Page 13 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

He hadn’t told me much of anything. But something about him lingers, restless and unresolved.

What?

I pace, nerves crackling beneath my skin, forcing myself to stay away from the aetherglass. Now that I know someone might be lurking on the other side, I won’t give them the satisfaction of watching me unravel.

Ah. Yes. He’d called me the daughter of Tiriana.

At the time, I’d thought nothing of it. Just a phrase—a daughter of that land, like any other.

But now, looking back…

He hadn’t meant it generally. He’d said it like a certainty. Like a name he already knew .

"Didn’t your mother teach you any better? I’d think she would, as a daughter of Tiriana..."

Not just Tiriana the land—Tiriana, my homeland. My birthright.

The guard must have told him. The loose-lipped fiend. If I ever see that demon again?—

The demon whose face he never showed me.

The one I only glimpsed in flashes. Fingers pressing nyrelith fruit to his lips. A mouth parting around the bite.

And yet, somehow, I can’t recall him at all.

I let out a breath and ease the stone door nearly shut. It feels heavier than it should. Or maybe it’s just me.

My legs burn, ache— a sharp reminder that I am not built for running. I sit at the edge of the bed, just for a moment, just long enough to gather myself?—

The room tips sideways, and I’m gone.

I wake with a gasp, bolting upright into a blinding shaft of daylight.

A shrill, piercing chirp shatters the silence. My gaze snaps to the window, where a ridiculously green bird sits on the sill, screeching its tiny throat raw.

Dama’s bleeding chains.

I drag a hand over my face, head pounding, body leaden, the kind of fatigue that doesn’t fade with sleep. I haven’t felt this awful since the night Mother and I drank Father’s last dregs of wine—before we burned the barrel for warmth.

I blink down at myself. Still in the lace hood. Still in the dress. Still in yesterday.

"It’s about time you woke up."

I startle at Sinea’s voice and turn to find her in the doorway, watching me .

"You shouldn’t have exerted yourself the day before a trial."

Today, she wears a blue-tinged glass corset and a matching floaty skirt. I don’t like it as much as the one that mirrors her eyes.

"Yes, and maybe I would have known that if someone had bothered to tell me." My tone is sharp, but I don’t care. "I hardly knew a bit of running would lay me out for the rest of the day and night."

Sinea dips her head—just for a second.

"Go on. Get cleaned up." She gestures to the wardrobe. "You’re expected at the banquet in a quarter hour."

I grit my teeth and push out of bed with a growl. Not just at the order. Not just at the rushed time frame. Not just at another thing Sinea never told me.

But because banquet means a room full of people.

And we only ever gathered in crowds when one of us was being taken. Sinea lifts a brow.

"Right. One more thing you neglected to inform me of. Rather poor attendant you make, wouldn’t you say?"

Sinea’s eyes flash with fiery menace. "I’m attending to you exactly as my attendant did for me."

I step closer, crowding her space. "And did you win?"

The accusation hangs between us, heavy, unanswered.

I turn away first, opening the wardrobe and willing it to understand what I want. That it would simply know I wanted to bathe—since Sinea hadn’t shown me that, either.

Nothing. Just a spare robe, a dress, and two sets of sleeping clothes.

Sinea steps to my side, closes the door, and taps once on the glass. "You can’t access it without me. Not yet, anyway," she says, softer now .

She opens the door again—revealing the bathing suite, just as before—and gestures dramatically for me to enter.

I strip without hesitation, without thought, without care. Not for Sinea’s eyes. Not for the others who might be in the shadows or anywhere else.

Because what choice do I have?

Hiding only works when you have somewhere to run. I don’t. Not here.

I let the fabric fall, let the air press against my skin, let my body be nothing more than a body.

"The banquet," Sinea says as I step into the pool—still set to the precise temperature I left it at yesterday, as if Shadowfell itself had been waiting for me. "Is the first formal event in Shadowfell, marking the opening of this season’s Maiden Trials."

Remembering what she said yesterday—how the magic-infused water already contained soap and something she called exfoliants and how I wouldn’t need to scrub.

I still wish for a cloth.

I never feel clean unless I can scrub the sweat away myself.

And maybe it’s just the urgency, but the shadows seem quieter today.

"You’ll meet the rest of your competition today. Tonight, you’ll compete. If you succeed, you’ll attend the formal presenting ball with all the potentials from every hold." Sinea’s voice is clipped. "Is that enough information for you?"

I splash a stream of sudsy water over my face.

"You would think reciting the day’s itinerary is a wealth of information, given how tight-lipped you’ve been. But no. I need to know who will be there and how to appease them enough not to make an enemy of them." Yourself included .

"We don’t have time for that now. You need to get ready."

I rise from the pool, water trailing down my skin, staring at her where she lingers in the doorway.

"I’m not going in there unarmed, Sinea. Now just tell me—who can I befriend, and who should I stay away from?"

She scoffs.

