Page 28 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

He nods once. “It’s thinning. But not gone. Not while you still sing.”

“Great. No pressure,” I mutter. Faelan doesn’t respond and a silence stretches between us. Then I ask what’s been pressing on me for days. “What happened between you and her? The Queen?”

Faelan’s jaw tightens. The torchlight deepens the shadows on his face.

“She wasn’t always what she is now,” he says finally. “Once, she wanted to save the world. End suffering. Create order out of chaos.”

“And you believed her. ”

“For a while.” He hesitates. “But her vision required sacrifice. As the weight of choices pressed on her, eventually there was no room for freedom. Or dreaming. Just…obedience. Control.”

I think of the veil I saw in the Dream—people hollow-eyed and quiet, their light stolen.

“Why did you leave the throne?”

He’s silent for a long time.

“I’ve told you I loved someone. Enough to walk away from everything. I thought…maybe love was more important than war.” He stops walking, gaze distant. “I was wrong.”

My heart twists. Not just at the words, but the way he says them—like a wound he keeps reopening and never lets heal.

“You still believe love isn’t worth it?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer, striding ahead in silence.

Eventually, the tunnel opens into a wide cavern—half-formed of stone, half-shaped by magic. In its center stands an archway carved into the earth, draped in vines that pulse with faint light. Its surface ripples like water. A veil.

Faelan stops a few feet from it. His face is unreadable.

“This is it,” he says.

I step forward. The air is heavy with possibility. The arch hums like a tuning fork. My mark begins to glow, warm and pulsing.

“What happens when I go through?”

“They’ll test you,” he says. “They’ll want to see what kind of creature dares to wake the Dream. Your blood. Your choices. Your voice. All of it.”

I exhale slowly. “So, no big deal huh? ”

He almost smiles.

“They’ll try to scare you. To tempt you. Some will want to tear you down. Others…may try to claim you.”

“Great,” I say, my mouth dry. “So a Fae welcome party, what with knives and riddles?”

He smirks and shrugs.

“You’ll be stronger than you think.”

I look at him. Really look.

“And you’ll be there?”

A beat.

“I’ll be nearby,” he says.

Not beside me. Not with me. Just…near. That hurts more than I want it to.

I think of Milo. Of my dream or was it a vision? I don’t see a choice, my path has been chosen. By me or not, the only way is forward. I step to the threshold. The air shivers. The mark on my chest flares. The arch parts—not torn, not forced—recognizing me. Accepting me.

I glance at Faelan one last time. His expression gives nothing away.

“What am I agreeing to?” I whisper.

He meets my eyes.

“A bargain,” he says. “And like all bargains…”

He trails off. The air crackles.

“…it comes with a price,” I fi nish for him.

The moment I step through the veil, the world shifts.

Not like walking into another place—more like falling through time, through memory, through the breath between a dream and waking.

My boots touch stone, but it’s not whole.

The floor beneath me is cracked marble covered with moss.

Vines curl through shattered archways. Light filters from a twilight sky that never brightens or dims.

The Court is a ruin of majesty. It rises around me in pieces—half-forgotten towers, melted glass domes, staircases that lead to nowhere.

Everything shimmers, almost dissolving when I look too hard, as if this place survives by sheer, uninspected memory alone.

Music echoes faintly through the air, but it’s broken.

Unfinished. A lullaby missing its end. A swell that fails to crescendo.

Even the flowers beside my feet, small and golden, wither within seconds and blow away on a wind that isn’t there.

Faelan steps beside me. His presence is darker here. Heavier. I feel the shift in him as if this place drapes chains across his shoulders. And then they come.

Fae of all kinds step from the mist and broken halls. Some ethereal—glowing, winged, eyes like stars. Others wild—horned and rooted, wrapped in bark or fur, their gazes sharp with hunger. Their beauty is terrible, aching. Like the memory of something you once loved and lost.

Some bow, mockingly. Others stare through Faelan like he’s already ash. I hear the whispers.

“Oathbreaker.” “The Dreamless King returns.” “What does he bring us? Another curse?”

