Page 11 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

The vampire holding me freezes. His eyes widen in confusion. Or fear.

From the shadows at the far end of the alley, something steps forward.

Not something. Someone.

The figure moves like a ripple in water, parting the darkness. His cloak flutters behind him like smoke, and his boots don’t make a sound against the pavement. The air changes—becoming thinner, stranger. Everything tilts, but not like before. This isn’t drugs or fear. This is… power .

“Let her go,” Faelan says, his stance is nonchalant, one hand resting on the hilt of a sword at his side.

His voice is soft, almost bored. But it echoes strangely, as if two voices speak at once—his and something older layered beneath. The vampire doesn’t move.

“I said,” Faelan repeats, lifting a hand, “ let her go . ”

There’s no light—no fire or flash—but the shadows around his fingers twist unnaturally. He stares at the fist gripping my shirt and the vampire screams and jerks away like he’s been burned. Smoke rises from his hand where Faelan’s gaze landed. Corvin, still kneeling, lifts his head.

“Faelan.”

The cloaked man nods slightly at his erstwhile ally.

“You look like shit.”

The second vampire—the one I hit—backs away.

“You can tell her it’s too late,” Faelan says coolly. “The Dream chose her. She’ll never belong to your Queen.”

“She will,” the vampire snarls, despite the tremor in his voice. “She’s already halfway in.”

“Then I’ll burn the other half,” Faelan replies, eyes flashing silvery white.

He draws his sword, slicing the empty air, but the shadows respond.

He doesn’t close the distance, but they explode outward from the glint of his blade like a living thing—ripping down the alley, swallowing both vampires in a burst of writhing black.

They scream as they vanish, like they are being dragged under water.

Then silence.

My lungs seize, refusing my attempts to inhale. I sink to the ground, clutching the rebar like a lifeline.

Faelan turns toward me. He’s beautiful in a way that makes no sense—like a sketch half-finished, like if you blinked you’d forget what he looked like. His features shimmer, slippery and unreadable .

“You shouldn’t be here,” he says.

I laugh. It comes out broken. “No shit.”

Corvin groans and tries to rise.

Faelan walks to him with a slow, apparently indifferent gait then offers a hand. For a moment I don’t think Corvin will take it; he stares at it for what seems like a long time, but then he does.

Their hands clasp. Not like friends. Like old enemies bound by something worse than hatred by memories .

“She’s waking up and she’s marked,” Faelan says, looking at me.

“I know,” Corvin mutters.

“She’s beginning to see.”

Corvin’s eyes flick to me, shadowed. “It’s too soon.”

Faelan’s voice drops. “She’ll need to decide soon. Because others are watching now, not just the Queen.”

They exchange a look I can’t decipher. Then Faelan steps toward me. I flinch—I can’t help it. He kneels at my side like someone who’s approaching a wild animal.

“You’ve been touched,” he says, brushing a finger just over my brow. “By smoke and blood and Dream. You’re waking, Skye, and that makes you visible .”

Waking? The vampires called me Dreamling and he says I’m waking. What does that mean? What am I waking from?

“Visible to what ?”

“Everyone,” Faelan says simply .

And then he’s gone. Not a step or a sound. One blink—there. The next—nothing. I stare at the empty alley, heart pounding like a drum in a war I don’t understand. Corvin sags against the wall, breath ragged.

“We need to get you out of here.”

“No,” I whisper. “I need to find Milo.”

He closes his eyes. “It’s already started.”

The silence that follows feels like a vacuum.

My breath rasps in my throat, dry and hoarse, as I take a shaky step forward. My boots scrape against something slick—Corvin’s blood. Or maybe the vampire’s. I don’t know which.

They’re gone. Faelan made them go. With a flick of his hand and a burst of shadows. I turn slowly, searching the shadows. When I look back, Corvin is gone too.

“Corvin?” I whisper, but the alley echoes it back too loudly, like it’s not really my voice.

