Page 9 of The Veil of Hollow Gods

"Ah, but where are my manners?" She slips into an easy mischievous smile and everything about her shifts to an otherworldly beauty.

Her skin glows faintly, along with her strange, glass-like corset, melding from gold to green like her eyes, eyes that now flare with even deeper colors.

She carries an air of effortless confidence, the kind that makes her impossible to ignore, and a natural sort of sensuality that radiates in the way she moves—graceful, almost playful.

Her voice is soft but melodic, tinged with a teasing lilt.

"I’m Sinea, your attendant for the duration of the Maiden Trials. "

My crossed arms fall to my sides, and I stare at the small orange-haired siren woman.

Trials?

"Oh, I see the guard didn’t tell you." She approaches, rubbing my upper arms with her palms as if warming me. "Don’t worry, I’ll explain what I can. But first, let’s get some food in you, yes? We don’t want all those coveted curves wasting away, do we?"

My face grows hot, and I scold myself for not covering myself as soon as I got out of bed. Sinea ushers me to the desk, pulling out the chair behind. I sit, and with a pointed nail, she taps on the glass top, making it erupt into a flurry of colors before a plate of food emerges out of nowhere .

"Are you a demon?" I ask, staring at the plate of hard cheese and crusty bread. At least this time there was a bit of meat to go along with it, unlike in the cave with the guard.

"Demon!? Priestess, no! I’m part fae, but that bit of magic is part of the aetherglass." She shakes her head, smoothing the petal-like layers of her skirt. "Do I look like a demon to you?"

I shrug. "Not really. But you’re feeding me like one. Just like that guard. He had the most beautiful fruit I’ve ever seen and refused to share it with me. Nyrelith, I think he called it."

Sinae’s large eyes grow even larger. "You’re saying a guard ate a nyrelith in front of you?"

I nod and break off a piece of bread.

But Sinae shakes her head. "Nyrelith is a sacred fruit to demons. It’s only eaten at festivals and placed on altars. Unless you’re royal, of course, then the rules don’t count, but the guard wasn’t royal. What did he look like?"

"I don’t know. He had a metal helmet on the whole time."

Her brow crinkles. "Even while he ate?"

"I—yes? Though saying it now, I’ll admit doesn’t make much sense. I don’t remember seeing his face at all."

"Ah, the guard probably altered your memories so you couldn’t report him."

I nod, chewing on my bread.

Sinea taps the aetherglass on the front of the wardrobe and a matching chair to mine appears before her.

"Now, do you know why you’re here?" she asks, seating herself. Except she’s not really sitting.

More like a bird perching on the very edge of a branch, making her look as if she’s very interested in me and what I’m about to say next.

I don’t know if I like it or not .

"Not really."

"That’s fine. What do you know?"

My gaze falls to her magical glass corset. How much do I tell this woman? Should I trust her entirely and tell her everything that led to me sitting here?

No. Not everything. No one needs to know about Vella’s garden. No one needs to know about Vella at all if I have anything to say about it.

So how much should I share?

If this Trial is meant to test skills, I’ll need all the allies and advantages I can get, as I have no skills of my own except for mending holes with pine straw.

But what if she’s my competition?

If she knows everything I know, she’ll know how to outmaneuver me.

"I’m sorry, I’m confused. Are you competing in this Trial?"

"Competing!" Sinae laughs, the musical sound hanging in the air a bit too long.

"Absolutely not. I went through my own Trial two turns ago. Those of us who make it to the end without showing signs of being the Maiden, usually get married off or stay in the city and attend to the next season’s hopefuls. "

Hopefuls.

I search her face and find no irony, no hint of disgust.

In Sinea’s view, being part of the Trial is a good thing.

Mother never gave me advice about this. Never told me what to say should I find myself in a Maiden Trial. All her training centered on staying out of sight of the guards.

Dama’s chains, I only just found out the women taken from our village are probably still alive somewhere. I put that thought in a dark corner of my mind and focus on what to do .

"I come from a small village. We don’t have a lot of books or technology, so the information we have about demons and Maidens is all word-of-mouth and will likely sound backward to you."

Sinea’s golden eyes shift greener. "Well, now’s not the time to be self-conscious. The more you tell me, the more help I can be. Plus, I’m not in the business of judging."

I eat the last of my cheese, surprised at how full my stomach is with such a small amount of food.

