Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 38 –
Ferris retreated from me, one step after the other marking each crushing moment of reality as it sank into her. The truth. There, written in the dark for her to see at last.
Her kiss still lingered on my mouth, the touch of sweetness I’d stolen already souring by what was to come. But I had made my decision. I’d hounded her here, wielded the Hollows to trap her and now that she was in my cage, I had no intention of letting her go.
The sunlight was draining quickly from the sky and as she turned to run – though there was nowhere for her to go – I caught her by the hand and marched her for the tower’s door.
“Let go of me,” she snarled, trying to twist out of my grip but my fingers only tightened on hers as I pushed her ahead of me into our sanctuary for the night.
“And let you run off in the forest to play with the Lost Children?” I growled, kicking the door shut behind us and releasing her hand. “The trees might favour you, Ferris Creed, but I will not risk your life for anything.”
She staggered away as if I’d burned her, turning to face me and backing up against a stone wall at the base of the spiral stairway awaiting us.
“You lied about everything,” she spat, betrayal written across her face.
“I never lied,” I growled, stalking closer and she snatched her slingshot from her pocket, aiming a rock at my forehead in warning.
“Stay. Back,” she commanded forcefully, though the tremor in her shoulders told of the fear rioting through her flesh.
“Are you going to kill me, lightwing?” I whispered, taking another step toward her, wondering if she might just loose that stone against my brow. Oh to die by her hand. That was far too sweet a death for me to be offered.
“I will,” she hissed between her teeth. “Don’t come any closer.”
I lunged and her rock whistled past my ear, crashing against the back wall before I grabbed her wrist, whirling her around holding her tight to my body with her back to my front, locking her arms to her sides with one of mine.
“I have a story to tell you,” I growled in her ear and she slammed her heel down on my foot, but she didn’t hold the strength she needed to fight me off. “We’re stuck here together tonight one way or the other, lightwing, so you may as well hear it.”
“I want nothing from you,” she spat. “Let go of me.”
I did so, snatching her slingshot and pocketing it for good measure. She seethed at me, taking hold of the Dragon amulet at her throat and my brows arched as I spotted the Unicorn nestled there beside the Raven.
“Dragon,” she called. “Please help me.”
I glanced warily around, her desperation to escape me leading her to a maddened plan. Was she going to risk a night in the forest just to evade me?
The Dragon didn’t come and the tension ran from my shoulders as a twisted smile found its way to my lips instead. No, she had not yet gotten control over it. So tonight at least, she was mine.
“Well, it looks like it’s just you and me then, lightwing,” I said with a taunting smile.
Ferris turned and sprinted up the stairs, fleeing deeper into the tower.
I followed with lazy steps, catching up to her when I made it to a large circular room with a wooden floor and a broken staircase that led to the next level. There were no more doors in here, no place to escape to and Ferris realised that as she twisted to face me once more, her face paling of colour.
“If I wanted you dead I’d have done it ten times over by now,” I said darkly and her throat bobbed as she absorbed those words. I wanted to calm the riot in her flesh, despising how she glared at me, how firmly her walls had come up, but there was no stopping the path we were on.
“What do you want then?” she demanded, her hand going to her amulets and gripping them protectively. But she knew I couldn’t kill her and take them for my own. Even if I could, there was no chance of that now. Ferris Creed had become far too precious to me in ways I doubted she would ever believe.
“I want to offer you the truth. All of it,” I said earnestly.
“I don’t care what you have to say. You’re a monster,” she hissed and I tilted my head down, darkness rolling from me in a tide I couldn’t control at that assessment. I didn’t care for the way Rathian looked at me, but her? I couldn’t bear that judgement in her eyes.
Death seeped from me into the floorboards in an uncontrollable wave and they groaned and cracked as they felt its touch. Then it crawled up the walls and made the moss there shiver and wilt, the bricks drying out, the mortar crumbling.
“What are you doing?” Ferris breathed in horror.
I scrunched my eyes closed, trying to reign in the death pouring from me, retreating from my human as it crawled out towards her.
“Get back!” I barked and she heeded my command, pressing herself to the wall on the other side of the room. Fuck, I had not meant to put her in danger. I was meant to protect her. But this power in me was wild as ever.
“Stop,” she gasped as the roof groaned above us and the tower shuddered while death seeped into every crevice it could find between the bricks.
“I’m trying,” I gritted out through my teeth, desperate to get a hold on it. It couldn’t take her from me. Not her. “The dark is so very fucking deep right now.”
The walls shivered as if they might buckle and Ferris yelled out in panic, “Stop it, please. I’ll listen to whatever you have to say, just stop!”
