Page 49 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

The light bends wrong, fracturing, splintering into a thousand rainbows?—

Tyr kneels before me, head pressed against my stomach.

And then…

It’s not Tyr.

A woman kneels in a garden, burying something, flowers twined in her hair.

And the sky above her bleeds.

She looks up at me, and it’s not her face I see.

Just bone.

The ground tips below my feet, and the girl disappears. Now…

I’m in a battlefield, feet bared, dripping blood and ichor over dying soldiers as I glide over them.

“Dama!” screams a mortally wounded human. “Take me! Take me to that next place.”

My body moves toward him and bends, sundering his soul, turning his body to ash.

“Do you see?” a body next to him asks, though it is clearly deceased .

“Amara! Do you see?” It’s Tyr’s voice, bleeding into the battlefield and I look down…

My knees crack on the cold stone as I collapse next to him.

Tyr holds my face, searching, eyes wild, wide…

“Do you see?” he asks again.

Tears roll down my cheeks, hot and unending.

He shakes me. “Amara! Who is Veydra?” he pleads.

A wail rips from me.

Shadows rise from the walls.

Time and place and inevitability converge into a single point inside my chest.

He shakes my face again, harder. “You must say it, woman!”

The words come out as a sob as the memories unfold and spiral out in my mind.

I can’t bear looking at him and pull him close, pressing him hard against me. Digging my fingers into the flesh of his back.

He shudders against me.

“How long?” I whisper.

He groans against my neck.

“How long?” I repeat, when he doesn’t answer.

“As long as it takes, my love.”

He pulls back, looking at me, but I look away.

“Don’t. Gods, don’t do that,” he murmurs, lifting my chin to meet his gaze.

Because standing before me isn’t a white-haired, coal-eyed demon. Not my captor and savior. Not a Frozen King.

His mask is gone.

And for a moment I see every incarnation, every face, every body he’s worn shimmering in front of me.

“Who is Veydra?” he asks .

I stare into his gaze, so full of pain. Of the weight of having remembered while he had to drag me back. Of doing so countless times.

Another wail forces past my lips when I finally tell him what he’s been asking for months. “Me. I am Veydra.”

He blinks. “And who is Dama?”

I nod.

The name I’ve been invoking my whole life.

His brows pull together. “Who is Dama, Amara? And?—”

He pauses, voice breaking.

“And why is she chained?”

The question breaks me. My chest splits in two, like the sky above.

I shake my head, and he grips my jaw, forcing me to look at his face.

A face that isn’t a face, just a shadow of all the different parts it’s played. Blurred at the edges, refusing to come into focus.

“Why is Dama chained, Amara?”

I let another sob wrack my body as the memory floods me.

A goddess on her throne, watching those in her charge. Not humans…

Demons.

They grew powerful. Strong.

They grew cunning.

And she could not abide that.

I shake my head, forcing the memory away.

His fingers on my face dig in brutally as he holds me in place. “Don’t push it away. You must see it. You must say it! ”

She was jealous of her pets. Her perfect little demons. They amassed knowledge and power so quickly, they had to be stopped.

She ripped a tear between planes and made them go through it. Told them it would be better on the new plane.

Told them she loved them.

And destroyed their realm.

But what her pets didn’t know was the new realm had no native magic.

Nothing lived in the aether.

The other gods saw what she’d done to her own creatures and chained her, burying her deep in the core of their world.

Burying…

Me.

“Amara! Why is she chained?”

“As punishment! For betraying her creation. They murdered her and buried her chained body in the center of their world.”

My chest heaves, breaths coming too fast, too shallow.

“Yes. And how are you Veydra and Dama and the Huntress on the battlefields and Amara?”

The spiral collapses inward.

And I break with it.

My throat is dry, thick with emotion, but I answer him. “This is my punishment.” I draw a hand down his shimmering face. “Eternally forgetting my heart’s desire. My one and only.”

“And what is mine?”

I don’t let another sob break free. “Dragging me back. Remembering me and not being able to tell me.”

He collapses into me, shuddering—as if his whole body moans “ finally . ”

I smooth a hand down his back, and for a while, we simply exist there.

Who knows how long?

When the god pulls away from his goddess, he stares at her, at me.

I brush a finger across his cheekbone, so familiar—a face I’ve known in a thousand lifetimes, however it may change.

Firm. Flesh. Real.

Not a memory. Not a vision or a dream. He is here now.

As am I.

Whole.

He leans into the touch, breath hitched in the same spot in his throat that mine is.

“Tyr…” His name tumbles from my lips but?—

My brow furrows.

That’s not his name.

