Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 24 –
“Have you changed your mind?” Ferris asked, a touch of disappointment in her voice.
“No,” I grunted.
I’d fallen quiet, lost to thoughts of the past as I tried to piece it into a story I could tell her without unveiling the whole truth. But I didn’t want to lie either. No one had asked this story of me in all these years. She wanted to hear it to understand me better and I found I wanted to share it. At least enough so that she could see the root of my malice.
“As I’ve told you, my time among the Coterie led me to truths I’d never intended to discover. Truths of their evildoings. And the fact is, things escalated to a point where I killed one of them for their misdeeds. It was a bloody fight, a wicked death, the type that stains the soul red.”
Ferris remained silent but she didn’t tense or pull away from me, choosing to remain in the cage of my arms despite how many times I’d warned her of the dangers that came attached to me.
“I ran from the carnage I’d reaped but I didn’t make it far. I was caught with blood on my hands and placed in a cold cell for a long winter night while my fate was decided. Our kind deliver punishments equal to the sinners’ crimes, and I had no doubt that death awaited me at dawn.”
Ferris drew in a sharp breath, her fingers tightening on my arm. “How did you escape?”
I swallowed the hardening lump in my throat, knowing I would have to evade the details but wanting to give her what I could.
“When sunrise came, I was taken to the stone courtyard in the heart of Mithelnore. All executions are carried out there in front of any civilian who wishes to come watch. My name was a curse on their lips as I was tethered to a wooden pole at the heart of the square and branded with the mark of an outcast – a statement that I was not welcome among our people even in the afterworld. I can so easily recall the way my knees pressed to the unforgiving stone, how the wind was blowing in from the north, carrying the scent of ice from the frozen sea. I can relive that day any time I close my eyes as if it’s branded there for me to suffer through time and again.”
“What did they do to you?” she breathed, sensing the weight in my voice at what was to come.
“Not to me,” I said darkly. “They could have stripped the flesh from my bones and I would have gladly offered the payment. But it wasn’t me that bore the price in the end.”
“Then who?”
“My family. My mother, father, my younger brother and sister. They dragged them out like rabid dogs, hands fisted around the backs of their necks as they shoved them down in front of me. They didn’t cry or beg. They were strong, my kin. They were warriors with hearts forged of iron, and the only pain I found in them was when they looked at me.”
“Hendrix, tell me they didn’t hurt them,” Ferris breathed, her nails digging into my arm.
“I cannot, lightwing.” I took a weighted breath. “They killed my father first. They beat and battered him while my mother yelled his name. She was next, a swift slice to her throat that quieted her and caused a riot of agony among the last of us. They took Amelda slower.” I squeezed my eyes shut, the horror of losing my little sister scoring a passage of pain through my chest. “My brother Kashton was the last, hauled in front of me, eye to eye, his words the crush of an anvil against my heart. ‘I’ll see you wherever our love guides us in the afterworld, brother.’”
I stopped talking, my throat clogged with the pain of those goodbyes.
Ferris rolled over in the cage of my arms, her fingers finding my cheek in the dark. “I’m so sorry.”
I grunted in acknowledgment, unable to force out more as she curled into me, embracing me, her face settling against my neck. I pulled her tight to my chest, allowing my heart to split open and bleed with her there. As it had never done with anyone else.
“How did you escape?” she asked against my skin, and heat rippled through me at the touch of her lips to my collarbone.
“I lost myself to the rage of my grief, broke free of my bonds. I fought, I killed, I ran. It is a blur of death and savagery. Somehow, I made it out of Rivenspire.” I knew precisely how. It was so much more than these words painted it out to be. And she might question how I could have done any such thing alone. But she nodded instead, perhaps keeping more questions to herself, or believing I might just be capable of such an escape given what she knew of my strength. I didn’t offer any more information either way.
“We should sleep now,” I muttered, drawing her nearer, my fingers gliding down the length of her spine. Her closeness helped to banish my demons again, and I was grateful when she nestled against me instead of rolling to face away from me once more.
“It must have broken you,” she exhaled, her fingers skimming down my arm. “I know what that’s like.”
“Then we are alike for reasons I would rather we weren’t.”
She glanced up at me from the crook of my neck, her eyes bright with emotion as her pain surfaced to meet mine. I tucked a lock of silver behind her ear and drank in that grief, knowing it all too well.
“Is that why you’re here? To try and bring them back from death?” Ferris asked, a tightness to her throat.
“No,” I said truthfully, my voice dripping in darkness.
“Then why?”
“Goodnight, lightwing,” I said firmly, and her eyes shuttered as she withdrew from me, her lips tightening at the edges.
“Goodnight, Hendrix.” She rolled away but let me keep her against my body, not knowing that she was wrapped in the arms of not just a killer, but the most wicked monster on Rathian.
