Page 50 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

We don’t speak. I lie in Tyr’s arms, lulled by his steady breath and the scent of his skin—warm, darkly sweet, with something older beneath.

Jesperailia.

That scent…I’ve always known it. A sweet dark fruit from a realm I’d forgotten.

The first realm.

The one I shattered.

When I rise, it’s to take a bath, and I beckon Tyr to join me. His smile is slow as he removes the linens and swings his long legs over the edge of the bed.

Each movement is deliberate, as if he means to savor the space between now and what comes next.

I open the aetherglass door, revealing the bathing chamber beyond, and Tyr pauses. “I forgot I gave you access to the queen’s bath.”

“Is tha—” My voice is weak, still strangled by the remnants of Lorien’s spell. I clear it and start again. “Is that the best you can offer your goddess?” I ask, voice still gravelly and low .

Tyr gives me a devious smile, one I’ve never seen on his face before—not in this life. And with a flourish of his hand, the endless obsidian and eddied waters disappear.

I stand among clouds, the horizon stretching forever. Mist wraps around me as my eyes fall on the ancient tub floating above the world.

I don’t know what stone it’s carved of, perhaps white marble or limestone, but I know it’s mine.

Just as I know this place is mine.

Turning around, I stare at Tyr, wide-eyed. “Is this…”

He lowers his gaze. “You know it’s not.”

“Of course.” I go to the edge of the tub, letting my fingers trail across the surface. “A fine illusion, all the same.”

For a moment, just a moment, I thought I was here.

There. But that realm no longer exists.

I look in the water, and upon seeing my own sour reflection rippling back, I give Tyr a final command. “Put it back.”

My voice cracks on the order—from emotion or residual spell, I cannot say which.

The mist and clouds melt away, and we’re back in the obsidian tomb of a bathing suite.

I let out a slow breath and walk into the roiling water. Tyr isn’t far behind me, hissing when his toes meet the water’s edge. “Gods below! Are you trying to boil me, wom—Amara?”

I offer him that same slow smile. “I like my gods tested and unbroken. If you can’t bathe with me, you’re free to wait in the bedroom.”

He splashes in the rest of the way, teeth gritted, before lowering in fully and positioning himself behind me. He pulls my back to his chest, and I let myself relax against him .

The position sparks a flood of mist-covered memories. Gooseflesh rises along my arms as endless evenings sprawl out in my mind, an eternity I might have had with my heart’s desire.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

“Shh. Don’t. Do not. I’m just as?—”

“I’m sorry I was so childish. So petty. I sundered a realm because my children were too perfect, and it cost me you.”

He smooths the hair off the side of my face. “You did not act alone, Amara. I was there with you, side by side. And until you’ve remembered all of it, I ask you not to blame yourself.”

“There’s more? More yet to remember?”

Tyr nods against the top of my head. “More yet to remember and also become. But there will be time for all of that later. Now, we must discuss?—”

“Lorien.”

“Precisely.” Tyr weaves his fingertips into my scalp, rubbing with just the right amount of pressure that makes my scalp tingle all the way down my spine. I sigh into the luxurious pleasure. “I think we should?—”

“Pretend I’m still bound to him.”

He kisses the top of my head. “Right again. The shadows claimed your current form, and that gives you an advantage. But if we pretend he’s still hidden that ability?—”

“And I’m still voiceless…”

Tyr flinches beneath me. “That, too,” he rumbles low in his chest. “If you stay the wounded bird he made you, he won’t have reason to escalate, and I can organize the Tirianan evacuation.”

I pause, sitting up and facing him so abruptly, water splashes in my god-king’s face. “You’d evacuate Tiriana?”

He nods. “My spies tell me Lorien’s forces are moving toward Tiriana. He intends to breach the ice wall and overtake Shadowfell and the rest of the northern continent by any means necessary.”

“Why?”

Tyr sinks further into the pool, white hair fanning out around him like a death shroud caught in the current. Suds washes over the shadowed marking I left in his flesh. And I wonder…

For the first time…

How many other women have touched this body?

My hands curl into fists under the water.

“Why does a king do most things? More power. Or fear of losing said power.”

I don’t hear him, not truly. I’m too busy thinking about how many lips touched the skin inked in remembrance of me.

How many thighs has he knelt between…

I shoot upright, towering over him, shadows twisting and curling around me.

Tyr looks up at me, unbothered.

And he smiles. “There you are.”

I reach down and ring his neck with one hand, lifting him from the water. Tyr still smiles as his lids flutter downward—not quite closed.

“How many?” I ask.

“You ask every cycle,” he says with that same smile, same lazy stare. “And every time, the answer is the same.”

I squeeze his neck harder, not cutting off his air, just the blood. “Then tell me again.”

He cups his hands around mine at his throat. Not to remove, merely to touch. “There has only ever been you, Amara. Every recurrence, every spiral, every lifetime, it’s only you. ”

I release him, and he holds my gaze.

“Even now?”

“Even now. Especially now.”

I nod, mind replaying every time I saw a shadow of ache, of memory in his gaze before… Every time I dismissed it as something else.

I can’t linger in those thoughts long. The burden he must have carried, the knowledge. I clear my throat and sink back into the pool.

“The Withered King.”

Tyr nods, sitting with me, scooping me into our previous position. “An old ally.”

“Trustworthy?”

“He’s aligned with me, and so he is also aligned with you.”

I draw shapes in the suds on his kneecaps. “And the others? I assume Carrion King has made his allegiance known?”

Tyr chuckles lightly. “Carrion King? Which of them deserves such a blasphemous title?”