Not truly.

Not anymore.

“What should I call you?” I ask, tracing the lines of his face.

He cups my hand, pressing into it that much more. “Woman, I don’t give one godless fuck what you call me.”

I stare into his eyes, now fully black obsidian. The white hair is back as well. I blink, slowly, and when I open my eyes again, I can see through his Tyr mask. But only if I will it.

My breaths quicken as I continue looking at him.

“Do not look at me with such need if you don’t?—”

I cut off his words with my lips, a hungry groan rising in my throat as they meet.

I consume him, biting, and sucking and tasting, and I know I’ll never have enough. Never be tired of him. Never want another .

Fabric rips, and it’s hard to tell who’s ripping what, because it’s both of us.

One, or maybe both of us, stands, and suddenly we’re on the bed, a tangle of limbs and mouths and teeth, and neither of us can pull away from the other, or get out of our clothes fast enough.

This isn’t lovemaking.

It isn’t even fucking.

It’s something else.

It’s remembrance. It’s homecoming.

It’s…

Sanctuary after ruin.

Our kiss doesn’t break. He falls back on the bed with both hands around my waist, bringing me with him.

So I straddle him, pulling away just long enough to look at all that sacred flesh beneath me.

My heart stops.

Throat hardens as I see with fresh eyes, the tattoo lining his skin.

I trace a line at the top of his shoulder. A pair of chained hands. I continue the line to the next interwoven image, a statue of a woman with her breasts bared. The next is a deep fissure in the world, a canyon, and lower, swirling his ribs is the image of bare feet, dripping with blood and ichor.

Dozens of vignettes line his body from shoulder to hip…

All of them memories.

All of them me.

All I had to do was look.

I shake my head, tears threatening.

“Stop it. You couldn’t see it until the moment you could.” Tyr’s voice is low, gruff, and it settles in my bones, beneath my skin, like it always does .

I shudder at the sensation. “I’m ashamed it took me so long.”

His stare hardens. “Then take succor in my body, woman.”

I smack him across the cheek, hard enough to sting.

“What have I told you about calling me woman?”

He smiles, grabbing my wrist and wrenching me toward his mouth.

“What name shall I use, then?” he whispers across my lips, as his hands glide down my back. “Realm Cleaver? Veydra? Persephone?”

Shadows rise, darkening the room, and I shudder under the weight of recognition. Shivers run down my spine to the beat of each of my former names.

“Amara will do just fine,” I murmur, my teeth sinking into his lower lip.

He rumbles his approval, and I kiss him, hard and completely, letting my hips rise to allow him entry.

“Tell me to stop, and I will,” he says, and I don’t like it one bit. I tell him as much by grabbing him at the base and slamming myself onto him.

His eyes roll into his head.

And shattered realms, he feels like he was carved for me, from me. Like he alone was made to fit my body.

Nails devour flesh, his and mine, and I take my time riding him. Take giddy delight in marking his skin with teeth and blood and power. Shadows fill the wounds I carve—dark rivulets trailing through the raised lines of his flesh.

Lightning cracks through the ruined sky, limning us in silver glow as snowfall dusts my shoulders and Tyr’s chest.

“Snowing inside?” I purr against his chest.

He only manages to groan in response.

Shadows weave through the room, spinning around limbs and linens. Tendrils wrap around Tyr’s wrists, pulling his hands exactly where I want them?—

One cupping my throat.

The other between my thighs, matching rhythm with my movement.

We climb higher together, rending spirit from curse, memory from bone. Riding pleasure like a balm for what ails us.

So when we reach our peak, we reach it together like always, crying out to the ceiling, the shattered sky, the broken realm, and all the times we’ve failed before.

I fall into his arms, panting. Sweat soaked.

The shadows fall away, snowy skin turns glistening, and my breath levels.

Tyr smooths a finger down my spine, and I have the distinct impression of being cleaner.

Less sticky with sweat and other things.

“Did you use some manner of washing charm?”

“I did.”

I nod against his warm skin. “Useful.”

He grunts a laugh, and as much as I don’t want to break this union, sully the space we’ve built here with the rest of the world?—

I must.

Lifting my head to meet his gaze, he presses a finger to my lips as if sensing where my thoughts aimed. “We have time,” he murmurs. “Not a lot. But some. There’s no need to rush through this.”

And so we fall into each other once more. Slower this time.

More deliberate.

I let the shadows do what they will …

I let the memories bleed into us, into the moment, the grief and pain and waiting…

And when I find my piece of euphoria once more, I whisper a promise into my god’s chest.

“Never leave me again. Never let me go. Even if I ask you to.”