Chapter 2: The Silence Screams
The map on the war table was a lie. Xaden’s knuckles turned white where they pressed against the polished obsidian, his gaze fixed on the inked ridges of the Tyrrendor Highlands. He knew every pass, every blind canyon. But the territory in his mind was blank, a featureless void where a single, vital presence should have been.
It wasn’t silence. Silence was peace. This was a muffled scream.
The bond was there—he could feel the thin, strained thread of it, a filament of ice in his chest—but it was muted. Deliberately dimmed from the other side. Wren had turned down the dial on her soul, leaving only static. His own fault. He knew it in the way Sgaeyl paced the mental link between them, a restless, furious shadow. Her agitation was a physical pressure against his ribs, a low-frequency hum of wrongness.
She is not here, Sgaeyl growled, the words less sound and more a seismic shift in his bones.
“I know,” he muttered aloud, the words swallowed by the cavernous room.
Nyxari sits on the cliff and watches the mist. She does not speak. She does not hunt. She watches. The dragon’s frustration was a scalding heat. Her rider has made a cage of quiet. This is a human foolishness.
“It’s a human consequence,” Xaden corrected, the guilt a cold, solid mass in his gut. He pushed away from the table, the legs screeching against stone. The shaft of dawnlight from the shattered skylight cut across the floor, illuminating motes of dust and the ghost of a footprint in the ash. He’d stood here a week ago, tracing supply lines, arguing tactics with Violet, with Liam. Wren had been at the far end of the table, cleaning her knives. She’d made a quiet comment about the vulnerability of the western ridge. He’d glanced at her, nodded absently, and turned back to Violet’s counterpoint. He couldn’t even remember Wren’s exact words now.
That was the heart of it. He’d heard her, but he hadn’t listened. None of them had.
The doors to the war room swung open. Violet entered first, her silver-tipped hair escaping its braid, shadows under her eyes. Liam followed, his usual easy grace subdued, and Bodhi brought up the rear, closing the doors with a soft thud that echoed in the chamber.
“You called?” Violet’s voice was raspy with lack of sleep. Tairn’s perpetual grumble was a background vibration in the air. “Sgaeyl’s pacing is giving Andarna a complex.”
“It’s Wren,” Xaden said. He didn’t know how else to start.
Liam’s brow furrowed. “Her bond’s still muted? I thought she just needed a few days. Space.”
“It’s been weeks,” Bodhi said, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. “Not a peep. Not even a flicker of irritation when you idiots nearly blew up the training yard yesterday. That’s… not normal.”
“What’s normal?” Violet asked, pulling out a chair but not sitting. “She’s always been quiet. Steady. She’s probably just… processing.”
“Processing what?” Xaden’s voice was sharper than he intended. He saw Violet flinch, just slightly. “What exactly is she processing, Vi? The fact that we’re a team? A family? That we’d burn the world down for each other?”
The words hung in the air, righteous and hollow.
Liam cleared his throat. “She never complained.”
“That’s the fucking point!” Xaden’s control snapped. The echo of his shout bounced off the obsidian walls. He saw the shock on their faces—he rarely raised his voice. He forced a breath into his tight chest. “She never complained. She was just… there. Solid. Reliable. We planned everything around the bond, around the next threat, around…” His eyes flicked to Violet. “Around what was loudest. What demanded immediate attention. And she just kept the peace. She absorbed the uneven distribution of our focus and asked for nothing.”
Violet’s face paled. “That’s not true. We always valued her.”
“Did we?” Bodhi pushed off the wall, his expression uncharacteristically serious. “Remember the meeting with the Esben elders? We spent an hour debating Vi’s approach. Wren suggested a flank maneuver using the river fog. We all went ‘hmm, good point,’ and then immediately went back to arguing about the frontal assault.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Shit. She was right. The fog would have worked.”
Silence descended, thick and accusatory. It was a small thing. One of a thousand small things.
“She always had the watch no one wanted,” Liam said quietly, his gaze distant. “The cold, boring ones. She’d just nod and go. I thought she preferred it. Liked the quiet.”
