Read Hollow by Caroline Peckham Chapter 33 – Two days of squatting in ramshackle buildings which barely offered shelter had done little to dampen my fury at Hendrix. Again he’d used me to gain a spirit which never would have been his otherwise. It rankled something deep within me, rage tearing at the piece of me which was wholly human and had suffered the cruelty and abuse of the Fae for far too long.
He’d spoken of Fae who hunted my kind for sport as if that were simply something that happened and there was nothing to be done for it. But I wouldn’t let the wounds of the past go unanswered, and I refused to keep playing this hunt for his gain. We might have made a truce to get to the end together, but he clearly wasn’t going to fight fair like he’d promised, so I didn’t plan on doing so either.
The past few nights had been filled with the horrors of the forest, vines creeping through cracks in broken walls and screams of unknown origin rattling the ceilings.
Hendrix was unbearable in his smugness, and my anger at what he’d now stolen from me three times was clawing at the insides of my skin almost as keenly as the Dragon was.
“He forgets himself in this place,” the Dragon growled in the confines of my mind while I scowled at the back of the Fae who had claimed to want to work with me. But it was clear now what should have been apparent the whole time – every Champion in these woods was out for themselves. Hendrix more than any other.
Perhaps he really had meant the things he’d said to me, really did appreciate my ideas and see my worth, but all that really amounted to was that he now thought of those merits as things at his own disposal.
I was more than tempted to part with him, to turn and run off into the trees and never again find myself swallowed in his shadow.
“Spit it out,” Hendrix demanded, stopping suddenly in a small glade at the edge of a little pond swamped in green weed.
I pursed my lips and made to turn away, but he caught hold of my chin and forced my eyes to meet with his.
“Let go of me,” I said coldly, but his grip only tightened.
“Not until you say the words which I can see spinning behind those enrapturing eyes of yours, lightwing.”
I wanted to refuse, to turn away just to spite him, but why should I? Why shouldn’t he face the vitriol which had been burning its way up the back of my throat ever since he’d used me to take yet another spirit from me?
“The Wolf should have been mine,” I hissed, stepping closer to him instead of backing away, my gaze simmering as it locked with his. “And the Fox and the Bear too for that matter.”
“Then why is it that their amulets sit firmly around my neck? Besides, I thought we were a team?” Hendrix teased, a smile at the edge of his mouth like this was all some big game to him, but it was the farthest thing from that to me.
“Don’t smirk at me like it doesn’t matter which of us claims the amulets. You know as well as I do that the one to return the most spirits to the Great Elm will be the one she bestows her boon upon. I need that favour – Rissa needs to be free of this place. If you know anything about me at all, then surely you can understand that?”
I jerked my chin out of his hold as tears flared in the corners of my eyes, my heart pounding at the truth of the words which were eating at me. It wasn’t just that he’d stolen them out from under me, it was that in doing so, I’d failed in what I’d promised my sister. I’d sworn to free her from this infernal place and I was running out of time to make good on that oath.
“You’re not the only one who needs the boon,” Hendrix said in a low voice, his words making a chill seep through my veins. There was pain in that admission, a truth he hadn’t shared with me. At least not in full.
“Why?” I demanded, forcing myself to turn back to him. “Tell me what it is you seek to gain which will not be achieved by the fracturing of the forest’s curse? You told me that you aren’t planning to ask for it to return your family from death to you and truthfully, I don’t believe even the Great Elm would be capable of that anyway. So what is it?”
Hendrix worked his jaw, his gaze slipping from mine, a slight shake of his head making it clear he didn’t intend to elaborate.
“There are many things that I would wish to fix in this wretched world,” he said, still not answering my question in full.
“Things more valuable than my sister’s life?”
“I didn’t say that.” He reached for me, but I backed away.
“Your actions said it plainly enough. I might have forgiven you for the Bear and even the Fox because I hadn’t shared my truth with you when you seized them. But the Wolf?” I shook my head, backing away, but he wasn’t going to allow me to escape so easily. His long strides made quick work of catching me, his hand snaring the back of my neck, his green eyes blazing with a wild determination as he drew me closer.
“I’m sorry, Ferris,” he said, his voice rough, his skin hot. “Is that what you need to hear from me? That I fucked up? That I always fuck up? Isn’t the mark on my face a clear enough indication of that? Didn’t I tell you plainly when we met that no living being wants any piece of me? I am all the things you thought me to be when we met and many worse horrors besides.”
“That’s not the male I saw when the Lost Children came for me,” I breathed, a single, traitorous tear tracking down my cheek. “The person you were that night wasn’t selfish and cruel but brave and self-sacrificing. He risked everything to come after me-”
“Rescuing you is nothing short of selfish,” he barked, dragging me closer, his words a slash against my lips, a curse I had no choice but to inhale. “Because I found you here in these woods, my lightwing. I found you and marked you as mine. You’re my luck, my prize, maybe even my salvation, but there is nothing about that which betrays goodness or heroics because I did not risk my life to save yours. I offered it up freely rather than allow you to be anything other than mine.”