Something about the fear in her words managed to gutter out the death spilling from me. I took a heavy breath as the weight of destruction settled back inside me and my gaze fell violet eyes in relief.
“Speak then,” she said icily. “Though it will change nothing. The moment dawn comes, I will run from you and never look back.”
The hatred in her gaze clawed at a ragged wound in my chest. I’d known this day would come, but I hadn’t known I would be so attached to this woman when it did. I couldn’t have predicted how viscerally her hatred would cut through me. How much it would scar my heart.
Perhaps she was right. These words were futile. But I felt, in a way, I owed them to her. No living soul had heard this story before, not from my lips. And perhaps none ever would again. But if there was to be one who listened, let it be her. Even if it changed nothing in the end.
“I never lied,” I repeated. “Omitted truths? Yes.”
“Your name isn’t Hendrix Draven,” she hissed. “There is lie number one.”
“Ah, but that name does belong to me. I was born Hendrix Bane, but my mother was a Draven before she wed my father.”
Ferris glared at me. “So you twisted the truth, that is equal to a lie in my eyes.”
“Alright,” I conceded. “And… well, I supposed I lied another time too now that I think on it.”
She blew out a breath through her nose. “In case you hadn’t realised, this little speech isn’t going well for you, Necromancer.”
The coldness in her tone was nearly as crushing as the terror in her gaze. But all I could do in answer to it was offer my story and let her judgement fall how it would. I side-stepped, moving a little closer but she mirrored me, moving the other way, evading me like we were opposing magnets. But surely she knew were the opposite. We’d been drawn to each other these past weeks. It was undeniable. I’d lived long enough to know desire in a woman when I found it aimed at me. And never had I felt such want as I had from her. It matched my own in its volatility, its rawness.
“My second lie was about this.” I tapped the mark on my temple, a roiling tempest rising inside me as I recalled the moment I was given it. “I told you that there were hundreds of Fae outcast from Rivenspire. That was not true. It is rare.”
“I should have known,” she muttered, emotion burning through her features that spoke of betrayal once again. “Your kind can never be trusted.”
“I think you might be right about that,” I agreed in a dark tone, stepping left again and she did the same to keep space between us.
“You betrayed your own people,” she accused.
“For reasons you might understand if you would only listen,” I urged and her jaw flexed.
“How can I believe a word that leaves your rotten mouth? You manipulated me. You used me. You told me things to make me feel sorry for you. That bullshit about your family-”
“Do not dare speak a word about my family!” I bellowed, the floorboards shuddering under the tenor of my voice as I lost control at her dismissal of their brutal executions. “I did not speak a single word of a lie about their deaths. The Coterie executed them for my crime. They were killed before my eyes, their dying screams still haunt me to this fucking day. Every time I close my eyes I see it. Every time I try to sleep, I dream of it. That was no lie. Don’t you ever suggest it to be so again.”
Ferris nodded mutely, her cheeks as white as ice and her eyes unblinking. “So let me guess the rest of your story,” she said, her soft voice growing harder as she spoke. “You somehow raised an army of the dead and let it sweep through Rathian. You let innocents die violent deaths as an answer to the wrongs done against you. You have let hundreds die. You have unleashed a plague upon our already cursed land and you expect me to what? Forgive you for it?” Her brow creased and tears blazed in her eyes but she didn’t let them fall.
She didn’t want to see any other reality than the one that everyone else believed. It was futile to answer her but I did. Because the path I was walking was one that would lead me into the waiting arms of Death anyway. She was the last person who might ever listen to my story. And though she didn’t want to hear it, for my own selfish gain, I was going to make her listen. Let my tale be told so that I might go into the ground all the more restfully knowing that at least one living creature had known the truth. Whether she believed it or not.
“No, I don’t want your forgiveness,” I said hollowly, giving up on trying to close the distance between us and instead turning to face the glass window that looked out over the forest. I could just make out the shadow of the Great Elm in the distance, but the night was pressing in thickly, like a blanket of black silk had been laid over the canopy.
“It is partly true what they say about me. I killed King Arthrun, but I did not covet the crown. I only wished for a new reign to come. Arthrun had been seated on the throne for hundreds of years – far longer than any other ruler before him but Providence had never come to select a new monarch. There was something gravely wrong about that. Everyone whispered of it. My mother was sure there was more to it than what he told the kingdom. He declared himself the Last King; the one Providence had promised to select one day for an eternal reign of peace. But Arthrun was greedy and cruel. And once I found myself old enough to join the Coterie and was welcomed into the fold, I saw what my mother had whispered to me of. Arthrun liked his blood sports. He had humans taken from their beds, stolen away in the night to partake in his twisted games.”
