Page 37 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THE CROWN OF THORNS

I wake to the rustle of silver-leafed branches and a hush beneath the wind. The dream light moves through the mist in slow pulses, soft and gold. No violence or fire, but something’s changed.

Faelan stands at the edge of the glade, back to me, shoulders tense. I understand that stillness—he’s bracing for war. Or something worse.

I rise, barefoot, the moss beneath me blooming with faint golden flowers, responding to my presence, I guess. He doesn’t turn as I approach.

“They’re calling.”

“Who?”

Before he answers, shapes move between the trees—tall, faceless, and draped in light. Not living Fae. Echoes. Memories given form. They drift across the glade like mist given purpose.

A voice—not spoken, but felt—shimmers through the air :

“The King is summoned. The Bridge walks beside him. The Crown must be reclaimed.”

Faelan clenches his jaw and fists.

“No.”

The echoes don’t react. They wait, light bleeding from their edges.

“I buried that throne,” he says, louder. “I don’t want it.”

“But it wants you,” I say quietly. “And it’s still controlling everything, isn’t it? Even now.”

His eyes flick to mine. There’s pain in them. Rage. Regret.

“You don’t understand what it means to wear that crown,” he says. “What it takes to hold it.”

I reach for his hand, squeezing his in mine.

“I don’t care about crowns. But it seems to me that if you don’t take it back, someone worse will. I think you already know that.”

His fingers close around mine.

The Freehold responds. Moss parts. Stone rises from beneath the earth—a path unfurling in silver-veined lines, glowing faintly. It stretches into the mist, toward a place I can’t see but somehow know. Faelan stares at it like it shouldn’t exist.

“That wasn’t part of this place before.”

“It is now.”

The spirits bow. Then vanish. He looks at me again.

“There’s no turning back. ”

“Then let’s go forward.”

Together, we step onto the path.

The path winds through shifting mist, woven with threads of memory and Dream light. I feel them underfoot—moments that don’t belong to me. Laughter caught in leaves. Tears soaked into stone. I don’t know if they’re Faelan’s memories or the land’s. Maybe they’re the same.

Faelan is silent, his expression tight and distant.

We’re halfway down the stone path when the mist thickens ahead. Not natural, but not Dream light either. It’s a cold, shadowed stillness that parts like a curtain, and Corvin steps out of it.

I stop. Faelan doesn’t, drawing his blade, which hums low at his side.

“Don’t,” Corvin says calmly, raising a hand. “I didn’t come to fight.”

“No,” Faelan says. “You came to interfere.”

Corvin’s eyes flick to mine.

“I came to warn her.”

I step forward, not letting go of Faelan’s hand.

“Warn me about what?”

His eyes flick to our hands, and he studies me a moment, something unreadable in his expression.

“If you follow this path, if you walk into the Court with him—if you stand beside a king—you won’t come back the same.”

I arch a brow. “You think I don’t already know that? ”

“You think you do,” he replies. “But you don’t know what the Court does to those who carry hope. It twists. Consumes. Crowns come with thorns, Skye. Even for you.”

Faelan bristles. “She’s not yours to warn.”

“No,” Corvin says softly. “But I made a promise. To someone long dead, or maybe just to myself. One way or another, I keep my promises.”

The silence that falls between them feels ancient—older than either of their faces, deeper than the mist around us.

“I need to ask,” I say, voice quiet. “Why do you protect me, Corvin? Really. Because it was never about just me. Or the Queen. Or even the Dream.”

His jaw tightens. He glances away.

“Because I failed her,” he says at last. “The one who came before you.”

Faelan turns his head sharply away, but he doesn’t speak.

Corvin continues, his voice low.

“There was another Dreamer, once. Long ago. The last true one before the line went dark. She trusted me. And I let her burn for it.”

My throat tightens.

“I made a vow,” Corvin says, meeting my eyes again. “That the next time, I would not fail. That the next Dreamer would not die for the world’s silence. Even if it meant breaking every rule. Even if it meant becoming something monstrous.”

Faelan’s grip tightens on my hand .

“You didn’t just become something monstrous. You chose it,” Faelan says.

“I chose her,” Corvin says. “And now I choose Skye. Whether she likes it or not.”

The air shifts. Corvin steps back into the mist, fading like smoke.

“Be careful,” he says, his voice echoing as he disappears. “The Court isn’t a place. It’s a test.”

Faelan doesn’t move. Neither do I.

“What happened to the last Dreamer?” I whisper.

Faelan doesn’t answer right away. When he does, it’s almost inaudible.

