Page 31 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THE CHOICES SHE CAN’T MAKE

F aelan doesn’t say a word. He grabs my arm—hard, but not to hurt—and pulls me into motion.

His grip trembles against my skin, not with fury, but with the strain of restraining himself.

We cross the glowing moss in silence. Behind us, the glade folds in on itself, the shimmer in the veil fading like breath from a mirror.

He doesn’t stop until we’re beyond the edge of the trial ring, where the trees are thicker and the stars feel farther away. Only then does he let go.

“I should’ve killed him,” Faelan says, the words tearing from his throat, raw and ragged.

They are ice, not loud, but jagged, half-choked, like he’s just now realizing the enormity of what he almost did and what he failed to do. I see the tremor in his hands, the desperate clench of his jaw, and for a beat, I don’t respond, just watching the battle raging behind his impossible eyes.

“You were going to attack him? ”

“He let her in,” he snaps. “She was watching you through him, Skye. If I’d waited another second?—”

“What? You’d do what, Faelan? Tear him apart while I stood there between you? You think that would’ve made me safe?”

He turns away, hands clenched at his sides. His coat flares slightly with the motion, trailing shadows. He’s too still. Too quiet.

“You don’t understand what you’re dealing with.”

“Because no one will tell me,” I bite out. “You keep acting like I’m this fragile thing you have to protect, but every time I let you close, you back away. You think I don’t notice?”

His shoulders go rigid. And then—he laughs. Bitter. Quiet. Almost broken.

“You think I want to stay distant?” he says, still not looking at me. “You think this is what I want? ”

“Then what do you want?” I step closer. “Because I’m done guessing.”

Finally, finally, he turns. His eyes are wild—not with rage, but something far worse. Fear.

“Everything I’ve ever cared about,” he says quietly, “everything I’ve tried to protect—I’ve lost.”

His voice isn’t cold now. It’s raw.

“And if she takes you—” He breaks off. “I won’t survive it.”

I stare at him, and my heart cracks open. Not because of what he said, but because I believe him. Because I feel it too.

I reach out, and my fingers brush his. The contact is soft, barely there, but he flinches like it burns .

“You don’t have to protect me from yourself,” I whisper. “I’m stronger than you think.”

His gaze drops to our hands. He clenches his jaw and shakes his head, tossing his long silver hair.

“You are stronger than me. That’s what terrifies me.”

For a second, we’re suspended—caught in something unspoken. Something huge. His hand lifts, like he’s going to touch my face. I don’t move. Then the Dream stutters.

A pulse—sharp and strange—ripples through the moss beneath us like something breathing under the surface. Faelan jerks his head toward it. His entire body shifts—coiled, alert.

“He’s still close,” he mutters, and now his voice is all instinct and edge. “The veil’s torn. His thread snagged.”

He moves toward a thinned place in the air, where the trees blur into a shimmer of silver. A tear in the Dream—soft, invisible until you know how to look. I follow without hesitation.

“You shouldn’t come,” Faelan says, half-turning. “You don’t understand what you are to him.”

I stop. “Then explain it.”

His jaw tightens.

“You don’t understand what you are to me, either,” he says, softer this time. “Not yet.”

My heart skips. We stand on the edge of something too big to name. I want to reach for him again. I want him to reach back. But instead, Faelan steps through the rift—into the place Corvin left behind. I follow.

The rift opens like a wound in the world. We step through, and everything changes. Dream light clings to my skin like dew. Moonlight pours over the hill in silver torrents, too bright, and too still. And there at the crest of the park The Scout stands , but not like I remember.

The bronze statue glows, pulsing with a light older than the metal itself. The surrounding grass is pale and colorless, coated in something like frost, but softer. Sound is muffled, distant. As if we’ve stepped out of time.

At the statue’s base, Corvin waits.

He sits like a fallen king—one leg crossed, arms resting lazily on his bent knee. The moonlight pools in his lap like an offering. His hair is tousled, his coat immaculate, his expression unreadable. He watches us approach, and when he smiles, it’s like the crack of winter ice.

“Nice of you to join me,” he says, voice smooth as silk soaked in secrets.

Faelan doesn’t stop walking until he’s nearly toe-to-toe with him.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Corvin rises in one slow, deliberate motion. His eyes catch the light, flashing with danger.

“You followed me.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

They circle each other like predators. The air between them is thick—electric. I hang back, breath caught in my throat, afraid that any sound from me might shatter whatever brittle tension is holding this moment together.

Corvin tilts his head, his gaze never leaving Faelan’s.

“You didn’t tell her, did you? ”

Faelan’s jaw clenches.

“Tell me what?” I ask, stepping forward.

Neither of them answers. The silence is a knife.

“Tell her what you did,” Corvin says softly. “Or shall I?”

Faelan doesn’t flinch, but I feel him lock down. He’s holding something back; something heavy. Something sharp.

“I’m done with riddles,” I say, louder now, voice shaking. “I deserve to know the truth.”

Corvin finally looks at me. Not with cruelty—but with something stranger. Something like awe.

“You don’t know what you are,” he says. “You don’t know what you could be. The Dream bends around you. It listens. Feels. You could unmake this broken world—or remake it better.”

I blink. “Better how?”