“We have to move on from this quarry,” I growled, folding my arms as Ferris marched up and down the boggy area of forest where the diary had guided us to the potential location of the Boar. “It’s not here.”
Ferris sighed, turning to me with pursed lips. “We don’t know that.”
“We are wasting time. We’ve been searching for days and there has been neither hide nor hair of it. It has likely been caught already.”
Ferris’s throat bobbed, her eyes roaming the trees around us once more as if she might find the spirit if she looked hard enough. I walked up to her and took her arm, her eyes lifting to meet mine and a ripple of tension passing between us.
“Ferris,” I urged in a low voice. “We cannot waste any more time.”
She sighed, conceding. “Fine. Then where next?” She drew her pack from her shoulder, taking out the diary and flicking through it.
I left her to decide, knowing she had likely already planned three different options, listed them out, weighed the odds, methods and madness in her schemes, and wouldn’t be swayed in the slightest by my opinion on the choice she came to. Not to mention the fact that I’d come to the realisation that acting against her plans was nothing short of foolish. My pretty little human had a mind for this forest, a knack for it too, seeming to understand it far better than I could ever hope to.
I moved to a nearby stream and crouched down to cup water and take a drink. As I did so, the thump of boots and crack of twigs made my head snap up.
I listened, counting five sets footfalls, moving fast, at a run.
I whirled around, sprinting back to Ferris and whipping her off her feet, clapping my hand to her mouth in the same movement to silence her gasp of surprise. Then I pelted straight for a large mass of ferns and slipped between them, dropping down and laying Ferris beneath me as we hid in the mass of foliage, allowing myself time to assess the threat coming our way.
I released my hand from Ferris’s mouth as we shifted to lie next to each other, pressing a finger to my lips, and she nodded seriously, peering out beyond the ferns.
Two humans raced into the clearing, sweat beading on their brows, one sporting a bloody gash on his arm and the other with an arrow sticking through her shoulder.
The woman had a pinched sort of face and her slender body was lined with muscle, while the man was strong-looking with dark eyebrows that contrasted with his fair hair.
The two of them raced through the stream and the woman screamed as another arrow whistled through the air and caught her in the back. She landed heavily on the ground and Ferris shifted beside me as if planning some reckless move to help them. I clamped my hand down on her shoulder, giving her a firm look that told her in no uncertain terms that I would not be allowing that.
“I know them. That’s Esther and Brian. They entered the forest with me,” she hissed, shoving my hand off of her and scrambling to get up, but I caught hold of her wrist, tugging her back down sharply and wrestling her beneath me. Ferris cursed me, aiming a knee between my thighs which I only stopped by pressing my weight down onto her and slapping a hand over her mouth.
I raised my head again in time to see the man trying to help the woman to her feet, but he gave up when three Fae broke through the forest behind them.
My muscles tensed, pure hatred seeping into my blood at the sight of the ringleader.
Islasees Bellatorn wore a cape of darkest blue, his red hair swept smoothly back over the crown of his head and the sharp lines of his face as ruthless as they were handsome. He held no weapon in hand, but the two Fae either side of him did, the male holding a bow aloft and the female wielding a double-headed axe. I knew them both well; Benson Rawk with his jet-black curls and Jadina Calehive with her aquamarine eyes and short blonde locks. They were two of Islasees favoured warriors, fit for the dirtiest kind of work. They had been the ones to walk me to the stone courtyard upon the morning of my family’s execution, they had taken part in their deaths, and they had somehow escaped the carnage I’d reaped that day.
Ferris thrashed beneath me as bitterness coated my tongue, my mind clouded by bloodlust. I wanted all three of their deaths so keenly that it burned me from the inside out.
I gritted my teeth, considering my options as I glared at Islasees. I ached to run him through with my sword and watch him die so very slowly at my hand. But Islasees could name me before I secured his death and unmask me to Ferris, revealing the rotten truth of who I was.
I couldn’t bear to lose her. Not yet. And worse than all that, what if I failed in my plight entirely and left her exposed to their wrath? There were three of them after all, and Islasees Bellatorn was the most fearsome, battle-hardened Fae in all of Rivenspire. As much as I believed I could defeat him, there was a chance I would fail. And without me protecting her, Ferris might not make it away from him. I could not risk her death for anything.
So despite all my instincts telling me to do the opposite, I stayed in place and ground my teeth, warring with the urge to seek vengeance here and now. I would get another chance after all. The Great Hunt was not over yet.
The human she’d called Brian made a run for the trees, but Benson released another arrow that cut through his neck and sent him slamming to the floor, skidding through a mass of dead leaves. Benson ran to him, finishing off the twitching man with a short blade and rolling him over to check his throat.
