Page 43 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

Silence.

Not just in my mind. Not only the shadows.

But between us.

I survey the ruined courtyard—shattered beyond repair. Statues fallen, broken. The pools of water now frozen, crusted in ice and snow. Shards of mirror mix with the falling snow, glittering with eerie light.

The air, cool but not cold—not cold enough to snow—feels wrong. Heavier.

Thrumming.

Tyr’s on his knees, head bowed and hands on the ground like he’s afraid if he moves, the world might split further. I stand over him, cloaked once more in shadows.

I examine my hips to find no fingerprints, no teeth marks on my shoulder.

Only blackened veins of living darkness beneath my skin—in each spot Tyr claimed as his.

Tyr raises his head, eyes on my face.

Like before, there’s still so much in those eyes, so much he won’t or can’t say. Grief. Rage. Hope .

But now there’s something new. Something I dare not speak, dare not think.

Shadows pulse against my skin—reminding me the Council awaits. I nod, and they’ve re-clothed me, replacing the torn, soiled dress with a duplicate. Exactly the same—down to the pin.

Tyr rises, waving his hand to put his clothes back in order.

“Is all that yours?” I ask pointing to a mound of snow collecting by a cracked fountain.

Another wave from him and all the snow disappears.

And with it gone, the silver light of the sigilweave comes blasting back.

“I suppose they’re tired of waiting.”

Tyr says nothing.

“On my way,” I say sweetly to the silvery light. “And I’m bringing the Frozen King with me.”

It’s the swath of windows I notice first. Not the disgruntled blue-robed women sitting before it.

But the wall of glass and the exploded sky beyond.

“Dama’s hand, it’s beautiful,” I murmur. I’ve never seen it from the highest tower in Shadowfell. Never been this close to the colors, the starlight.

Shoreena clears her throat, but I just can’t take my eyes off the sky.

“You’re late,” she scolds, and I have a problem with the tone.

I shift my gaze to her, letting it fall with the full weight of all that’s been lost—all who’ve come before .

Tyr stands at my shoulder, presence crackling like a storm that has only gone to ground.

I feel him there, but I don’t think the others do—Shoreena’s eyes don’t leave mine. None of the councilwomen’s gazes stray from me.

I let her comment stand, curdling in the air for several moments before finally answering. “You’re fortunate I came at all.”

Discomfort ripples through the women. Some shift in their overstuffed chairs. Others clear their throats.

And still others do my favorite thing yet and avert their gazes.

I cross the room, walking behind their table, their backs, to gaze out the window. “It’s quite marvelous.”

“Um, what exactly?” Shoreena asks, tone dry, long-suffering. “The sky?”

I hear the dismissal in her voice.

“Yes, Shoreena. The sky. When you’re born under perpetual snowfall at the hands of a white-haired king, the sky in all its glorious colors is marvelous.”

She sighs. “I suppose.”

I take a few more moments to drink in the sight.

“So, what are you ladies up here doing? Counting your markers? Crying over your lost fortunes?”

“Amara,” says the woman next to Shoreena. “Let us move on to the matter at hand—the Trial results.”

I turn, catching Tyr’s stoic gaze.

He doesn’t signal. Doesn’t do anything except bear witness.

“Can’t say I’m interested in discussing that,” I purr as shadows curl around the councilwoman’s hands, twisting like shackles.

“Can’t say I’m interested in much of anything you have to say,” I announced, walking back to the other side of the table. I saunter down the length, dragging my finger along it before I come to the middle and face them once more.

“In fact,” I say, standing next to Tyr and tucking my arm in his. “Consider this my formal request.” I lock eyes with each of them in turn. “Never summon me again.”

I don’t have to ask. Tyr already knows and shimmers us out of their chambers.

His scent strikes me first. Sweet, masculine, with something ruinous beneath. It’s everywhere, as if wherever he’s taken us is steeped in him.

I take in the room—dark velvet walls, a crackling fire, and an enormous hearth.

Impossibly large bed with dark rumpled sheets.

My stomach drops.

“Is there a reason you brought me to your private bedchamber, Tyr?”

He releases my arm and turns, pacing. His movements are restless, uncalculated—a storm barely leashed by flesh.

“They should never have summoned you,” he growls.

I say nothing, deciding to see what else this version of Tyr lets spill through the cracks.

“You’ve forced the Council’s hand.” He drags a hand through his hair and doesn’t bother to smooth it back down. “You were brilliant.”

He says it low, like it’s not a compliment.

An assessment.

“Devastating. You commanded the room like it was already yours.”

