Page 32 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

REVERBERATION

W e slam through the door to my apartment, and I don’t realize I’m shaking until Faelan lets go.

The silence inside is so normal, yet it feels like a lie. Dim light pools across the floor. The couch is askew from earlier; one of my guitar strings hums faintly where I left it half-tuned. The world is ending, and somehow the dishes are still in the sink.

“Skye?”

Milo’s voice slices through the quiet.

He’s curled up on the couch like he never left it, pale and too still, his hoodie bunched at his elbows, the blanket half-slipped off his legs. The TV plays some late-night animation, colors flashing across his skin, but his eyes aren’t on the screen. They’re locked on me.

Or maybe on something behind me.

“I saw it,” he whispers, his voice unnaturally calm. “The light. From the park. ”

His eyes, usually so familiar, hold a stillness I don’t recognize, a depth that makes my stomach clench. It’s not just curiosity; it’s understanding, and something else… something cold and ancient.

I drop to my knees in front of him.

“It’s okay,” I say, even though it’s not. “I’m okay. You’re okay.”

He blinks slowly, like I’m speaking another language.

“That wasn’t just light,” he says. “It was you.”

I hesitate. Faelan doesn’t say a word, lingering behind me like a shadow—like a wall holding back what I don’t know.

“It was,” I admit, barely breathing. “I…I lost control.”

Milo’s mouth twitches. Not a smile, not exactly.

“It didn’t feel like losing,” he murmurs, and there’s a flicker of something too knowing, too old, in his eyes. A reflection of Corvin’s own chilling insight.

I frown. “What did it feel like?”

He tilts his head. “Like something waking up.”

Faelan moves to my side. His energy is tight, ready to lash out, and Milo notices. His eyes narrow.

“You don’t like him,” he says, too casually. “Corvin.”

My breath catches. “You need to stay away from him. Resist him. He’s dangerous, Milo.”

“He’s honest,” he says, his voice flat. “He doesn’t lie about what he is.”

“And what are you?” I ask quietly .

His eyes meet mine, and for one terrible second, I see it clearly: a vast, cold emptiness behind his gaze, like looking into a starless void.

It’s not Milo. Not fully. It’s the echo of Corvin’s magic, a dark, unsettling clarity that makes my own skin prickle.

It doesn't make sense, and yet, in that moment, it makes perfect, terrifying sense.

“I don’t know,” he says. “But I’m tired of pretending I’m just your little brother.”

My heart breaks and burns in the same instant.

“You are my brother. You always will be.”

He says nothing, staring for a long, quiet moment, then turning back to the screen like I never said anything at all.

I search for words, for something to say or do, anything.

I’ve got nothing. Not even the hints of a strain of song come to me.

Nothing but emptiness and a deep, aching loss.

I’m losing him, and I don’t know what to do about it.

The air shifts. A pressure hums low, deep in my spine. Faelan straightens, looking around, suddenly alert.

“Something’s coming,” he mutters.

A sound like wind and bells. The shimmer of heatless fire outside the kitchen window.

I rise slowly, crossing to the glass. Outside, the night peels open like a page being turned. A golden bird—larger than any crow, wings tipped in light and echo—lands hard on the sill.

It bows once, its molten eyes locking onto mine.

“Shit,” Faelan breathes. “That’s Court magic.”

The bird opens its beak. A scroll drops to the sill, sizzling at the edges. I reach for it with hands that don’t feel like mine. Four words glow across the parchment:

THE DREAMER IS SUMMONED.

I don’t remember standing. Don’t remember stepping onto the fire escape outside my window.

The scroll still burning in my hand.

THE DREAMER IS SUMMONED.

I stare at the words like they’ll change if I blink hard enough. They don’t. The parchment sears a warning through my skin, but I don’t let go.

Behind me, Faelan paces. Not with restlessness— with calculation. He hasn’t spoken since the bird vanished. He muttered a few words in a language I don’t understand and moved away. Finally, I speak.

“What does it mean?”

He doesn’t look at me. “It means they know what you are.”

“I thought they already knew.”

He stops pacing, his eyes full of a fire as hot as the scroll in my hand. Behind him, Milo watches with a cold detachment, as if he’s watching a mildly interesting TV show.

“Not like this.” His jaw clenches. “This isn’t a test any longer. The Voice has told the Court the results of the test. This is a claim.”

The word hits hard and my guts clench tight.

“A claim?” I say, my voice low, my eyes narrowing .

“They want to bind you to them. Use you to stabilize the Court, return it to power. And if they can’t… they’ll take you apart to understand why they can’t control you.”

A cold sweat prickles down my spine.

“And why are you just telling me this now? Why? What’s changed?”

Faelan turns, his eyes blazing gold. His jaw is tight, his hands balled into fists, so tense he’s vibrating.

“Because until last night, they didn’t believe you were real.” He steps closer. “You sang the Dream awake, Skye. You lit the sky like fire. Of course the predators are circling.”

I hate that he’s right. I hate that my hands tremble and my heart flutters in fear.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“I know,” he says, softer. “But they don’t care.”

The silence stretches between us like an over-taut guitar string. My throat aches from holding back what I can’t name: rage. Fear. Grief. All tangled together.

I step back inside. Milo hasn’t moved from the couch. He’s breathing steady, but I feel the shift in him like a storm waiting to break. I tuck the scroll in the drawer beside the bed and slide the window shut behind me.

“I need air,” I whisper.

Faelan doesn’t try to stop me, and Milo says nothing, his attention absorbed in the flashing colors of the television.

The alley outside is soaked in mist. It curls low along the ground, clinging to the grass, thick as milk. The sun hasn’t risen, but something in the air feels held . Something is waiting .

