Page 40 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

TYR

She’s beautiful in her defiance.

I can’t stand to keep my eyes on her too long, or I risk giving something more away.

I stare at the ground until Varek elbows me.

“You don’t want to miss this, brother.”

I bristle at the casualness but lift my gaze all the same.

The shadows have her now—completely—and they carry her toward the pit.

I hold my breath as they drag her under.

The audience screams in protest.

They should.

I made sure her odds were the best.

Made certain no one bet on her death.

And yet they watch her fall.

Just like I do.

They watch this world swallow her the way it’s swallowed so many before.

Moments pass.

Shoreena catches my eye, tilting her head in question.

I shake mine.

Give her time, damn you.

Varek shifts beside me, impatient, foot scuffing the stone.

I consider stomping on it.

And then?—

A single thready wisp of shadow rises from the center of the world.

Higher.

Stronger.

The audience gasps.

Someone screams.

And there she is.

Amara, rising from the pit, cloaked in living shadow.

Crowned by their darkness.

AMARA

The shadows— my shadows—curl around me, setting me gently at the edge of the pit.

The crowd stirs. Someone tries to clap, but the sound is thin. Wrong.

Do they even know why they’re clapping?

I move through the stunned world without meeting a single face.

Not in the crowd.

Not Ashera.

Not Selke.

Especially not the kings behind me .

Each step I take, shadows ripple out beneath my feet.

And with each step, the world reshapes itself.

Bloomrot thickens, curling black and heavy around petals and vines.

Flowers bloom and decay in an instant before turning to ash.

Crystalline veins crack under the weight of something they can’t hold.

And I keep walking.

Up the Woundspire’s steps

Through the antechamber.

Down the empty hall.

Onto the sigilweave.

And back to my chamber.

Where else can I go?

The shadows cocoon me as I lower into the chaise.

They hum around me, a quiet heartbeat.

I stare at the wall.

Is this what they wanted?

This shadow-cloaked myth they’ve been grooming?

This Maiden?

And if it isn’t...

What in Dama’s bloody chains am I?

The room feels heavier. As if gravity pulls at me differently. Shadows pulse in time with my breath, and where I look through them, colors don’t dull, they enhance…

I don’t know how long I stare at that wall, watching the darkness ebb and swirl in front of it like some strange mirage, but it’s long enough that I think about moving the chaise to face the window.

And the moment the thought occurs, the shadows—dancing, breathing, blanketing me—swirl around the settee, lift it and me off the ground, and reposition us to face the window.

I’m indifferent to it, to this world and all I’ve seen in it, I hardly process it. Hardly notice. I simply stare out the window at the cracked sky, bleeding more color than ever before. As if the sky might open up and devour the world itself.

The shadows continue screaming quietly inside my mind.

“I don’t want to be disturbed,” I say to no one. But the shadows answer, splitting off and blocking the door. The remaining darkness curls around my fingers and wrists like a pet snake, waiting, shivering in anticipation of my next command.

All I can do is stare at the shattered sky and aim to not hear their cries. But that’s all there is… The voices within the darkness—Sevigny’s, the terrified one, all the nameless, faceless others from so many seasons before.

If their souls, or essences, or some part of them is trapped in the pit of this world—or worse, in the shadows themselves—then they aren’t in the Shadowed Veil.

They aren’t at peace.

I can’t hold the weight of that.

Not now. I just stare.

I watch the sun set, the night spread across the sky like jewel-studded velvet.

The shadows breathe. They don’t still. They don’t quiet.

Sevigny’s last words to me play over and over.

You know what to do.

But I certainly do not.

The sun rises, spilling shocking green and blue across the horizon .

More last words of women I never knew.

Mamma!

Please, Dama, save me!

I never wanted this.

A little green bird catches my attention, its feathers reflecting in the light. It offers a single shrill chirp, and I nod.

“Fine,” I say, gesturing to the space next to me.