“That’s madness,” I breathed, my eyes falling to his lips which hovered so close to my own, my body aching for a kiss which would be so much more than a sin. “I’m human, I’m nothing to you. My lifetime passes by in little more than a blink to your kind-”
“Yet it doesn’t, does it, Ferris? Not for you. Again and again you’ve been reborn. Thirteen times you’ve heeded the call of the cursed forest while thirteen times, I’ve fought to ignore the pull of it. Except that pull never faded when I stepped into these trees. It never lessened one bit. Not until you stumbled across my path. Not until I captured you.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that I don’t think the forest was ever what awaited me here. I’m saying that all those years I spent denying the call of the trees, I think I was really denying the call of you. My lightwing. My elusive spirit.” He brushed his fingers down the side of my face, his green eyes studying the violet in mine while I fought to remember to breathe, fought to remember that I was supposed to hate him, that I was furious with him. That he had used and betrayed me no matter the pretty words he spun which had my heart pounding wildly the way it was now.
“They weren’t me,” I said feebly. “Those other women who wore my face. I don’t remember them. I don’t know who they loved or what they dreamed.”
“I never knew them either. And I think there’s good reason for that. Because you are the one I was destined to find. You are the one who I truly came here to claim.”
His lips brushed mine with that final word and a knot tightened in my gut, a flush of heat racing through my limbs, a surge of want exploding in every piece of me, and all the reasons I had to deny his words, to deny him just faded away to nothing.
My eyes fell closed, my lips parted, chin tilted and-
A Raven’s cry cut the air to ribbons as a swathe of darkness far deeper than any shadow cast by nature cut through the trees and swept over our heads.
We ducked and I threw a hand up to protect my face, the silken feathers of the spirit brushing across my arm as it passed.
“That way!” a man yelled, and Hendrix hauled me back to my feet as a pair of Fae warriors burst into our clearing in pursuit of the spirit.
The dark-haired one spotted us and fired off an arrow which shot for my face so fast I could do nothing but scream.
Hendrix threw himself in front of me, the arrow piercing his bicep, and a snarl of feral fury tore from his lips.
“The Raven is ours!” the fair-haired Fae warrior yelled, drawing his sword and aiming it at us in a clear threat. “Leave it to us and you’ll find we have no quarrel with you.”
Hendrix bared his teeth, ripping the arrow from his arm and tossing it towards them, placing himself between me and the newcomers in a protective stance.
“Your arrow says differently,” he snarled.
“I shot for the movement,” the dark-haired Fae said, raising a hand in apology. “I expected the Raven, not… who exactly are you, anyway?”
“And what is that mark on your face?” the fair-haired warrior added, his eyes narrowing as he took a closer look at Hendrix.
Hendrix stilled in that unnatural way of his, cutting a look my way which spoke of a thousand warnings.
“It’s none of your concern,” he growled, all simmering violence as he took a step closer to them, placing himself between me and the threat they posed.
I glanced between them, the sound of the Raven’s wingbeats drawing further away with each wasted moment. I couldn’t miss my chance at it for a second time. I had to capture it. For Rissa.
“Forest, lend me a path,” I pleaded beneath my breath, then turned and sprinted away into the trees.
Cries rang out behind me and I ducked on instinct a beat before an arrow slammed into a tree right where my head had been, the branches shifting to shield me at my back.
Hendrix bellowed in fury, his roar sending birds racing from the canopy overhead as I sped away from him and the clash of swords sounded behind me, marking the fight he’d fallen into.
I cast a fearful look over my shoulder, but already the sight of the Fae was lost to me. Hendrix was a formidable warrior though. I had to believe he could look after himself.
The Raven had a good start on me, but the forest seemed to know what I was looking for, a pathway opening on my right, then twisting sharply left and spearing through the trees. I was running so fast that the tips of the branches and their leaves skimmed my arms and face as they pulled aside for me.
A patch of silken darkness up ahead urged me on faster and faster, my own heart a pounding rhythm my boots fought to keep up with.
The Raven was the guardian of the night in the forest. It wouldn’t be wooed the way I had hoped to do so with the Stag, and it wouldn’t be tempted into action as the Fox had been with the fire. Nor did it fear the day as the Wolf had done because the light was its twin in so many ways. I had no plan in place to lure it to me, but I was still determined to capture it at last. I wouldn’t let it get away a second time.
Shouts and the crash of swords echoed behind me. I threw another glance over my shoulder, hoping Hendrix and the Fae would keep each other distracted long enough for me to do what I needed.
My boots splashed into a stream, water sloshing over the tops of them and chilling my ankles but I ignored it, hunting the treetops for a patch of darker shadow.
Birds swooped between the branches overhead, squirrels and other rodents racing back and forth too, the motion drawing my focus but only distracting me from my target.
“Come on,” I muttered, hunting the space between the greenery with growing desperation.
A cry came, pain haunting it as it spun through the trees at my back, and my heart leapt in panic before I recognised Hendrix’s bellow of challenge a moment later. He wasn’t the one in pain.
Then I spotted it. A patch of deepest midnight lurking near the top of a wide pine tree to my right.
I broke into a run, leaping for the lowest branch, my fingernails biting into the bark as I caught it and hauled myself skyward.
