Page 38 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THE TRIAL OF MOONLIGHT

T he crown on Faelan’s brow pulses with power as a hush settles over the Court.

He stands tall in the throne’s shadow, not yet seated, his breathing measured. Composed, but I feel the storm behind his calm—the energy thrumming in the air between us like a struck chord. He’s taken back the Crown of Thorns, and the Dream remembers.

And so does the Court.

The Fae nobles line the curved tiers of the hall like carved idols. Some shimmer with glamours; others stand draped in memory and shadow, cloaks of moss, blood lace, or dream flame trailing behind them. They are ancient, terrible, beautiful—and watching me.

Not him.

Me.

Because I’m not supposed to be here .

A mortal. A Dreamer. A Bridge.

The air crackles with unspoken questions. Accusation. Curiosity. Fear. Faelan lifts his head.

“I stand as King,” he says, his voice ringing out like truth through crystal. “But I did not return alone.”

A ripple of reaction. Soft murmurs, sharp glances.

“She stands with me,” he continues, and reaches for my hand.

I take it. Not because I have to—but because I want to. My fingers lace with his, and I step forward into full view. Gasps echo like falling water.

“She is not of the blood,” someone hisses from the left dais.

“She carries the mark,” another counters. “The old power.”

“The Dream walks in her shadow,” murmurs a third. “And the Queen wants her caged.”

That silences them all. Faelan’s grip tightens.

“Skye saved the Dream when the rest of us let it rot. She walked into Hollowlands and pulled people back. She has awakened Freeholds with nothing but a song. If there is judgment to be had—it will not come from cowards who have stood by while the world bled.”

A few flinch. One snarls. The oldest of them steps forward.

She is tall and crowned in bone-thin antlers. Her skin gleams like obsidian and snow. Her eyes—moon-pale—never leave mine.

“The Dreamer stands unbound,” she says, voice like frost. “And that is a danger to all. Mortal hearts crack under this kind of power. Her song stirs the old roads. Her hands unmake the veil. She is a storm in soft skin.”

Faelan growls low in his throat. She stares, but I don’t step back.

“I’m not unbound,” I say, voice clear. “I’m choosing.”

“And have you chosen what you are?” she asks.

I falter. And that’s when the High Arbiter appears.

A shimmer of mist coalesces at the highest point of the dais. Robes like woven starlight fall from a figure too tall to be human, too still to be living. No face. No features. Just light—moonlight and shadow tangled together.

The Court bows, even Faelan, though his is more a tilt of his head than a kneel. I follow suit—barely.

The Arbiter speaks without speaking. The voice enters my mind like bells submerged in water.

“The Bridge must be tested.”

A breath. A stillness.

“You walk with the Crown—but you do not yet wear your own truth. The Trial of Moonlight will determine if you are what the Dream needs—or what it must end.”

My stomach clenches. I keep my gaze forward.

“I’ll face your trial,” I say. “But I won’t be judged by fear.”

A pause. The Arbiter doesn’t move. Then it nods.

“Then descend. And we shall see what breaks first—your body, your mind…or your heart.”

The stones shift beneath our feet. A staircase spirals downward from the base of the throne—cut from moonlight, shaped from memory. It hums with power. Faelan turns to me.

“You don’t have to?—”

“Yes,” I say, already stepping forward. “I do.”

The Court watches, breathless and silent. And I walk into the trial.

The stairs vanish behind me the moment my foot touches the final step.

Light folds inward. Sound vanishes. The air is still and dense. The world has shifted, and I know without needing to ask that this is no physical place.

This is the Dream’s judgment.

A chamber unfolds before me, shaped like a moonlit glade, but wrong. Unsettling. Trees grow in twisted arches, bark glittering like glass. Shadows hover without owners. The grass glows underfoot, dim and steady like the pulse of something living. At the center, a single mirror waits.

Tall. Black. It’s ringed in silver thorns. As I approach, it doesn’t reflect me.

Not at first. Trepidation makes my heart flutter as I walk forward cautiously, bare feet brushing the cool grass. Every step hums with memory. Grief. Hope. Loss. My heartbeat echoes too loud in my ears.

When I stop before the mirror, it shifts.

And I see her.

It takes me a moment to realize that it’s me, but not .

She’s standing exactly where I am, but her eyes are hollow, her hair matted with blood and starlight. Her skin flickers—like a candle about to go out. Where my mark is gold and silver, hers pulses a deep crimson, leaking shadow.

She looks… monstrous.

I take a step back.

So does she.

“I’m not her,” I whisper.

The mirror-woman tilts her head, and her hollow eyes bore into me, reflecting my deepest, most agonizing fear: that I will become like everyone else. Ground down by the relentless weight of this world, losing all hope, all dreams.

That I will fail Milo, leaving him trapped in a nightmare I couldn't fix.

That I will be nothing more than a broken has-been, a flicker of what I could have been, consumed by the very power I was meant to wield.

A second image joins her.

My mother.

She stands beside the broken version of me, hands clasped in front of her. Her face is unreadable. And yet—her eyes glow like mine now do. The same light. The same pain.

“You hid everything,” I whisper. “You left me to figure this out alone.”

She says nothing.

Another image forms.

Milo .

But it’s not my brother as he was. It’s Milo with Corvin’s mark glowing faintly over his heart. His eyes blank. Dream-touched and fading.

I choke on a sob. “I didn’t mean to lose you.”

The mirror ripples.

Now Faelan stands behind them—watching me with that unreadable expression. And Corvin. Distant. Drenched in shadow and memory. Behind all of them—her .

The Queen.

She smiles with my face.