“The one who touched me at the second Trial.”

My choice of words has the exact effect I hoped.

Tyr’s chest stiffens as if preparing to fight.

“A fitting name, then. As to your question, I don’t give a sullied hollow whose side he’s on.

The Maiden Council kept me from choosing you during that Trial, stating it wouldn’t be fair to the other potentials.

But by blood and bone, Amara, I’ll make him pay for putting his filthy mortal hands on you. ”

Need grows between my thighs, and I turn to face my god-king. “Swearing oaths like that will get you in trouble, Tyr.”

His gaze flashes to mine. “Trouble I suspect I will savor. ”

I hold his gaze until our breaths quicken, and suddenly, I’m in his lap, having him once more.

Afterward, we discuss the rest of the dead kings, their allegiances, and whether we might convince them to swear fealty to Tyr.

“The Shrouded one and the Void King, what of them?” I ask.

Tyr lets out a heavy breath. “They are more complicated than they seem.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means there’s more for you to remember, love.”

In the end, we have a plan.

It’s tenuous and relies far too much on luck and timing and too little on skill.

But it’s what we have.

That night, after several more rounds of claiming each other’s bodies, I fall asleep in Tyr’s arms. In the same bed I was first brought to—unconscious. Merely a woman.

We wake before dawn and worship each other’s skin once more before the rest of Shadowfell rouses.

“Sinea,” I say as we’re getting dressed.

“I think I know where he’s keeping her.”

I lace up the soft boots the aetherglass gave me, and Tyr helps me tie the new corset vest in the back. Over the right breast is the same image of a nyrelith from the silver pin—now embroidered in red silk. I run my fingers along it.

“Take me there?”

“Certainly,” he says, and with a wave of his hand, we’re no longer standing in my bedchamber but in?—

“By the fucking stars,” I moan, covering my nose and mouth with my sleeve.

It smells like human waste and decay and mold .

“Is this a dungeon?” I ask, looking at the plain stone walls and spiderwebs filling every crevice.

“It may have once been, yes. But Shadowfell has many secrets, and I have the keys to none of them.”

He leads me down a long corridor, and the stench only grows stronger as if it’s seeped into the stone and wood.

Cell after cell stand wide-open, wooden doors hanging askew, half rotted. But one cell at the end of the row…

That one has a stone door.

I nod toward it, and with just a thought, Tyr rolls away the stone.

I’m almost afraid to look.

I take a moment, collecting myself for what might lie beyond.

Sinea sits on a filthy cot, body unwashed, hair in mats. She stares at the wall, unseeing.

There’s a festering wound on her thigh. I hadn’t seen it during the profane coronation.

I go to her, seeing her without the mask Lorien used to hide her abuse, without the fae glamours or charms. Just a small, frail, broken woman.

“Shattered skies,” Tyr hums as I lift her off the cot. Sinea doesn’t move. She doesn’t look at me. Not once.

Not when Tyr takes us to the closest bathing chamber. Not when I wash her and he heals the infection in her leg.

Not even when I dress her and arrange her curls the way she likes.

“Sinea,” I whisper, as I tuck her back into her own bed.

She doesn’t hear me. Or can’t.

Or won’t.

But her eyes lower. And I wait until she falls asleep before leaving .

“Protect her,” I murmur to the shadows, and a portion of darkness breaks from the wall, settling at her doorway.

I trust the shadows to keep her safe, but I don’t like leaving her.

I look up at Tyr, and he reads in on my face. “She’ll be safe. At least for the short term.”

I take his arm, and in a heartbeat, we’re back in his suite.

Tyr paces.

I do the same at the opposite end of the room.

“What was he doing to her?” I ask, voice still strained and hoarse.

“I do not know. Lorien’s always been secretive about his power.”

I pause, crossing the room to meet him. “What can you tell me? About him, about Shadowfell or me or… Now is not the time to play the same game you’ve been playing.”

He lifts a brow at me. “I wasn’t playing a game, Amara. I was quite literally compelled. Bound not to reveal anything about our history until you’d discovered it yourself. It’s part of our curse. In fact…”

He takes a breath but doesn’t finish his thought.

I grab him by the shirt collar, pulling him down. “In fact, what, Tyrenoch?”

The name flows from my throat like I’ve always known it.

Because I have.

His true name. The name of the first god…the one whose consummated love with his goddess created a race of demons.

Tyr bows his head.

It’s why he was so angry when I called him the full name of this realm. Tarenvyr …

Calling him that false name was just another reminder that I didn’t remember.

A reminder that he’d failed.

He lets a slow sigh unwind from his chest, uncoiling centuries, lifetimes, of waiting to hear that name once more.

So, some part of him does care what name I call him.

“I was going to say, if you’re away from me for too long, you’ll begin to forget. I discovered that shortly after I found you the first time. But don’t worry. I have no plans to let you out of my sight.”

I close my eyes, reaching for that memory, that recursive lifetime.

It’s hazy, covered in soot and ash, and I can’t quite?—

“Oh! Is that why I forgot you saved me from the demon in the frozen forest? Why I forgot it was you and me in that cave?”

“Exactly. And why I couldn’t explain it to you.”

I turn, headed back to my pacing spot, but Tyr grabs my hand. I look over my shoulder at him.

“There’s one more thing you don’t know that you should.” His voice wavers, and I turn to meet him fully.

“Tell me.”

“There will come a time...” Tyr lowers his gaze, voice now trembling.

His brow furrows as he squeezes my hand tight.

“You must choose, Amara. This life, this world, this fleeting form…”

“Or return to divinity. And begin the spiral anew.”