have the limits her Marks imposed. It let her reach for everything.
Everything was too much.
Another sound through the wall. A gasp. The thud of a body hitting the mattress too hard.
I was on my feet before I made the decision to move.
Her door wasn't locked. The room was dark, lit only by moonlight through the leaf-windows. She lay tangled in her sheets, fighting invisible enemies—arms twitching, legs kicking, and she let out a strangled snarl.
"No." The word came out broken, desperate. "I won't—you can't make me—"
Sweat plastered her hair to her forehead. Her skin, when I pressed my palm to her brow, was scalding.
She flinched at the contact. Then stopped.
Her eyes stayed closed, but the tension around her mouth eased. Her breathing slowed, just slightly.
"Cold," she mumbled. "You're cold."
I wasn't. But compared to the inferno in her veins, I supposed anything would feel like ice.
I should leave. Should fetch a healer, wake Serenya, do something useful instead of standing here like a fool with my hand on her forehead.
I didn't leave.
I sat on the edge of her bed instead, letting my palm settle more firmly against her burning skin. She moaned and both the tether and my pulse quickened.
"It hurts," she whispered. Her eyes were still closed. She wasn't fully awake—caught somewhere between sleep and fever dream, the words slipping out unguarded. "Everything's too loud. Too bright. Can't make it stop."
"The power." My voice came out rougher than I intended. "You drew too much today."
"Mmm." Her hand found mine where it rested on her forehead. She didn't push it away. She pulled it closer, turning her cheek into my palm like a cat seeking warmth. "Hurts less when you're close."
My chest seized.
My breath caught.
"Like a hand over a wound," she murmured. "Pressure. Stops the bleeding."
Fever talk. Just delirium, she wouldn't remember this.
But the tether was settling between us. Finding harmony with every beat.
Hurts less when you're close.
I'd spent weeks keeping distance. Maintaining walls. Telling myself the control was for her.
What if the distance was the wound?
She shifted. Her grip on my hand loosened, then tightened—like she was afraid I'd disappear.
"Stay." Barely a breath. "Please."
“Anything you want, Little Fox,” I whispered.
Her fever broke near dawn. The heat faded to warmth, her breathing evened into true sleep.
She didn't let go of my hand.
I didn't pull it back.
She was going to get herself killed by her own hair.
The morning session had started well enough.
Her footwork was sharper than it had been a week ago, her reflexes honed by days of relentless practice.
But every time she moved into a complex strike sequence, a dark strand would slip free and catch in her peripheral vision.
She'd flinch. Lose half a second. In a real fight, half a second was a throat slit.
It happened three times before she snapped.
The fourth time her hair whipped across her eyes mid-strike, she let out a sound somewhere between a growl and a scream. Her practice blade clattered to the ground. Before I could speak, she'd pulled a dagger from her belt and grabbed a fistful of dark hair, angling the blade toward it.
"Amaria—"
"I'm done." Her voice was tight. Furious. "It's been in my way for months. Should have cut it off in Velmyra."
She meant it. The blade was already pressed against the gathered strands, teeth gritted, ready to saw through years of growth out of pure frustrated spite.
I moved without thinking.
My hand closed around her wrist firmly. The dagger stopped an inch from the first cut.
Her eyes dropped to where her fingers circled my wrist. To the red string. She looked at it the way she'd looked at it on the horse—quick, cataloging, filing it somewhere I couldn't reach. Her free hand shifted a fraction closer to it. Then away.
She didn't ask.
"Don't."
The word came out quieter than I intended. Last night was still too close to the surface—her burning skin under my palm, her voice in the dark saying hurts less when you're close. She didn't remember. I couldn't forget.
"I'll fix it," I said.
She stared at me. The hostility flickered, replaced by something warier. More uncertain.
"You'll fix it."
"Your hair. I'll braid it so it stays out of your way." I released her wrist. "Unless you'd prefer to hack it off with a dagger and spend the next month looking like you lost a fight with a sheep shearer."
A beat of silence.
Then, impossibly, her mouth twitched.
"Fine." She dropped the dagger into the grass. "Fine. Fix it, then."
She sat.
Right there, in the middle of the training grounds, she lowered herself to the ground and waited. The afternoon sun caught the dark strands spilling down her back—tangled, wild, still damp with sweat from the session.
I stood there for a moment. Processing. She was letting me touch her. Deliberately. Without a fight.
I sat behind her.
The first touch was the hardest.
I found the edge of her hairline, gathering the strands that had come loose around her face. She went still—not hostile. Just... waiting. Alert. Like a wild animal that hadn't decided yet whether to bolt.
I worked in silence. Sectioning. Weaving.
The motions came back without effort—muscle memory from a childhood I'd spent years trying to forget.
My mother had taught me this pattern. Had sat me on her lap and guided my clumsy fingers through the intricate crossings, laughing when I tangled it, praising when I got it right.
For the people you protect, she'd said. For the ones who matter most.
I hadn't braided anyone's hair since she died.
Amaria's shoulders loosened as I worked. The tension bled out of her, degree by degree, until she was almost leaning back into my hands. Her scalp was warm under my fingertips. The nape of her neck, when I reached it, was soft. Vulnerable.
"Hold still, Little Fox."
"I am still."
"You're fidgeting."
"I don't fidget." She shifted again, proving herself a liar.
"You're fidgeting right now."
"I'm adjusting. There's a difference."
"There isn't."
