Page 20 of The Hollow King

Tears?

I could not remember the last time I had wept. I had believed, somewhere in the long grey stretch of my existence, that whatever part of me had once been capable of it had burned alongside my wife. But more followed, hot and fast, tracking down into my beard, and I made no move to stop them.

All my rage and hatred had blinded me. Three hundred years of it, and I had poured every last drop of it onto the one woman who carried what remained of the only person I had ever loved.

“You will have a fruitful life and die an old man, but your Queen will be beside you.”

“W-What?”

“May you find your peace, Varga Belascu, here and when you return your soul to me.”

The light began to dim, the silver retreating back into the glass the way it had come, and with it went the weight of a presence I had felt only twice in three centuries.

“No. No. Wait. Please,” I cried, trying to stand, but the light vanished, leaving only the moon's ordinary reflection in the ordinary glass.

Iona is yours, a voice whispered, so faint I could not have said whether it came from the mirror or from somewhere inside my own skull.

I clutched my head.

What had I done?

I ran to the locked door and flung my weight against it. Once. Twice. The old wood held, then splintered, then gave way entirely, and I stumbled through into the dark.

There was not enough light to find my wife's portrait by memory alone. I collided with a crate, then another, cursing, until my hand found the cold brass of an old oil lamp near the window. My claws shook too badly to strike the flint at first. When the wick finally caught, I carried the small flame back to the fireplace and raised it high.

The resemblance was there. I searched for it the way a starving man searches a bare table, and this time I found it. The hair was wrong, and the aged paint could not tell me the colour of Morana's eyes, but everything else was there, waiting, as though it had been waiting three hundred years for me to finally look. The slight frame. The soft jawline. The particular curve of her lips, caught mid-smile by an artist who had known he was painting the only woman I would ever love.

“Morana,” I whispered. “What have I become, my love.”

I sank to my knees before the fireplace, the lamp trembling in my grip, and let the grief and shame collide the way they should have collided three hundred years ago, on the night I first chose the axe over the grave.

Chapter 12

Iona

I woke up like I had for twenty-two years, but this would be my last. Tonight I would be sacrificed under the moonlight. My skull would adorn the path to his castle. There were no more tears left. I was simply tired of this life.

There was a strange peace in that. I had spent so many years afraid of small things—a raised hand, a sharp word, the particular silence that came before my husband's temper broke—that fearing the largest thing of all felt almost like relief. Death could only happen once. My husband had made me die a hundred small deaths before this one ever arrived.

I traced my finger along the jagged scar on my cheek. I had encountered enough monsters and not all of them left scars. With a heavy sigh, I sat up and wondered if Borin would bring any special three foods today. It was a foolish thing to wonder about, on such a morning, but I had learned that the mind reached for small comforts when it could no longer bear the large ones.

Something moved in the corner of my eye. It lurked in the dark shadows on the far side of the room.

The beast rose and the chair creaked. I pulled the covers high and began to tremble as he grew closer.

“How are you feeling?” he asked, raising his hand towards me.

I flinched at the sight of his claws and covered my head with my forearm. When he did not touch me or strike me, I slowly lowered my arm. My heart continued to hammer long after the danger had not come. It had learned, these past few days, that safety was never guaranteed simply because a blow had not yet fallen.

His head had drooped and both of his hands remained by his side. I had never seen him stand so still. Even in stillness, there was usually something coiled in him, some violence waiting for permission. This was different. This looked almost like a man ashamed to be seen.

“Iona,” he said while I gasped.

“You know my name?”

He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

“Borin reminded me,” he said, scraping his boot along the wood. “I—”