Ferris looked revulsed at that and I nodded gravely. “He did the same to any ‘lesser’ Fae he took a disliking to. It was ritualistic sadism, all carried out in the name of the spirits. Arthrun would have the Coterie pray to them and declare his bloodshed an offering to their supremacy. And all the while, I saw the sick and bitter truth beneath his lies. All I know of the spirits is purity, they are not creatures who demand torture for their own gain. Not even Death herself covets such things. No, that is the desire of sick bastards like Arthrun. Fae with too much power and too much time on their hands.”
I took a heavy breath to calm my wrath, waiting to see if Ferris might comment on what I’d said but she remained silent. So I continued.
“Years went by where I was forced to keep the company of the most cruel Fae among the Coterie. My parents shuddered at what they saw, but neither said a word. For to speak out against the king was to find yourself placed into the execution pit yourself. But the more time passed, the more I could not stand what I witnessed. I could no longer stay my hand and pretend to go along with it, pretend to be one of them. Something had to be done.”
“So you killed him,” Ferris whispered at last and I sensed that she was closer to me than she had been before. But I didn’t look around.
“Yes,” I growled. “And I do not regret it. Not for a second. That monster needed to be dealt with. Providence would not have chosen him as the Last King and even if he had, I would rather deal with his wrath over the heinous creature he had placed on the throne.
So I trained in secret for the task. I studied the king’s palace meticulously – it’s a hallowed place, built on the bones of an ancient monster that was slain by the very first Fae royal to be selected by Providence. I studied every door of that palace, every window, every avenue I could take in my plot to assassinate him. And when the night came, I snuck into his quarters and attempted to kill him in his sleep. But he woke before I could strike him and we fell into a bloody battle before I managed to drive a dagger into his heart. In that moment I saw something. Something I still do not understand to this day…”
“What was it?” Ferris pressed, like she was hanging on every word I spoke now.
“Providence,” I said thickly. “Just for a moment, a glimmer of him in the living quarters beyond the king’s bed chamber. All I saw was a strange grey haze around the spirit then a blaze of violet ignited in his gaze, those bright cat’s eyes I’d heard all the songs about gleaming from his feline face. He was there, then gone into that grey mist. And to this day, I do not understand why.”
I fell quiet and so did Ferris, the silence passing between us broken only by the howling wind that whipped around the tower.
“I took his crown,” I said eventually, shattering the quiet like my fist through glass. “I took it and ran – that crown holds a fierce power and I did not want one of the Coterie to claim it. But when I found my way out of the palace, I accidently alerted a guard as I made it to the outer wall. The cries were already going up in the palace. The king had been found. Blood soaked my chest, my hands and the guard who saw me put two and two together. I felled him with a heavy punch to the head, but I should have killed him even though he was an innocent. Had I done so, I may never have been caught. My family may never have been executed. That guard’s death might have stopped the axe of fate from falling how it did. But…” I trailed off. I’d gone over that night in my mind so many times, seeing all the ways I might have prevented what had come next. But there was no undoing the past. The coins had settled where they had fallen, meeting heavily with the hand of fate and binding themselves to it.
“I hid the crown,” I muttered. “It still lays in that place to this day. Buried somewhere in the trees that spread away from the palace walls, though the exact location is a blur. I suppose it doesn’t matter now anyway.”
“No,” Ferris agreed quietly. “So… you were caught?”
“Yes. And you know the rest. But what you don’t know is what happened after my family were killed while I knelt there in that stone courtyard with all the world ripped away from me. The Art of speaking to the dead had been my gift from the spirits, but it twisted that day. I called out for Death to assist me, begging her to answer my plea. And she came. Death herself took my hand and spoke in my ear, words that crossed from the afterworld to this plane of the living. ‘You are death and death is thee.’ I felt her power pour into my heart, awakening a terrible force that rattled through my flesh and burrowed into my bones.
The spirit of Death’s power latched itself to my Art, mutilating and warping it into some new, deeper, darker magic. And these marks appeared upon my neck, inked there by the shadow of Death herself.” I gestured to the bony hands that were tattooed around my throat. “Then… the dead around me began to wake. I wielded this new strength and dragged my family back from death, somehow tearing their souls from the grip of the afterworld and lashing them back to their bodies. In terrified, delighted wonder I watched as they rose to their feet while the Fae who had come to witness their executions screamed in bloody horror. But they were not as they had once been. They were ravenous in their wrath, my mother, father, sister and brother racing out to kill all those who stood close, tearing at their enemies with nothing but their hands. Any who met with death joined their army, bowing to the destructive revenge I had so desperately wanted to reap. They answered to the call of my ragged heart that day, every kill another solider turned to my will. And the death they harvested was great.