Faelan says nothing. He stands straight, gaze ahead, jaw tight. They don’t touch him. But they do not welcome him .

A figure moves forward. Regal. Ancient. Beautiful in the way cliffs are beautiful—cold and unyielding. Her skin is the color of moonstone, her hair braided with bone and starlight. She wears no crown, but every eye shifts when she speaks. Her voice rings like bells cracked by time.

“You return at last, son of the Veil. Crownless. Changeless. And not alone.”

She looks at me.

“Dreambound. Human-born. Claimed by two.”

Her gaze circles me, sharp as frost. I want to flinch, but I don’t. Her eyes are silver with no whites at all. A storm that never ends.

“You wear the mark of the Dream. And yet you do not belong here. Not fully.”

She circles me. I feel her energy like pressure on my chest—testing, probing, brushing against the edges of something I haven’t named yet.

“You are a seed,” she says at last. “Not a tree. But seeds are dangerous things. In the right hands, they grow. In the wrong… they rot.”

I stiffen. “I didn’t come here to be dissected.”

Something like amusement flickers across her lips. It doesn’t soften her.

“I am the Voice of the Court,” she murmurs. “I do my duty. So bloom. Or burn. Show us what you are, Dreamer. Call the shape of your truth. Or leave this place as empty as you entered.”

The words hit me with the force of a physical blow. A sudden, searing heat runs through my veins, coiling around the mark on my chest. I feel a counter-current of icy cold trying to extinguish it, a painful pull in two different directions. Bloom or burn. The choice is a real, tangible agony.

She steps back. The others watch. Faelan says nothing. His eyes find mine, but he doesn’t move, doesn’t speak. I realize that he can’t . This is my test.

I swallow hard. My heart is too loud. My hands tremble.

What is truth? What is hope? I close my eyes.

I don’t try to force it. I don’t try to summon power or light or flame.

I breathe. And I sing. I don’t choose the song, it’s there.

One that I think will touch…something. I feel naked without my guitar but the words come along with the melody.

A song that embodies the aching, This Town by Niall Horn.

The melody is raw, born from grief and longing. But as it leaves me, it doesn’t just fade. The broken music of the Court—the unfinished lullaby—seems to catch on my notes, weaving itself into the harmony. My voice is no longer a memory; it’s a current, a shaping force.

The air shimmers. The withered flowers at my feet tremble, then unfurl.

For a moment, they are whole and golden and alive.

Then they fade, gently. But they bloomed.

Around me, something forms—a kitchen, broken and whole, patched from memory.

The chipped mug. The peeling paint. A warmth that has nothing to do with fire.

The sound of my mother humming. It blooms in full.

And then fades—slowly. Gently. Like an echo released from the walls of a forgotten home.

The last note of the song seems to linger on the air as if it’s desperately clinging to life, to not be consumed .

Silence reigns so utter and complete that the last note of the song seems to linger on the air as if it’s desperately clinging to life, to not be consumed.

The Voice steps forward. Her expression does not change, but the air around her stills.

“The Dream remembers you,” she says. “It has not decided what you will become.”

Then she turns. To Faelan. Her voice goes sharp. Cold as blade-edge.

“You abandoned your crown. You left the gate unguarded. And now you bring us this child of ruin and rebirth.”

A beat. Faelan meets her gaze, silent and stoic. All eyes are on the two of them, including mine.

“Is this redemption, Faelan… or revenge?”

He meets her gaze, unflinching. But I see it—the fracture behind his calm. He doesn’t answer. Not yet. Faelan holds her gaze, still and silent.

For a breath, it seems he won’t answer. That he’ll bear the weight of her accusation in silence, as he always does.

“Maybe both,” he answers.

A ripple of sound stirs through the watching Fae—whispers like wind through dry leaves. Some scoff. Others murmur, almost approving. The Voice doesn’t blink.

“She will remain,” the Voice decrees, already turning away. “If she fails, she is no longer our concern. If she succeeds… the Court will remember.”

And just like that, it’s over.

