Page 17 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

“The storm’s right. The veil’s thin. If we wait, the moment may pass.” He holds my gaze. “This one matters.”

I hesitate a second longer before grabbing my coat from the back of the chair. I shove Milo’s scarf into the pocket like a charm, and follow him into the night.

We don’t drive. We walk. Down empty streets blurred by water, through alleys choked with rusted dumpsters and rain-soaked trash.

I trail him in silence, boots splashing through puddles.

The deeper we go, the more the city forgets itself.

Lights are farther apart. Storefronts vanish.

The skyline fades behind pouring sheets of rain.

He stops at a chain-link fence behind the old train yards, where the skeletal remains of tracks glisten under scattered sodium lights. Beyond it, a massive warehouse slumps into the mud—half-roof caved in, bricks blackened by time and fire.

“This place looks condemned,” I mutter.

“It is,” Corvin replies. “But it remembers.”

He pulls up a broken corner of the fence and holds it, letting me slip through before coming himself. We move toward the warehouse, each step heavier than the last. Like gravity is thickening. The rain slackens the moment we cross the threshold, as if the storm respects this place—or avoids it.

Inside, the dark yawns open. Rotting beams stretch across the remnants of the ceiling. Pools of rainwater ripple on the concrete floor. Echoes of old industry cling to the rafters. A hollowed-out corpse of a building, long forgotten.

“What is this?” I whisper.

Corvin gestures to the far wall. “Touch it.”

I look at him, uncertain. “Why?”

“Because it remembers you.”

The same words Faelan used. My throat tightens, but my feet move.

I step up to the wall. Crumbling red brick, and ivy-stained concrete. There’s no magic here. No shimmer. Just water damage, graffiti, and rust. My fingers tingle as I raise them.

I hesitate. Then I touch it. And the world breaks open.

Not violently. Not like a crack or a scream. More like… music beneath silence. Light beneath dust. The warehouse breathes in. The air shudders. And then?—

A thread of golden light winds through the floor like a vein.

Another curls upward along the wall. Then more thread lines weaving, pulsing, revealing structures that were never built by hands—more composed than constructed.

Like architecture hummed into place. Arches of starlight. Echoes of once-was and maybe-could-be .

I hear voices. Not words—impressions. Laughter. Grief. Songs. Children running through a market that no longer exists. Footsteps over tile that crumbled decades ago. Something sweet and amazing on my tongue, but it’s tinged with the metallic tang of old blood.

It’s like the building exhales a memory.

I stumble back, hand to my chest. “What the hell was that?”

Corvin doesn’t move. He watches me with something between reverence and dread.

“It’s a Freehold,” he says. “Or what’s left of one. The memory of a place tied to belief, rooted in the Dream. You woke it.”

I shake my head, heart pounding. “I didn’t do anything. I touched it.”

“And it responded,” he says. “Because you’re not just a Dreamer, Skye. You’re a Shaper.”

The words stop me cold.

“What?”

“You can awaken Freeholds. Rebuild them. Or destroy them. Most like you are gone—burned out, corrupted, or erased. But you…” He steps forward. “You brought it back .”

The golden threads pulse again. It feels like the warehouse is watching me. I stumble away from the wall.

“No. No, no, I don’t want this. I didn’t ask for any of this.”

Corvin’s voice is low. “Wanting has nothing to do with it. You were born for this.”

“I’m not a savior,” I hiss. “I’m not a symbol, or a—” I almost say myth. But I still hear the music. Still see the shimmer. “I’m just trying to survive and save my brother.”

“And so is the Dream,” he says. “It’s dying, Skye.

Starving. The Queen wants to rewrite it in her image—to lock it, rule it, own it.

It’s the only way she can seal her rule.

Make sure that no one can ever challenge her.

She needs someone like you to do it. That’s why she took Milo. That’s why she wants you.”

I sink down onto a broken crate, the echo of the Freehold dancing behind my eyes.

