Page 49

49

KENDALL

M athis stands like a statue in the blood-soaked dirt, the battlefield still steaming around us. His gaze cuts through the haze, not at Callum or even me—but at Adora, slumped unconscious beside us like a broken crown no one wants to touch.

“She’s stable,” I say, voice tighter than I mean it to be. “The Hollowed is gone.”

“No,” he replies. “It’s simply… moved.”

My stomach flips. “What the hell does that mean?”

He steps forward slowly, his right hand gnarled with scars at his side like a loyal shadow, arms crossed and expression smug. Mathis doesn’t look at me when he speaks—he watches the skies, like he’s reading runes in the ash.

“You pulled it out of her. Burned it free with blood and will. But that kind of power doesn’t vanish. It hungers. It remembers.”

My breath catches in my throat.

“You’re saying it’s still here ?”

“I’m saying it’s looking for somewhere else to go.”

I glance at Adora, then Callum, then back to Mathis. “And you just show up now, like you weren’t watching the entire time?”

“I was watching,” he says, voice like cold water. “From a distance. Sometimes that’s where strategy lives.”

“And what about family ?”

His jaw tics. For a split second, there’s emotion behind the sharp edge of his eyes.

“I didn’t know I had one,” he murmurs. “Not really. Not until it was almost too late.”

The burly man suddenly steps forward, crouching beside Adora without asking, sliding his arms beneath her and lifting her like she weighs nothing.

“She’ll be safe with us,” he says. “We have containment. And a claim.”

Callum bristles beside me, stepping forward, voice low. “What claim?”

Mathis turns to him. “She’s my daughter , Callum. Just as you were once my son .”

Callum flinches.

Not physically. Emotionally. Deeply.

I feel it like a second heartbeat inside my ribs.

“I’m not part of your pack anymore,” he says. “You lost that right.”

Mathis nods once. Not in agreement—acknowledgement.

“And yet… you still lead like one of mine. Maybe better than I ever did.”

He turns his back then, just like that. No fanfare. No goodbye. His man carries Adora down the ridge, disappearing into the trees without looking back.

Just like that—she’s gone.

Again. But I feel like this is the right thing for her, and Callum didn’t push. We both feel it. It’s time to let her really figure out who she is and find her place.

We regroup in the ruins of what used to be a town square. Fires still smolder in cracked barrels. The wounded rest in makeshift tents. The leaders—what few we have—gather around a long slab of stone.

Tension thrums like a live wire.

The dragons won’t sit beside the witches. The wolves from the Hollow snarl every time a werewolf walks too close. No one trusts the quiet. Peace feels like a fluke.

And I feel it, the shift, the turning.

The unity we bled for is already splintering.

Callum leans close to me at the edge of the circle, whispering, “We need something to hold them together.”

“Or someone.”

He looks at me. “You don’t need to be their answer.”

“No,” I say. “But maybe I’m the reason they haven’t torn each other apart yet.”

He slips his hand into mine beneath the table. Warm. Solid.

“Then let’s hold them together until we find the next move.”

I nod. But my skin prickles. Something’s wrong.

And then it hits like lightning through my skull.

The world around me blurs.

The stone turns to black glass.

The voices vanish.

I see a forest—dense, dark, rotting. And in the center of it, a figure. Hooded. Kneeling.

A voice like ice whispers my name—not aloud, but inside my bones.

“The vessel has not vanished. Only changed.”

The hooded figure lifts their head. I can’t see their face. But they smile. I wake with a start, gasping.

Callum catches me. “Hey, hey. What happened?”

“It’s not over.”

“What?”

“The Hollowed. It’s not done. It’s looking . Your dad was right.”

“Looking for what?”

I swallow. Hard.

“For someone new.”

Later, after the chaos simmers down and the factions go back to biting each other’s heads off, I leave the war room. My boots echo down the tunnel that leads to the lower ruins—past the torches, the moss-eaten stone, the scent of blood and ash still clinging to the walls.

The holding cells are cold. Quiet.

No one stops me when I ask to see him.

Part of me wishes they would.

But I need to see him with my own eyes. I need to face what’s left.

Stefan’s sitting against the back wall of a containment ward. Not in chains. Just behind a weak shimmer of spelled light that flickers every few seconds like it might give out. His face is battered—left cheek swollen, bottom lip split, dried blood marking his jawline like a scar-in-the-making. But his posture is proud. Still. Chin lifted, arms crossed. The way he always looked before a fight—like he didn’t want to throw the first punch but would absolutely throw the last.

His dark hair is matted from sweat and dirt, longer than it used to be, curling slightly at the ends. Messy in a way that used to make me smile.

Now, it just looks lost.

His blue eyes flick up when he sees me. Sharp and cutting, but… not cruel.

He flinches.

But he doesn’t look away.

“Figured you’d come,” he says, voice rough from dust or screaming—I’m not sure which.

I lean against the rusted gate. My own reflection warps in the shimmer of the ward between us.

“Wanted to see for myself,” I say.

He arches a brow. “If I’m still human?”

I shake my head. “If you’re still you.”

“I don’t know,” he finally says.

The silence stretches between us like a rope frayed and fraying.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he adds after a moment. His voice is quieter now. Realer.

I swallow hard. “Yeah. I scare the hell out of myself, too.”

He laughs, sort of. It’s dry and bitter and doesn’t touch the hollows beneath his eyes.

“You changed,” he says.

“I had to.”

“I didn’t.”

There it is. Simple. Brutal. True.

I nod. “That’s why we broke.”

He shifts forward slightly, elbows resting on his knees. The anger’s mostly drained from his face, but what’s left is worse—uncertainty. Like he’s only just realizing the weight of the side he chose. What he almost helped destroy.

“I used to think love was enough,” he murmurs.

“So did I.”

We sit in that for a long beat. He doesn’t cry. I don’t either. But it feels like something died between us anyway—and maybe that’s been happening for a while. This just made it official.

“You were brave,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “Braver than I’ll ever be.”

I look at him. Really look.

The boy I loved—the one who used to carry me piggyback to the lake, who used to kiss my palms when I got cold, who swore he’d never be like the monsters who took his parents—is still in there. But he’s drowning. Buried beneath the grief and the fear and the rage that Gideon’s Torch fed like fire to dry grass.

And he knows it now.

“You don’t have to hate what you don’t understand, Stefan.”

His eyes meet mine again and this time, they’re red around the edges. Raw. Ashamed.

“I don’t hate you,” he says. “I just don’t think I belong in your world anymore.”

I nod slowly. “Maybe you never did.”

I push off the gate. My hand brushes the stone, cold and rough under my fingers. I turn to leave.

But his voice stops me.

“Kendall.”

I pause.

“Yeah?”

He hesitates, like he’s not sure if he has the right to say what he’s about to say.

“I’m glad you’re alive.”

The words are thick. Honest.

I don’t turn back. Don’t say anything right away. Just let the quiet settle around them, heavy and final. Then I speak. “You too.” And I walk away.

I don’t feel lighter. Or better. Or stronger. But I feel done.

And for now, that’s enough.

Outside, Callum’s waiting.

I slide into his arms like I never left.

“Ready?” he asks.

I nod into his shoulder. But my voice is tight when I answer.

“No. But I will be.”

Because the Hollowed didn’t die with Adora. It’s still hunting. And I’m not done fighting, I’ll be ready.