Page 14 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THREADS OF LIGHT

T he instant coffee is tasteless.

I watch the faint swirl of granules that never fully dissolved, clinging to the bottom like grit in a wound. The light in the kitchen window is weak, more haze than sun. It’s morning, technically, but it doesn’t feel like it.

I didn’t sleep. I closed my eyes and fell into something, but it was not rest. Milo was there—calling to me through darkness thick as oil.

His voice twisted, warped, coming from places that didn’t obey the rules of space or time.

A mirror. A storm drain. A mouth that wasn’t his.

He kept saying my name like it was a prayer. Or a warning.

Now I sit at my kitchen table, heart heavy, mug in hand, trying to convince myself it wasn’t real, even though it felt real. Every time I woke up gasping, I could still hear him. He’s in trouble, which should be nothing new, but this time…

I close my eyes and press my forehead to the lip of the cup. My skin buzzes like a current is moving under it, nerves fraying with the quiet hum of something I can’t name. The city isn’t right anymore. Or maybe I’m the one that changed.

The memory of the Freehold flickers, shimmering around me, the music, the light, the version of me with silver in her eyes.

I set the mug down with a soft thud and reach for Milo’s sketchbook.

I flip through it slowly—pages thick with graphite.

More drawings of the theater. Of me. Of that woman with the crown and the eyes like moons.

He knew. Long before I did. I open to a new page, pick up a pencil and try to draw The Folly as I saw it in my vision.

My hand trembles. The lines are clumsy. The detail is lost. I can’t capture the impossible beauty, the gilded panels, the shimmering light.

My rendering is just a ruin. The pages of his book mock me with their perfect, effortless detail.

“I’m going to find you,” I whisper.

The words don’t feel like a promise. They feel like a spell.

The air shifts. Determination, or something close enough to it, fills my chest. I rise and walk to my corner.

The red light of my mic blinks, a sirens call.

There are a few messages waiting too. I don’t bother looking beyond the subject lines.

Where are you? Are you okay? You’ve been off for days…

Those are the nice ones, mixed in with the usual scattering of hateful and disgusting ones. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, focusing my thoughts before I hit record.

“Hi,” I say. “Today’s not scripted. This is me, live and alive. Thanks for the messages. This is going to be my shortest broadcast, probably ever. “

I pause, not sure what to say. The truth? No, too crazy. But I need to put this out there .

“We’ve talked, for a long time. About there being more than what we see.

That this darkness can’t be all there is.

That despair isn’t…” I trail off, isn’t what?

What are you saying Skye? “I know you’re listening.

Don’t give up. Because if you are, then know this: I’m still here. Talk soon. Stay alive.”

I stop the recording, stand and move. I leave the apartment but nothing feels real and I’m not even sure where I’m going.

Acting on this blind instinct to find and save Milo, without even the hint of a plan.

It’s as if my body’s been given instructions from somewhere else.

My boots hit the pavement outside, each step pulling me away from the familiar and deeper into something that hums beneath the surface of the world.

Kansas City surrounds me—concrete, brick, wood, steel. None of it feels real. Cars pass. People exist. They flicker at the corners of my vision like ghosts—laughing, crying, silent.

I keep walking.

Through the haze and city noise, the hill of Penn Valley Park looms ahead. I climb without thinking, breath short, muscles tight from days of strain. When I reach the top, he’s already there.

Faelan stands beneath The Scout , the great bronze silhouette of the horse and rider framed by sky. His cloak flutters in the breeze like mist. From a distance he looks carved from shadow—immovable, unreal.

He doesn’t turn as I approach, only says, “You heard him again.”

It’s not a question. I stop a few paces behind him.

“You knew I would.”

Faelan looks out over the city. The skyline glows faintly beneath the veil of morning haze. From up here, everything looks peaceful and drab. Still. I know better now.

“The veil is thinning,” he says. “For you, more than most. He’s caught on the edge. That makes him dangerous. That makes you dangerous.”

I almost laugh. “Because I dream?”

“Because you’re beginning to remember.”

The wind carries a low, strange hum—not sound exactly, more an impression . Like a thread pulled tight between here and somewhere else. Faelan finally turns.

“Why here?” I ask, nodding to the statue. “Why this place?”

He glances up at it. “Some things the city doesn’t forget. Even when the people do.”

