Page 20 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

BENEATH THE SKIN

T he streets are slick with rain as we move, fast and quiet, through the city’s underbelly. Faelan keeps pace beside me, not speaking, but I feel him watching. Or maybe it’s the mark under my collarbone—pulsing in tune with something I can’t name—that feels him.

I want to be thinking about the kiss—about the weight of his hand on my skin, the way the Dream pressed around us like it wanted to hold the moment too—but I can’t. Not now.

Milo’s out there. And I’m done being a second too late. A step behind.

Faelan slows at the mouth of a narrow side street and tilts his head slightly, as if listening for something I can’t hear. The rain has faded to a mist, but the world is muffled, like sound’s being swallowed before it can fully form.

“Here,” he says.

I follow him down the alley, past broken fences and crumbling brick. We’re deep into the bones of the city now—places people avoid without knowing why. The Dream is thin here, like a skin stretched over an old wound. The hum I sense on some instinctual level is wrong, discordant.

“How do you know where to go?” I ask.

His voice is low and he doesn’t look at me when he speaks.

“You’re marked. Part of you is… resonating. The Dream’s responding to you.”

“So you’re tracking me to find him?”

“In a way.” He pauses. “You’re connected to him, and he’s leaving traces—faint echoes in the Dream, like blood in water.”

I hate the image that conjures so I move faster.

We round the corner, and Faelan throws out an arm to stop me. At first, I don’t see it—but then a glint of something catches my eye. It’s small, resting in a puddle. I kneel.

It’s one of Milo’s bracelets. The woven cord is soaked, the tiny metal charm—an old music note—is tarnished and worn. Mom gave him this not long before she got sick, and he has never taken it off. My throat tightens as I scoop it up, closing my fingers around it.

“He was here,” I say, my voice unnaturally high as I force the words around the lump.

Faelan crouches beside me. He presses two long, pale fingers to the ground and closes his eyes.

“Dragged,” he murmurs. “Two figures. One struggling. No sign of a kill. They weren’t here to feed.”

“So what were they doing? ”

He doesn’t answer, but his eyes narrow toward the warehouse across the street. Its windows are blacked out. The front entrance has a thick rusty chain across it. I frown, not sure why he’s looking at it then I see a side door that is ajar.

Bait.

They left the door open on purpose. Of course they did. He’s alive because I’m the one they want. I move to rise, but Faelan catches my wrist. His touch is cool, but heat flares on my skin.

“Skye—”

“I’m going in.”

“You shouldn’t go alone.”

“I’m not leaving him in there. You said it yourself that they’re moving. If he’s alive, I don’t have time to wait.”

His jaw clenches. He doesn’t like it, but he nods once.

“I’ll circle. If you’re not out in five minutes?—”

“Come in guns blazing?”

“No,” he says. “Something worse.”

I don’t ask, because I don’t want to know.

I’ve seen how shadows respond to his will, and the way he wields that katana on his side isn’t the moves of an amateur.

I nod and head to the door, not bothering with trying to be stealthy.

They know I’m coming. I’m not sure what I’m going to do once I go inside, but I can’t do nothing.

I pull the door open and step into the dark. The Dream stirs around me tense with anticipation and expectation. I offer a silent prayer that I’m not too late. The door groans closed behind me, sealing me into the dark .

It’s not pitch black—cracks in the boarded windows let in slits of dull amber streetlight, enough to cast warped shadows across the floor.

The air is colder than it should be. Not just damp—more hollow, waiting to be filled with violence or worse.

The Dream curls closer, cautious, and thin.

If I know anything for sure it’s that this place has teeth.

“Milo?” I call, barely above a whisper.

No answer. Of course not. It’s not going to be that easy, now is it?

I move carefully forward, boots echoing on concrete. Something rustles to the left, but when I turn, there’s nothing but shadows and silence. The warehouse is huge and seems to be empty save for long-abandoned crates, broken shelving, and rusted hooks dangling from chains.

What those hooks are for, I have no idea, but they look like something out of a horror film. Then I see him. Curled against the far wall like discarded trash. Limp but unmistakable.

“Milo!” The word bursts out as I run.

He doesn’t respond. I fall to my knees next to him sliding the last bit of distance. My hands shake as I reach for his face. His skin is cold—too cold. Not corpse-cold, but chilled, and he’s pale. His lips are cracked. There’s a blood smear at the corner of his mouth like he coughed it up.

“Milo, wake up. Please—” My voice breaks. “Come on, little brother, this isn’t the end.”

