Page 54 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

It’s strange to see my breath in the air, hear these new thick-soled boots crunch on ice, and feel them sink into dense snow…

Without suffering the bite of air, the sting in my fingers and cheeks.

What another version of me would have given for such a luxury.

The moment we breach the burning Pine Forest, our steps become utterly silent. Not even the snow creaks under foot.

Flames dance around us, the Withered King and Tyr bearing the task of diverting them away from our party

I share a glance with Cinder, my hand on the twitching hide of his shoulder, or the bottom of it, anyway.

Tyr says we’re close.

Finally, he sighs into my mind.

Are you certain? Selke asks astride Cinder.

It didn’t take much to get her and Ashera to agree to riding the Steedlords through the forest. But getting them used to riding the enormous beasts was another matter .

“How am I meant to straddle such a wide creature?” Ashera asked when we got her on Duskreaver’s back.

“Hold on to the mane at his withers and use your thighs to keep steady,” Selke answered, looking entirely at ease on Cindermaw.

Ashera nodded. “Yes, I know how to ride bareback. I just don’t know if I can do it with my muscles stretched so far.”

She stiffened, eyes going distant in a way I knew meant Duskreaver was speaking to her. “Shut your filthy mouth, you animal,” she hisses.

Selke had wanted to leave before first light. Said it was bad luck to kill a king under a rising sun.

So we had a meal, rested for a few hours, and left.

Now, under the orange glow of unnatural fire, none of us look the same. Hollowed, haunted in the harsh shadows drawn in flame and ice.

I’m certain, I answer. Over the next hill, we’ll have a clear view of his vestige camp.

A memory folds into me—half-formed, insistent, cold in ways the wind never could be.

I ignore it.

I try to.

But it’s been pacing behind my thoughts since we left the Ruined Fortress.

Tyr, leading the party, stops, peering into the distant flames.

I stretch forward, keeping a hand on Cinder to touch Tyr’s back. What is it? I ask in his mind.

Something is off. Unbalanced.

Selke scoffs in both our minds, connected to us all through Cindermaw. Possibly the horde of soulless vestiges on the other side of the burning forest ?

Tyr turns, looking back where we came. Maybe. Let’s keep moving.

The Withered King grunts his approval behind Ashera and Duskreaver, and we move forward—through fire, snow, and memory.

I feel them, just like in the Ruined Fortress, spinning around me, trying to distract me, trying to give me more pieces of myself.

But I can’t divide my attention now. I have to stay focused on the forest. On the vestiges ahead.

Mother, why do we call different regions of the continent vestiges?

I see myself at the small table in our hovel, Mother across from me, Vella at her breast.

I shake my head, dislodging the memory from my mind, and continue onward.

It doesn’t take long to reach the crest of the hill—to see the valley of vestiges just outside Tiriana’s main square.

My throat thickens.

The square was never much before, but now?—

Boarded up, iced over. Evacuated except for the shells of people Lorien assembled.

They stand in straight lines. Waiting.

Pointed in our direction.

I reach for Tyr’s sleeve, grounding myself in his presence. He scans the field. “I don’t see Lorien,” he murmurs.

“Yes. But once we start killing his puppets, I’m certain he’ll show his face.”

Cinder shifts his weight next to me, letting out a soft snort, but it’s Selke who speaks. “We can’t just?—”

“They’re already dead,” I say flatly. “They are merely husks, emptied by Lorien of everything human. Putting what remains down is a kindness. ”

My words leave a charge in the air.

Like that left by a lie.

It’s true they’re already gone.

But calling it a kindness? That’s a lie I tell for Selke. For Ashera.

And the shared glance between Tyr and the Withered King affirms it.

It is not kindness.

It’s necessity.

I take a breath. “Tyr and Withered King will shimmer down and build a distraction. Smoke, fire, ice—I don’t care. Just make it big enough they don’t see two enormous war horses galloping downhill at them.

The kings nod, accepting my orders.

“Cinder and Dusk, stay in your horseflesh. Keep Ashera and Sinea above the fray, so they can aim their potions and Graceborn magic at the vestiges.”

I’m not touching either horse, so they can’t communicate directly to my mind, but both nod their large heads up and down.

I reach up, taking Selke’s hand. “Stay safe. Throw your potions, and stay on the godsdamned horse.”

She squeezes my hand. “You stay safe, too.”

I don’t give her earnest words time or space to land before turning to Ashera. “Whatever they gave you, don’t hold back. Don’t save any for Lorien.”

Ashera’s brow pulls together. “How did you?—”

“Because it’s what I would have done. Use everything on the vestiges, Ashera, and let the god-aligned take care of the worm king.”

She reaches down, pushing a wind-blown lock of hair from my face. “I didn’t expect to lose the Trials to you.” She pauses, smiling softly. “But I’m glad the shadows chose you.”

I smile, though I can’t tell if she’s being earnest or simply counting her luck that she’s not in my shoes.

It doesn’t matter.

“What about you?” Tyr asks.

“My shadows and I are going to find Lorien and hopefully undo...”

I don’t continue.

There is no undoing this.

Tyr’s gaze never leaves mine. He says nothing—because I already know.

Stay safe. Stay whole. Come back to me.

I don’t hear his words, but they’re clear to me in his eyes.

