#ch46

[shysheeperz]

[shysheeperz]

[shysheeperz]

[symdog]

[symdog]

[everyjunniebug]

[mkcannothelpyou]

[mmdaesatra]

The Silencer - Chapter 46

Not like a woman. Not like a soldier. Like a verdict.

The air changed the moment the crypt swallowed us.

It was colder inside than it should have been—thick with the kind of chill that clung to bones, that knew names. Every breath left a ghost behind. Our footsteps made no sound, boots pressing into ancient dust and brittle moss.

Tolan walked behind me, sword drawn but held low, a faint glimmer of enchantment pulsing along the edge. I could hear his breath. Controlled, tight. He was trying. But the weight of the place—it wanted to unmake men like him.

Dimhollow didn’t whisper. It listened.

We moved through a narrow stone throat choked in vines and broken urns, our bodies close to the wall. Flickers of old torchlight lit the path in intervals, barely illuminating the damp carvings along the sides— coiled symbols , ancient runes, and reliefs that looked almost Ayleid, but sharper. Bloodier.

Further in, the ceiling rose—vaulted and hollowed by time. Water dripped from long-stilled stalactites. A broken iron gate stood at the edge of the next chamber, twisted at the hinges, as though something had ripped its way out rather than in.

I signaled a halt.

Tolan came up beside me. We crouched behind a cracked wall of loose stone and skeletal remains.

Ahead, down a sloping corridor, torchlight moved. Not still. Not stationed. Carried.

And voices.

I tilted my head, listening.

“They’re wasting time with rituals. The seal won’t break without old blood.”

“We’ll find the key. That priest nearly opened it.”

“Too slow. The master grows impatient. He wants her awake.”

The footsteps passed just beyond the next archway.

Two of them—no more. Their shadows dragged behind them like smoke. Vampires, definitely. Their speech wasn’t just cruel—it was practiced. They were part of something larger. A plan , not a hunt.

Tolan’s eyes flicked to me, brow furrowed.

I shook my head. Not yet.

We moved again—low, careful, pressing ourselves into the decay. My hands brushed old coffins stacked like bone shelves, the wood softened by rot. Every creak of stone, every brush of cloak felt too loud.

Another turn.

A collapsed pillar. A stairwell spiraling down into the deeper crypts.

We descended, breath held.

And somewhere far below—too far to reach by voice— a woman screamed.

Tolan stopped in place.

I turned my head, slowly. Watching him—not the path.

He was already shifting toward the far tunnel. Toward the source.

His voice was low, strained. “Someone’s alive down here.”

I didn’t move.

Another scream followed—shorter, hoarser. Then a wet sound. Gurgling. Ending.

Tolan turned to me. “We can’t just leave them.”

“We didn’t come here for captives.” I said flatly.

“They’re torturing someone!” His voice cracked. “You heard it.”

“I did.” I looked down the corridor, where flickering shadows danced along the wet floor. “I also heard them talking about a ritual. A seal. Something buried.”

He narrowed his eyes. “So?”

“So if we alert them too early, we lose what we came for. And more die later.”

His fists clenched.

“You’re as bad as them.”

I stepped closer, voice low and quiet like a blade sliding home. “No. I’m worse. Because I know what I’m doing.”

Tolan stared at me, jaw tight.

But he didn’t move.

Not yet.

Then another scream tore through the corridor—closer now. And his resolve broke.

“I’m going.” Tolan said again, voice sharp with conviction.

I didn’t answer.

The silence between us hung just long enough to snap—

“There!”

A hiss from behind the pillar. A flash of eyes in the dark. The sound of armor shifting, fangs clicking.

“Intruders!”

Everything broke.

Two vampires slipped out from the shadows like smoke, fast and pale , their movements sharp and feral. Behind them, thralls—gaunt, blood-drunk, unarmored but fast , surged forward with crude weapons and wild eyes.

I didn’t hesitate.

My dagger left its sheath with a whisper, my sword already in my hand.

I moved.

The first thrall lunged, swinging an axe too wide. I ducked low, spun inward, and let the silver edge of my dagger find the hollow beneath his jaw. One thrust. He fell gargling, bleeding out over his own boots.

Another was on me in a blink—this one faster.

