Page 28 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

Lorien stiffens.

Tyr smiles.

And the other kings…

They sit straighter, as if finally waking up from a century-long slumber.

“Get your potential under control, Tyr, before I have to take matters into my own hands.”

Lorien says it loud enough for all to hear, but Tyr doesn’t bother with a response. Instead, he leans forward and locks those coal-black eyes on mine.

“If you’re leveling accusations, potential, I suggest you finish the Trial first.”

Oh.

Sure.

Yes, of course—finish first, then discuss how the game is rigged. That makes perfect sense.

I show the king a finger and sit back down.

Whatever magic keeps my goblet filled also removes the pile of half-chewed food next to me. I shake my head, trying to make sense of this .

Why would they rig a trial so no one could win?

I breathe, slow and steady. Ground myself. I can’t think about that now. I have to win. That’s all. Win the first Trial. Another breath and I let my lids flutter closed, centering myself in my body. The feel of the velvet pillow under my fingertips. The scents of the room mingling in my nose.

Veydra wants surrender.

So I’ll give it to her.

Another slow inhale and I take a small purple-red fruit, round at the bottom, tapering toward the top. Its flesh is slightly velvety.

I don’t know the name for it but I hold it up, gaze following to the ceiling. To her. “In your name, Veydra, I take this fruit.”

Slowly, I bring the strange thing to my lips and take a small bite.

Its flesh is both firm and has give. Sweet but not overly so. It doesn’t explode with layers and texture and music.

It’s simply food.

Nourishment.

Warmth settles in my chest, glowing like well tended embers.

A sip of wine washes it down.

Wine that doesn’t enchant. Doesn’t tempt me to pour it over myself. Just delicious, fermented grapes.

The potentials sharing the platter stare at me.

“What is happening exactly?” one with burnished umber skin and a lovely halo of reddish curls asks. She has a measured curiosity about her.

I pick up another of the same fruit and offer it to her. “I’m not sure, honestly. But I think I broke their little game.

She eyes the fruit, refusing to take it.

“I don’t blame you. But it won’t turn you into that,” I nod toward a potential entirely lost in the spell of gluttony. “Not if you do it right.”

“And what’s right?” the other potential asks. She’s got sharp and perceptive gray eyes. Both wear silver silks.

“This is Veydra’s temple, at least I think it is. Treat it like it’s sacred. Like a sacrament to her. With reverence.”

The women pause to glance at each other. “And how does that unmake whatever they’ve spelled the food and wine with?” asks the one crowned in curls.

“I haven’t a clue. I just know that it worked.”

Both women stare at me, suspicion still etched in their gaze.

“It’s up to you. I’m not trying to make you do anything. But the game is rigged. And I found a way around the trap.”

I set the fruit back on the dish and my gaze goes to the lofts. The nobles, demons and humans a like seem…

Disappointed.

I shrug. Tired of being gawked at, of their judgement, I stand. “Are we done here?” I turn to the kings’ loft. “Can I be excused from the dinner table now?”

I curtsey, sour and deep. When I rise, they’re whispering among themselves.

All except Tyr.

His gaze burns through me and I can’t sort whether it’s with anger or something else.

The war king pulls away from the discussion first. “Sit down, you arrogant little cur!” His face reddens and all the stitches in his talisman cloak heave and stretch with his anger.

My gaze goes to his hands instinctively, waiting for him to swing a weapon or aim a spell.

“Look at me when I speak to you, girl!”

I smile, eyes lowered. Voice soft. “I’m sorry King of Bones and Blood. Would you like me to sit or look. I can only fit so much in my girlish mind.”

He snarls, but I’m certain I catch someone coughing a laugh.

“You think you’re so special, girl from the frozen lands. Well, allow me to correct that mistake. You are nothing. Not here. Not anywhere. And if you think you can simply break the game because it doesn’t suit your fancy?—”

Lorien clears his throat. “What the good king Varek is saying, Amara, is that you may not be excused as there is a second aspect to this Trial.”

That, not the war god-king’s insults, strike like ice water.

“Fantastic,” I say with a sharp smile. “Just want I wanted. An encore.”

Their attendants escort out the potentials who’d entirely lost themselves. Only five of us remaine.

The ones who didn’t partake.

And me.

We sit in a circle facing each other. No food or wine. Only pillows and our knees brushing each other.

I’m next to the gray-eyed potential in silver. Next to her is her vestige mate crowned in curls. On my other side is Sevigny, and next to her, is another potential I haven’t met. Dark hair and eyes like me, but her shoulders are tanned, not pale and translucent having never seen the sun.