His lashes flutter. A groan escapes—small, wrecked, but it’s enough. He’s alive. If barely, but I can work with this.

I look him over. The fang marks are unmistakable, low on his neck near the shoulder. Too clean for it to have been a frenzy. There are no signs of a struggle on him. This wasn’t about rage. It was controlled. Intentional.

They didn’t kill him because they wanted me to find him like this.

I bite down on the scream rising in my chest and ease him into my lap, brushing sweat-damp curls from his forehead.

“Hold on,” I whisper. “I’ve got you.”

“That won’t be enough,” comes a voice from the shadows.

I don’t flinch because I know that voice.

Corvin steps into the fractured light like a dream with bones. Black coat swirling. Crimson-threaded gloves. Eyes too old and too tired to lie. He looks at Milo with something close to sympathy, but not sorrow. Never sorrow. I don’t think he’s capable of such an emotion.

“You were warned he was in too deep,” he says. “And yet, here we are.”

“What did they do to him?” I ask, teeth clenched.

“Fed. Not enough to kill. Just enough to mark. And weaken. He’s drifting on the edge of nothing.” His gaze lifts to me. “You can’t pull him back, not alone.”

I don’t like the way he says that. Too measured. Too careful.

“What do you mean?”

He steps closer, slow, deliberate, until he’s a breath away. I don’t move. I refuse to flinch.

“I can bring him back,” Corvin says, voice low. “But it won’t be free.”

“What kind of price? ”

He glances at Milo. “He’s too far gone to choose. Which means it falls to you.”

My mouth goes dry. “What are you saying?”

“I can use blood craft—my own essence—to restore him. Bind his spirit back to his body. Heal the damage. But it creates… a tether. He’ll be linked to me. Not turned,” Corvin adds, reading the panic behind my eyes, “but beholden. What we call a thrall.”

The word lands like a fist in my stomach. There’s something more, something he’s not saying, but this is Milo.

“You want to enslave him.”

“No,” he says, too calm. “I want to keep him alive . This is the only way. No one else is offering you a choice, Skye. I am.”

I look at Milo. His breath is shallow. His pulse—flickering. He’s not going to make it without help. I know it. Corvin knows it. Milo wouldn’t want to be bound to anyone, least of all a vampire, but… he also wouldn’t want to die. And right now, he doesn’t get a vote.

“Why?” I whisper. “Why give me the choice?”

Corvin tilts his head. “Because you still have one.”

I close my eyes. Every part of me screams no.

The memory of Milo, small and feverish, clinging to me after Mom died, flashes behind my eyelids.

His terrified cries in the dead of night.

His fragile hope that I could fix everything.

He was always too good for this world, too soft.

If I say no—if I let him go—I’m no better than the monsters that left him here.

My hand tightens around Milo’s, my knuckles white.

I promised Mom. I promised him. I promised myself: I will not fail him again.

Damn it .

“What happens to him…after?” I ask. “What does being a thrall mean?”

“He’ll live. He’ll be free to move, to speak, to think. But if I call, he’ll answer. If I command—he obeys.” Corvin shrugs. “Most never test those limits.”

I look at my brother again. His chest barely rises.

Memories rush past too fast for me to identify them individually, but the tapestry of our lives together leaves a lasting impression.

The way it’s been since we lost Mom—he and me alone.

He’s my responsibility, and it’s because of me that he’s in this mess.

One thing is clear. The one thing I know for certain: I can’t lose him.

“Do it,” I say, the words cutting like glass, tearing a piece of my soul away with them. “Bring him back.”

Corvin nods, once. No gloating. No smile.

He kneels and pulls a small obsidian blade from his coat.

He drags the blade across the palm of his hand, and blood wells.

Then, with a few sharp words I don’t recognize, he grabs Milo by his jaw, clenching his hand into a fist over his mouth.

Blood drips, then becomes a steady stream pouring into Milo’s mouth.

The Dream trembles. The mark on my collarbone flares.

Suddenly the air tastes like copper and starlight.

Milo gasps.

It’s not a gentle inhale—it’s violent. Like he’s been yanked away from drowning by some mystical hand grabbing his lungs. His back arches, a sudden, convulsive shudder running through his body.

His eyes snap open wide, wild, unfocused, and for a terrifying instant, they are not Milo’s eyes at all—they are a flat, ancient silver, mirroring the mark on my collarbone.

A raw, guttural sound, half-howl, half-choke, tears from his throat, and he thrashes weakly against my hold, a desperate, instinctual revulsion.

Then, as quickly as it came, the light in his eyes fades, replaced by a dazed confusion.