I met him with the flat of my sword, parrying , twisting his strike away, then slamming the pommel of my dagger into his nose. Cartilage cracked. He staggered—just long enough for my sword to slip beneath his ribs.

“Behind you!” Tolan barked.

I turned just in time to see a vampire lunge for me from the left—claws extended, face twisted in hunger. But Tolan was there.

Beside me, his ward a wall of flickering light , shielding us from a burst of vampire flame. He lunged through the heat, his sword cleaving into a thrall’s skull with righteous fury. Bone split. Blood sprayed.

“Light guide you.” he muttered, twisting the sword, then yanking it free.

The vampire shrieked, and turned to ash at his feet.

Another thrall tried to flank us. I pivoted, sweeping low— my blade carving across his knee . He dropped with a scream, and I finished him without mercy.

“You fight like a goddamned Daedra.” he muttered.

“No gods left in me.” I answered.

More footsteps. More shapes in the dark.

They were trying to surround us —push us into the chamber where there’d be no room to move, no shadows to slip through.

Tolan pressed his back to mine.

“How many?” he said through clenched teeth.

I exhaled.

“Enough.”

They surged toward us like a wave breaking through bones.

The first thrall lunged with a jagged sword too heavy for his frame, eyes wide with bloodlust. I sidestepped, let the blade scream past my ribs, and pivoted on my heel. My sword cleaved into his side, slicing through meat and marrow like cloth. His body folded mid-scream, slumping against the stone with a final wet cough.

Two more came from opposite sides. One barehanded, the other with a curved dagger. I dropped low, blade across my back as I spun between them. The dagger nicked my shoulder, but my sword rose under the thrall’s chin and burst out through the crown of his skull. Blood and bone fountained as he dropped. I didn’t stop moving.

The barehanded one grabbed for my throat.

Mistake.

I drove my silver dagger between his ribs and twisted it until he convulsed, spitting black blood down his chest. I pulled the blade free and let him fall in a heap.

Tolan was holding his own—barely. His ward glowed like a dying star, flickering as a vampire’s magic slammed against it. He gritted his teeth and pushed forward, shouldering the caster aside and bringing his sword down in a vertical arc that split robe, spine, and altar alike.

Another came at me—cloaked, quick. Too quick.

I parried high, then ducked and swept his legs. He fell hard. I pinned him with my knee, shoved my sword down through his chest and felt the tip catch the stone beneath.

“No!”

Tolan’s voice.

I turned, but too slow.

A shadow streaked from the side hall—a full-blooded vampire, claws extended, mouth wide with hunger. I raised my blade, but I wouldn’t make it.

Tolan did.

He collided with me, pushing me out of the way just as the vampire’s claws came down.

They sank into his ribs.

Time fractured.

His body arched in the air as the vampire dragged him back, spinning, sinking fangs deep into his throat with a sound like cloth tearing in wet hands.

Tolan gasped. His sword clattered across the stone floor and slid to a stop in the pooling blood. His eyes locked on mine.

The vampire pulled back, lips red, face alight with ecstasy. It hissed, baring its teeth again—

I moved.

No calculation. No thought.

Just wrath.

My sword came down on the vampire’s shoulder and sank to the hilt, severing its arm. It shrieked, turning—my dagger flashed and punctured its eye.

I grabbed the back of its head, forced it down, and drove the dagger again and again into its skull until my hands were slick and it stopped moving.

Silence dropped over the crypt.

Everything was still.

Except him.

He was slumped near the shattered altar, propped against the wall as though resting, though the pool of blood beneath him said otherwise. His breathing was shallow—wet and irregular.

I crossed the chamber slowly, my boots echoing between the corpses.

He looked up at me.

His eyes, usually hard with judgment, were soft now. Unfocused. Human.

“I didn’t think… it would end like this.” he murmured.

I knelt beside him, my voice low. “Don’t move.”

He gave a breath that might’ve been a laugh. “That’s not going to be a problem.”

Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. I pressed a hand against the wound at his side—not to save him. Just to let him know he wasn’t alone.

“I always thought… I’d see the light,” he said. His voice was quieter now. “Stendarr. Warmth. Mercy.”

I didn’t speak at first.

I could’ve lied. Told him something kind. But lies are for the living.

“You won’t.” I whispered.

His brow furrowed. But not in fear.

“Then what is there?”

I swallowed hard.

“Only darkness,” I said. “But… you don’t need to be afraid of it.”