Ferris made a noise of agonised grief against the palm of my hand, tears pricking the corners of her eyes at the deaths of the humans. But I knew what she didn’t – Death had come calling for them before they’d even stepped out into that clearing. There had been no saving them from her call. I kept the company of that spirit often enough to know that once her mind was made up, there was no swaying the course of fate. But the glare Ferris gave me through the haze of her furious tears told me she wouldn’t understand that even if I explained it to her.
“No amulets,” Benson called to Islasees in disappointment.
“What about this one?” Islasees jerked his chin at the woman in the stream who was crawling up the bank, trying to gain her feet in the slippery mud.
Ferris struggled beneath me, but still I kept her pinned in the dirt, my hand tight over her lips. I could feel the weight of her hatred for me simmering in her stare, whatever else I’d begun kidding myself into thinking she might have begun to see in me burning away with the sting of it. But I didn’t let her rise. Still I made no move to help the woman who was clawing her way up the bank with death stalking her last moments. It was already done. Death watched on in the shadows, nodding her head to me from within the folds of her heavy cowl.
“I’ll find out what she has for you, my lord.” Jadina bowed her head loyally to Islasees, then stalked over to the human with light-footed movements that didn’t marry with the brutal swing of her axe. Ferris jolted beneath me as she watched Esther die, and Jadina leaned down, ripping her collar open to check for amulets.
“She has one!” Jadina whooped.
Islasees stalked over to the woman, his mouth turned down at the corners as usual, the humans’ deaths stirring no emotion from him as he leaned down and ripped the amulet from her throat.
“That was hardly fair, Jadina,” Benson drawled, sauntering back over to the others. “I’d marked her with my arrows. The kill belonged to me.”
“That’s not how it works, Benson.” Jadina cut him a hard look and Benson muttered something incoherent.
Islasees only had attention to spare for the amulet, fastening it around his neck and releasing a sigh as the spirit became his.
“Which is it, my lord?” Benson asked curiously.
“The Rat,” Islasees answered, tucking the amulet beneath his collar and revealing the glimmer of another amulet there.
My jaw ticked at the sight. He had two fucking amulets and he was clearly using his warriors to cut down other Champions to seize them for his own, working around the rules on stealing them with bloodshed. I should have expected nothing less from the brutal, warmongering Lord Protector. He always had been an underhanded bastard, using the shadows, trickery and deception to gain his wants more often than not.
“Where next, my lord?” Jadina asked, wiping her axe off on a row of ferns.
“The woman they were with headed south when she split apart from them a mile back, so south we will go,” Islasees said darkly. “Once we’ve cut down the last of their worthless kind and taken whatever amulets they may have gathered, we can turn our gaze to mightier opponents.”
“Even Princess Drava?” Benson hissed uncertainly, and my ears pricked up at that. So I’d been right, my aunt had come. But surely the Lord Protector wouldn’t turn on a royal.
“If we need an amulet from her, then we will convince her to relinquish it,” Islasees said firmly. “Queen Sorshana demanded we break the curse and seize the boon in her name. So it shall be done.”
“Yes, my lord,” Benson and Jadina replied.
Drava had been favoured as the next queen the last I’d heard, making her an opponent of Queen Sorshana in the court, and no doubt that was why she’d entered this foul place. If she were to end the curse of the forest, it would win her much favour with the Fae. Perhaps Drava was thinking to oust our queen from her position. It was a bold move. The kind I might have made myself once…
Islasees took off across the clearing, marching south with his two lap dogs in tow, and I waited several moments before finally taking my hand from Ferris’s lips and climbing off of her.
“How could you?” she spat, scrambling to her feet and backing away from me, her hand moving to the slingshot she carried in her pocket – though clearly she wasn’t entirely departed from her senses because she didn’t draw it.
I sighed, not liking the fury in her expression one bit and wishing I could have chosen a different path for us to take so that we hadn’t had to bear witness to that savagery. All it had done was serve as a reminder to Ferris of all the reasons she had to hate my kind, and I had been so enjoying the moments when she allowed herself to forget that with me.
“Death hung watching in the shadows, lightwing. She had already chosen this for their moment. I could not have stopped it any more than you could have. And though I greatly wish to see that male’s body separated from his thick head, I could not take on both him and the others and keep you safe. All three of them are seasoned warriors and enough of a challenge for me that I would have needed more than a moment in which to rid them from this world. And that timescale could easily have been at the cost of your demise. So no, I did not jump in to avenge two strangers whose fates had already been sealed, but I refuse to risk you for anything, least of all a pointless cause.”
Ferris blanched at my assessment of what we’d just witnessed, those angry tears still glimmering in her eyes, the violet blazing with more intensity and enchantment than I had ever seen. The Dragon’s amulet at her throat lifted from her chest, glowing a faint teal colour as her silver hair stirred in a wind I couldn’t feel.