They scatter, fading into mist or shadow or doorways that shouldn’t exist. The twilight deepens. The ruined Court empties until it’s just me and Faelan again, standing beneath broken stars in a place made of dreams and lost memories .

I turn to him, and for a moment, neither of us says a word.

“They really know how to make a girl feel welcome,” I say, half-chuckling not from any amusement but to relieve the stress.

Faelan exhales through his nose.

“You impressed them.”

“Wasn’t trying to,” I mutter. “I just…remembered.”

“I know,” he says. “That’s what they needed to see.”

His tone is unreadable. Careful. Distance tightening in every syllable and I hate it.

We walk in silence, back through a cracked archway and into what remains of the palace gardens—twisting vines, still pools that don’t reflect, and fruit trees straining to bloom under a twilight sky that never changes.

I stop beside one of them. Its silver-skinned fruit faintly glows, but I know instinctively that it’s hollow inside. Beautiful and empty.

“Is this why you brought me here?” I ask. “To perform? Prove myself to people who had already decided I didn’t belong?”

“No.” Faelan doesn’t look at me. “I brought you here because it was the only way to save him.”

“Milo.”

“The tether still holds. Corvin’s magic runs deep, but if the Court recognizes you… if the Dream does… we can sever it fully. Give him back what was stolen.”

I press my fingers to my ribs. To where the music lives.

“And that only happens if I embrace this? ”

“Yes.”

I study him in the half-light. He looks tired. Beautiful, but haunted. Like the palace. Like the Dream.

“And what happens to me, Faelan?”

His gaze shifts to me at last.

“That depends,” he says. “On what you become.”

My breath catches. It’s the honesty in his voice that undoes me. That, and the silence that follows. Heavy. Unrelenting. I move closer—not touching, but close enough that I can feel the crackling edge of his magic. Close enough that I know he feels me.

“Say it,” I whisper. “You saw Corvin kiss me. And you pulled away. Say it.”

He doesn’t deny it. His jaw clenches.

“I had no right to feel what I felt.”

“But you did.”

He turns away like the sight of me burns. “And I can’t let that happen again.”

The ache flares sharp in my chest.

“Why? Because it makes me a target? Or because you think it makes you weak?”

He says nothing. I take another step forward.

“You keep saying you want to protect me. But all you’ve done since then is run.” His hands twitch. His breath shudders. “You think I don’t know what this is? What’s happening between us? I’m not asking for promises. I’m asking you to stop pretending it doesn’t matter. ”

“I’m not pretending,” he says, his voice raw now. “I’m surviving.”

I turn from him, fury and hurt clawing at my heart, tearing at my thoughts.

“Then maybe I should’ve let Corvin finish the claim.”

“Don’t,” he snaps and his voice is steel.

I whirl on him.

“Then stop pushing me away!”

Silence. The wind stirs dead leaves that never rot.

“I asked you to stay near,” I say, voice breaking. “But you keep stepping back like I’m something you can’t afford to want.”

He looks at me like I’ve struck him. And still he says nothing.

“Stop giving me reasons to want more.”

It’s a whisper. Not cruel. Just broken. Like he’s trying to put the fire out before it consumes us both. I stare at him, every breath aching.

I don’t wait for his answer.

I turn, and walk deeper into the garden—past the vines, past the hollow trees, into the quiet. The song inside me is trembling. Waiting. I don’t sing it out loud, but the lyrics of Slash and Fergie’s Beautiful Dangerous play in my head.

The vines shift in the windless air. My steps echo softly against broken stone. I try to let go of what just happened—of the Court, the song, the way his eyes met mine and still held back.

Then I hear it. Faint. Almost nothing. A breath behind me.

“I never stopped wanting you. ”

My heart stutters. I slow—just for a second. A half-step. A pause that barely exists. I don’t turn around. Maybe I misheard. Maybe I imagined it. Or maybe it’s the truth, too soft and too late.

I keep walking. Faster now. Into the dark, where the air still hums with the last notes of the song I sang. My song. My truth. It trembles inside me still.

And behind me, Faelan doesn’t follow.