He blinked slowly.

I looked him in the eye.

“Death is our friend,” I said, voice barely audible. “And our salvation.”

He stared at me, some emotion flickering behind the pain.

“I never thought… I’d die next to someone like you.”

“Me neither.” I whispered.

A silence stretched between us, heavy and still.

Then, with the faintest curve of his lips: “You’re not what I thought.”

I leaned a little closer.

“And you were better than I ever expected.”

His hand twitched, then went still.

I stayed there until his chest stopped rising.

Not long.

Not loud.

Just the way most truths die.

I didn’t know how long I sat there. Maybe minutes. Maybe longer. The cold of the stone beneath me crept through the damp of my leathers, but I didn’t move. Tolan’s body was still slumped at my side, growing heavier in death. His blood had soaked into the back of my thighs, sticky and cooling. I should have stood. I should have closed his eyes. But I stayed there, spine hunched, elbows on knees, staring at nothing.

He had saved me.

The man who questioned every step I took through these halls. The man who called me a weapon. A sinner. A servant of nothing but death. The man who would’ve gladly bound me for heresy a year ago… had chosen to shield me with his body.

And I wouldn’t have done the same.

Not for him.

Not for most.

That truth sat in the pit of my stomach like lead—ugly and heavy and quiet. I didn’t flinch from it. I wasn’t built for regret. But the feeling that replaced it was worse. It wasn’t sorrow. Not quite. It was… a tightening. A kindling.

Why did he do it?

Because it was right?

Because he still believed in redemption?

Or because he had nothing left to live for?

Maybe I was just convenient. The last person in the room worth dying for.

I stared down at my hands. Blood was caked across my gloves, blackened and thick. My fingers ached from clenching. My sword lay abandoned at my feet, the edge chipped from bone, streaked with gore. The silver of my dagger had dulled with blood, and I hadn’t even felt the kills stack up.

I’d lost count. Lost time. Lost weight.

Something inside me was shifting. Breathing. Stretching its arms after a long sleep.

It wasn’t grief.

It was rage.

Not sudden. But steady. Low-burning. Like coals beneath ash.

It moved through my veins slowly, deliberately, rising into my throat like something living. Like something I couldn’t swallow anymore.

Tolan had died for me. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t want it.

And now I had to carry it.

I clenched my jaw, my fingers curling so tightly into fists I heard the leather strain.

This was the moment the stories always missed—the seconds between stillness and fury. Between the last breath and the first step forward.

I stood.

Not like a woman. Not like a soldier.

Like a verdict.

Tolan had passed judgment on me the moment he took that blow. And now I would pass judgment on everything still breathing in this tomb.

I left his body behind.

Because I had no more prayers. Only punishment.

I reached for my sword without looking.

The leather-wrapped grip slid into my palm like it belonged there—blood-slick, familiar, eager. Then, without hesitation, I leaned down and took Tolan’s blade from the stone where it had fallen beside him. His hand no longer held it. He had no more need of it.

But I did.

It was heavier than mine, longer, forged for defense and prayer. It had seen battles with purpose—used to protect, to hold lines, to ward against darkness.

Now it would become darkness.

One blade of death, one blade of faith.

I stood, twin swords in hand, and stepped forward into the next corridor.

The crypt didn’t greet me. It recoiled.

I moved like smoke—low, fast, silent no longer. The first vampire didn’t have time to scream. I burst through the half-rotted archway, blades rising in a mirrored flash. My sword slashed through his stomach, the other across his throat , a crisscross of steel and blood.

He dropped in pieces.

The next thrall raised a rusted axe.

I didn’t stop.

I drove Tolan’s sword through his knee, dropped him to the floor, then kicked him onto his back and plunged my own blade through his sternum.

His eyes rolled up. His scream echoed off the walls—cut short by steel.

Another vampire bolted down the stairs from the upper platform, hissing in fury, spell-light gathering at her fingertips.

I raised my palm.

Ice exploded from my fingers in a spear-like burst , the shard punching clean through her chest and nailing her to the far wall. Her mouth opened in shock—frozen in place.

I walked past her without pausing.

A thrall threw himself at me with a dagger, screaming.

I caught his wrist, snapped it backward until the bone tore through skin , and drove both blades into his chest. I twisted them in opposite directions, feeling the ribs break open under the pressure.

