Page 56 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

Then tips forward, crushing the remnant bones of his ruined face.

I think about raising my boot. Crushing him thoroughly under it.

But pause .

I won’t.

I don’t need to desecrate his bones to know he’s gone. But I stare at them for a long while.

I sense Tyr behind me, waiting, giving me space, but I don’t look up until I hear the Steedlords shedding their horseflesh.

Selke and Ashera trail behind them by several paces. Ashera’s hands and chest still glow and smoke with Graceborn power.

Smells like it might have been pure fire.

“Is…is that it?” Sinea asks, only slightly winded, though she has a deep gash from her brow to her cheek, and her bandoleer is emptied of its bottles.

Duskreaver answers with a loud snort, then spits a giant gob of phlegm on Lorien’s body.

They all look to me.

And I look at the body. The mud that once was a snow-covered Tiriana. The shattered sky.

“Is it over?” Ashera echos, wrapping an arm around Selke’s middle.

I glance at Tyr. His expression is inscrutable.

“I don’t think so,” I say and point myself to the horizon, to the sky bleeding a chaos of color so low, it looks as though it’s bled onto the land itself.

It only takes one step, one intentional pace toward the fissure before my shadows sweep in, taking me and Tyr to the mouth of the rupture.

And gods…

It’s so much bigger than I imagined. Whether because I’m closer or the sky has shattered further, I do not know.

“You told me this was the auric mists of aetherglow reflecting in the atmosphere. ”

Tyr stands by my side, unmoving, gaze fixed on the rip in the sky.

“I lied.”

I study his profile. The hollow of his cheekbone. The cut of his jaw. Dark lashes.

In those two words lie everything he’s ever left unsaid or only whispered.

I lied to protect you. To keep you safe. I lied to make sure you stayed in the game. To make certain you became who you were meant to be.

Not the Maiden.

Shadows cling to both of us, covering the field of asphodel blooms in eerie darkness.

The cycle of the goddess.

All of them.

“Who will you be when this is over?”

His throat bobs several times before he speaks. “Whoever you make me.” Tyr’s voice cracks on the last word.

Not because he’s broken.

I see it now.

Shattered realms, I see him now.

The pain. The silent screaming.

His voice cracks because he remembers exactly how many times I’ve asked, and he’s answered the same question.

My eyes prick, throat hardens.

“You were made for more than this,” I whisper.

He nods slowly. “So were you,” he says. “But they needed you to believe in me. Or Lorien. It didn’t matter who, so long as it kept you turning the wheel—walking the spiral.”

Cold dread winds up my spine, a remembered feeling more than an embodied sensation .

“If I’d chosen Lorien. Been his Maiden…”

“He would have worn my face. Said the right words. Opened the door just enough to keep you walking the same path.”

“But I didn’t.”

Tyr turns to me. He cups the side of my face, and I lean into it.

“No. You never do.”

And that’s always the price. Every time.

He brushes the wind-blown hair from my eyes. “It’s the cycle. Choice was only ever an illusion. He only needed you to remember enough to repeat the cycle. And now he’ll come back along with the rest of us.”

I shake my head. “No. That’s not what I wanted. I mean to break this wheel, this constant cage of cycles.”

Tyr smiles softly. Resigned. Saddened. “And I believe you will. You’ve tried every time since the first to break the wheel. You will succeed.”

I hear what he leaves silent between us.

You will succeed. But likely not this time. Or the next, or any time in the near or distant future.

“You don’t want me to try this time?”

“I want you to succeed. But I won’t ask you to break yourself to do it.”

“And if I do?”

He’s silent. The shadows gather around us like breath.

“Then I’ll remember you,” he says. “In the next one. And the next. Until you remember yourself fully. And break it for good.”

Thunder rolls in the distance. I ask Tyr with a look.

“That was not my doing.”

The sound echoes in my bones, and through the rift in the sky I see …

Lightning.

A shudder runs through me, and suddenly, the world is rendered in sharper clarity.

Tyr’s profile is somehow shadowed despite standing in front of a dazzling hole leaking colors into the sky.

He turns to me, and his eyes widen. “You’re luminous.”

I look down at my hands, glowing silver light around the shadows wreathing them.

What is this?

But I already know.

I reach to touch Tyr’s cheek, silver light not enough to blot out the shadow of his grief.

“I don’t know why or how, but I feel the edges of humanity splitting at the seams.”

Tyr only nods.

“And I don’t know what comes next, my love. But I know I must try.”

A single shining tear spills down his darkened cheek.

“Come with me,” I say, pulling him toward the shattered hole in the horizon.

“I cannot, my heart.”

“You can. I know it. You must come with me. You must step through with me.”

He shakes his head, just once. “I must remain here and bear witness so that?—”

“Silence!” The voice booms from somewhere not of my body. A god voice.

My god voice.

“You will come with me, Tyrenoch.”

His stiffens at the command, eyes widening.

I pull him close, voice leveling to its usual timbre. “You will come, and you must promise to hold me and not let go. ”

My lower lips trembles as his gaze fills with lifetimes of ache and longing.

“Hold me. Don’t let me go. Even if I ask.”

Tyr holds his elbow out for me.

Like he’s done so many times before in Shadowfell.

In every other cycle.

And we step forward together.

Into the end of the world.