46. Chapter 46 #3
I just saved his life.
It felt like an execution.
I just saved the whole palace.
It didn't feel like salvation. It felt like starving myself just to make sure the monster didn't feed.
I slid down the door until I was slumped onto the floor.
On the other side, I heard his footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Walking away.
The tether stretched.
It hurt and I let it.
ERYNDOR
I shouldn't have gone to her.
I'd stood in that doorway and cracked my own mask wide open. For three seconds I'd been the version of myself that would have burned the deal, the throne, the whole wretched plan just to keep her looking at me like I was worth something.
She slammed the door in my face. Thank the gods she slammed that door.
But she would think I chose this.
Let her.
She would think I'd traded whatever we had for political power and public approval.
Let her.
She would look at me with those dark eyes full of betrayal and something worse—grief—and I would have to meet her gaze and feel nothing.
Let her.
I flattened my hand to my heart where the tether anchored. Pushed the words down the bond like a command.
Hatred is survivable. Love is fatal. And I will not be the reason she dies.
AMARIA
I dreamed of darkness.
Not running from it. Not watching it consume the world from some distant, helpless vantage point.
I was it.
The Void stretched in every direction, and I was the thing that lived inside it. Vast. Ancient. Aching with it. I had no body, no edges, no beginning or end. Just hunger.
Endless, gnawing hunger.
More, the darkness whispered. More. More. More.
The word echoed through the emptiness, and I realized it was coming from me. I was starving. I had been starving for eons. Every star I'd swallowed, every world I'd unmade—none of it was enough. None of it would ever be enough.
Then I saw him.
Eryndor stood in a circle of light.
Golden. Warm. The only bright thing in an infinite sea of black. He was looking for something—looking for me—his face tight with worry, his hands reaching into the dark.
"Amaria?"
His voice echoed strangely. Muffled. Like he was calling through water.
I drifted toward him. The way darkness moves when light flickers—filling every space, reaching for every corner.
Light, the hunger crooned. So much light.
He saw me then. His eyes went wide, and for a moment I thought he would run.
He didn't.
"Amaria." He stepped closer to the edge of his circle. "It's okay. I'm here. Come back to me."
Come back.
I wanted to. Some part of me remembered what it felt like to be human. To have a body. To want something other than consumption.
But the hunger was louder.
His light could fill us, it whispered. His warmth could stop the aching. Just a taste. Just a little. He has so much, and we have nothing.
I reached for him.
My darkness touched his light.
It didn't blend. Didn't harmonize. It fed.
His warmth poured into me. The endless ache of my emptiness eased. And it was good. It was so good. Better than anything I'd ever—
Eryndor screamed.
The sound splintered the euphoria. His face was twisted with agony, his golden light dimming, his body crumbling at the edges as I drew more and more from him.
Stop, the buried part of me begged. You're killing him. Stop.
But I couldn't stop. The hunger wouldn't let me. It had been starving for so long, and he was right there, and I needed—I needed—
More.
I consumed him.
The light went out. The warmth vanished. And where Eryndor had stood, there was nothing.
Just me.
Just the darkness.
Just the hunger, still gnawing, still empty, still whispering more more more—
"Amaria."
A different voice. Deep. Ancient. Familiar.
I spun—or the darkness that was me shifted—and Dreadscale stood at the edge of the Void. He didn't glow like Eryndor had. He was simply there, solid and immovable, watching me with those unreadable eyes.
"What did I do?" The words tore out of me. "I couldn't stop. I consumed him."
"The Void isn't just emptiness, Amaria."
His voice was low and echoed through the darkness.
"It's hungry. And you give it what it needs."
"I don't understand—"
But the dream was already fracturing. Cracks spiderwebbed through the darkness—or through me. Dreadscale's form flickered. The Void shuddered.
And I was falling, falling, falling—
I woke up gasping.
My hands clawed at the sheets. My lungs burned. For a terrible, disorienting moment, I couldn't remember where I was—couldn't remember if I had a body, if I was real, if I was still the thing in the dark reaching for something to devour.
Then the room came into focus. The gilded ceiling. The silk curtains. The cage.
Just a dream.
But my hands were shaking. And when I closed my eyes, I could still feel it—the hunger. The satisfaction of consuming his light. The terrible, perfect fullness of it.
I wanted to eat him.
The thought made me gag.
I wanted to swallow him whole and I liked it.
I sat in the dark until dawn crept through the curtains, Dreadscale's words circling through my skull like vultures.
The Void isn't just emptiness. It's hungry.
And you can feed it.