I wrap my arms around myself and walk. Far enough to hear something besides the thundering in my chest. I hum, quiet as breath. Not a song. A sound with the bare beginnings of a melody. Something to keep me tethered. My fingers twitch, and gold sparks dance at the tips.

Everything is raw. Dangerous. Something shifts in the fog, and I freeze. A shape moves. Then another.

They step from the mist one by one. Tall, pale figures clad in bone-white armor with faceless helmets. Their bodies blur at the edges, like something half-remembered from a nightmare. Their movements are wrong . Not fast. Not slow. Just— off.

There’s no time to run. No time to scream. They’re already here. One lowers a blade etched in crimson that drips to the ground, sizzling.

Another tilts its head and says, “The Queen wants her.”

The voice is oily. Genderless, yet familiar, like an old wound you never quite forget.

“Alive, if possible. Broken, if not.”

I stumble back. My pulse explodes in my ears.

Faelan is suddenly there—beside me, moving between me and them, his coat flaring with that wind he seems to carry with him. His blade sings into his hand, silver and curved, humming with magic.

“You’ll have to go through me,” he growls.

They don’t hesitate.

The first knight lunges. Faelan meets them head-on, steel clashing with crimson. Sparks fly. Dream light flickers .

Another comes for me. I scream—and it’s not just sound.

It’s a raw, primal surge that rips through my chest, a terrifying, exhilarating release.

Gold light erupts from my mark, a flash-fire of unexpected and unplanned power that feels like my very soul is igniting.

The sensation is both agonizing and liberating, a scream of pure defiance.

The knight bursts into flame. Not red, not orange—gold. It screams as it’s consumed, its form dissolving into ash that vanishes on the wind. My breath hitches. I’m shaking, every nerve ending screaming. I can’t stop it. I don’t know how to stop it.

Faelan turns to me, his eyes wide.

“Skye—no more. Not here.”

More knights step from the mist.

He grabs my hand and spins me away from them.

“ Run. ”

Faelan has my hand in a death grip, practically dragging me behind him. Trash bins crash to either side. The chain-link fence at the end rattles violently as he kicks it open. The West Bottoms stretch ahead—dark warehouses, rusted fire escapes, streets that never quite sleep.

But the Dream is bleeding in. I can see it— really see it now.

The street lamps flicker gold. Shadows twist in ways they shouldn’t. A fire escape coils like a serpent and hisses when we pass. Windows go black as if the buildings themselves are clenching their eyes shut.

Behind us, the knights descend—bone-pale and fast, wrong in the way rot is wrong. Their armor, though pale, doesn’t shine; it drinks light .

Faelan snarls a word in that language I don’t know. A streetlight above us bursts, showering sparks onto the sidewalk. We round a corner—and that’s when I see people.

A couple outside a corner bar freezes mid-argument. The woman screams. But the man beside her just… blinks. Then calmly lights a cigarette.

“What the hell?” I gasp, my voice raw. A surge of desperate frustration burns through me. Why can’t they see? Why won’t they react? Don’t they feel this?

“They see it,” Faelan says. “Some of them. The ones who still dream.”

Another knight crashes through a parked car, tearing it apart like it’s tissue paper. We run faster.

A child stands on the curb clutching her mother’s hand, eyes wide. Her mother pulls her close, whispering, “Don’t look. Just keep walking.”

They do. Like nothing is wrong. Like knights of nightmare aren’t tearing through the city, chasing me.

The urge to scream, to force them to acknowledge the crumbling reality, is almost unbearable.

My power thrums, desperate to make them see, to make them feel .

But I clench my teeth, holding it back, terrified of what else I might unleash.

“The Dream’s slipping,” Faelan growls. “She’s pushing through—and people can’t hold it.”

We dash across an intersection. A city bus screeches to a halt—drivers and passengers staring at nothing, even as a knight stalks across their hood.

Reality is cracking.

Kansas City isn’t sleeping anymore .

Faelan yanks me into a narrow passage between two crumbling brick buildings. The air warps—heatless and heavy, like we’ve passed through a membrane. I feel it in my teeth, the pressure building.

“We’re close,” he mutters, voice hoarse. “Keep moving.”

The alley ends in a concrete retaining wall, streaked with old graffiti and overgrown ivy. For one heartbeat, I think we’re trapped.

Then Faelan slams his palm against the wall, a guttural sound tearing from his throat, raw with desperate effort. The stone groans beneath his hand, and I feel a surge of his magic—a wild, untamed power that makes the very air crackle.

The world shivers. A sigil flares—ghost light spreading like ink in water. The wall ripples, folding inward like paper, not a door appearing, but reality itself tearing open. A seam in the stone, bleeding light.

“What is this?” I pant, lungs burning, feet raw in my boots.

“A Waygate,” Faelan says. “Old. Hidden even from the Court.”

Behind us, the sound is sickeningly close: the metallic clack of bone-white armor, the low, predatory hiss of their cold magic, a presence that smells of ozone and dead dreams.

I turn. They’re spilling into the alley. One of them lifts its head and snarls. Its eyes burn red inside its helmet like coals in a dying fire. It starts toward us.

“This all started because I wanted to save Milo…” I whisper, trembling. “How did it become this?”

Faelan looks at me. And for once, all the distance between us vanishes .

“Because you’re more than his sister now,” he says. “You’re hope. And hope, in this world, is dangerous.”

He doesn’t wait for my answer. He grips my hand tighter and pulls me forward—into the Gate.

The world folds.

We fall.

Behind us, the city screams. And I realize, with a chilling clarity, that the scream is not just for the city. It's for the world. And the hunt has only just begun.