Blood painted the walls.

I didn’t speak.

I didn’t breathe.

I moved

Room after room. They came at me in twos, in fours, in swarms. Some with fangs. Some with swords. One with fire blooming in his hands—but I was faster.

A gust of frost tore through the corridor, shards of glass-hard ice cutting open faces and throats.

I vaulted across a broken altar, slammed one blade into a vampire’s gut, kicked her off the hilt, and caught another across the temple with the flat of Tolan’s sword. She fell like a sack of meat. I split her skull open with the heel of my boot.

No hesitation.

No mercy.

Not tonight.

Two more came from above—leaping from a stone balcony like animals. One landed near, claws slashing for my face.

I ducked beneath the strike and slammed the pommel of my dagger into her temple. She staggered, and I cut upward from groin to sternum with my blade, intestines spilling wetly onto the floor.

The second landed behind me.

I turned too slow—

He drove a dagger into my shoulder.

Pain burst down my arm. I hissed and dropped my left blade—Tolan’s.

But not my own.

I grabbed his wrist, pulled him forward, and slammed my knee into his gut. He gasped, and I wrenched the dagger from my shoulder and buried it into his throat. He twitched once, then fell gurgling.

I retrieved Tolan’s sword with a bloody grip and pressed onward.

By the time I reached the next descent, my leathers were torn. My arms burned. One sleeve hung shredded, soaked in black-red blood. My hair clung to my jawline in wet strands. My breathing was raw in my chest.

There were more.

Three in the next chamber, gathered around a dismembered corpse—laughing over the blood like it was wine.

They didn’t hear me.

They didn’t even look up.

I ran the first through from behind, my sword tearing out the front of his chest like a second spine.

The second turned, too late. I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the edge of the altar— once, twice, three times, until her skull split like brittle stone.

The last tried to flee.

I flung a needle-sharp spear of ice into her back and leapt across the room after it. She was on her knees when I arrived. I tore the shard free and drove my sword down into the base of her neck, crushing the spine like a twig.

The silence that followed was different.

Not hollow.

But awed.

Even the dead, I thought, must be watching.

My breath came in bursts. My vision flickered at the edges. Wounds were layered over bruises, my legs screaming, my arms trembling under the weight of two swords slick with ruin.

But I was not finished.

Not yet.

The doors to the next chamber stood half-open, as though even the crypt itself knew I was coming.

My hands were numb. The hilts of my swords had fused with my palms—skin broken, raw. I couldn’t tell which blood was mine anymore. My vision narrowed and tunneled with each step, but I kept moving. Kept dragging myself forward like something pulled by purpose alone.

I kicked the door wider.

The chamber beyond yawned like a mouth in the stone. Pillars ringed a sunken dais. Strange runes pulsed along the floor, carved into a circular slab of obsidian. The air was different here—heavy, humming. Ancient.

And I wasn’t alone.

Three vampires stood near the dais , their backs to me—one robed, chanting softly over the circle. The others turned the moment the door creaked.

“She made it here?” one hissed, astonished.

“I thought she’d be bleeding out in the halls.” the other growled.

I didn’t answer.

Two stood at the far ends, cloaked and still— keepers , watching the ritual with cold reverence. The last two were armed— hunters , pureblood, faces marked with age and command. They’d been waiting.

I took one step forward. Then another.

And I stumbled.

Just once.

My knee hit the floor, blades dragging stone. My breath hitched—chest tight, muscles seizing. My body was failing.

The vampires saw it.

They grinned.

They advanced.

I rose—slow, shaking—but I raised both blades, crossing them before me.

One vampire lunged. I parried, barely. My arm screamed. My heel slipped on blood.

Another strike—I blocked, but the impact knocked me back, my vision flashing white.

They circled me now, laughter in their throats.

“You’re no Dawnguard,” one sneered, slashing toward my ribs. I blocked it with a desperate twist of Tolan’s sword. The vibration rang through my bones.

“You’re just a girl playing hero in a corpse’s skin.”

I was falling apart.

Not down— yet —but I could feel it. My arms were trembling under the weight of two swords. My breathing was ragged, pain singing sharp through my ribs. Blood soaked through my armor. Most of it wasn’t mine, but some of it was. And there were seven vampires closing in, teeth bared, eyes shining, smelling my exhaustion.