I held my breath, expecting the beast to burst from her at any given moment, knowing that if it did, then Islasees and his cohort would quickly return to this place. And perhaps if they did, they’d find their deaths in the jaws of her Dragon after all.
But just as fast as the moment had come, it faded. The tears slipped past her hold, spilling down her cheeks as she crumpled with the weight of the truth I’d offered her, clearly accepting it and hating it at the same time.
I stepped forward, lifting my hands to cradle her face between them, swiping the tears from her cheeks, wanting to banish that hurt and pain in her tumultuous gaze.
She slapped my hands away from her with a sharp shake of her head, backing up and swiping the tears away for herself as she forced them to still.
“Come,” I said, stepping from the ferns and reaching out to take Ferris’s hand in mine.
I might come to blows with Islasees yet, but I would have more amulets to my name when I did. His death was written, but not this day. Not with her here and me unable to guarantee her safety. I’d already lost too many important people to the ruthless wrath of that male. I wouldn’t risk her becoming the next.
“He has the Tiger amulet,” Ferris hissed, tugging her hand free of my hold. “I saw the emblem.”
“We cannot let him gain any more,” I announced in a growl, turning for the trees in the opposite direction to the one Islasees had taken, but Ferris caught my wrist.
I looked back at her, finding a crease between her eyes. “That Fae, you know him, don’t you?”
I nodded stiffly. “I told you of him. Islasees Bellatorn, Lord Protector of the Queen.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, her gaze darkening with that knowledge.
“You wish him dead,” she stated.
“More than anything,” I growled. “But our fates will intertwine again beneath these boughs. You will know when it’s time for me to strike at him.” I turned away from her, but she stepped into my path.
“That’s a purposefully cryptic thing to say,” she accused.
I tilted my head down, lifting her hand and pressing my mouth to her knuckles, watching as her eyes widened at the touch. “I never wanted to wrap you up in my past, lightwing. But I fear it is catching up to me. And once it stands in the starkness of day with us, you will no longer wish to keep my company.”
She gently pulled her hand from mine, her eyes narrowed and full of burning questions. But she didn’t voice them. Perhaps because she knew I wouldn’t answer them. At least a little of that fury had retreated again, a little of that hatred for the Fae she cherished so forcefully – while forgetting she should have included me in its wrath. I supposed the enemy of my enemy truly might be my friend. Or maybe something far more significant than that.
“Whatever it is you’re hiding from me, I can handle it,” she said firmly.
“Then how about this – I promise the truth will come to light. But for now, let me remain in the dark with you a while longer while we hunt together. An alliance built of who we are in this forest, not of who we are outside it.”
She hesitated, then slowly nodded. “For now.”
“That is more than enough.” I smiled ruefully, then gestured for her to lead the way. But she didn’t, not at first. She moved to the bodies of the humans who had found their deaths in this place and carefully moved them so that they lay on their backs at the base of a large cherry tree beside one another.
She broke off the arrows which had taken down the woman and moved to the small stream where she took time selecting stones, plucking several from the water and tossing them aside again until she was satisfied with the four she had chosen.
I watched in silence as she placed them upon the eyes of the dead, using mud from the riverbank to paint an X and an O on them.
I wasn’t entirely familiar with human death rites but there was a stoic reverence to her movements as she completed them. Though I knew it was foolish to linger here a moment longer than necessary, I couldn’t find it in me to stop her from completing the task.
She gathered small sprigs of flowers from the brambles between the roots of the trees, and I reached up to pluck a few sprigs of elder flowers from a high bough to offer her too.
Ferris blinked at me in surprise but wordlessly accepted my offering, my small token of apology. Finally, she placed the bundled flowers in the fingers of the dead along with their weapons.
All the while, Death lingered in the shadows between the trees, watching her, assessing her. The spirit had long become a constant in my life, and though I could hardly claim to have a relationship with her, I did believe I knew enough to sense when she was pleased. And right now, Death was eyeing Ferris like she was something to behold, something to covet, something to desire…
I didn’t like that one bit.
A growl slid up the back of my throat and a breath of laughter spun around me in the breeze before Death took my meaning and scurried away to offer her focus elsewhere.
Good. It would not do for that spirit to take too much of a liking to my lightwing.
When Ferris was finally satisfied, she muttered something which I didn’t catch all the words of but I guessed was a promise to see this curse broken from what fragments I did hear. Then she turned to me at last.
Her violet eyes met mine and I stilled beneath their scrutiny.
“Where to now?” I asked.
Predictably she moved to take a book from her pack, handing the bag to me so that I might carry it for her, and I smirked as I accepted the small burden of it. Then, with her diary in hand, we made a path west while the forest parted for Ferris Creed, its roots and branches sweeping aside, a path appearing at her feet through a magic which was solely devoted to her even if she seemed blind to it at times. And I followed in her wake, wondering if I might just like to keep on following this creature for a long time yet.