“The next part of the Trial,” the Gloaming Room woman—Shoreena says, “starts now.”

Smoke swirls around the king’s loft. Embers flair within thick gray plumes and when it clears, the kings are gone .

No longer seated in their obsidian thrones.

“Relax,” a voice croons behind me.

Varek.

Of course.

“Why don’t you relax?” I counter but the bite in my tone falter as his fingers grazes—rough and calloused—graze the exposed flesh of my shoulder.

Panic knifes through me, flashes red over everything.

Across the circle, Lorien touches the potential crowned in curls. Her jaw is clenched, her eyes far away.

I scan the others. All of them keeping still. Enduring. Masking. The one with dark hair and eyes shudders as the Shrouded King threads his bony fingers through her hair as though he might weave it into silk.

Think.

What is this? What are they trying to do?

Make us the Maiden.

How?

I glance upward to Veydra, her eyes now closed.

Think!

Varek’s hand scrapes down my back. Gooseflesh rises—not at the sensation, but the wrongness.

He groans, low and pleased. Misreading it.

Sweat prickles at my scalp. My stomach lurches.

But I force my thoughts into place.

Veydra. Gluttony and fornication?

No. That’s not what she wanted.

His fingers slip lower, beneath the fabric.

To my hips.

I swallow, rage and nausea tangling in my gut. And I find Tyr.

His eyes—black mirrors—locked on mine .

His jaw is clenched as he pets Sevigny’s shoulder next to me.

I scan the other king’s faces, all focused on the potential Maiden in front of them. Even the Withered King is enraptured by the jagged pulse in the gray-eyed potential’s neck.

All except Tyr. I lock onto his gaze once more and something in his face softens. It’s only a fraction. Hardly recognizable. But I see it.

My breath catches.

This is the Trial.

But it’s not what it seems.

“It’s not—” I start, voice dry and cracking. “It’s not what it seems.”

“Quiet, girl” King Varek orders and grabs a fist full of my ass. “You’re ruining my fun.”

I quake on my pillow, knees, fists, shoulders. Not in fear of what he might do. But with the rage that he’d try.

And for the first time in my life—despite years of hiding myself with thick layers, despite knowing what my body meant to others—I wish I wasn’t female.

I wish I had the stature, the strength, to fight this king off.

But I don’t.

He sinks to his knees behind me, his hot breath on my neck as he whispers against it. “This is my favorite Trial, girl, and I won’t have you ruining—aaack!”

Warm blood drips down my back.

Because while I don’t have the strength to match him, I did have the element of surprise. And I bet it surprised the fuck out of him when his nose met the back of my head.

The king stumbles back, landing on his ass with a thump .

“As I was saying, this isn’t what it seems.” I meet every potential’s gaze, waiting until I have their attention.

“Veydra doesn’t want fornication, just like she didn’t want gluttony.”

Tyr’s voice glides through the air like silk. “Then what does she want, Amara?” I shudder as it finds its home under my skin.

I meet his gaze, smoldering like black fire. He’s no longer touching Sevigny. All the kings have stilled.

“She wants reverence.”

“And?” he pushes.

My chest tightens. His gaze lands inside me like a mark. A brand.

“She wants us to choose her. To exalt her—if we wish. With food. With sex. But it must be offered. Not coerced.”

“What…what are you saying?” Sev asks.

“I’m saying I choose to honor her by abstaining.”

I rise. “I’ll be on my way now.”

Halfway to the doors, I hear the others rise behind me.

We walk together, out of the circle.

Out of their gaze.

And that’s the end of the first Trial.

The temple somehow leads directly to the Gloaming Room, where the rest of the potentials are seated on the stone benches.

It’s only a moment later when the attendant Shoreena steps in silently and gestures us to line up on the sigilweave script.

“Go on, now. I’m only sending you back to your chambers,” she urges when none of us moves toward the silver sigils etched in the floor .

I don’t remember stepping on the magic scribbles, arriving in my chamber, or even getting in the bed.

Only the drift of weightless air—cool, unfamiliar—on my face.

Then light. Then pressure.

The next thing I’m cognizant of is waking. And a strange pressure in the back of my mind.

No, not pressure, a presence. I open my eyes, expecting Sinae only to find…

“Tyr!” I pull the cover up to my neck.

I also didn’t remember taking off the silk dress, but I could definitely recognize the feel of sheets on bare skin.

“Do you haunt every chamber like this, or just mine?”

“Only when their attendant is as rubbish as Sinae. Why didn’t you tell someone she’d taken your window?”

He gestures to the wall?—

—or rather, the window.