I shrug. “Isn’t it?”

He stops mid-step, pinning me with wide, wary eyes. “What do you mean?”

I raise a hand, letting darkness coil and bloom in my palm. “It’s not such a leap. The pit in the center of Shadowfell crowned me in shadows. You’ve said from the start—though I only now believe you—the shadows aren’t yours. You’ve also said you’re just the steward of Shadowfell.”

I let the darkness dissipate and drop my arm.

“Seems they’ve chosen their queen, yes?”

The light gutters in Tyr’s black eyes.

“It seems that way, doesn’t it.”

He holds my gaze for just a moment before returning to pacing like a caged beast. “They’ll come for you now. They’ll try to bind you. To break you. And I’ll kill them all for daring.”

I can’t help the slow laugh creeping up my throat at his somber promise.

“Of that I have no doubt, but let’s play it different than they expect.”

He stops. “You have a plan?”

I sink into the bench at the foot of his bed, crossing my legs. “They think I’m the Maiden—whatever that is.”

Dawning flashes on his face. “You want to play the part. Draw them out.”

Before I answer, Tyr crosses the room in two long strides. It’s so fast I brace, but he doesn’t strike.

Instead, he gathers me up, burying his face in my neck.

“You smell like night-kissed forest,” he murmurs, voice cracked open at the edges. “And the end of the world.”

Tyr’s breath shudders against my skin, but he doesn’t move. His arms cage me, trembling with restraint.

I tip my head, brushing my mouth against his temple.

And feel it—the last sliver of control between us, the brittle thread of restraint…

Snapping like a breath held too long .

He jerks back just enough to meet my eyes. One final chance to end this. To step away.

Because our moment in the courtyard could easily stay only that.

A moment.

The rush of post-Trial need and the grounding safety found in skin.

A mistake we vow not to make again.

Either of us could step away.

I don’t.

Neither does he.

Because maybe the courtyard was just that.

A rush.

A mistake.

But this?

This feels like a continuation…

Tyr crushes his mouth to mine, all broken want and worship, bruising and raw. His kiss tastes like everything I’ve lost, everything taken.

There’s nothing careful in it.

Only ruin.

I pull him closer, fingers sinking into the hair at his nape, and the shadows answer. They coil around us, binding, bleeding into the very air, until we are nothing but hunger and heat.

Tyr lifts me without breaking the kiss, carrying me to the bed, laying me out like an offering.

To what, or who, doesn’t matter.

I drag him down with me.

His hands find my thighs, splaying them apart as he settles between them—and it is not sweet. It is not soft.

It is inevitable.

Like the shattering of a dying star .

He sinks to his knees, as if worship were instinct, not a choice. Fingers buried in my hips, he pulls me closer and feasts on me like I’m his last meal on this realm.

My back arches, and I grab the sheets in my fist. Fire licks up my spine, but ice circles my core.

Tyr groans as he plunges into my center. “You were always mine,” he murmurs against me, voice dark as the rot beneath the roots of this realm. “Even when the world forgets our names.”

Lightning flashes in the sky, limning my shadows in ghostly silver.

My breath catches in my throat as ice and heat and need all collide. I tangle my hands in his hair—gripping, grounding, desperate not to be undone too quickly.

But the ache coils low and heavy, threatening to escape.

My hips rise, and he holds me there, pinned in his grip, refusing to let me go until he splits my world again.

He already knows my body, and it only takes moments.

When it comes, it’s not a shatter but an unraveling—slow, silent, sacred.

I collapse into my darkness, my shadows. Shivering. Twitching.

Needing more.

Tyr kisses the shadowy veins around my hips where his marks once lived.

I tear at his jacket, his shirt, desperate to feel his skin. He rises from the ground, stripping away the remaining barriers between us.

I stare at the carved muscle, the tattoos on his chest and arm, swirling around his hip, all the way down to his thigh.

And when I meet his gaze again, it’s different.

Tyr slows.

His hands are gentle. Not out of mercy .

But of reverence.

The kind you give when you intend to destroy with worship.

He braces above me, forehead pressed to mine, breath ragged. “Tell me to stop,” he rasps.

I curl my fingers into his hair and throw a knee over his hip, anchoring him to me. “Don’t you fucking dare.”

Something inside him cracks at the words—something final—and then he’s pressing into me, filling me, and the world breaks open.

I arch against him, my breath swallowed by his mouth.

There’s no rhythm to it, no grace. Only the fierce, brutal need to be closer, to tear each other open and stitch the broken pieces back together with flesh and fire.

