Eryx POV

    I can’t remember the walk to the Hollow. I don’t remember the cell door, or the chain biting deeper into my wrists, or the way the light changed as they brought me up from the dark. I don’t remember the path or the scent of the pines or the breath of the wind on my face for the first time in days. Memory just… skips. One heartbeat, iron and stone. The next, trees like columns and the ground humming under my feet.

    What I do feel, what I do know, is that something inside of me has shifted. The thick, tarry hate that had been sticking to my teeth when I spoke, that ugly heat that wanted to spit at my mother and bite at my father and tear at any hand that touched me, isn’t leading any longer. It crouches lower. It sulks. It’s still here, I can taste it, but it’s not wearing my face anymore. For the first time in weeks, I look up and the first thought that hits me isn’t rage. It’s April.

    She’s at the edge of the stakes, where the ward–line paints old symbols into the earth. She stands there, her hand curled over her stomach, her eyes on me like a rope held tight. If I can reach anything, I can reach that.

    The warlock’s circle glows a color that isn’t a color. It’s bright enough to make my skin flinch away from it and yet there’s no warmth. His ring hums. His voiceys weight into the hollow ce under the soil and the Hollow listens like it has to. Xander is a steady shadow at my side. There are guards behind us, but I don’t care who they are. I care about the tug I feel in my chest when April breathes.

    “I’m releasing every barrier,” the warlock says, and the runes at my wrists dim. The magic that wrapped around and silenced me falls free. “This will

    hurt.”

    It’s like waking up in a fire.

    Heat roars through my ribs and down my spine and coils into my gut like something alive, and my knees go. I drop hard, chains nging where theyy beneath me, my breath yanked out of me. I hear someone bark amand and someone else swear, but it all wobbles, warps, slides away. The only thing that doesn’t blur is April’s face.

    “Now,” the warlock says. He doesn’t shout. His voice is a deid t and pressed down.

    The ground splits cleanly inside the circle. There’s no dirt thrown, no crumble, no mess, just an opening like a cut that’s been waiting to be opened. Heat pours up from it. Not the kind that keeps you warm. The kind that finds your lungs and makes them forget how to be lungs.

    Then she is there.

    Not her face, not her hands, not a shape I can point at. She pours through me like floodwater and me all at once, a rush that climbs my spine and hooks itself into the back of my skull and drags my head up like she wants to make sure we all see who is wearing who. I bite back a sound and fail. It tears out of me raw. My muscles lock and then seize. My jaw clenchies until I taste blood. My heart trips and stumbles and trips again.

    “Hold,” the warlock says, and the ring on his hand res. The white in the circle goes brighter, impossible, and then it’s not white anymore, it’s something that hurts to look at. The Hollow groans around us. Trees shiver. The ground presses back.

    She clings. Gods, she clings. The Hollowed Queen pours into every part of me and clings there. It’s not just pain, though there’s plenty of that, it’s a kind of pressure that makes it hard to know where I end. She tries to pin my own magic to the floor and sit on it. She tips my head toward the forest like her hands are inside my skull. She slides thin threads through my chest and flicks them to see which string makes me jerk the most.

    April breathes in and my heart trips. She finds that andughs without sound.

    I hit my side and then roll and then get to my knees again because I refuse to stay down. My hands w at everything until my fingers ache. My teeth grind so hard my jaw pops. Every muscle trembles Sweat runs down my back and into the waistband of my pants and the breeze finds it and makes me shake harder. I blink and the world doubles. I blink again and it doubles more.

    “Eryx.” April’s voice, it’s soft and steady. Not begging but calling, “I’m here,”

    I find her. I get my head up and get my eyes on her and everything that isn’t her goes quiet for a second. That second is mine. I yank on it like a man grabs rope in a storm. I drag myself toward her with my hands on the chain, It scrapes across the bed of the circle and the sound bites my skin from the inside.

    “Don’tb,/b” Xander warns.

    09:39 Sun, 31 Aug

    “Let him go as far as he can,” the warlock says. “Let him find his ground.”

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    I reach and my hand lifts on its own. It shakes like it belongs to someone older. I reach anyway. The first sound I make that isn’t a scream thrashes out of my throat. “Make it stop.”

    April takes a step that isn’t a step. She leans in, not past the stakes, no, she keeps herself safe, but she gives me her body, her breath, and her eyes. ” can’t,” she says, and it’s ruthless and true. “You can. Hold, Eryx. Don’t let her drag you to death.”

    “I’m tired,” I choke. “I can’t do it, I can’t hold, I can’t.”

    “You can,” she says. “You don’t get to die here. This is not where we end.”

    Her voice is a physical thing. It bites my lip for me. It keeps my teeth clenched when the Queen tries to prise them open and pour out through me. I clutch the chain until my knuckles go white.