No answer. Corvin’s nowhere. Just…vanished, the way he’s done before.

I press a hand to the wall to steady myself. My knees want to buckle. My fingers are trembling. My brain’s trying to catch up, but nothing makes sense. Vampires. Magic. Blood like ink.

And them —Faelan, not entirely human. Mysterious and strange, but protecting me. Contrasting with Corvin, who is wounded because of me, but also involving himself. What do they want? What is happening to me? To Milo?

My stomach rolls. I bend over, dry heaving again, but nothing comes up. Just bile and dread. Then the street shifts .

Not physically, not exactly—but it’s wrong. One second, I’m staring at the alley’s mouth, the wet pavement leading toward Union Ave. The next, it looks different. The street narrows, stretches. The streetlamp overhead blinks out, and for a moment I swear the stars shift in the sky.

I blink. Rub my eyes. The city comes back—but now everything’s off, slightly unreal, like I’m in a dream. A whisper snakes through the air, faint as fog.

Skye.

I spin. Nothing behind me. No voice, no breath, no movement. But there is a strange pull in my chest, like gravity is off by a few degrees.

I stumble out of the alley. The night is humid, thick with the stench of the river and death. Even out here, it feels off. Both too quiet and too loud when sirens, far away, twist into howls. Ahead a flickering marquee spells a word I can’t read, then it doesn’t.

Skye.

Not out loud. In my head. I freeze.

That wasn’t my voice. It wasn’t even in English. I don’t know the words, but I understand them.

Come home.

The Dream is bleeding through. That’s what this is. Somehow, I know it.

Afraid and confused I stagger across the street towards a boarded-up church. I don’t remember it being here but then I never paid that much attention did I? Too busy with my own concerns, too wrapped up in trying to survive to the next day. The next moment.

The door creaks when I open it, like it’s been waiting for me. Dust and rot cling to the air. The pews are half collapsed. The final remnants of a shattered stained-glass window throws broken moonlight across the altar.

I slip behind one of the few remaining pews and collapse to the ground, curling into myself. I’m shaking so I dig my fingers into my arms. I don’t know if I’m trying to hold myself together or tear myself apart.

The world flickers. A memory—but it’s not mine. It can’t be even if I know that’s what it is.

A sound. Hooves on stone, followed by screams. I’m looking over a battlefield drowned in blue fire. I’m wearing armor. My sword sings with impossible power that I’ve never touched.

Flicker. A great black throne surrounded by silver light. A man sits on it, tall and cold and terrible. His eyes glow silver, and when he looks at me—my heart stops. Faelan…

I choke on a sob and press my fists to my eyes.

“ It’s not real, ” I whisper. “ It’s not real. ”

But it is. Some part of me knows it is. Another whisper in the shadows. Closer. A chorus of voices saying my name, over and over, like a prayer. Or a spell.

Skye… Skye… Skye…

My breath stutters. I’m not alone. Not anymore. And I don’t think I ever was .

I don’t know if I fall asleep or pass out. I startle awake with the rotting floorboards digging into my cheek. My head is pounding and my stomach churns like it’s trying to work its way through something awful. I push myself upright, feeling the deep imprint of the rough wood on my cheek.

I’m so out of it that I sit for more than a minute when it hits me how incredibly dangerous and stupid this is. I slept here…wherever here is…which is the same as begging for terrible things to happen. Especially if I’m still in the Bottoms, which I think I am. If not, then where the hell am I?

The air has that distinct odor of rot and mold mixing with ancient dust. I glance around but I’m alone by some miracle. I grab the back of a collapsed pew and pull, but only get partway up before the wood breaks, and I fall back onto my ass.

“Damn it,” I curse.

Sighing, I climb up without using anything. It’s not like I’m decrepit and, amazingly, I’m not hurt. I raise my hand to rub sleep from my eyes and stop, staring at my jacket. The sleeve is torn but that’s not what stops me. It’s the bloodstains.