The bird flies in and, with considerably less fanfare than the first time, she transforms into Sinea.

“Are-are you all right?” Her gaze flicks to the swirling shadows at the door, then the ones clinging to my wrists like wraiths.

I stare at her, and she looks different.

Subtly. I can see more of her through whatever glamours or magic she uses. Her angles are sharper. Teeth slightly angled outward. She’s more fae than she lets on.

“No one quite knows what to make of the Trial. The kings shimmered themselves away as soon as the audience learned the few who had bet on your death wouldn’t be paid.”

I lean back in the chaise, grip finally loosening from the arm. “I hope they found Shoreena and strung her up.”

Sinea’s brows pinch together. “Why would you wish for that? She didn’t cause this. She didn’t start the Trials. The demons did. She’s trying to make a living in a world stacked against her. Like all of us.”

And that is a perspective I hadn’t reached before.

“So, what is all this?” She gestures to me, the shadows, to all of it.

I glare at her. “Isn’t this your Maiden?”

“That?” It looks as though she might disagree. But she quickly thinks better of it. “You know, I don’t rightly know. I suppose it could be.”

I say nothing, letting the silence stretch, staring at the fissure in the sky. “You lied to me.”

Sinea nods. “Countless times. But only because I thought it was what you needed to hear to put you in a good position.”

I shake my head. “I’m not talking about that. You lied about women dying. You said the ones who don’t win the Trial go on to become attendants or to other vestiges to find husbands.”

Sinea nods. “I did say that.”

I suck in my cheeks, letting my teeth grind against the sore parts. “You know they’re trapped there. I heard them. I hear them now. In the shadows. They don’t move on to the Shadowed Veil.”

Sinea’s features give nothing away. “I did know. They’re part of it now. Part of the Trials, the land, the?—”

“The rot. The corruption. The evil?—”

She cuts me off with a scoff. “Don’t be so na?ve, Amara.”

“Excuse me?”

Sinea sits down next to me. “Evil doesn’t exist.”

A bitter laugh rises from me. Tell that to the women screaming inside my head.

I lift a brow at her. “I think I’d call allowing women to be hunted and transformed into something they don’t understand… Women forced to live in service to the prophesy of some Maiden meant to?—”

Sinea presses her fingers to her forehead. “Priestess, shut up for a second, Amara.”

I stare at her, stunned.

“I’m not saying this world is just or fair or even kind. But I am saying that your vision of evil is corrupted. The shadows you dress yourself in?—”

“I did not choose this. They chose me.”

She purses her lips at me. “I’m saying the shadows aren’t evil. They’ve existed far longer than the concept.” Her eyes dart to the door. “Did you hear that?”

I shake my head. I heard nothing.

“Do you want me to answer it?”

“I don’t want visitors. I made an exception for you because I forgot you can turn into a bird. If I had, I would have sealed the window shut, too.”

She nods, settling into the chaise, and we stare out the window.

For all the light she’s shed, she’s also illuminated things I hadn’t dared consider.

If the shadows chose me, or vice versa, and the shadows also seemingly house the spirits of all those women who came before me…

Gods…

“I-I think you should go,” I say quietly.

Sinea doesn’t question me. She simply nods and transforms herself, then flies out my window and toward the setting sun.

I shake my head. Reeling.

If the shadows chose me...

And the shadows hold them...

Then all of them are inside me now.

Their memories. Their rage. Their loss.

My breath comes quicker, more shallow, and the screams in my head grow louder.

I press my hands to my temples.

Stop. Please. Stop this .

Sevigny’s laugh plays like a memory, braided over her scream, over the others’ screams.

And I, too, scream.

The shadows spiral out from me, filling the room with darkness.

I could burn it all down. Raze and salt the earth and hope that whatever grows through the bones of what was isn’t so corrupt. Isn’t so twisted, bent only toward its own survival.

I could.

And maybe I will.