Page 39 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

The potentials and I exchange glances across the wounded mouth of the world.

The gaping maw of the Mother.

Ashera’s eyes widen at the site, like even she’s not sure what to do.

Selke and I lock eyes. She mouths something, and I try to follow her lips but can’t make it out. I shake my head, not understanding. She grits her teeth and tries again.

“You first.”

Except the crowd has other ideas. Everyone in Selke’s section rises as one, stomping the ground hard enough to rattle the stone beneath her. They chant words that aren’t in the common tongue—or any other Mother taught us.

Selke’s eyes widen, the whites flashing as her arms flail outward. She crouches low, trying to steady herself?—

As if the world itself is trying to buck her off.

Selke screams, pitching forward?—

And shadows rise from the pit.

A writhing bloom of living darkness. Blacker than ink, unfurling in shapes the mind was never meant to hold. Tendrils spill outward, coiling silken across the scarred sky, gleaming with colors that, like the sky, shouldn’t exist.

My chest tightens, throat growing hard as gleaming tendrils curl toward her, catching the light like raven feathers.

She bats them away, screaming, but the shadows only thicken around her, winding upward from the pit.

Soon, only Selke’s beautiful face remains above the shadows.

“Leave her alone!” I shout across the pit.

But the shadows do not bend to my will. I do not command them.

I track down Tyr’s gaze. “Do something!”

He merely shakes his head in resignation, and I can nearly hear his voice in my mind.

“I’ve told you. The shadows are not mine, Amara.”

Selke’s eyes roll back. Her jaw slackens. It’s not fear I see anymore—only a strange bliss—as the tendrils lift her like a queen on a chaise of darkness, carrying her toward the pit.

Dama’s fucking chains, her expression…it’s ecstasy.

Twisted and strange, but unmistakable pleasure. And it slams me back into memory—the unsanctioned pre-Trial. It was just like this. Shadows teasing and twisting, responding to me…

“They respond to your emotions, Selke!”

Ashera folds her arms, backing away from the edge of the pit, but more shadows emerge, creating a living wall of darkness behind her, keeping her in place.

“I’d figured that out,” Selke says, low and guttural. Darkness dances around her body, gliding up her skin. “Not this,” she murmurs, too quietly for me to hear, but somehow, I do .

I feel it.

The crowd keeps jeering, keeps stomping, and it occurs to me. They’re not cheering for her.

They want her to fail. They want the shadows to take her.

They’re rooting for her death.

She screams again as the shadows rip her clothes off. She’s nude, and all these people watch as shadows take what she hasn’t agreed to give.

“WHY? Why is this the Becoming!” I shout into the crowd, at the kings, at the shadows themselves.

“I will remind the other potentials to remain quiet,” Shoreena’s voice coos over all else. “The shadows do only what must be done to make a Maiden.”

The woman’s voice burns into my mind. Seared, forever. Whatever happens here, if I win or lose, I will find a way to make Shoreena, the kings, this whole fucking world, pay for the humiliation. The torture.

I’ll burn it all down.

With them in it.

At last, the shadows decide they’re done with Selke and set her back on the ground. They don’t linger, leaving her standing nude, shaking but upright, defiant.

The stomping stops, edging into low, murmuring grumbles.

They’re upset.

Ah. I see it now.

They aren’t laying bets on who wins. They’re betting on who dies.

Charming.

The shadows shudder, quivering and shimmering above the pit before writhing toward the next potential.

Ashera .

She doesn’t fight.

Doesn’t flinch before the mass of coiled nightmare. She raises her chin.

“Hello, my pretties. I’m happy to see you again,” she purrs and slips off her lace cloak, preparing for the same treatment as Selke.

But the shadows do not want the same from her.

They grab her by the throat, snatch her off the ground, and dangle Ashera over the pit.

Ashera clamps her eyes shut, screaming, as her legs sway over the chasm. “Please!” she screams.

Of course it would be different for her. Ashera isn’t afraid of sex or nudity, not even publicly. Being Graceborn trained her for that.

Is that the game? Are the shadows revealing our fears? Mapping our responses to see who’s worthy?

I’ve never seen Ashera without that composed expression, but now…

She clings to the band of twisting darkness around her neck, both wanting to be free of it and desperate for it to stay exactly where it is.

“Calm down!” I cry over her screams. “You must relax, or it will only get worse.”

Ashera screams again. “Go fuck yourself!” she growls, then takes a big, shuddering breath.

My eye catches the other potential, refusing to look at the scene before her.

She’s crouched, hugging her knees, trembling with sobs, and my throat locks tight as I realize that’s exactly how Vella would have reacted.

Terror.

“Stop this!” I scream at no one.

Everyone .

At the kings, idly watching, the crowd of demons and humans gambling. The Maiden Council. The dead gods. Everyone.

And no one does.

