Page 36 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

WAKE THE DREAMER

I wake to the sound of wind.

It rattles the windows and hums through the broken places in the walls. For a moment, I don’t remember where I am. Then I see the arch of the old ceiling, the soft moss glinting faint gold in the cracks, and I remember.

Faelan’s sanctuary.

Memory crashes back. The Hollowland. The fire. The song.

Faelan.

I sit up too fast. My body aches deeper than muscles—like I’ve been cracked open and only half put back together. My fingers tremble. My mark burns, steady and slow.

Faelan lies nearby on a pile of old velvet cushions. He’s pale, yes, but it’s more than that. The lines of exhaustion are etched around his eyes, and his body, usually so poised, seems to sag, still tense even in sleep .

He’s too still. But breathing. His eyes flutter open as I reach for him.

“Faelan—” My voice breaks on his name.

He tries to smile. “You’re awake.”

“What did you do?” I whisper.

He doesn’t answer. He looks at me like he’s trying to memorize every pore of my face. I frown, shaking my head. I touch his cheek, trailing my fingers along his smooth jaw. Not a hint of stubble.

“I went too deep,” he says finally, his voice a low rasp, a tremor running through his hand as he lifts it, then lets it fall. “The Dream wouldn’t let you go. So I gave it something it couldn’t refuse.”

A sharp breath shudders through me. “You gave part of yourself.”

He nods once, slow and careful. A smile flits over his lips, fading as fast as it forms, turning into a grimace.

“Don’t make it a habit. I’m not that generous.”

I laugh—but it breaks halfway through, twisting into something raw. I press my forehead to his.

“You shouldn’t have.”

“I know,” he murmurs. “But I did.”

Something is different. Not just with him—within me.

I stand slowly, stepping to the broken window at the edge of the sanctuary. The city sprawls below, bathed in thin gray light. But I don’t see it like I used to. I see layers. Threads. Veins of gold and shadow and something sharp beneath the surface .

I see the Hollowlands—still faintly glowing where the damage was worst. I see the Freeholds like distant and quiet stars, dimming. I see the Vampire nests—cold and pulsing. Parasites sucking hope from the world.

The Veil is no longer separate from me. It lives in my eyes. My skin. My breath. I am the Bridge.

“I can see it,” I whisper, and the words are a revelation.

It’s overwhelming, a torrent of information and sensation, but there’s a strange, undeniable clarity to it.

Like the world has suddenly clicked into focus, revealing a hidden truth I was always meant to perceive.

It's not just seeing; it's feeling the pulse of the Dream itself, every wound, every flicker of life.

Faelan shifts behind me. “What do you see?”

“Everything.” I turn toward him, heart pounding. “Every broken thing. Every place that’s still alive. The Dream is bleeding—and I feel where the wounds are.”

His expression darkens. “That means they’ll feel you too.”

I nod. “Then let them come.”

Outside the inner chamber, the moss underfoot has receded, exposing ancient runes carved into the stone. The wind doesn’t feel like wind anymore. It whispers. Watches.

I pace in a tight circle, barely aware of the way my fingers spark gold where they graze the stone. The mark on my shoulder pulses, no longer in pain—but in anticipation. Like it’s waiting.

Corvin leans against a pillar at the edge of the courtyard, half in shadow. Faelan doesn’t look at him, but the tension between them is so thick I could choke on it .

“You’re going to have to say something,” I snap, turning to face Corvin. “You were already here when I woke up. You knew this would happen. What aren’t you telling me?”

Faelan’s voice cuts like a blade.

“Tell her, Corvin. Or I will.”

Corvin doesn’t flinch. His eyes—still that impossibly cold blue—rest on mine.

“I made a deal,” he says softly. “With the Queen.”

I stiffen. “Why?”

His answer comes without hesitation. “To keep you alive.”

Faelan lets out a bitter laugh, but there’s no humor in it. “She doesn’t trade in mercy.”

“I didn’t ask her for mercy,” Corvin says. “I asked for time.”

“You gave her access to the Dream,” Faelan accuses. “You gave her me .”

“I gave her myself ,” Corvin snarls, stepping forward. “I offered my servitude. My soul. Everything. To protect the Dreamer until she was strong enough to stand on her own.”

I don’t know what to say. My heart hammers in my chest.

“You did that—for me?”

Corvin’s gaze doesn’t waver.

“You weren’t supposed to become the Bridge. I was. That was the prophecy. The Queen feared me. But she never saw you coming,” Corvin says.

My throat tightens. “So what now? ”

“You surpassed me,” Corvin says, not bitter, not angry. Almost… reverent. “You became what I was too broken to be.”

Faelan finally turns to him, rage trembling in his fingers.

“And yet she’s bound to you by your deal.”

Corvin doesn’t deny it. He shrugs and slightly shakes his head.

“The more power she uses, the more the tether strengthens.”

I take a step back. “So I’m your leash?”

“No,” he says, pain slipping into his voice. “You’re my redemption.”

A silence falls over us—thick, charged, unspoken. The air shifts, and Faelan stiffens, eyes flicking toward the far archway.

“They’re here.”

Corvin closes his eyes.

“The Queen sent them. She felt the transformation. She thinks she can claim you before the choice solidifies.”

A low hum fills the sanctuary. The moss recoils. The runes flare. The veil ripples—and they step through.

Vampire knights. Three at first. Then five. Then more. Pale armor. Bone-forged blades. Their presence eats the light.

Faelan draws his sword. I raise my hand. My voice rises without thinking—a note of warning, not yet a weapon.

Corvin steps between me and the knights, cloak fluttering like smoke.

“You can’t have her,” he says, his voice iron and shadow. “Not now. Not ever.”

One knight speaks—no mouth, no voice. It’s a pressure .

