Page 41 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

THE LAST KISS BEFORE DAWN

T he world is quiet.

Not empty, not dead—but quiet in that aching, reverent way, just before the first note of a song. I wake to stillness, light pressing against my closed eyes. It’s not sunlight—it’s softer, laced with memory: Dream light.

My breath is shallow, and for a moment I don’t move. Instead, I listen. The Freehold hums around me, low and living, like the deep vibration of a bass string. It breathes in time with me.

I’m still here.

Pain ebbs at the edge of awareness, dulled like the aftertaste of sorrow. My limbs are heavy, but I’m not broken. I feel…remade. Not whole, not yet, but something new, forged in the crucible of the mirror, refined by the fire of the song, and tempered by the Queen’s venom.

Physically, my very cells hum with a quiet, golden energy, a resonance that feels both ancient and utterly new, as if the Dream has woven itself into my very being .

Emotionally, the sharp edges of fear and doubt have softened, replaced by a deep, unyielding core of resolve.

Magically, the Veil no longer feels like a barrier but an extension of myself—a living skin I can breathe through, a power that flows as naturally as my own blood.

I sit up slowly. My throat is dry and raw, as if I’ve been screaming for hours. Or singing.

The chamber is quiet, veiled in soft greens and silver light. Vines have crept across the stone ceiling, flowering in shades that don’t exist in the waking world—colors stolen from dreams. I swing my legs over the side of the bed and stand barefoot on warm stone.

Outside, the Freehold stretches open like a heart unfolding.

Gold spills across the courtyard. Dream-birds flit between the trees, their wings a shimmer of translucent crystal and ink.

Everything feels sharper, more alive—no, it is alive.

It responds to me. This place is part of me now. I carry its song, and it carries mine.

I step through the archway into the garden. My legs tremble with each step, but the air holds me up. Leaves rustle. Petals lift toward me like offerings.

A breeze touches my cheek, and with it comes a familiar presence.

Faelan.

My heartbeat leaps as he emerges from the far arch, quiet as breath, a cup in his hands. Steam curls from it, and the scent carries through the air—spiced peach tea, sweet and earthy. He doesn’t speak as he holds it out.

I take it. My fingers brush his, and the silence between us hums .

“Morning,” I whisper.

His smile is small, fragile. “Something like that.”

We sit beneath the dream tree. Its bark faintly glows, as if remembering firelight. I sip slowly, savoring the warmth. Faelan watches the horizon where the Freehold meets the Veil. The city lies beyond, still hidden in fog—but I feel it, like a song just beginning to stir.

“Did we really do it?” I ask.

He turns to me. “Yes,” he says softly. “For now.”

I let the words settle. For now. Not forever. But enough. We bought time. We gave them light. The Dream has returned to the world.

I study him—his unshaven jaw, the facial hair new on him.

There is silver etched into his dark lashes, and his eyes, though bright with relief, hold a deeper shadow, a weariness that pulls like gravity around his shoulders.

I see the subtle tremor in his hand as he lifts his tea, a fleeting flicker in the Dream light around him that hints at the immense power he expended, the soul-piece he sacrificed to bring me back.

I don’t fully comprehend what he lost, but I see the profound cost etched into his very being. He looks, somehow, more mortal, more real, and the sight twists my gut with a fierce protectiveness.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

He looks down. “Don’t thank me.”

There’s a silence, thick with everything we haven’t said. I shift closer. My fingers hover at his jaw, and I feel the pull between us again—ancient and immediate. When I lean in, he stills .

“You’re still healing,” he says gently.

I nod. “So are you.”

His eyes close. “We changed everything. But the Queen—she’s out there. Waiting. Watching. Planning.”

I feel it too. A distant pressure, like a hand on glass. She’s waiting. Wounded, maybe. But not defeated.

“We’ll be ready,” I say.

His gaze meets mine, something fierce and tender in it. “Together.”

We sit in the hush, side by side, as the Dream wind stirs around us. Somewhere beyond the Freehold, the city is beginning to stir.

And something deeper is waking with it.

I don’t know how long I stand there, wrapped in Faelan’s arms, the world quiet around us. The city breathes. The Veil is soft, its terrible weight, the absolute hopelessness lifted—but not gone.

Eventually, I pull away.

Faelan doesn’t stop me, but he studies my face like he’s trying to memorize it, like he knows something’s shifting between us again and can’t name it.

“I need to see him,” I say quietly.

He nods. “He’s awake. They brought him here after… after it all.”

“Will you come?”