“With you at its center,” he murmurs. “You wouldn’t need to hide. Or suffer. You’d never have to lose anyone again.”

The Crown. He’s talking about the Crown. He wants me to take it.

“Enough,” Faelan snaps, stepping between us. “She’s not yours to shape.”

Corvin’s face hardens. “And you think she’s yours?”

“I think she’s her own,” Faelan growls. “And I won’t let you twist her.”

“Then maybe,” Corvin says, stepping forward, “you shouldn’t have broken her in the first place.”

The crack in Faelan’s restraint splits wide. He moves. Steel and shadow collide .

Faelan’s blade erupts from nowhere—a thin arc of gleaming starlight.

Corvin meets it with nothing but his bare hands, and still the force throws Faelan back a step.

Faelan’s movements are no longer the controlled, regal dance I’ve seen before; they are raw, desperate, fueled by a primal need to protect. They break apart. Circle again.

“You can’t beat me,” Corvin says, his breath even.

“I don’t have to,” Faelan snarls. “I just have to stop you.”

They clash again. Faster. Wilder. Magic flies—Faelan’s strikes leave behind burning ribbons of light, each one a desperate, furious attempt to break through Corvin's effortless defense. Corvin moves like water or smoke, dodging, weaving, striking back with bursts of pressure and dream stuff that bends the grass flat, almost mocking Faelan’s frantic efforts.

“Stop it!” I scream. “Both of you!”

They don’t.

Corvin scores a line across Faelan’s ribs—blood sprays and vanishes into mist. Faelan doesn’t slow; if anything, his attacks become more unhinged, more feral.

He drives Corvin back with a guttural growl, his blade slicing downward with a fury I’ve never seen in him before, a wildness that makes my blood run cold.

The Dream cracks around them.

I feel it; in my spine. In my teeth. In my soul.

Their rage becomes a storm. A pull. A vortex. And I’m caught at the center.

Pain builds—pressure behind my eyes, in my throat, my hands. Music pounds through my body, wild and hot and bright .

They’re going to kill each other.

And something in the Dream is going to break.

I can’t breathe.

The air vibrates with magic—sharp and relentless. It hums against my skin like static before a storm, thick enough to choke on. The world around me warps, every line bending, the Dream twisting tighter with every heartbeat. I can taste lightning; I can taste fear.

Faelan and Corvin are shadows and flame—blade and fury colliding in blinding bursts of dark light and silver. Their faces blur. Only their rage is clear. Only their hatred. And I’m at the center of it.

“Stop!” I scream, but my voice breaks. My throat is raw, my body trembles uncontrollably. They don’t stop. They don’t even hear me.

Faelan’s blade cuts the air, and blood flies—mist and moonlight mingling as Corvin twists away, smiling like the wound is nothing.

I try to move, to get between them, but the Dream pushes back. The ground isn’t ground anymore—it pulses under my boots like a heartbeat gone wild. My heartbeat.

I clutch my chest. I feel it—the thing inside me rising. Pressure. Heat. Grief. Rage.

This isn’t what I wanted. I never asked for this. All I wanted was to save Milo. Just one thing in this broken world to hold on to.

The chaos is too much. The voices, the pressure, the sheer, crushing weight of their hatred and the Dream’s convulsion.

I am drowning, pulled under by a tide of despair.

But then, a flicker. A defiance. If I'm going under, I'll go singing.

This isn't surrender; this is a choice. A desperate, furious act of will.

I fall to my knees. The Dream convulses around me. I close my eyes.

And then I sing. Not a whisper, not a plea. A roar. A lifetime of silence, cracking open. The words of Going Under by Evanescence tear from my soul, raw and unbidden, a desperate defiance against the chaos.

The lyrics crawl from the depths of my soul. A whisper at first. Familiar. Haunting.

It’s not just a song—it’s a scream I’ve never let out. A lifetime of silence, cracking open.

I clutch the earth, my knuckles white, feeling the vibrations of the song ripple through the ground beneath me. The voices—Faelan shouting, Corvin laughing, Milo slipping away, the world slipping away—they are still there, but now they are fuel. I am not drowning; I am becoming the storm.

The Dream explodes. Not just around me, but from me.

A searing, liberating agony rips through my chest, a golden-violet light blasting outward.

It’s not just light; it’s pure, raw song made manifest. A shockwave shreds the air like shattered glass, magic howling, unmaking the night.

Faelan and Corvin are thrown apart, their bodies slamming into opposite trees, roots groaning under the impact.

Silence falls.

I’m on my feet, but I don’t remember standing.

The moon hangs still. The trees shake like they’ve seen a god. The Scout statue glows—no longer silver, but gold, like it remembers something it should have forgotten .

Faelan stares at me. His lip is bleeding. His blade is on the ground.

Corvin is rising, slower than before. Eyes locked on mine. Wary.

I breathe—and the air itself is a song, a low, resonant hum vibrating through my bones. It's not just breath; it's the Dream, flowing through me, a part of me.

I don’t know what I’ve become.

But they do.

“So it begins,” Corvin says, one hand pressed to the bleeding wound.

He steps backwards and vanishes.

I seek out Faelan; his wide eyes are on mine. I blink, shaking.

“What did I do?”