They weren’t rushing.

They were circling.

They wanted me to feel it—the helplessness. One had already tasted my weakness when my parry lagged and his blade opened my shoulder. Another had cracked my knee when I barely dodged.

They knew.

I wasn’t going to make it.

“Cut her legs,” one whispered. “Bring her down. Wake the coffin with her screams.”

I adjusted my grip, blades shaking.

They moved as one.

The first came from the left—fast, curved sword aimed for my throat. I blocked, but the force sent me staggering. The second came from behind. I twisted, caught his arm, slashed his chest , but my elbow cracked against the wall and the sword nearly slipped.

Then another was in front of me, driving a dagger for my ribs—

He never reached me.

His body twitched, then lurched backward, his entire head torn clean from his shoulders. Blood arced high, painting the ceiling as something fast—too fast— moved through them.

The vampires turned in confusion.

One screamed.

Eyes, crystalline blue and steady crimson, was already inside them.

No spell. No sound.

Just hands, teeth, and death.

The second vampire tried to draw back— Amon’s fingers punched through her stomach , grabbed her spine, and ripped it out through her back like wet rope. Her body dropped with a slap.

The third raised a spell—too slow.

Amon leapt, landed on him with a crunch of bones, and tore out his throat with his jaw. He bit deep, shook his head like an animal, and spat chunks of flesh across the floor.

The fourth tried to run.

Amon vanished.

Then reappeared behind him— his hand plunged through the vampire’s back, crushed the heart in his palm, and yanked it out still twitching. He flung the corpse into the wall with such force it left a crater.

One of them cried out, “What are you!?”

Amon turned toward him. His mouth was red, his fangs long, his eyes burning with something that wasn’t hunger —something colder.

He didn’t answer.

He tore his entire lower jaw off.

Blood splashed in thick ropes. Teeth clattered across the floor. The vampire choked on nothing.

Another lunged with a sword—

Amon caught the blade between his palms, let it slice into his own hands without flinching, then twisted it, breaking the vampire’s wrist with a snap like dry wood. He bit into his face, half tearing it off, then kicked the body across the room into the ritual stones.

The last one turned to me—terrified now. “Help—”

Amon was on him before I could move.

He didn’t kill him clean.

He ripped his arm off , let him fall screaming, then kneeled on his chest and caved it in with his bare hands. The vampire gurgled, still alive as Amon slowly, deliberately , shoved one hand into his mouth and ripped his skull open from the jaw upward.

The sound—wet, sharp, final —echoed across the chamber.

The chamber was silent.

The vampires were gone—what remained of them piled in broken pieces across the stone, blood pooling in runes that no longer glowed. The air stank of iron, ash, and marrow.

Amon stood in the center of it all, chest rising slow, calm.

Like it hadn’t cost him a thing.

His hands dripped red to the elbows. His jaw was stained with darker streaks—what little skin wasn’t marked by gore gleamed cold and white beneath the torchlight. His hair was damp, wild, pushed back from his face. The thin tear in his shirt revealed part of his chest— pale as snow, soaked in streaks of crimson.

His eyes locked on mine across the ruin.

Frostbite blue and a glimmering red—like fire through wine.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t move.

And neither did I.

Until my knee buckled.

The pain hit me all at once— white-hot and everywhere. My lungs seized, the room tilted. My fingers went limp. The swords slipped from my hands and clattered to the floor.

The last thing I saw before the ground came up to meet me—

was him. Moving.

Faster than I could fall.

Strong arms wrapped around me, catching me just before I hit the stone. The air left my lungs as he drew me in— not tightly, but deliberately. Carefully. His grip didn’t shake. His chest was solid beneath my weight, slick with warmth that wasn’t his own.

My head fell against his collarbone.

I didn’t fight it.

His breath was shallow. Cold. His voice came low, right above me.

“Still breathing?”

“Unfortunately.” I rasped.

A breath passed between us. Not a laugh. Just air.

I forced my eyes up.

And saw them.

His eyes.

One was ice, pale and sharp, like a blade chipped from glacier. The other was blood, deep and steady, like a secret burning behind glass.

They didn’t belong in the same face.

They barely belonged in a man.

“I had it under control.” I muttered.

His mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.

“Sure.” he said softly.

I tried to move again, but my knee buckled.

