Page 34 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THE RED ECLIPSE

W e steal a final, silent moment in one another's arms, fully dressed and ready, knowing it might be the last.

Then the sanctuary trembles.

It’s subtle at first—the faintest vibration, like something old and hungry shifting beneath the skin of the world. I jolt upright in Faelan’s arms, the dream light around us flickering like a flame about to go out.

Faelan’s already moving. His coat whispers against the stone as he crosses the courtyard, eyes scanning the shadows like they might split open.

“What is it?” I ask, breathless.

“The veil,” he says, his voice taut. “It’s… thinning. Or something’s forcing it apart.”

The air tastes wrong—ozone and copper. My mark burns low and steady. I press my palm to it and flinch .

“Milo—”

Then it hits. A wave—not of air, but pressure. The stones hum beneath my bare feet, the moss curls away like it’s afraid to touch me.

“Skye.” Faelan turns toward me, sharp now. “You feel that?”

I nod. “Something’s wrong. Something’s?—”

Another wave. Harder. I stagger, catching myself against the low stone wall that rings the pool. Across the surface, dream light fractures like broken glass.

And then I see it. Not with my eyes—but with whatever part of me sings in the Dream.

Outside the Freehold, a Hollowland is rupturing from under the city like a vein being torn open. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of people are inside. Caught in the Dream’s fracture. Caught between worlds.

“They’re trapped,” I whisper. “I feel them. They’re screaming.”

Faelan’s face goes cold.

“Where?” I demand. “Where is it?”

“The rift’s near the river,” he says. “An old Freehold buried beneath the West Bottoms.”

“I have to go.”

He steps in front of me. “You barely survived last time. You’re still unsteady.”

“I don’t care. They’re dying, Faelan.”

“You can’t help them if you burn yourself out?—”

“I’m not asking for permission! ”

We stare at each other. A fire burns inside my chest matched by thunder under our feet. Finally, he growls something in the old tongue and turns.

“I’m coming with you.”

The wind claws at my face as we run.

Faelan pulls me through a tear in the veil, and we emerge behind an abandoned warehouse, stumbling out onto cracked asphalt—halfway between the river and what’s left of the West Bottoms. The world is wrong.

Tilted. The sky isn’t right either. A bruise-black and red eclipse bleeds across the moon, low and too close, casting the city in rust-colored light.

Everything is quiet. Too quiet.

The street lamps flicker as we pass. Cars parked haphazardly on the curbs sit untouched, their windshields dusted with ash. Somewhere, sirens scream—but they’re distant. Too far to be of any help, and what could they do? What good are first responders against this?

We round the corner—and the ground falls away.

Faelan grabs my arm, yanking me back as the street collapses. A chasm splits the pavement, jagged and glowing from beneath. It’s not stone and earth; it’s something else . Dream light—tainted and bleeding—rising in slow, pulsing waves.

I stumble to the edge, staring down.

I see them.

People.

Some half-fallen through the cracks, suspended between layers of reality like flies caught in amber.

Some fully within, floating in broken scenes—living memories that endlessly repeat.

A man begs an invisible child not to go.

A woman paces the same four steps, whispering someone’s name.

A group of kids sits around a school desk that’s burning at the edges, unmoving, silent.

A Hollowland, torn wide open.

“No,” I breathe. “No no no?—”

Faelan kneels beside me, jaw locked.

“They’re lost in liminality. If we don’t pull them out now, they’ll fade completely. And so will this part of the city.”

I reach for the fissure—and recoil.

It screams.

Not a sound, but a psychic assault. A thousand dream-threads, jagged and sharp, lash out and wrap around my arms, wrists, chest. My pulse pounds with them, and in the cacophony, I hear the voices.

Milo’s, twisted and full of a cold hate I’d never heard before.

My mother’s, not the gentle whisper I remember, but a terrified sob.

And Faelan’s, his voice laced with the confession he never made, a ghost of a love I hadn't earned.

It isn't just pain; it's an invasion. It digs into my soul, pulling at the threads of my own trauma, a mirror of my worst fears.

I try to hum—just a small sound—but the moment the note leaves my lips, the Hollowland pushes back with a violent psychic shove. It wants to keep those it’s claimed, and it wants to drown my voice in its broken chorus.

“I can’t do it,” I gasp, shaking .

“You can,” Faelan says, grabbing my shoulders. “You’ve held the Dream together before. You’ve called it back from the brink.”

“That was different. That was?—”

“That was instinct,” he cuts in. “This time, you choose.”