I find Tyr’s gaze, and he flinches. He sees it. The oath in my eyes.

I will end them all.

I will end him.

Tyr bows his head. As though he’s accepting his fate.

The audience in Ashera’s section continues to jeer and stomp, and though she’s trying to calm herself, the shadows drag her to the center of the pit, and dangle her over the deepest part.

Ashera goes limp, her body fatigued or just tired of fighting a battle we were never meant to win. Who’s to say?

Urine trails down her leg, dripping off her slippers and into the shattered chasm. Her eyes are downcast, tears streaming.

Suddenly the shadows vibrate, tendrils lashing out in all directions, mass growing larger.

They ripple through the air en masse and return her to solid ground.

The pieces started falling into place. The Trial wanted Selke’s virtue and Ashera’s humiliation.

What will it want from me?

From the other potential?

But before I can ponder the answer, the crowd behind the girl who reminds me so much of Vella stands, stomping.

And the shadows respond. They don’t drag her out immediately, like with Ashera.

No.

They treat us all differently. With her, a single tendril of darkness hovers in front of her, beckoning. Asking .

I can almost hear it.

Come join us. Come play. Come see what you’re made of.

But she doesn’t move. She only shakes her head, sobbing, huddling closer to her knees as if she could make herself small enough to not be seen.

Not be noticed.

Not be here.

“You have to!” I shout over the pit. “You have to let it test you.”

She hears me and meets my gaze—hers tear-lined and reddened. “I can’t. I—I know if I let it, I’ll die.”

Her crowd jeers, taunting her, and she covers her ears. “Please, don’t make me do this.” It’s hardly more than a whimper, but I feel her words echo in me.

Another inky tendril joins the first, twisting around itself while both motion her toward them playfully.

She buries her face in her knees once more and lets out a wail. “Please stop!”

A third joins, but she can’t see it, and it only takes a moment for the shadows to render their verdict.

The three tendrils separate, scooping her up gently as she cries into her knees?—

And throws her into the pit.

The crowd roars with approval, almost louder than her screams.

And the girl is gone forever.

Taken by a world too cruel for her to survive.

My mind whirrs. Think, Amara! What do they want from you?

The shadows weave closer, consuming the air as they do.

Of Selke they demanded surrender…her body and will.

I’ve already given that during the pre-Trial .

They wanted Ashera’s exposure. She had to lose her dignity and composure.

And the woman from the courtyard?

They’d wanted her to abandon her instinct to shrink, to hide. And when she didn’t…

I shake my head. For as much of the game as I can see, I can’t see what they want from me.

I throw a glance at Tyr, hoping…

But he’s staring at the ground. As if he’d rather be looking anywhere but at the woman about to die.

“Coward!” I scream at him, and the shadows shiver as they descend on me.

I stiffen, preparing for?—

Anything. Everything.

They glide down my skin, blotting out the world, the stares, the jeers, until all I can hear is a single voice.

You know what to do.

The familiar sound sends a dart of dread straight into my heart.

“S-Sevigny?” I whisper into the thickened darkness.

Another voice comes from within the shadows. A scream. One I know all too well.

The woman the shadows just murdered.

Do what they ask! she screams as if she’s still fighting them off—even in death.

More voices…all feminine.

Give in to them.

Release your burden!

“Tell me something helpful, or shut your fucking mouths!”

The chorus of voices, crying, screaming, encouraging, fall silent. The shadows still float and funnel around me, grazing my skin .

“What do you want?” I ask it.

The shadows answer.

Everything.

They lift me off the ground, gently carrying me to the deepest, darkest center.

Everything. That’s all?

“Fine,” I say. “Have it. Take it. Take everything. I have nothing left, anyway.”

The whirring in my mind stops. The silent hum of calculation, of planning, and tracking, falls silent. The shadows thin, just enough for me to see a single face through them.

Tyr, watching, eyes wide. Lips pressed together.

The light bends wrong, colors streak through my eyes, and the world…

The shadows and arena, everything falls away.

A girl kneels in a bed of ruined flowers—petals thin as bone.

A circlet of rotting blooms crowns her bowed head.

The vision rips away, leaving only darkness before another scene surges up to swallow me whole.

The woman gliding over a battlefield, touching the fallen.

It disintegrates, and another scene plays behind my eyes.

The crowd jeering, chanting, the ones in my section stomping.

The scene twists, and I’m seeing it from Tyr’s eyes…

Swirling darkness all around me, slowly, so slowly, sinking into the pit.

Shadows curl tighter—around my ankles, wrists, my throat.

I don’t resist .

I don’t fight.

I let them have me.

There’s no sensation of falling. Only sinking. Slow. Deep.

The arena tilts overhead, the spectators and kings reduced to distant smears of light.

Cold presses in, sinking into my bones, but I keep drifting farther downward.