"Demons come to my village once a week to kill the woman they think will become the Maiden and end their reign of power.

" There. That ought to do it. Exactly what I grew up believing without a shred of personal information.

Those enormous eyes of hers grow even larger, and a hand goes to her chest. "Misty aethers. You’re from Tiriana!"

"I’m sorry. I just…we don’t." Sinea takes several breaths and finds herself once more. "You’ve seen a map of the whole continent, yes?"

"I have." Mother drew it in the snow that drifted onto the threshold every day until Vella and I could name all the separate vestiges. When we could, she moved on to the eastern and southern human continents.

Tiriana is a stretch of land in the dead center of the continent.

"Well, usually guards bring potentials to the closest keep in the nearest vestige. So, let’s say if a guard found a potential in Nightfall, the western-most vestige, the guard wouldn’t take her all the way to Ebonhold in the east. They’d take her to Nightfall Keep."

I stare at her glimmering golden green eyes, so full of wild excitement and glee, as if she’s gleaning joy from my strange circumstances. "So where am I then?"

"That guard brought you all the way to Shadowhold."

Dread fills the spot my stomach used to be, and if I wasn’t already seated, I would have taken one.

The north? Why would that guard bring me all the way to the northwestern vestige?

One that shares a border with the capital.

The home of the Frozen King.

Claws and teeth rip their way through my insides, begging to be set free. But I sit there and tremble with rage so pure I’m certain I could melt the very stones of this room.

The king who turned my home into a barren, unyielding tundra. The king who took my father’s life and made my life and my family’s infinitely more difficult. The king who ruined Tiriana has never been so close before.

"Are-are you quite all right?"

I keep my gaze firmly on the blanket bunched in my fists. I don’t want Sinea to see this. I don’t know why, but it seems important to keep this from her. "Yes, I just… I’ve never been so far from home, and I’m finding myself suddenly caught up in a wave of homesickness."

She barks out a one-note laugh. "You’re a liar. A good one, but a liar all the same."

I keep my eyes down, not confirming or denying.

"It’s fine. Keep your secrets. I don’t much care. I only care that you learn to wield your innate gifts well enough to survive at least the first Trial. I can’t have my first ever charge fail her first Trial."

"Right. And now that I know where your priorities lie…"

Sinea lifts a single shoulder; even a shrug she somehow makes look graceful and provocative. "We’re all selfish, to a degree. Best we all have our own motivations nudging us along, I say."

She said the girls who don’t show signs of being a Maiden help new potentials or go off and get married. Meaning there are three options. Pass and move on with a regular life. Pass, move on, and become a Maiden. Or… "What happens to the women who fail the trials?"

This time, it’s Sinea who hides her eyes. "Let’s just say they don’t leave the same as when they came."

I ignore the ominous dip in her tone. "You don’t expect me to compete without fully knowing the stakes, do you?"

She takes a moment, lips pressing tightly together. "I expect you to trust that I’ve been through this; and believe me when I say knowing too much is definitely the enemy here."

"Will you at least tell me what the first Trial is, then?"

"I can do better than that. I can show you. But first, let’s get you out of that blanket and into some real clothes."

Sinea rises and taps again on the aetherglass portion of the wardrobe. The door swings open to reveal what I can only describe as a bathing suite.

"We’ll start by soaking all that ice out of your veins."

"Dama’s fucking promise," I whisper, making Sinea nod in approval.

"You’ve got that right. All this season’s potentials have access to their own bathing chambers."

I step inside the wardrobe, transformed into an obsidian cavern with a deep, swirling bathing pool in the dead center.

The walls are smooth as glass, disturbed only by glowing veins that give an ambient glow to the dark space.

Overhead, floating orbs illuminate everything but the farthest corners of the cavern.

Shadows and secrets swirl in those corners like a physical presence .

Staring at the edges of the room too long makes my skin prickle until I avert my gaze.

I’m not afraid of the dark, but this darkness isn’t simply the absence of light.

And I’d rather not be naked in it.

The orbs aren’t affixed to the ceiling or walls like lanterns, but hover back and forth at will, wandering closer and farther until one nearly bumps into my nose. I can’t shake the uneasy feeling that I’m being watched.

To avoid thinking about that possibility, I focus on the water. Not still, but moving in perpetual eddies, swirling with faint tendrils of light that twist and coil in the currents as if they, like the shadows and light orbs, are alive.