The Raven was watching me, I could feel the weight of its gaze on my movements as I climbed, and I began to fear it would take flight the moment I made it up to its perch.
“The world is hurting,” I said in a low and soothing voice. “The Great Elm is hurting. She needs us to bring you all back to her.”
In the depths of that midnight shadow, the Raven cocked its head, its metallic beak catching a shard of light and allowing me to make out the shape of its head. It could rip into my flesh with that beak all too easily, but it wasn’t animosity I read in its expression. The Raven was listening to me.
“That’s why I’m here. Maybe you’ve seen a girl with my face in these woods before? Maybe she spoke to you as I am now, or maybe she got it all wrong and that’s why this curse is still spreading? Either way, I’m here now. I want to help. I want to return the forest to what it once was. Can you remember the way it used to be? When you would guide the blanket of night over the trees and watch them in the darkness so that all here could slumber in peace?”
The Raven released a low caw, the sound pierced with magic that struck a chord deep inside my chest and brought a tear to my eye. I didn’t think the spirit could fully remember the days I was describing in its maddened state, but it grieved them, it held an emptiness in its soul which would only ever be fixed by the ending of this curse.
I heaved myself up onto the branch it had chosen for its perch, adrenaline coursing through my veins and a healthy dose of fear accompanying me into the treetops. If it swooped at me, I could easily be knocked right out of the trees and break my neck on the forest floor so far below. But I didn’t think it wanted to hurt me.
The Raven hopped closer, its weight making the branch bounce wildly, its size dwarfing mine where I crouched before it and my stomach swooping at the motion.
“That’s it,” I urged, reaching out with trembling fingers, my balance all too precarious. “I’ll do all I can to end this torment. I only need you to help me, to join me and-”
A rush of motion below us made me look down, the Raven cawing in alarm as Hendrix pursued the fair-haired Fae out into the stream with a furious cry.
My lips parted in horror as Hendrix hunted the male down and swung his sword for his neck with a brutal efficiency which saw blood flying in a great arc, death filling the space all around us as the Fae’s head fell into the stream a beat before his body followed.
My eyes met the wild rage in Hendrix’s expression, terror consuming me as I found myself looking right at the monster he had so often warned me he was. He’d chased that male down and executed him without hesitation. It was brutal and violent and horrifying and for what?
Hendrix heaved in great breaths as he stared up at me, a moment of full understanding passing between us as he was revealed at his very worst and I was forced to face it head on.
Then his eyes moved to the Raven at my side, my hand outstretched and so close to touching it that barely a breeze could slip through the divide.
He drew a dagger and hauled his arm back to throw it.
“No,” I gasped, lunging for the Raven, betrayal slicing through me even faster than the blade slit the air in two.
My hand pressed to the Raven’s metal beak and a pulse of magic struck me in the chest like a gong clanging to announce the hour of midnight.
Darkness enveloped me, and I would have screamed had there been any air in my lungs to do so. Instead I was lifted from the branch, my arms flying wide as silken wings draped around me, encompassing me and constricting tightly before bursting apart into a layer of night itself.
The midnight air enveloped me right down to the marrow of my bones and then slipped beneath the surface of my skin, a thump sounding as an amulet fell onto the branch before me.
I lurched for it as my vision returned, fingers knotting around the metal chain before I had even realised that those same fingers were now coated in runes so beautiful and haunting that I could have sobbed to look upon them.
I was so caught up staring at the new markings on the fingers of my right hand that I almost didn’t notice the dagger lodged in the trunk of the tree right where the Raven had been.
My gaze snapped back to Hendrix as I dropped the Raven’s amulet around my neck, and I hated how much that betrayal felt like a punch to the gut. He may as well have spat in my face as he looked at me with the burning intensity he now offered.
“You swore to me that you would not do that again,” I hissed, ire and treachery sour on my tongue, every moment I’d allowed myself to consider him something more than a self-serving brute coming to haunt and mock me as I stared into his endlessly green eyes.
“It was going to attack you,” he growled. “And I nearly lost you to those bastards a moment ago. You can’t seriously have expected me to just stand here and-”
“You lied to me,” I spat, refusing to let him ply me with excuses and bullshit. “You broke any fragile trust I’d been building in you and for what? Tell me why you think you deserve the boon so much more than I do. Tell me what it is that you value so much more than the life which was stolen from my sister!”
“It wasn’t about the boon or the spirits or the fucking amulet!” he yelled, but all I could see was the blood coating his hands, the body of the male he had hunted like a beast and cut down while he ran for his life.
“You told me you were a monster,” I said, reaching inside myself for the Dragon which always lurked just beyond my grasp, awaiting my call. “I should have listened before now.”
The Dragon answered me at once, spilling from the amulet and coiling around me so that I could leap from the branch onto its back.
“You will not leave me, Ferris Creed!” Hendrix roared as he realised what I was doing, but through the burn of my tears and the solid weight of his betrayal in my gut, I refused to listen to the desperation of his cry. And without allowing myself so much as a single look back, I sped away from him on my Dragon and left him to rot in the grip of the trees.