Dark, like some kind of fucked up Rorschach test laid onto the cloth. The memories crash like a wave pulling me under. I stumble backwards, barely catching my balance and not going back onto my already bruised and sore ass.

“Right,” I mutter. “That happened.”

I swallow, shake my head, then do the only thing I can: I move. Fucked up or not fucked up, Milo is still missing and all this… whatever this is… ties into it. I knew the world was a mess. Now I know it’s even more so than I thought.

Fine. This is a shitshow. But one way or another, I will save Milo .

I hit the rickety door to the Church hard enough that it slams open.

I emerge onto the street, which looks exactly the same as it always does.

Empty at this hour except for a couple of homeless people slowly walking to where they will sit for the day, holding their dirty signs and praying for the charity of strangers.

I blink, half-expecting everything to shimmer and change, but nothing does.

Good. Whatever is happening, nothing changes what’s next.

Milo is my responsibility. Stupid, careless, irresponsible idiot though he is, he’s my idiot.

I’ve spent my life trying to protect him and though I’ve failed more times than I can count, it doesn’t mean I’m done yet.

I’m coming, Milo. Keep your fucking head down and that god damn mouth shut.

The sky is full on morning when I make it home. Not that it feels like home anymore.

My key sticks in the lock. I jiggle it with a curse under my breath, shoulder braced against the door, until it finally clicks open.

The hinges groan as I push inside. Same cracked tile in the entry.

Same smell of dust and stale coffee. Everything looks the same.

But none of it feels right. Like nothing fits together the way it should.

I close the door and hear the weak click, then lean against it. My whole body is one big ache. My arms are shaking. My ribs throb with every breath. There’s a deep scrape on my knee below a tear in my jeans that I hadn’t noticed before—raw and ugly and pulsing.

I toe off my boots and limp down the hall, stripping off my jacket. It smells like sweat and blood. I leave it in a heap on the floor. Shower later. Maybe. If I can convince myself to stand that long. I go to my bed and drop onto the edge of the mattress .

My head is pounding, and my vision swims. But when I go to kick off my jeans, I catch the sharp edge of wrong out of the corner of my eye.

It’s on my pillow. A folded sheet of parchment—not paper , parchment—off-white, thick, and lined with red at the edge. Blood? I don’t want to know. I reach for it, slowly, every nerve screaming. There’s no mistaking that it wasn’t here when I left.

I glance over and check that the window is still latched, which it is. The door was locked when I came in and I relocked it. Yet someone was inside. Someone was here, in my home. Standing over my bed.

My fingers tremble as I unfold it. The paper is unnaturally warm and the ink is dark, almost iridescent, like it was written with a quill dipped in oil and shadows.

The handwriting is elegant. Unhurried. The kind of writing that belongs in grimoires and fairy tales, not in a shitty one-bedroom apartment.

The Queen waits.

You have until the Solstice.

A single drop of blood stains the bottom corner, smeared like a fingerprint. There’s a final line. Smaller. Delicate and flowing script.

You sing in your sleep.

I drop the note like it burns.

My breath rattles. My heart hammers so loud it feels like it’s outside my chest. This isn’t about Milo anymore—not just about Milo, if it ever was. I’m not caught in a storm of things I don’t understand and don’t know how to comprehend.

I push up from the bed and move toward the window, needing something—air, perspective, a boundary between me and what I just read.

The city sprawls below, wrapped in haze and morning light. The skyline glows faintly pink, like a bruise. It should be beautiful. But all I can think is how thin it feels. Like the veil between worlds is paper, and someone is tearing it.

I press my forehead to the glass, eyes burning.

Milo’s in this deeper than I ever imagined. Whatever this is—this war, this magic, this Dream-bleeding-into-reality nightmare—I don’t think he stumbled into it. I think someone pulled him in. Maybe for me. Maybe because of me.

And now? Now I’m in it too. One of these bastards has my brother. And no matter what I have to do, I’m going to get him back.