Page 4 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

I’d always known what my sister was—what her fate would likely be. But it wasn’t until face-to-face with evidence even I couldn’t refute that I realized I’d always hoped it wasn’t true. Hoped Vella was simply a strange girl who liked plants and learned to care for them to help her family survive.

That’s what I told anyone who asked too many questions.

I didn’t know how tightly I clung to the hope I’d peddled to so many others.

And now, the brutality of having it stripped away, face-to-face with not only the truth but the demon whose only job is to find and kill my sister…

Something wild rages within me. Claws and teeth beneath my skin rip through all that rotting dread. I stop shaking and straighten my spine like Mother’s.

"Whose lovely winter garden is this?" the demon asks. His voice comes in waves, crashing and receding—relentless. Pulling me and that wild, protective creature within me toward his darkness .

"Mine," I answer without hesitation, grounding myself in the snow and soil and cold to keep his voice and all that power from overtaking me. My eyes stay down, but my voice is clear.

Certain.

"It’s mine," I repeat. I don’t dare glance at Vella and send a silent prayer to the Dama that she stays quiet.

"Is that so?"

I keep staring at my boots, but that doesn’t keep me from hearing, from feeling the smile in his words.

"It is." I raise my chin but keep my eyes down, not even daring to look at him through my lashes.

The demon storms past me, carrying with him the scent of a bloom I have no reference for.

It’s achingly sweet, with a depth that clings to the air, as though the world itself mourns its fleeting beauty.

Beneath it lingers a darker note, subtle and sharp, the ghost of something decayed.

It pulls at me, a contradiction of life and death, ruin and splendor.

He stomps into the garden, trampling fruit, and petals, and tender leaves.

My eyes dart to Vella, warning her. To her credit, she keeps her gaze on the ground, just like Mother taught us.

Vella doesn’t make a single sound as the demon destroys her hidden treasure.

I’m uncertain I could have done the same if I were her.

I suppress the urge to pull my coat tighter or curl inward against both the cold and the demon’s ire. In fact, my left hand skims down my side, almost without my knowledge, making sure the fabric is still well away from my figure.

"Your garden? And what is this?"

I turn to see the demon holding a purple-fleshed fruit in his gloved hand .

My answer comes quick and surer than it has any right to. "I don’t know the names. I grow what I like the look of."

"Mm. Look at me. I can’t tell if you’re lying."

I keep my gaze on the fat purple fruit in his hand. "I’ll do no such thing."

The demon stills. "You’d disobey a king?"

"You said it yourself. You’re a king. Not my king."

In that moment, time seems to slow. The icy wind stalls as the fruit falls from his fingers, its purple skin exploding when it hits the frozen ground, spraying seeds and lush golden flesh all over the black leather of the demon’s boot.

Such a pointless waste.

A moment later and he’s closed the distance between us. The demon’s gloved hand snakes under my chin, forcing my head upward.

"Look. At. Me." It’s a whisper, but with every breath, the weight of the underlying command still crashes into me. Through me.

Relentless. Unyielding.

That inner protective beast within me doesn’t rage against it. Doesn’t claw and rend through me to get to the demon manipulating my will.

It stills. As if lying down somewhere in my chest, it settles like a fed and happy feline.

"Do not make me tell you again."

Slowly, deliberately, I raise my eyes to meet his, making sure he sees every scrap of hatred I have for him.

For his kind.

For what they’ve done to us.

And what he will do to me.

I’ve seen a demon before. A fleeting silhouette, a passing face in the distance. They look like us, only perfected versions, like the dead gods who cast them from their realm were kind enough to make sure they blended with the natives, but had no notion that too comely, too perfect is unsettling.

This demon is no exception, though something about him goes beyond the innate disquiet.

His hair, long and snow-white, spills over his shoulders like threads of winter spun too fine to hold warmth.

Coal-black eyes rimmed with lashes of the same, a halo that draws the eye but holds no softness.

And his face—too sharp to be mortal, too symmetrical to be real—seems chiseled from the very ice and snow around us. Cold, unyielding, deadly.

Certainly, he’s beautiful, but in the same way as those red blades just before drawing blood. In the same way that fresh snow lies perfectly smooth, hiding all the rooted traps and loose soil beneath.

His black eyes widen, nose flaring. "What is your name, girl?"