“She never made it out.”

We keep walking.

The path vanishes before we reach the gates.

One blink, and we’re standing at the edge of an impossible place—where architecture dreams itself into being and the trees grow from starlight and bone. The air here hums with history, with law, with pain. It tastes of ash and honey. Sweet and bitter.

A Court of Echoed Dreams.

It rises like a cathedral carved from night. Petaled spires reach toward a sky that isn’t the sky at all, but a canopy of slow-moving constellations, turning in silent judgment. The throne waits at the far end of the broken dais. Empty. Waiting.

There’s a weight to the air and the place as if it’s been waiting forever .

Faelan’s steps slow. I feel him hesitate—not in body, but in soul. Doubts play over his face as he stares at the empty throne.

I watch him, and I see the ghosts of his past etched in the tension of his shoulders. He's not just looking at a chair; he's looking at a cage, at a burden that once broke him. I feel the echoes of the sacrifices he made, the love he lost, the impossible choices that led him to bury this place.

The air around him seems to thicken, heavy with the weight of centuries of responsibility, settling on him even before he touches it.

“You don’t have to,” I say quietly.

He looks at me, startled.

“Yes, I do.” His voice is steady, but it carries that undertone of something frayed. Faelan turns to face the dais. “This place remembers, but it doesn’t forgive.”

The Court stirs around us. Ancient Fae rise from the shadows, stepping into the Dream from their hidden alcoves and root-dwellings.

Not all are physical. Some are merely silhouettes of memory, their eyes glowing with ancient, cold power, their forms subtly shifting like smoke, reflecting a history too vast to comprehend.

They do not bow. They watch, their collective gaze a physical weight, judging, assessing.

One steps forward. A woman with thorns woven into her silver hair and a voice like splintered ice, carrying the weight of centuries of scorn and tradition.

“You have returned, Exile.”

Faelan’s jaw tenses. “I never left. You cast me out. ”

“You abandoned your birthright.”

“I refused a crown that cost too much.”

She smiles. It’s not kind.

“And now you bring the Bridge to us,” she says, turning her gaze to me. “The girl who sings Freeholds into waking. Tell me, Dreamer—do you understand what you’ve become?”

I raise my chin. “No. But I will.”

A low, collective hum ripples through the Court, a sound that is undeniably a warning, a unified murmur of ancient disapproval that presses in on me like a physical force. The Dream light around us flickers, responding to their judgment.

Faelan steps forward, drawing his blade. Not in challenge. In ritual.

“I reclaim what was mine,” he says, his voice a low, raw vow. “Not for power. Not for pride. But for war. For the world. And because there is no other way.”

Each word is a heavy stone, laid one upon the other, building a grim, unyielding resolve.

The woman steps aside.

The throne sits in shadow. The closer he gets, the more the air thickens. The darker the shadows become. Vines curl along the stone floor—alive, sensing his approach. The moment he places a hand on the armrest, the Court goes silent.

The crown doesn't just bloom; it coalesces from the deepest shadows beneath the throne, a slow, agonizing crystallization of darkness and ancient power. It's a twist of black thorns, sharp as obsidian, interwoven with strands of glowing Dream light that pulse with a cold, hungry energy .

Faelan feels its hum, a low, resonant thrum that vibrates through his bones, a dark echo of the power he once wielded. It floats in the air before him, waiting. He doesn’t take it immediately. He turns to me.

“Skye,” he says. “If I wear this, everything changes.”

“I know.”

“It will bind you to me. The Bridge to the Throne.”

I meet his eyes.

“I was always bound to the Dream. You just brought me home.”

His hand rises. The crown descends.

Thorns prick his brow, and a sharp, visceral pain laces through him, but it's more than physical.

It's a jolt of ancient magic, a deep, undeniable connection forging itself into his very being, binding him to this place, to this power, to this destiny.

Silver blood, luminous in the Dream light, beads on his skin.

The Court bows. Faelan turns—king once more—and offers me his hand.

I take it.

The moment our fingers touch, a jolt of pure, raw energy surges through me, like roots suddenly growing deep within my soul, intertwining with his.

It's not just a bond; it's an undeniable awareness, a sudden, profound understanding of Faelan's thoughts, his fears, his unwavering resolve. The Dream shudders around us, a ripple of immense power.

Across the Freeholds, Hollowlands pulse with renewed agony. Veins of light, sharp and bright, split the Veil. Somewhere, the Queen screams, a sound of pure, unadulterated fury.

I smile.

Let her scream.