“She wants to use me,” I whisper.

“So does everyone,” he says. “The Court. The Queen. Even Faelan.”

“And you?”

His pause is long. Careful.

“I promised to protect you. That’s what I’m doing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” he says softly. “It’s not.”

The golden threads begin to fade. The warehouse dims to shadows and rain, but I still feel it. In my bones. In the hollows behind memory. The shape of a world that should not exist, but does. A world waiting to be remembered.

“You have to choose who you become,” Corvin says. “And you’ll have to do it soon.”

Lightning flashes, illuminating the twisted tracks outside. And deep in the night, the Dream calls like a tune I can almost remember the words to .

The warehouse settles into silence, but it’s not peace. Anything but. My hands tremble faintly, fingertips tingling from the Dream’s residue. I don’t know how long we stand there, Corvin and I, in that forgotten corner of memory. But eventually, he breaks the silence.

“We should go,” he says, voice low.

“I’m not sure I can move,” I murmur. “I feel like I’ve been rewired.”

He doesn’t smile, only holds out his hand. I hesitate—then take it.

Outside, the wind has shifted again. The storm has caught up with us.

Lightning flickers and thunder rolls low and slow through the sky as we walk in silence past chain-link fences and rusted train cars.

Broken windows glare like hollow eyes. I don’t ask where we’re going.

The city pulls at me—threads of it glowing behind my eyes.

When we reach my apartment, the hallway is dim and humming, the fluorescent bulbs flickering like they’re struggling to remember how to be light. I stop at my door. Corvin doesn’t follow me inside. He lingers at the threshold, rain dripping from his hair.

I open the door, then pause and glance back. He looks like he belongs to the storm—soaked, silent, eyes holding the weight of things he’ll never say aloud.

“Corvin…” I begin.

He cuts in gently. “You’ll have to choose soon.”

“Between you and Faelan?”

“No,” he says. “Between who you were… and who you’ll become. ”

I open my mouth to argue—but there’s no argument. Only the truth of it. He steps back into the shadows and disappears. Leaving me alone.

The apartment is empty like an ache that cannot be filled.

The space where Milo should be throbs. Milo has been my cross to bear.

The weight of my life, but also the reason.

Caring for him, getting him out of trouble, has defined me.

It’s not just that he’s missing that hurts this much.

It’s that I failed. Failed to protect him.

The rain pours harder, relentless against the windows. My apartment creaks and shudders under the pressure of the wind, but inside, everything is still.

I don’t know who to trust. But I know what’s mine. My voice. My music. If the Dream wants that—it’s going to hear it on my terms.

I sit cross-legged on the couch, my guitar in my lap. I don’t think—just let instinct guide my hands. The strings are cool against my fingers, slightly out of tune. I don’t fix it. I let them speak the way they are.

A melody begins to form. Minor. Raw. Old.

I don’t remember writing it. But it’s mine.

It feels older than me, deeper. Notes that don’t belong to this world but slide out of me like breath. A song with bones and blood and memory. I don’t sing—not at first. I let the music build, fragile and strange, like smoke catching on light.

And then something shifts.

The apartment goes quiet—not just of sound, but of everything. The fridge stops humming. The storm falls away, as if the wind outside is holding its breath. Shadows in the corners still .

The air hums.

My music calls something into being—just for a heartbeat. I feel it. A flicker of presence. Of attention. Like the Dream leans closer, listening.

And then it’s gone. But I felt it. And I know, without being told, what it means. I don’t just see the Dream. I don’t just shape it.

I can create.

That realization settles into my spine like warmth and fire.

I sit here, alone in my flickering apartment, guitar in hand, and let the last note drift into silence. My reflection in the darkened window looks different. Not softer. Not harder. Just more.

I think of Faelan’s riddles. Of Corvin’s grief. Of Milo’s silence.

But in this moment, none of them matter. This is mine. This is me. The Dream may be dying. But not before I sing it back to life.