“I still recall how Islasees Bellatorn turned and fled from the tide of Hollows I’d sent after him, the very man who had wielded the knife that had silenced my mother’s screams. The one who had watched in dark glee as his soldiers beat my father into a silent grave, who had commanded that my sister and brother followed them into death. He who had placed the outcast mark upon my flesh. I bellowed a vow to the spirit of Death, promising I would hand Islasees’s wretched soul to her myself. But then the power she had offered me began to wane, I lost my grip on it and could not guide it like I had at first. It still spilled from me in a tide, flowing in every direction and I couldn’t stop it. Like it was chasing every drop of life around it, determined to snuff it out.
“My family came to me, surrounding me with bloodshot eyes and ice-white features and as they drew me to my feet and my mother whispered, ‘you must flee.’”
My hands fisted on the narrow windowsill as I let all the pain of that day pour out.
“What happened next?” Ferris asked, her voice a raspy plea to know the end.
“Islasees gathered his ranks. His army met with that of my Hollow creations and a brutal war was fought between them. But Islasees only had eyes for me. He chased us, me and my family, hounding us towards the edge of Rivenspire until we were forced to abandon the only home we had ever known. Since that day, I have had little control over the Hollows at all. Sometimes I can will them here and there when the power gets it claws in me but…” I shrugged. “Death comes and goes like the tide. It leaks from me unbidden and creates more Hollows who sew more death wherever they may go.”
A heaviness hung in the air at my words, shaking the foundations of everything we had built our shaky alliance upon. This was my olive branch, the only one I had to extend. And she might refuse here and now.
“What happened to your family?” Ferris asked. She was closer again, drawn to me by some madness and I was tempted to turn to her and pull her near – but she would only cringe away now that she knew what I was.
“They wait for me in the Blight,” I said thickly. “They have remained at my side ever since that day, caught in the grip of death yet unable to leave this world. At first, I thought they were truly back from death, but over time I saw that they were not. Part of them is here and part of them is in the afterworld. They’ve lost their spark, their desire to live but still they linger here in some half form that is not enough to sate them. They cannot even perish as the other Hollows are able to. I have pleaded with Death herself to return them to me fully or to allow them to pass into death at last. But there is only one way to release them from my curse.”
“The boon,” Ferris breathed and she laid a hand on my back.
I stilled, confused by her touch, how she reached for me when I was baring my deplorable soul to her.
“It is my only hope to free them,” I admitted.
“It’s my only hope to free Rissa too,” Ferris answered and my chest hollowed out.
I turned to her as her hand fell to her side and my heart sank at the broken look on her face.
“Only one of us can have their wish fulfilled, lightwing,” I said darkly, reaching for the amulets at her throat and brushing my fingers over the spirits she’d won for herself.
She took my hand, gripping it as if making some deal with me and I ached to draw her into the cage of my arms, but I remained rigid, uncertain how we would move forward from here, or if we would do so at all.
“Our trust is shattered,” she admitted and my throat thickened. “But…”
Everything hung on that word, every fragment of my being waiting to hear the next words to pass her lips.
“Some foolish part of me is telling me I am right where I’m supposed to be.”
“Then stay,” I gritted out, aching for her to do so down to the roots of my very being.
Her hand tightened on mine, a firmness to her fingers telling me she was in charge in that moment. “If I choose to leave, will you stop me?”
“Yes,” I said roughly, knowing it was so, casting all lies aside and giving her the ugly reality of what I was.
She nodded slowly, her fingers falling from mine and a roiling storm of tension rising between us. “Then I guess I’m staying.”
At that declaration, the dark power of death receded inside me, somehow dispelled by it. But I couldn’t fathom how such a little thing could hold sway over the tumult of death that had been pouring from me.
“Tonight or forever?” I smirked, relieved to feel the oppressive aura lifting from my soul at last.
“I’m not sure,” she answered, her throat rising and falling as I stepped deeper into her personal space.
I released her hand and trailed my fingers over her throat, a growl of want rising at her touch. “Let’s focus on tonight for now.”
“Alright,” she agreed, stepping closer to me, desire rising between us as tension corded the air, threading it with unspoken words.
I’d never felt drawn to anyone like this before. And something about the way the air was shifting and how her eyes were trained on mine told me everything was about to change for us. It was as certain as the sun rising upon the dawn.