His grip didn’t falter.

I looked at him fully then—face inches from mine. His skin, too perfect. His expression unreadable. His gaze dropped for a moment—to my split lip, the blood on my temple, the torn leather over my ribs. Then he looked at me again. Those cursed, unblinking eyes.

“You’re hurt.” he said, barely above a whisper.

“I’ve had worse.”

“That doesn’t mean you should have more.”

I hated how easily he lifted me.

Like I weighed nothing. Like I was just another broken body he was dragging off the battlefield.

But he didn’t drag.

He carried.

One arm under my knees, the other around my back—blood-soaked and silent, his grip unnervingly gentle for someone who’d just crushed skulls barehanded. My head lolled against his chest as he stepped carefully over the corpses, toward the outer edge of the chamber, where the floor was clean enough to lie down a half-dead assassin without making it worse.

“I said I didn’t need help.” I muttered, voice rasping with pain.

“You’re bleeding too fast to lie right now,” he said quietly. “You can hate me later.”

He knelt and lowered me onto the stone like I was made of glass, adjusting me just enough so my spine didn’t catch against a crack in the floor. I tried to sit up, but a hot bolt of pain ripped through my ribs and forced a hiss from between my teeth.

His hands were already moving.

He reached into his coat, fingers quick and practiced, and pulled free a small black vial etched with a silver seal. He uncorked it with one twist, the scent of clove and crushed herbs sharp in the air.

“Here,” he said, holding it out. “It’s strong. Don’t drink it fast.”

I stared at it.

“You carry healing potions?”

“I carry a lot of things I hope I don’t have to use.”

I took it with shaking fingers. The glass was warm from his body heat. I brought it to my lips and drank—slow at first, then faster as the pain dulled and the burning behind my eyes faded. The wounds didn’t close, not fully. But they stopped screaming.

He didn’t speak.

He watched.

And I hated how close he still was.

“You didn’t have to do this,” I said, lowering the vial. “I could’ve—”

“You would’ve bled out,” he said flatly. “You almost did.”

There was no softness in his voice now. Just truth.

And something else beneath it.

I turned my face away. Looked toward the altar, toward the stone sarcophagus the vampires had died trying to protect.

Amon followed my gaze.

“So,” he said quietly. “That’s what they were digging.”

And I suddenly remembered: we weren’t done yet.

The potion had dulled the pain, but not enough.

I still limped when I stood. Still pressed one hand to my ribs as I stepped forward toward the dais.

Amon walked beside me, just behind my shoulder. I could hear the blood drying on his clothes. He hadn’t cleaned his hands. I didn’t ask why. I didn’t care.

We reached the circle.

The stone slab at its center was carved with deep, winding glyphs—runic swirls that glowed faintly as we approached, pulsing like a slow, dead heartbeat . Blood had gathered around the base, soaked into the channels. Ritual blood. Vampire blood. Death blood.

I stared at it.

“So,” I said. “We open it?”

Amon didn’t answer right away.

Then, with a breath: “We should.”

I reached for the edge of the sarcophagus, placed both hands against the stone, and pushed. The lid was heavy, stiff with age—but it gave with a grinding scrape. Amon joined me silently, and together we shifted the lid aside.

Air hissed upward—cold and dry and wrong.

Then the figure inside moved.

There was a click —metal unsealing from bone—and the body fell forward.

A woman.

She crumpled to the floor at our feet in a heap of dark cloth and tangled hair.

Amon froze.

For the first time since I’d seen him tear through vampires like they were wheat— he flinched.

His foot took one step back.

“No.” he whispered.

I blinked.

The woman on the floor stirred. Her fingers twitched, then clenched. Her breath came in sharp, startled gulps. Eyes snapped open—golden, piercing, inhuman. Her head turned toward us. Toward him.

And she stared.

“You.” she breathed.

Amon didn’t move.

“Serana?” he said.

Her name was a ghost in the room.

And the way he said it—it wasn’t fear. It was something else. Something tangled. Too raw to be surprise. Too quiet to be pain.

And her face—frozen, expression tight with memories I didn’t know the shape of.

“You shouldn’t be alive.” she said. Her voice was hoarse. Cold.

“Neither should you.” Amon murmured.

They didn’t move.

I stared between them.

Whatever this was—

I wasn’t ready for it.

To be continued…