A beat of silence. Something moves behind his eyes, then he shakes his head .

“No. Not yet.”

I don’t ask why. Some things need to remain unsaid. Some distances are earned, and Faelan… he’s a wound wrapped in a crown.

I squeeze his hand once before turning away.

Milo’s room is tucked in one of the Freehold’s quieter wings—a place untouched by thrones or ritual. The hallways feel stranger, suspended in a magic that isn’t Fae or mortal, but something new. Something mine.

The door is ajar.

He’s sitting on the edge of the cot, facing the narrow window. He is swinging his legs, too small for the frame. The sunlight touches his curls, turning them gold.

“Milo?”

He turns. His face is pale, thinner than I remember—but his eyes… his eyes are awake. Not just conscious. Dreaming.

“Skye,” he says, and then, like breath returning to lungs, like light returning to a shattered sky, “Skye!”

He barrels into me, arms tight around my waist. I wrap my arms around him and bury my face in his shoulder. There is a hint of the smell of ash, but something bright beneath it—like spring rising through frost .

“I’m here,” I whisper. “I’m here, I’ve got you.”

He pulls back and looks at me.

“You sang it open. The whole sky. I saw it.”

“You felt it?”

“I felt you. ” He presses his hand over his heart. “Like a lighthouse. You brought me back.”

As he says the words, a surge of warmth floods through me, a profound sense of reconnection, like a frayed tether suddenly knitting itself whole.

Where there had been a chilling emptiness, a light now blooms, filling the void with his familiar presence.

I laugh, a breathless, tear-choked sound, full of everything unsaid, the overwhelming relief and joy of having this Milo back—the one before the trauma, before all the loss, before the world broke him.

Our history of shared loss and so many trials that I never thought would end.

And probably, they’re not over, but for this moment, I have the Milo I remember.

“You were always coming back. You’re stronger than you know,” I say, tears filling the corners of my eyes.

He stiffens, hesitation in every muscle.

“She’s still out there. The Queen. I can hear her, but…she’s…she’s afraid of you…now.”

“She should be.” I tuck a curl behind his ear. “You remember it all?”

“Most of it. The bad stuff,” he says. That’s a weight settling onto my heart. I’d hoped maybe he wouldn’t remember how bad it got for him, but of course my luck has never been that good. “But Skye…Mom. ”

“Yeah?” I ask, gripping his shoulders tight, studying his face.

“I saw her. I think…I think she helped. She…talked to me.”

“What did she say?” I ask, breath catching at his words.

“That the song is older than fear. That you carry it now.”

Something breaks open in my chest again. Not pain this time. Grief transformed. I hold him tighter.

“We carry it together.”

He leans into me, warm and real. My brother, returned to me, means more than I ever would have thought possible.

“Does this mean we can go home?”

I pause, not wanting to break the moment, but there’s no going back now.

Forward is the only way. I changed the world, or started to.

There’s more to do. The flames of hope are little more than a spark in the darkness—too easy to crush out.

She’s still out there. The Queen, planning, plotting, and wanting to send the world into the depths of despair.

“No,” I say. “But it means the world might become a home again.”

The wind is sharp at the edge of the Freehold, where the strange, living stone bleeds into what was once Hollowland. The sky is brighter here—washed in pale gold and silver-shot blues, like it’s remembering how to be a sky again .

Below, the city stirs, not just a hum, but a symphony of subtle awakenings.

Here and there, vibrant bursts of emerald green creep over crumbling concrete, and splashes of defiant crimson bloom from forgotten cracks.

The air, once heavy with despair, now carries the faint, clean scent of rain and growing things.

Hope returns to the streets like the Dream is painting it back one brushstroke, one dreamer, at a time.

Corvin stands alone at the threshold.

His coat flutters around him, the collar turned up against the breeze. There’s dried blood on the sleeve. His stance is watchful, weight on one foot, like he might leave at any moment—but he hasn’t.

“You’ve changed the world,” he says without turning.

“Not alone,” I answer, stepping up beside him.

He doesn’t look at me right away. His gaze is fixed on the city—what remains of it. What might rise again.

“I made a deal with the Queen,” he says at last. “It wasn’t clean. Nothing ever is with her. But it bought you time.”

I nod. “And now she’ll come for us both.”

“She’s already trying,” he murmurs. “Worming her way in. Promises of safety. Of silence.” He scoffs, darkly amused. “She doesn’t understand you. Not really. You’re too loud. Too alive.”

I glance sideways. “Why did you choose me?”