“You have served. Now you are spent.”

They lunge.

Faelan moves first, blade slashing through the nearest knight. Corvin meets another with impossible speed, magic twisting around his hands. I sing—low and sharp—and one knight ignites in gold fire, but they keep coming.

Faelan grabs my wrist.

“We can’t hold this line. Not here.”

“There’s a gate,” Corvin says. “Old magic. In the undercity. It’ll lead you to a Freehold the Queen hasn’t found.”

“What about you?” I ask.

There is the slightest hesitation as his eyes dart from me to the knights, then back. A sly grin forms on his face.

“I’ll hold them as long as I can.”

Faelan curses. “We’ll go together. All three?—”

“No,” Corvin says. “The bond makes me a beacon. I’ll lead them away. Buy you time.”

Faelan pulls me toward the archway, where a thin shimmer of Dream veils the exit. Corvin watches me go, one last time.

“Remember this, Skye,” he calls. “I didn’t betray you. I chose you.”

I choke on the emotions swelling through me. I don’t have words to express the feelings. I shouldn’t care. He’s done nothing but manipulate and use me. He bonded Milo. But none of that stops the feelings. I shake my head and turn, running alongside Faelan .

Faelan’s grip is iron on my wrist as we run. The veil ripples ahead—like a wound stitched into the alley air. Thin as gauze. Flickering like a heat mirage.

“I hear them,” I pant, stumbling over cracked pavement. “They’re screaming in the Dream.”

“It’s not them,” Faelan growls. “It’s the veil. It’s remembering the last time it was breached.”

Another ripple of energy hits—this one so sharp it slices through my mark like lightning. I choke on a sob of pain as golden light spills down my arm.

We reach a rusted chain-link fence, and Corvin slices it open with his blade. He holds the sharp edges aside as I squeeze through before following.

“Where?” I ask, looking around at the empty, broken parking lot. A handful of abandoned, rusting trucks dot the area.

“There,” he points.

It looks like the side of a cliff that the road leads right into. A massive, thick door blocks the way forward, but Faelan raises his arm, swirls his hand, then clenches his fist. The door opens with a groan like a giant awakening from a long slumber.

We sprint into the cavern, the door closing behind us. Moving deep into the bones of Kansas City. Darkness engulfs as the door closes, the only light coming from the glow of my mark. Faelan says something in that ancient tongue, and his blade glows with silvery light.

“This is the tunnels? I’ve never been here,” I say.

“It’s the Underground,” Faelan says, pulling me along. “Abandoned like so many things. ”

He keeps his sword in one hand and holds my hand with the other. I can barely make out my surroundings, but every time I put my boot down it echoes with a muffled sound. The place feels massive.

He leads the way with a certainty that says he knows the way. Or he’s really good at faking it. I wouldn’t put either possibility past him. Then I feel it. A gate in the dream.

“It’s not stable,” I whisper. “I feel it slipping.”

Faelan doesn’t answer right away. He’s bleeding from wounds I didn’t see him take—across the temple, down one arm—and I feel a sharp pang of guilt, a cold knot in my stomach.

Every step he takes seems to cost him, his jaw clenched, his movements a little less fluid than before, but his eyes are fixed on the gate, unwavering.

“It wasn’t meant to open again,” he says, his voice strained, raw with effort. “Not like this. Forcing it… it could tear the very fabric of this place apart. It could tear us apart.”

The air around the gate itself feels sharp, like broken glass, and the ground trembles violently beneath our feet, a low, guttural growl vibrating through the stone. I take a breath that burns all the way down.

“Then why bring me here?”

“Because it remembers you,” he says, finally turning to face me. “The Dream. The Old Roads. This place. They all do.”

My vision blurs. The light in my veins is burning hotter, wilder.

“So what do I do?”

He steps closer. Puts one hand on my face, gently, like I’m made of something breakable and holy all at once .

“You don’t force it open,” he says. “You ask.”

As if on cue, the metallic clack of the knights’ footfalls echoes behind us, closer now, amplified by the cavernous space. Cold laughter seems to ripple through the dark. They’re right behind us. I close my eyes. Not to flee. To open.

The song rises inside me—not loud, not furious, but steady.

A hum, quiet and reverent, like the way my mother used to sing lullabies when the lights went out.

It’s not just a sound; it’s a deep, intuitive pull, a resonance that feels like reaching out with my soul.

I feel the ancient magic of the gate respond to me, specifically, a slow, creaking acknowledgment.

The Dream answers—not in words, but in motion.

The veil peels back like petals. Like memory.

The hidden gate opens.

I open my eyes and see it. Mist, light, trees not made of wood but of memory and starlight. Faelan takes my hand and pulls me through.

As the veil seals behind us, I catch one last glimpse of the knights closing on us. I flip them off as it closes.

We’re in a Freehold. It’s different this time. Wilder. Less structured. As if my presence here has reshaped it already. The trees bow as we pass. The stones glow beneath my feet. It hits me that I don’t feel human anymore. Faelan turns to me, breathing hard.

“You opened a sealed gate with a song.”

“Yeah,” I shrug, not sure why he’s acting like this. It’s what he asked me to do.

He stares at me for a long, tense beat. Then he smiles—small, sad, amazed .

“That’s the point, Skye. You shouldn’t have been able to, but you did. Easily. Effortlessly. You are the Bridge.”

I shudder as the wind shifts. Somewhere beyond this Freehold, war is coming. The Queen is on the move. And the veil is thinner than it has ever been.

I take a deep breath and hold it, a strange mix of terror and exhilaration warring within me. I’m becoming, something. Something more. And for the first time, I feel I stand at least a chance. The fear is still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but it’s no longer paralyzing. It’s a fuel.

“Then it’s time,” I say. “Let her come.”