“Lorien can’t hurt me, Tyr. Not as I am. And he knows it.”

His gaze doesn’t waver, firelight and ice shining in black mirrors.

“I’ll be careful.”

“Find me when you need me,” he says finally, before vanishing in a cloud of mist.

The Withered King steps forward into my sightline. “Do what you must, Amara.”

There’s a weight in his tone, grief in his silver eyes…and then, he, too, is gone in a cloud of mist.

Cindermaw and Duskreaver lower their heads on either side of me, pressing their muzzles into my shoulder blades.

A shudder runs across my back at the contact.

It was nice to see you this time around. Cinder says in my mind.

It was. And if it all goes tits up, we’ll see you next cycle, Dusk says with a tone that’s far too light .

In unison, the war horses gallop down the snow-covered hill, burning forest at their backs.

And I stand atop the hill and watch.

Watch Tyr smite down an entire row of vestiges with a single bolt of lightning, only to disappear in a cloud of mist and frost, then do the same to the next line.

The Withered King walks among the ranks, his robes billowing out behind him. Every hollowed-out shell his robe brushes across disintegrates to a pile of blackened ash and dust in the snow.

Shattered fucking realms, there are so godsdamn many.

And I don’t see Lorien anywhere.

Cinder and Dusk only need to walk toward the vestiges before they collapse to the frozen ground.

They don’t fight back.

They don’t move.

They simply fall.

It won’t take long for the six of them to obliterate?—

In the distance, past the derelict town square, more vestiges march to take the places of the fallen.

They don’t hurry.

Their arrival is inevitable.

A burst of magic, bright and clear, lights up the center of the square. When the light dies, Ashera sits atop the Steedlord, chest smoking, hands spread wide…

And a circle of fallen vestiges surrounds them.

I track back to the reinforcements, but the slope of the town doesn’t let me see where they’re coming from.

I need to get higher.

For a moment, I consider climbing a tree.

Only a moment.

Shadows swirl at my feet and then my boots are no longer on the ground .

“Holding out on me, hm?”

The shadows respond, taking me high enough to pinpoint where the reinforcements are coming from.

My heart stalls for a beat.

They’re—

They’re coming from my house.

Not the hovel it became after too many long winters, too little fuel, and too many rooms dismantled and burned for warmth. But the home it was. The one with the wide porch and shuttered windows that kept out the afternoon light.

I hardly remember the shape of it…

I…

I was so young when the world turned to ice.

But I know that structure…

It’s where I was happy once.

“Take me to it,” I order the shadows. And they do.

We both know it’s a trap.

The shadows and I.

And we go, anyway.

They wrap around me like darkness stitched from breath and smoke. One moment I’m hovering above the hilltop, the next, the world folds and…

I’m in the house.

Sun streams in through the windows. It smells like freshly laundered clothes and stew, and my mother softly hums somewhere in the middle of the house.

Why is it so bright?

I follow the sound of her voice through the entryway, past the sitting room, and into the lounge where she nurses my sister. Younger me sits in the table front in front of her, dark hair spilling everywhere, dark eyes on my sister's face.

“Look who's no longer the Maiden,” my mother says.

But the voice …

It stops me in my tracks, clearing away the memory.

I stand in the entryway once more.

No.

I never moved.

Vestiges sprawl across every surface, some seated, some leaning against walls and furniture, some contorted into shapes bodies should never be in.

Lorien stands in front of me, mask intact, and blue eyes somehow more beautiful in the hazy light of Tiriana’s perpetual gray and snow.

“It's a nice bit of magic,” I say, looking around the house. “The fires, too. Though, you can’t unmake with fire, ice that was built from grief and memory and protection. But, I suppose, it did what you wanted. Here I am.”

Lorien smiles, a brilliant display of gleaming teeth.

A gold-rimmed lie. “Yes. You are here. And now that you are…" He pauses, folding his arms over his brocade jacket. “What do you intend to do?"

“That depends on how you answer my next question,” I say, shadows clinging to my arms and body, fanning out beside me like wings of darkness.

Lorien tracks the shadows, still smiling. “And what question is that?”

“Why?”

He lifts a brow. “Why what, dear?”

I gesture to the vestiges, the house. “Why all of this? Why unmake so many? Why are you so set on taking over the continent that you’d murder so many?”

His expression falls, pupils constricting to pinpricks. “You still don’t see it, do you?”

At once, the vestiges stand, forming silent battle lines. There are so many their shoulders touch, some even stand at an angle to fit .

Several rows of hollowed out people stand between Lorien and me.

Is he shielding himself with…

I can’t even think the rest of the thought.

“I don’t care about the continent. I don’t care about any of these mortal wastes.” He walks forward, vestiges bowing and bending out of his path in bone-cracking angles that make my guts roil.

And then I see her.

Standing directly behind Lorien is Mother’s hollowed-out face. Dark gaze fixed, flat. Mouth slightly open, expression flat.

To her right stands Vella. Arm severed at the bicep.

Lorien’s gaze bores into me, watching for the break, waiting for me to lose composure.

He wouldn’t have stood in front of them for any other reason.

I swallow hard, dragging my eyes back to him.

“I care,” he says, brilliant gaze flashing with menace, “about keeping you contained.”

He steps closer.

“So what are you going to do about it, Shadow Queen?”