“She made the quiet because we gave her no other room,” Xaden said, the realization a sick, spreading chill. “We didn’t see her fading because we were the ones who stopped looking. We took her presence as a given. A constant. Like the fucking mountains.” He looked at each of them, his amber eyes burning. “When did any of us last ask her what she needed? Not what the group needed. Not what the mission required. What Wren needed.”
Violet looked down at her hands. “I asked her to check my saddle straps last Tuesday.”
A laugh escaped Bodhi, bitter and short. “Yeah. That counts.”
“This isn’t about blame,” Liam said, though his voice was strained. “It’s about… what now? The bond’s muted. She’s gone to her family’s estate. Do we… give her more time?”
Time is a river, Sgaeyl hissed into Xaden’s mind. It carries things away. The dragon’s impatience was a physical shove. Nyxari grieves. The silence is a wound. You will fix this.
“It’s not just about time,” Xaden said, translating the dragon’s urgency. “We broke something. Ignoring it won’t make it heal. It’ll just scar over wrong.” He leaned back on the table, the weight of his failure a crushing fatigue. “I can feel the thread. It’s thin, but it’s there. She didn’t sever. She shut a door.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want us knocking,” Violet whispered.
“Maybe she doesn’t think we ever will,” Xaden countered. His mind replayed a hundred moments. Wren handing him a fresh whetstone without being asked. Wren stitching up a gash on Bodhi’s arm while he joked about his clumsiness. Wren listening, always listening, while the rest of them talked. Her storm-gray eyes, watching, absorbing, saying nothing. How long had that quiet fire been simmering? And how had they all been so blind to the heat?
“We have to go to her,” Liam said suddenly, conviction hardening his features. “Not to drag her back. But to… see her. To apologize. Properly.”
Bodhi nodded. “Yeah. We owe her that. An audience. A chance to tell us to go to hell, if that’s what she wants.”
Violet looked uncertain. “And if seeing us makes it worse? If it feels like pressure?”
“Then we leave,” Xaden said, the decision crystallizing as he spoke. “But we have to try. We have to look her in the eye and acknowledge that we failed her. That I failed her.” He pushed off the table. “We leave at first light. Aretia can hold for a few days.”
Finally, Sgaeyl murmured, the tension in their link easing a fraction. The human sees his error. Now he must wear it.
The plans began—quick, efficient. They were riders; preparation was instinct. But beneath the practical talk of flight patterns and securing the stronghold, a new awareness hummed. Xaden found himself cataloging every memory of Wren with a painful, fresh clarity. The dry, unexpected wit that would surface when she was comfortable. The way she’d hum an old Highland tune while maintaining her gear. The absolute, unshakeable loyalty that had been their bedrock. A bedrock they’d mistaken for floorboards.
Later, as they dispersed to prepare, Violet caught his arm in the corridor. The permanent smell of ozone and stone was stronger here.
“You really think this will work?” she asked, her grey eyes searching his.
“I don’t know,” he admitted, the honesty tearing at him. “I just know that not trying is a guarantee that it won’t. I can’t…” He rubbed the spot over his heart. “I can’t live with this void, Vi. It’s not just an absence. It’s an accusation.”
She squeezed his arm, a brief, hard pressure. “We were all blind. But you’re right. We have to try.”
He watched her walk away, thinking of the delicate, brutal balance of their world. They fought wars, bonded dragons, carried marks that could get them killed. Yet the most devastating wound had been inflicted quietly, over years, with the gentle brutality of neglect. By him. By all of them.
He walked out onto the battlements. The wind off the mountains was knife-sharp and clean. Below, in the dragon caves, he could feel Sgaeyl’s restless energy, a beacon calling to a partner who would not answer. Nyxari’s silence was a hole in the fabric of their world.
Xaden looked north, towards the mist-choked Highlands and the crumbling estate they’d once mocked Wren for missing. He hadn’t understood. It wasn’t about the stones of the place. It was about being seen. And they had stopped seeing her.
Tomorrow, they would fly into that mist. Not as conquerors, but as petitioners. Not to claim, but to apologize. The thread in his chest felt impossibly frail. He willed a single, clear thought down it, not knowing if it could breach the mute wall she’d erected.
We’re coming. And we finally see what we lost.
The wind snatched the unspoken words away. But for the first time since the dull ache began, the static in his chest seemed to shift, just a hair. Like a breath held too long, finally released.