    The warlock walks the inside of the circle, slow and even, and speaks those words that feel like stone dropping into water. The groove he cut glows brighter and brighter until the air above it wavers. The seam under my knees hums through my bones.

    The Hollowed Queenughs. It’s not a sound anyone else hears, but I feel it as if the back of my skull were a room she’s sitting in. Sheughs and it echoes and echoes and then itnds in my teeth.

    You gave me such a powerful vessel, now you die with me.

    “Get out,” I snarl, and the voice thates out of my throat is mine. It’s shredded, but it’s mine.

    Your mother cries sweeter than most. Your father tastes like iron and smoke. Your mate smells like hope and that’s the worst of all. I’ll drink her and leave the empty cup for you to rock.

    “Shut up,” I spit, and I m my head back into the something behind me, because the pain is mine, and when the pain is mine she can’t y it like an

    instrument.

    You begged your mate to make it stop, she purrs. Beg her again. Beg her to trade. I like trades.

    “Enough,” the warlock says, and the circle brightens again, and the heat inside me spikes so fast it steals my breath. It pours into my lungs and sets them on fire. I bend, fold, try to curl around it, but it’s everywhere at once. There’s no part of me I can hold safe.

    I scream. There’s no way not to. It tears something open in me I thought was already opened, and it keeps going. My back hits the ground. I bow up off it. I can’t stop any of it, so I don’t try. I ride the scream like a wave. I don’t let it drown me.

    She bites. That’s bwhat /bbit /bfeels like. Teeth in my heart, teeth in my spine, teeth in that space behind my eyes where pictures go when I close bthem/b. Her bite is cold and bthen /bhat and then something else that has no temperature, only intent.

    You will bigive /i/bme this body and let it burn with me. You’re only a boy wearing a crown you didn’t earn, Sit down,

    “No” grind out, because stubbornness is free and it’s all I have left that doesn’t cost anything

    I w for the chain and miss and w again until i catch it and hold I picture the link in front of my fingers. I picture the iron. I put my bmind /bin the exact ce where the metal meets my skin and hold there she tries to pull me away and I go limp everywhere else, and that keeps me stuck it’s a tuck t learned bwhen /bmy father trained me to stand inside pam and count past it

    The warlock’s ring sings like struck true the cigle is so bright it burns the underside of my eyelids even closed open my eyes anyway. I want to see, If I’m going to live, I want to see what it costs if I’m going to die. I want to see who I die looking at

    April is crying and I hate that i can’t wipe her face. My father is rock, standing with my mother. He watches and waits and doesn’t blink. The guards sweat and pretend they don’t. The Hollow breathes and the breath thates out of it but my ps and tastes like ash and oft altar smoke.

    “Come out and die,” the warlockmands, and something in his voice stops instant “All of you. No rot left forter

    She rattles my bones. I taste her anger taste her hunger. I taste something like surprise and like amusement and like pride, all in one, the way a knife

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    has sheen and edge and blood. She stretches inside me. She tries to smear herself into the walls. She tries to climb up my spine and into my mouth. I mp my teeth. I bite my tongue until copper floods my mouth.

    Fine, she whispers in my mind, and her tone shifts. If you want a story, I will tell one.

    The warlock freezes, like he can hear her.

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    My head jerks and my lips part and she bares my teeth in a smile that isn’t mine. My hands jerk against the chain and my wrists burn where the cuffs bite deeper. When I speak, it’s her, and it’s vile.

    “Do you like the idea of your mate asking me to make it stop, little wolf girl,” she croons. “Do you like the thought of him lying on this dirt and giving me a body so he can breathe without pain, and me saying yes. Do you like the picture of me wearing his face and licking the tears off your cheeks.”

    April inches. She doesn’t step back. She doesn’t cover her stomach. She looks me in the eye and lets me see the hurt and the anger and the refusal.

    “Get out of him,” she says, and it’s small and soft and it shouldn’t carry, but it does.

    The warlock moves but he doesn’t touch me. He throws something into the circle and itnds with a hiss. The air tears and the heat spikes again and again and it doesn’t teau this time, it climbs. I arch off the ground, blow my breath, suck in another, again, again, the way you do when you’re drowning and you keep catching a pocket of air and then water crashes over your face anyway.

    “Hold,” he says. “Hold.”

    “I’m trying,” I rasp. “I’m trying, I’m trying.”

    You’re not enough, she whispers in my mind, and slides cold hands down my ribs, across my belly, toward the wolf. She wants my other half. She wants

    my wolf to throw me down and step into my mouth and howl for her. My wolf shows its teeth and crouches and refuses. He’s stubborn in the exact shape I am. He loves the exact same shape. He doesn’t open doors for old things.

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