“You are all of this, Dreamer,” she says softly, her voice echoing my own deepest doubts, “and none of it. You are the echo of their failures, the ghost of their lost hope. You are the one who will break.”

I shake my head. “You’re not real. This is a test.”

Her smile widens. “Then why do you keep failing it?”

A sharp sound breaks through the silence—a chime like breaking bone.

The mirror cracks.

Pain lances through my chest. I stumble forward. The Queen’s image distorts, flickers, vanishes.

Only me now.

The broken version.

Still staring.

Still waiting .

“You can’t carry all of it,” she says, voice trembling with something I don’t want to name.

“I have to,” I answer, but uncertainty comes in, black waves edged with despair.

“Then you’ll break.”

And I do. Or I don’t. Or I almost do.

I break, unbreak, remold, and break again over and over as I stare into those empty, hollow eyes and see what will happen.

Or what could happen: the world losing. Losing hope.

Losing its ability to dream. Drowned in drugs and mindlessness.

Every individual becoming more and more self-absorbed as they lose the ability to see beyond the moment they’re in.

The future fades, and behind it all, she laughs. Soft. Musical, but in a discordant way. It doesn’t have melody. Isn’t filled with the beauty even a discord in song can bring; it’s filled with empty loss.

The music touches my heart, caressing, crooning, calling me to sing along with it. To give myself to the empty despair. To become just another broken echo in her endless reign.

The lyrics of a song I rarely perform, but one I know well, New Divide by Linkin Park. The number of times I’ve jammed out alone in my room, singing to no one but myself to this song are innumerable. The pain and the aching need mirroring what I’ve felt for so long.

“Maybe,” I say, stepping closer. “But maybe I’ll rebuild something better.”

She tilts her head again.

I press my palm to the glass .

It’s cold. It hums.

I whisper the words, barely carrying the tune, but the discord retreats. The crack widens.

I press harder.

And sing.

Breath and feeling, a thread of sound pulled from somewhere deeper than fear, from the very core of my being.

As the melody flows from me, I feel a warmth expand from my chest, a vibrant vibration that hums through my fingertips.

It bleeds into the mirror, into me, and the mirror's surface ripples, not from my touch, but from within, golden light expanding from its depths, responding to my song.

Gold floods the fracture lines. My reflection begins to change.

Not perfect. Not whole. But real.

And then—the glass shatters.

Light engulfs me.

I don’t fall. I don’t rise. I simply become .

Light bursts through the silver archway as I step out, not walking—but unfolding.

I expect silence. Shock. Maybe fear.

Instead, the Court sings.

Not with voices—but with stillness. With awe. I feel their breath catch as one. Dream light clings to me like a second skin, curling from my fingertips, pulsing from the mark across my shoulder.

Faelan rises to his feet the moment he sees me. His crown of glass thorns tilts as he descends the steps, eyes locked to mine .

I should feel overwhelmed. I don’t. I feel…real.

Changed. Whole in ways I wasn’t before.

Behind me, the Trial arch flickers—then vanishes. Faelan stands before me now, and the Court stretched behind him. Watching. Judging. Waiting.

“What did you see?” Faelan asks, voice pitched low, meant for me alone.

“I saw what I could become,” I answer. “If I forget who I am.”

He searches my face. “And did you?”

“No,” I whisper. “But I remembered something else.”

I take a single step forward. The Dream swells inside me—soft, golden, tense with potential. The Freehold around the palace quivers, ancient threads tugging at my presence like a guitar begging to be strummed.

The Queen’s banner flutters high above the eastern arch. Faint. Like an echo.

I raise my voice—not loud, not forceful, just true.

I sing. The same melody I sang into the Hollowland, but changed now. Softer. Steadier. Woven with memory and grief and defiance.

The Dream listens. And responds.

At the far edge of the Court, something groans—a wall that was never meant to move creaks open, the sound like ancient stone remembering. Vines curl back, thick with forgotten earth, and the air thickens with the scent of damp soil and blooming magic. Stones pulse faint blue .

A gate appears, shimmering into being, not just light but a living, breathing portal.

Faelan inhales sharply. The nobles shift. Even the coldest among them—those who never once bowed—stand straighter. Eyes widen. A murmur rises.

Behind the archway, a Freehold awakens. Long-lost. Forgotten. Buried beneath centuries of silence. But not dead. Dream light spills across the threshold.

The Court moves as one, not a simple shift, but a collective, visceral reaction.

Some Fae recoil, their glamour flickering, eyes wide with a primal fear of the unknown.

Others gasp, a sound like a thousand forgotten breaths, their ancient faces etched with awe.

A few even shed tears, luminous and slow, for a memory they didn’t know they possessed.

The rustle of their armor, the soft whisper of their cloaks, the unified sigh that sweeps through the hall—it’s a profound act of submission, a momentous shift in allegiance that feels like the very foundations of the Dream are trembling.

They kneel . Not all. But enough.

Enough to break the rules. Enough to mean something. Even the Fae with silver blood and teeth like knives bow their heads.

Faelan’s voice is soft but reverent.

“You woke a place that time forgot. With nothing but your voice.”

I nod, breath shallow.

“Because I remembered what it used to be. And I believed it could be again.”

He takes my hand. The light in his eyes isn’t just awe. It’s faith. Real faith. Not just in what I’ve become, but in me .

High above us, the blood eclipse begins to fade—its red edge peeling back, revealing a sliver of silver moon. But it’s not over. I feel the shift before it arrives.

A tremor in the air. A pull against my spine. The Queen knows. She sees what I’ve done. And she’s coming. Faelan squeezes my hand, grounding me.

“I’m not afraid,” I say quietly.

His smile is fierce. “Good. Because this is where it begins.”