I wrap my arms around myself, rubbing my arms.

“You said last night the Queen isn’t the only one who remembers the old war.”

He nods.

“So tell me, Faelan. What side are you on?”

A long pause.

Then he says, “That depends on which version of you survives the Solstice.”

And just like that, I realize I’m standing in two worlds again. The park is still here—but overlaid with something older. Something shimmering. Banners where there should be branches. Stone where there should be grass. And the statue is watching me back .

My stomach knots. I blink hard. When I look again, it’s gone. Just a city park. Just a statue. Faelan, though, is still there. Still watching me. And suddenly, I know—whatever comes next, there’s no going back to before .

Only forward. Through whatever this is, dream or nightmare.

The wind shifts and I don’t know how else to describe it. One moment it’s a breeze, brushing my hair across my face, ruffling Faelan’s strange cloak. The next, it feels like it’s aware of me. As if the wind is turning to look.

I step back, instinct pulling at the edge of my thoughts. Faelan doesn’t move, watching with that unreadable expression of his—part shadow, part myth.

“You’re feeling it now,” he says.

“What is it , exactly?”

He doesn’t answer. Instead, he gestures with one long finger—a tilt of his hand—and turns, walking away from the statue, away from the city. Not a word and no command, but I follow. I don’t ask where we’re going. I know, instinctively, it won’t be a place listed on any map.

We descend the hill and cross a street I’ve walked dozens of times before, but today it feels warped—like a held breath, desperate to exhale. Cars pass, moving slower than they should. Or maybe I’m moving faster. Reality hiccups, subtle, but enough to set my teeth on edge.

“Keep your eyes forward,” Faelan says softly. “Don’t blink too long. Don’t anchor yourself too deep.”

I don’t know what that means, but I obey what I do understand of it .

We duck into a side alley I didn’t know existed—winding between two brick warehouses and overgrown with ivy, like it’s been hidden for years. The air cools as we walk, and becomes heavier. The city thins behind us, dissolving like steam.

And then, between one breath and the next, we’re back in front of The Folly .

I stop at the threshold.

“This is it?” I ask. “Here, again?”

Faelan doesn’t respond right away. He walks up to the doors and presses his hand to the scorched wood, closing his eyes.

“This place remembered you,” he says.

Faelan’s hand lingers on the door, eyes closed, like he’s listening to something I can’t hear.

Or maybe I can, if I stop pretending this is normal.

I move next to him and press my hand next to his.

The wood hums faintly. A warmth pulses under my skin, matching the rhythm in my chest. Or his. Or the building’s.

“Come,” he says, and the door opens without a sound.

Inside, the theater waits—not burned, not ruined, not exactly.

It’s both. Wreckage and wonder, like two halves of a dream I can’t untangle.

We don’t linger in the lobby. He leads me through the hushed interior, past scorched velvet and crumbling plaster, all lit by a light that doesn’t come from any source I can see.

We move through a back hallway and out a side door that opens not onto a street, but a stairwell—twisting upward, impossibly high, smelling of cool stone and dust. It shouldn’t exist inside the bounds of the building.

The air is cooler, crisp and full of electricity.

As strange as it all is, I don’t ask questions.

At the top, we step onto a roof that shouldn’t be there and the view takes my breath away.

Kansas City sprawls below, but not as I’ve ever seen it.

There are two versions of it layered together—like one world printed atop another.

The familiar skyline of glass, steel, and brick is overlaid with something shimmering, a ghost of a different city.

Roads faintly glow, threads of starlight running like veins.

Buildings are crowned in silent auroras, and bridges are woven from mist. It’s breathtaking, but it feels like it’s humming just out of tune with reality.

Light pulses through the streets like blood, and I swear I can feel the faint vibrations against my skin.

I look down. Silver threads, luminous and alive, weave between landmarks—spiraling out from The Folly in curved paths of light.

They stretch toward Union Station, The Nelson, the West Bottoms. Places I’ve always felt something around but never questioned.

As I look at the thread leading toward Union Station, a soft, beautiful chord resonates in my mind, a physical pull of gravity.

It’s the same feeling I had when I first met Faelan, only stronger.

“Those are Freeholds,” he says. “Or what’s left of them. Fractured. Fading. Anchors of what the Dream used to be. What it could be.”

I keep staring, heart pounding. “Why can I feel them?”