My throat tightens. My mark burns.

They’re slipping.

If I wait another moment, they’ll be gone. All of them.

So I sing, pulling another song from my repertoire, Control by Halsey.

Low. Unsteady. But pure, from my heart.

The first notes tremble, threading into the rupture. Gold sparks across the edges of the chasm. The pressure hits me instantly—like I’m pulling the weight of the world through my lungs.

The Dream answers.

The memories flicker. The people begin to move. One by one, they turn toward the sound. Toward me. A boy lifts his head. An old man’s fingers twitch. A woman screams—and then breathes.

The magic floods me.

Burns through my ribs like wildfire.

I scream and sing in the same breath—pushing everything I have into the Hollowland. Not to destroy it, but to anchor it. To remind it what it once was. What it could be.

And it works.

The fissure stabilizes. Not whole—but stitched. For now.

I collapse .

Everything hurts.

Not like cuts or bruises. This is deeper—like my soul is raw, like I tore open a part of myself to seal the Hollowland and now I don’t fit right in my body.

Faelan lifts me into his arms. I want to protest, tell him I can walk, but my limbs won’t listen. They tremble, overworked and overstrung.

The song echoes faintly through the mending air. The hush isn't just a lack of sound; it's the stillness of something exhausted and newly whole. The city holds its breath, waiting to see if it will break again.

We retreat down a narrow alley. The world feels hushed again—shocked into stillness. Above us, the blood eclipse pulses, staining the sky with rusted light. A thin wind skates through broken glass and silence.

“I held it,” I murmur, cheek pressed to Faelan’s shoulder. “I held it together.”

“You did more than that,” he says softly. “You saved them.”

“But it took something from me.”

“I know.” His voice is low. Tense. “That’s what the Dream does. It gives, and it takes.”

He sets me down gently on the steps of a ruined loading dock. I try to sit upright, but my body lurches sideways. Faelan catches me again, holding me steady. His hands are careful. His face unreadable.

I look down the street. The rupture is closed, but the air trembles .

People emerge slowly from doorways, from cars, from behind dumpsters and stairwells. As they do, I feel a faint, humming thread of connection to each of them—a resonance of my song still clinging to their waking minds. I can feel their disorientation, the low thrum of their fear, but it’s distant.

A woman prays, her voice trembling. A man walks right past us like nothing happened at all. Their reactions are muted, as if the Dream has already begun to smooth their edges, to make this moment a soft, forgotten blur.

“They’re waking up,” I whisper.

Faelan grunts and nods.

“Some. The rest… they’ll forget. The Dream will smooth the edges, make it soft again. Until next time.”

A beat of silence. Then—a shadow moves.

Faelan whirls, his blade appearing in his hand.

I rise too, unsteady but alert. The pressure in the air shifts—and I know it before I see him.

Corvin.

He steps out of the mist, clean as if he’s untouched by everything that’s happened. His coat hangs like shadow and smoke, and his eyes flicker—bright with something that isn’t entirely his.

“That was impressive,” he says, stopping a step out of range. “You stabilized a fracture like an Anchor. But you’re not one, are you?”

“Why are you here?” Faelan snaps.

Corvin ignores him, his attention on me. “I felt it. When she sang. ”

His gaze slides over me—too intimate, too knowing. I flinch.

“She’s changing,” he murmurs. “Faster than even I expected.”

Faelan takes a step forward. “You will not touch her.”

Corvin doesn’t retreat. “I don’t have to. She’s already tied to me. The more power she uses, the more the bond deepens.”

I shake my head. “I didn’t choose that.”

“No,” he agrees. “But you will. One way or another.”

Lightning rips across the blood-red sky. The veil shudders. Something big is coming. Corvin turns toward the eclipse, watching as a thin line of shadow bleeds down the moon’s face.

“The Hollowlands are just the beginning. The Queen is moving. The others… are waking.”

He looks over his shoulder at me.

“You need to choose soon, Dreamer. Before the Dream chooses for you.”

Then he’s gone—fading like mist, like a memory. Faelan doesn’t move. Neither do I.

Corvin’s right. I feel the choice coming. Not just between Faelan and Corvin, and not just between love or power.

But between who I was and what I’m becoming. I look up into the sky at the eclipsing moon. The blood eclipse watches silent, offering no insight.

When it comes time to choose... will there still be a me left to save?

I take a deep breath, close my eyes, and the Queen of the Vampires is there, waiting in the dark behind my eyelids.