"Yes, roll your enormous golden eyes at me all you like." I snatch the towel that appears on the outcropping of stone where I’d gripped the ledge. "But I don’t care if you don’t like it, or me, or if this isn’t your way.

I intend to survive these trials, and I need you to do that. So start helping me."

The part-fae woman who survived the trials herself lets out a long, theatrical sigh. "Finally. Priestess knows I’ve been waiting for you to assert some will."

I ball my fists in the towel, gripping it tight. Not to dry myself off. Not to warm myself.

To keep from smashing her smug, smiling face in.

"This was a test?"

She nods, pleased with herself. "Come on. Let’s get you ready. I’ll drill you on the other potentials on the way."

I watch her carefully as she drapes me in layers of lace. She doesn’t seem to be lying. But I don’t believe her, either. Withholding information wasn’t a test—it was control.

Why? That remains to be seen.

"Right, so you’ve met three already. I wouldn’t worry much about them, honestly. They’re from the western part of the vestige, so you know what that means."

"I certainly don’t."

"Oh. Of course. I forget how little you know of the continent."

Sinea fastens the last lace tie, her tone light, dismissive. "The potentials from the western part of Shadowfell are usually sex workers. They’re here for a good time, and they’ll do well until they don’t. Which is always inevitable."

The words don’t fit together at first. Sex worker. They clang in my mind, sharp-edged and mismatched, like fire eater or storm tamer. A contradiction.

I must have misheard.

But no, she said it plainly, without hesitation. I turn the phrase over, trying to make sense of it, trying to shove it into a shape that fits inside what I know.

Mother mentioned it once, years ago. The memory flickers—quick, unimportant at the time, said in passing and promptly forgotten. Some women survive however they must.

That was it. That was all. No elaboration, no details, no reason to dwell.

But here, now, the meaning slams into place, like a door locking shut.

This isn’t some desperate last resort, some shadowy, whispered transaction. It’s structured. Expected. A place in society, given a name like any other profession.

A chill unfurls at the base of my skull, slow, creeping. I’ve always known the world is shaped by power—who has it, who suffers under it. But this…

This is something else.

A life. A role. A fate.

"Sex workers. Women who sell sex for money."

Sinea nods, escorting me out of the chamber. "Now, there are two others from the north, but I’ve already sized them up, and I don’t think you need to worry about them."

I’ll draw my own conclusions about that, thank you very much.

She ushers me into the hall. "The one you need to watch out for is Ashera. "

The way she says the name—reverent, hushed. Like the walls or the shadows might hear it and stir.

"She’s a professional. Practically bred for the trials. She’ll take one look at you and tear you apart. She’s not even from Shadowfell originally, but she used her training to enter the Trials early.”

I glance down at myself. At the uniform. At the way it sits on my skin.

A "professional" wouldn’t feel as ridiculous as I do. But I don’t think I look bad. And my discomfort? Surely not noticeable.

"What does she look like? How will I know who to stay away from?"

Sinea scoffs. "Trust me, you’ll know. You won’t be able to take your eyes off her. Just like everyone else at the banquet."

We continue down the hallway, and to my surprise, she leads me to a room only a few doors down, one that was locked yesterday.

"This is a nether transit bay. You can tell by that rune there." She points to a glimmering circular rune over the door I hadn’t noticed before. "It’ll take you anywhere in the hold you want to go in moments."

I don’t think I like the sound of that. "Will it knock me out for days like traveling to get here?"

She shakes her head. "No, it’s not magic. This is tech." The great obsidian door unlocks and opens as she puts her palm on it.

The air inside is wrong. Too still, too contained. The moment I step in, the sound of the outside world is gone, swallowed by a silence so thick it presses against my ears.

"Banquet Hall, please," Sinea says sweetly.

Everything is seamless—too seamless. The walls, the floor, even the rail I grip are smooth and polished, untouched by age or use. There’s no rattle of chains, no grind of gears, no sense of weight shifting as we move. If not for the faint pressure in my gut, I wouldn’t know we were moving at all.

I hate it.

I’m used to feeling the world when I travel—the crunch of snow, the sway of a cart, the ache of a climb. This? This is movement without motion, stillness without rest. Like the space around me is rearranging itself while I stay exactly where I am.

"Don’t worry," Sinea says, lightly touching my white-knuckled grip on the rail. "You’ll get used to the sensation."

I doubt that. In fact I’m not stepping foot into this contraption agin if I can help it.

The pressure in my gut tightens, sharpens—like the ground itself is bracing beneath me.

Then, without my permission, the door swings open.

And the world drops out from under me.

A banquet hall. Vast, towering, endless. A vaulted ceiling that swallows sound, chandeliers spilling light across a sea of…

The weight of them hits me before the sight does. A crush of bodies, silk and metal, the murmuring tide of too many voices.

Too many eyes.

The perfect storm of too many people and the strange transport to make stomach lurch. Cold sweat blooms beneath my collar, sticky against my spine.

I’ve stood before demons before. I’ve faced death in the dark.

But I have never been swallowed whole.