Page 24 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

VEIL OF THORNS

T he city feels tense, the kind of tension you can’t put your finger on but you feel anyway. Like a guitar string tuned too tight and ready to snap.

I walk alone, guitar slung across my back, my breath fogging faintly in the cool midnight air. There’s no destination—just a pull towards…somewhere. Not to a street I can name, but the mark beneath my collarbone pulses in slow, steady beats, guiding me and I follow it.

I go through alleys slick with rain, past broken fences and old stone walls where the Dream feels as thin as crepe paper.

My boots echo on cracked pavement, then on gravel, until there is only silence.

The noise of the city fades as I cross the river, going from Missouri to the less populated Kansas.

It’s just me and the wind and something older pressing close.

I see it.

An old church rises from behind a curtain of ivy and rot. Its steeple is broken, the bell tower gutted, but something in the air trembles with memory. Not holiness or divinity, but something honest. Grief carved into stone. Belief without promise.

I approach slowly, then hesitate at the threshold. The doors hang crooked. The inside smells of moss and mildew. The mark under my skin thrums. My breath catches. I step inside and gasp.

This place is awake .

Moonlight filters through the remains of stained glass in fractured colors—deep violet, ghost-blue, blood-red. Ivy crawls across the walls. An altar slouches at the far end, draped in dust and vines. A bird nests where the cross once stood. No pews are left, only stone and silence.

I slide the guitar off my back and sit on what used to be a choir riser. I don’t know why I came here. No, that’s a lie. I came to sing.

My fingers move before my mind catches up. The first chord hums through the air like a ripple in still water. I don’t plan the melody. I don’t write the words. They find me.

I was made from shattered stars,

A ghost between the veil and skin,

But every wound I’ve ever carried ? —

Sings louder than the silence I’ve been in.

The chords vibrate against my chest, and the mark glows faintly. Gold, like sunlight beneath the skin. Dust lifts in the air. The vines shift.

There’s power in a broken voice,

In fire born from ash and bone,

If the Dream would make me weapon ? —

Let it know I choose my tone.

Something cracks in the ceiling. A tremor runs through the floor. I don’t stop.

Let her come with teeth and shadow ? —

Let them hunt me in the dark ? —

I am not the girl they silenced ? —

I am song. And this is my spark.

The final chord echoes like thunder underwater. Then silence. The hush that follows isn’t empty. It’s reverent . A wind stirs, soft at first, then rising.

Vines twist toward the altar and bloom. Blue flowers erupt from cracks in the stone. The stained glass re-forms, half-healing. The dust becomes motes of light. I feel it—not around me but through me.

The Dream is listening. And it’s answering.

A bell tolls once from the broken tower. No rope. No mechanism. It’s resonance. Power. The church glows, faint but unmistakable. A Freehold is being born . My mark burns bright, and I fall forward onto my knees as the world shifts.

The moment the final chord dies, the silence that follows is thick with something alive. The church breathes—not metaphorically, but literally.

The air pulls inward, cool and laced with scents; jasmine, blood rose, old parchment, and petrichor.

The vines twist in ecstasy. Petals bloom in midair, drifting like soft snowfall.

The walls no longer seem broken, only becoming.

Like they’re shifting into something older, truer, the way they were meant to be .

And then—light .

Not from the moon. Not from any sun. It pours through the rafters like liquid star fire, glimmering and silver-blue.

It bends in slow spirals, casting fractured constellations across the ceiling.

Symbols flicker in the dust. Fractured stars arc overhead, turning slowly in a crown that isn’t a crown.

The mark beneath my collarbone sears—not with pain. Recognition.

I inhale and I know.

This wasn’t just a song. My voice hadn’t just made a sound; it had made a thing. I didn’t simply sing; I had shaped.

It’s not like the court magic Faelan wields—all Dream-forged swords and intricate covenants.

This is older. Wilder. A language of emotion and memory made manifest. I feel the church’s deep-seated grief and faith, its abandoned hope, and I can feel my voice weaving them into something new, something whole.