I give him my surname only. "DeTiri." His brow quirks at my surname, as I knew it would, but I press on. "And I’m no girl. I’ve spent twenty-five long turns in this frozen hell of yours."

He meets my gaze fully, and I work to keep my legs from shaking. "My hell? You think I turned your ancestral home to a wind-gutted tundra?"

I swallow against the rising nausea and lift my chin higher. "Are you a demon?"

He looks down at me like one might at an amusing pet. "If you can’t tell, then clearly I’m doing something wrong."

Vella scoffs nearby, but I can’t take my eyes off the hateful creature in front of me.

My lip curls around each word as it leaves my mouth.

"All demons are the same to me." I fold my arms over myself. "Do whatever you’re going to do. Pull out your pretty red blade and get this over with. I’m growing bored. "

Run, Vella. As soon as I’m gone, run.

My sister lets a strangled sob through her lips. Mother taught us better than to show our feelings around a demon, so I have to believe she did it on purpose. Hopefully that means she knows what I want.

"So eager to die, young Maiden. Why is that?" The demon steps even closer, but I refuse to balk. Refuse to give him even a single inch.

"Because dying is better than merely surviving this bleeding white sprawl you’ve forced on us."

A flash of something unexpected fills his black eyes. I can’t be sure what.

A glint of red cuts the corner of my vision, sharp and final, and the demon spins me around, pressing my back to his sturdy front.

His grip is iron, presence overwhelming, and I should be terrified—should claw for the breath that may be my last. But instead, the fight drains from me, slipping through my fingers like blood already spilled.

Fear flares briefly, a hollow echo of what it should be before something else rises to take its place.

Relief.

It swallows me whole, vast and heavy, like the first breath after drowning. Relief, not from death itself, but from the bone-deep cold of this world. Of this existence I never asked for… Of the bitter truth that we are not daughters or sisters or people to them—only bodies that break well.

And yes, I’m loathed to admit it, but relief, too, at no longer worrying about Vella. I can’t protect her from the Veil, no matter how much I’d like to try .

Because death isn’t the greatest loss. It’s the slow unmaking and decay while we still breathe.

And then, like that same breath stolen away—nothing.

Slowly, my eyes open, lashes stuck together with frost. I pry them open, only to see dark fabric billowing and…

Bouncing?

My head aches, and I perform a quick survey on my body. Arms and legs, cold and stiff, but not abnormally so. Midsection…

Sore as if I’ve been bent over something hard for some time.

"Ah, it wakes. Now maybe it will walk on its own, eh?"

The voice is unfamiliar, like metal scraping against stone, with an edge that cuts through the air.

And right through me.

I heave up what’s left in my stomach all down the demon’s back. He doesn’t appreciate that and yanks me off his shoulder, slamming me to the frozen ground.

"That’s my favorite cape," the demon snarls as I groan but I collect myself well enough to respond with a shrug.

"Maybe tone down the grating metal in your voice, and I won’t puke on you." They know—demons—that putting magic in their voices has that effect on us.

But they do it anyway.

If this is the afterlife…

"How dare you speak to me with such disrespect?" He raises his hand to strike me, and though I see it, my legs are too heavy, too cold to move in time.

Warm blood coats my mouth and lips, dribbling down my chin, and I laugh. Not the afterlife. "Aren’t I supposed to be dead?"

"Stupid human girl. Stand up and walk." The demon, face shrouded in a carved metal helmet, puts his hand on the pommel of his sword.

The threat doesn’t land.

"First thing, I’m no girl, demon, and it’s rather unnerving that your kind continues to refer to fully adult females as children.

Second, you can threaten me with that sword of yours all you like.

" I nod toward the thick handle, engraved and embellished with metalwork. "But I already know I’m too important to kill, so you’re just making yourself look foolish. "

"Oh? And how did you manage to work that out?" I can’t see his expression, but the guard’s sneer is clear in every simpering syllable.

I rise, if only to keep the cold from seeping further into my clothes. "If a demon king wants someone dead, I doubt they screw up the job."

"Shut your whore mouth, girl," the demon spits, and those words…not simply calling me a whore but the ridiculous insistence on referring to me as a child… Those teeth and claws rise under my skin, begging to be set free.

"Stupid and ugly, I see. I’ve already told you I’m not a girl, and as for the whore part, well, I’m sure you would know what makes a woman a whore far better than I."

I barely see him unbutton his scabbard before the hilt of his sword crashes into my skull and everything goes dark.