A huff of breath that might have been a laugh, and she softened by a fraction.
Something sharp caught against my fingers.
"You have razors in your hair."
"I'm aware."
"You have razors in your hair and you expected me to braid around them."
"Is that a problem, Crownforged?"
"It's a challenge." I worked the strand free from the tiny blade, careful not to slice my fingertip. "Most people keep their weapons in sheaths. Not woven into their scalp."
"Most people aren't me."
"No," I agreed. "They aren't."
Another razor. Another delicate extraction. Then my fingers brushed something different—smooth, pale, warm from her skin. A bead. Small, secured at the base of one of the blade-braids near her temple.
Bone.
I knew what bone jewelry meant in Liraeth. The townsfolk wore pieces of their dead—rings, pendants, beads woven into hair. A way of carrying the ones they'd lost.
"This bead." I traced it lightly. "It's not decoration."
She went still.
"No."
I waited. My fingers kept working the braid around it, giving her time.
"My grandmother." The words came out quieter than her usual voice. "She was a warrior. One of the great ones—defended Liraeth's northern border for forty years before she fell. My mother carved the bead from her rib bone after the burning."
I let that settle. A rib bone. Close to the heart.
"She taught you to fight?"
"She taught my mother. My mother taught me." A pause. "The razors were her idea. Said a woman's hair was the last thing enemies expected to be lethal."
"She sounds formidable."
"She was." Another pause, longer this time. "She would have hated you."
"Most people do."
"No, I mean—" A breath that was almost a laugh. "She hated Velmyrans on principle. Said they'd forgotten what mattered. Too busy building hierarchies to remember they were all going to die."
"She wasn't wrong."
Amaria turned her head slightly—not enough to disrupt the braid, just enough to catch me in her peripheral vision.
"That's a strange thing for a Crownforged to say."
"Perhaps."
I secured another crossing. Over, under, through. The pattern taking shape beneath my hands, her grandmother's bone bead woven into it now, protected by the intricate design.
"She'd still hate you, though," Amaria said. "Just on principle."
"I can live with that."
She laughed. Soft and unexpected. I wanted to make her do it again. But I tied off the final crossing instead and let my hands fall away. The braid hung heavy between her shoulder blades—intricate, secure, the bead nestled at her temple where it belonged.
Neither of us moved.
The training grounds were quiet. Afternoon light slanting gold through the trees. Her back still close enough that her warmth radiated through the space between us.
Tell her.
My hand still remembered the weight of her head in my lap. The fever-damp hair I'd smoothed back for hours. The way she'd turned into my touch like it was the only thing holding her together.
She was trusting something she didn't fully know.
"Amaria."
"Mmm?"
"There's something you should know about the King—”
She started to turn. "What do you—"
"Well, well." Maxx's voice cut through the clearing like a blade. "Isn't this cozy."
"Go away, Maxx." Amaria's voice was flat.
"I was sent to fetch you for the midday meal. How was I supposed to know I'd stumble into—" He gestured vaguely at us. "—whatever this is?"
"It's practical," I said. "Her hair was interfering with her training."
"Right. Practical." Maxx leaned against a tree, clearly going nowhere. "Very tactical, that braid. Very... intricate."
Something in his tone made me pause.
"What of it?"
"Nothing. Just—" He tilted his head, studying my work with sharper eyes than his lazy posture suggested. "That's not a soldier's braid, is it? That's not a standard-issue weave you'd learn in basic training."
I glared at him.
"Soldier boys know functional braids," Maxx continued, his voice still light but his gaze steady. "Keeps it out of the way, nothing fancy. That—" He pointed. "—that's got about fifteen more crossings than functional requires. That's decorative. That's—"
"I had a mother, Maxx. Before I was a soldier." I held his gaze, daring him to push further.
The sharpness in his features faltered. He looked away first, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Right. Yeah." He cleared his throat. "Well. Dreadscale found some kind of roasted meat situation and Serenya's writing in Veil ink again. Very exciting. Don't want to miss it."
He was halfway to the treeline when he paused.
Didn't turn around, but his voice lost its performance edge.
"She hasn't eaten since this morning. Serenya.
She does that when she's deep in the ink work—forgets she has a body.
" He paused. "Dreadscale's been sitting with her, but he's not exactly the nagging type. "
I didn't know what to do with the fact that Maxx was tracking Serenya's meals.
Amaria quirked an eyebrow at me and stood. Brushed grass from her trousers. Her hand went to the braid—fingers tracing the pattern I'd woven.
"Eryndor. What were you going to tell me?"
"Later. When we're not rushed." I stood, rolling the stiffness from my shoulders. "Did he say roasted meat?"
"I think he said 'roasted meat situation.' Which could mean anything with Maxx."
"Last time he said 'situation,' it was fermented cactus wine."
"And Serenya couldn't feel her face for three hours." She fell into step beside me. "Dreadscale drank the whole bottle and said it tasted like regret."
"That sounds about right." I paused. "Though I recall Maxx held her water cup for her until the feeling came back. With both hands. Very solicitous for a man who claims to care about nothing."
Amaria's mouth curved. "He thinks nobody notices."
"Dreadscale notices."
She glanced at me, surprised. I wasn't sure why I'd said it—only that it was true.
I'd seen the way the Dragonborn watched Maxx fussing over Serenya that night.
The recognition in his face had been unmistakable—he was seeing a male handle something precious with the same care he would have, if he ever let himself.