The Dream doesn’t just listen to the song; it feels the heart behind it.

And when it feels deeply enough, it answers.

A hum rises, not just beneath my skin, but in my very bones. The floor shimmers, and the air thickens with a raw, electric energy. The veil is bleeding through—no longer a barrier, but a thread woven into the fabric of this moment.

I see a woman kneeling where I kneel—her hair like mine, but older, dressed in mourning black. I blink and she’s gone.

I see Faelan, proud and crowned, stepping through this same space—the altar stands tall, and he is not alone. A woman touches his arm and the vision vanishes like mist.

They’re not memories. Not visions.

They’re truths. Possibilities. Echoes layered in time. The Dream is folding around me like a shroud made of light and story. And I am not watching anymore.

I am within it.

Elsewhere—

Faelan stumbles as the pulse hits him mid-stride. His breath catches, and for a moment he forgets how to stand.

The Dream is moving.

No—not just moving. Unfolding.

“Skye,” he breathes.

A blue flower blooms from a crack in the pavement beside him. He knows that scent. Knows it like grief.

He doesn’t hesitate. In a breath, he vanishes.

Elsewhere still ? —

Corvin sits in a high-rise penthouse, the glass windows gleaming. He looks up from his desk. The wine glass beside him trembles. His pupils dilate.

The song echoes. Not as music—but as resonance. Old magic. Forbidden.

His hand closes around the stem of the glass. It shatters in his grip.

“Damn it, girl,” he whispers, eyes going red.

He rises, already moving.

Everywhere—

Fae in exile lift their heads. Those who remember the ways of old stir from their hiding places. Called back to life. To hope.

A whisper passes through the hidden places of the city.

She sings.

And in the deep places, where hunger rules and the Queen’s name is a prayer of power, the vampires still.

One word slips from their lips, unbidden, unwanted.

Dreamer.

Back in the church ? —

I fall to my knees. The vines twist and gently cradle me. The stained glass glows like it remembers why it was made. I look around the church and understand.

This isn’t just sacred. It’s claimed. By me.

The Dream has seen me. Not as a vessel. Not as a pawn.

As a player.

And now? Everything has changed .

The Queen ? —

The court of the Undying Queen lies beneath the city, a hidden, vast space humming with hunger.

Smoke curls in constant spirals out of braziers shaped from bones.

Shadows cling to the arches like living things, and the walls weep old blood.

At the center of it all, seated on a throne carved from obsidian and veined with bone, she waits: the Queen.

Her hair is black as void, eyes milk-pale with no pupils, yet somehow all-seeing. Her mouth is painted red, the color of fresh wounds. And as she watches the scrying pool before her, a cruel smile touches her lips.

The water shudders. Shimmers.

And sings.

It’s faint—a ripple of the final chord, the echo of power threaded through time—but it’s enough. The Queen sits back, fingers flexing against the throne’s armrest.

“So. She’s found her voice.”

A figure shifts in the shadows beside her. A vampire—old and beautiful and blood-hungry. His silver armor gleams beneath a tattered cloak.

“She awakened a Freehold,” he murmurs. “The Dream moved through her.”

The Queen lifts a single, delicate hand. The scrying pool stills, but the image lingers, in it is reflected Skye, on her knees in the church, glowing like a candle about to become a blaze.

“She was nothing,” the Queen says softly, her voice a razor’s edge. “A girl with a sad voice and a stubborn heart. I let her wander. I let her breathe. I thought her pain would be another stone in my foundation. I was wrong.”

She stands. The court freezes. Dozens of vampires go still—warriors, courtiers, servants. None of them blink. None dare.

“The Hunt is declared,” the Queen says.

A sound passes through the court like a tremor. The First Hunt in centuries.

“She is to be brought to me,” the Queen continues. “Alive. Or broken. I want her voice stilled. Her Dream unraveled. Her light bled out.”

