Lightning cracks above us, and she jumps slightly. Instinctively, I reach out, my fingers brushing her wrist. The bond flares, bright and immediate.
She gasps. I freeze. Her pulse jumps under my touch. For a moment, we don’t move.
“I—” she starts, but the words tangle.
“Don’t,” I say. “You don’t have to explain it.”
We sit in the quiet, the only sound the storm above us.
Eventually, she shifts closer. Not enough to touch. Just… closer.
I don’t move away. Soon, the exhaustion takes me.
That night,I dream. Of fire…consuming, endless, living fire. It rises like a tide from the earth itself, devouring trees, stone, sky. Screams echo through the smoke, familiar and distant, layered over each other like shattered glass.
I run.
The ground cracks beneath my feet, and blood seeps from the fractures, thick and black and smoking. Shapes move in the fire: twisted reflections, clawed things with empty eyes. They whisper my name like a curse. Like a prophecy.
I see her then.
Amelia stands at the center of the inferno, her cloak in tatters, her hands ablaze with flickering magic she cannot control. The sigils on her arms are burning too bright, too fast, spreading up her throat like vines made of light.
She reaches for me.
Her lips move, but no sound comes. Her eyes, gods, her eyes, are wide with pain and fury and something like betrayal. And then she crumples, her knees hitting the scorched earth.
Blood spills from her mouth in a slow, terrible ribbon.
“No—” I try to reach her, but my limbs are heavy, too slow. The dream turns against me, dragging me back with invisible hands. The fire roars louder, but the sound is no longer flame, it’s her screaming.
Screaming my name.
The bond pulses like a blade being driven through my chest. I feel her pain in my bones, in my marrow, and still I can’t reach her…
I wake with a shout, lungs heaving like I’ve broken the surface of deep water. My heart slams against my ribs. My hands are shaking. Across the tent, Amelia is already awake.
She’s sitting up, her eyes fixed on me, not startled, not confused. Just… watching.
As if she saw it too. As if she always does.
7
AMELIA
We reach the borders of Nytheria just past dusk.
The Wildspont shivers as I cross the threshold, brushing invisible fingers along my skin like a welcome and a warning. Trees arch over us, thick with moss and glowing fungi, the ground soft with deep, pulsing roots. The magic here feels thinner than it should, tired. But still alive.
Behind me, Zeidan says nothing, his hood drawn low and his presence a heavy weight against my spine. The bond itches, restless. My people will feel it. The land already does.
The memory of last night’s dream clings to me like smoke. I can still feel the heat of it through the bond, the panic that wasn’t mine, the helpless fury that was. Zeidan hasn’t mentioned it since we broke camp, but I can feel the echo of it in him. Restless and watchful.
Behind me, his attention shifts, not toward danger, but toward the forest itself.
“The Wildspont,” he says quietly. “It’s… alive.”
I glance back, surprised by the softness in his voice.