Shadows bear witness.

Dead gods bow.

Ruined sky cracks further.

He moves harder, deeper, the weight of him pressing until there’s no space between our bodies, no air between our mouths.

Only the press of eternity.

Tyr wraps a hand around the back of my neck, pulling my forehead against his, his voice wrecked and shaking against my lips. “You don’t know how long I’ve waited.”

The shadows quake with his words.

My nails rake down his back, drawing blood, and he growls into my mouth, driving harder, chasing something deeper than release. Something we both want but neither can name.

And when it breaks—when the moment tears itself open and pours us through it—I swear I hear the world scream.

We come apart in the same breath, unraveling and remaking each other in the same moment.

We don’t speak.

There are no words left for what we are.

Only the wreckage, and the quiet, thundering truth rising in its wake.

We can never undo this.

Later—who’s to say how much longer—the sheets are still tangled around my hips, heavy with sweat and shadow. Tyr sits beside me, bare-chested, quiet in a way that doesn’t feel cautious. Just…full.

Like words would only empty the moment.

With a flick of his fingers, a tray appears on the sheets before us—silver dishes, obsidian stemware. Nothing casual. No attempt to disguise this as anything but what it is.

A meal between royals.

I drag the sheet tighter around me and reach without ceremony. Figs, seared meat, bitter greens dusted in something glittering. I don’t ask what. I chew.

The silence between us feels like a different kind of communion.

He tears the bread. Offers me a piece. I take it, brush his fingers with mine. Not on purpose. Not entirely.

He opens his mouth—some thought forming—but I shake my head, slowly.

“Don’t.”

He obeys.

We eat like everything is different and also the same. Like the world didn’t turn over under our bodies. Like I didn’t die and rise again somewhere in the middle of it .

And then?—

The door crashes open.

Not a knock. Not a voice announcing itself. A shimmer and the stench of sanctimony.

Lorien.

He strides into the room like it belongs to him. As if any of this ever did.

The shadows react first—curling tighter around my body, drawing the sheets close like armor. Tyr doesn’t move. Not yet. He only shifts slightly, enough to be between Lorien and me without blocking my view.

“So this is where you’ve been,” Lorien says, his simpering tone wrapped in false warmth.

I hear it now, what’s always been there.

See it, too.

The Maggot King beneath the mask.

He can’t hide from me any longer.

He leans in the doorway, pretending to look at his nails. “Whoring your way into a crown?”

I don’t flinch.

He takes in the room—the bed, the remnants of our sex, the wreckage we’ve made in our wake.

“She refused to meet with the Council,” he says, directing it at Tyr like a report. “Shoreena told me everything. Your little Maiden ordered us never to summon her again.” He pauses. “As if she thinks herself untouchable.”

I stretch one leg from beneath the sheet, resting it over the other, slow and deliberate. “I am untouchable.”

Lorien’s golden glow flickers. “You’re not a queen, Amara. You’re a tool. A vessel. You’re?—”

“Everything you’re not.” My voice doesn’ t rise. It doesn’t need to.

He stares, jaw tightening, nostrils flaring slightly while he tries to recover.

“If the Council wishes to speak with me,” I say, brushing crumbs from my fingers. “They may submit a formal request. In writing.”

Lorien’s gaze tracks from me to Tyr and back again.

Tyr speaks at last. “Leave.”

The weight of the command stills the room.

But Tyr isn’t finished.

He rises to his full height, every line of him sharp with threat. “While she’s letting you.”

Lorien doesn’t move. Not for a breath. Not for two.

Then vanishes in a pulse of furious gold.

And we are alone again.

Tyr sits back down, and the door slams behind Lorien.

Silence folds around us again, broken only by the low crackle of fire and the faint scrape of forks against plates.

Tyr hasn’t moved from the edge of the bed, watching the embers like they hold an answer he doesn’t want to say aloud.

“They’ll make their move soon,” I murmur, not bothering to look at him. “Now that I’ve made mine.”

He nods once. “They’ll try to pull you into a ceremony. Lock you in a role before you can claim your own.”

I scoff. “They think I still want to be chosen.”

Tyr lifts his gaze to mine. “Don’t you?”

I smile, slow. Cold. “Never. I never wanted their approval. I only wanted to survive long enough to tear it all down.”

Tyr pauses, going still. Then he curves his mouth upward. It’s not a smile. “Then you know what happens next.”

I rise, letting the sheet fall, uncaring if he looks.

He does. But it’s different. Not hunger. Not awe.

Readiness.

“Next,” I say, “they dance to my tempo.”