She walks down the steps of the dais...

“She does not know what she is,” the Queen says, her gaze sweeping over her silent court.

“But I do. She is a singer of old truths. A shaper. And if she sings again, she will undo it all.” A hush falls like a dropped veil.

“She will break this world open, and with it, my perfect, dreamless kingdom. This world of order and control. The world I have built to keep us all safe from the chaos of hope.”

Her smile returns, slow and savage.

“Stop. Her. Voice.”

FAELAN

The church is a faint glow on the horizon, like a wound that won’t close. I feel her before I reach her—thrumming with pain and light. My breath catches as I push through the warped doorway, and then—I see her .

Skye is collapsed in the center of the sanctuary, her guitar lying abandoned at her side. The vines still bloom, but the Dream is fading—pulling back like a tide, but leaving behind its mark.

Her. She is the mark.

I drop to my knees beside her, and everything else—time, air, fear—falls away.

“Skye,” I whisper.

My voice sounds wrong. Too small. I touch her cheek. Her skin is warm, too warm. Power hums beneath it like a fever dream. Her eyes flutter open.

“Faelan?” Her voice is barely a breath, but I would know it anywhere.

“I’m here,” I say. “You called the Dream. You…sang…it answered you.”

Her mouth moves—half smile, half ache. “I didn’t mean to…”

“You shaped it,” I say, awe and fear mixing in my voice. “You became it.”

Her eyes close again. She drifts, and I want to pull her back, but I don’t know how. Not gently enough. Not without risking breaking something. She gave too much, and took too much in. I lift my head.

The veil here is thinner than I’ve ever felt it—so thin it’s dangerous. The air crackles with old magic, the kind that predates kings and courts and blood-soaked thrones. I feel them before I see them.

Fae.

They emerge, dreams walking—crowned in shadow and star fire, cloaked in memory. My kin, though they do not claim me anymore. One by one, they approach. One by one, they kneel.

The wordless reverence slices through me. I want to shield her, to pull her into my arms and tell them she’s not theirs, she’s not anyone’s. But I don’t move, not from lack of desire but because I can’t.

“She is seen,” one of them says. “She is Chosen.”

Chosen.

My gut twists. I never wanted this for her. I wanted to protect her from this exact fate. The air changes, fracturing—sharp, cold, wrong.

I rise fast as the first vampire steps through the veil, clad in tarnished armor.

More follow—half a dozen, maybe more. They move like wolves, silent and smiling. Their blades shimmer green—poisoned, laced with something vile enough to rot a Freehold from the inside out.

I step ahead, blocking their path to her, drawing my blade, my heart in my throat.

She’s on her knees, barely conscious, humming with power that might kill her if they don’t get to her first. The Fae do nothing; they simply watch.

“They’ve found her,” I say, my voice low and sharp, shaking with everything I can’t say aloud.

“Forsaken King, you know our position is clear,” the oldest Fae says, their voice ancient and hollow. “The oath of non-interference with mortal affairs remains unbroken. We came to witness, not to war. ”

My heart twists into a sharp, bitter knot. I understand that this isn’t cowardice; it’s a curse, an oath they are bound to by something far older than my desires. I grit my teeth, wanting to scream, to fight, to tear down the sky itself if I must, but I stand alone.

The lead vampire grins.

“She sings once, and the world shifts. How delightful.”

He lifts his blade.

Behind me, Skye groans. She reaches for her guitar with a trembling hand. It’s instinct. Survival. A song might save her. Might destroy everything.

Too slow.

I turn back toward the vampires, fury flooding every inch of me. They want to take her. To break her. Or worse—silence her. Not while I breathe.

The old church breathes around me, the stones remembering. The vines, the flowers—they are Skye’s song made real. I lift my blade, the weight of a broken crown and a shattered covenant heavy in my hand.

“And now…” I meet the lead vampire’s eyes, a promise in my gaze that is both a shield and a curse. “I will never stop.”