Not sound. Light. A flood of green so bright it swallowed the room, swallowed the candle, swallowed the grey window light and the distant campfires and the shadows in the corners. It poured from the charm like blood from a wound — hot, alive, ancient — and Arin felt it rush through her body like a river breaking through a dam.
She gasped. Caldan's hand locked on her throat — not squeezing, just holding, his fingers rigid, his eyes blazing green in the reflected light.
And then the vision came.
A room she'd never seen. Grand. Vaulted ceiling. White torches. A woman standing at its center — chestnut hair, grey eyes, a jaw that Arin knew because she saw it every morning in whatever dull surface she could find to check her reflection.
Her mother. Young. Maybe twenty. Wearing a gown that no border village woman should own, standing with the straight-backed posture of someone who had been trained to carry the weight of crowns.
