bChapter /bb201 /b

    Eryx POV

    b59/bb% /b

    I keep my hands in front of me so the guards can see the cuffs. The iron bites when I flex my fingers, and the spelled sigils prickle against my skin. I asked for them and no one argued. Not after what happened in the hall when the Hollowed Queen tried to talk through me.

    The cuffs are my safety, I hope, anyway.

    We move as a tight line along the fringe of pines. My father takes point with two guards a step off his shoulders. My mother keeps ten paces back, her magic quiet and ready. Helena walks between Garrick and Killian. She’s pale, focused, and too calm, the way people get when they’ve already decided they’ll be punished for whates next. The guards made her roll her sleeves earlier so the wards we inked on her

    forearms stay clear. She didn’tin. She just looked at the trees and said she’d show us where she stood.

    The border of the Hollow doesn’t look like much until you’re close. The light goes thin, the air gets sweet with rot, and wind that was moving a moment ago loses its mind and circles in small, tired loops. My wolf hates it. I have to breathe slow to keep the animal under my skin from lifting its head and raking ws down my ribs. The Hollow doesn’t feel like a ce. It feels like a bruise on the world that never healed.

    “Last warning,” my father says without looking back. “If anyone isn’t sure, turn around now.”

    No one turns, they won’t, this is their pack as well, their home.

    We cross together.

    It’s colder inside, then warmer under the skin, like a fever that can’t decide what to be. Sound doesn’t carry right. The crunch of our boots on

    needles sounds a step behind. The smells are wrong. Sap and damp soil and something sweet like overripe fruit that makes my tongue press to my teeth. The trees lean a little, like they’re listening, and the moss climbs in spirals I don’t want to look at for long.

    It’s changed since I wasst in here, which wasn’t long ago, it’s changing faster now than it was before.

    The cuffs check me every time my instinct tries to call up a veil or a shield. The metal drinks the first spark. The sigils settle again like small, patient hands. I keep my head clear and my eyes forward. My mother weaves a loose behind us on the move, thin strands thaty close to the ground and skim the bark. She does it without lifting her hands more than an inch. My father rests one palm on the hilt of the de, quenched in salt and ash.

    Helena tips her face to the sour air and closes her eyes like she’s listening to a tune only she can hear. She turns left, stops, turns again, and points deeper in. “There,” she says, and her voice is low but steady. “The clearing with the stone ribs. I stepped inside the circle and called. I

    can find it.”

    We follow her through a stand of birch that should be too thin to hide anything and into a darkerne where the ground goes soft. The deeper we go, the more the quiet presses in. No birds. No bugs. The only sound is our group moving and the breath we try to keep even.

    We reach the clearing.

    Ribs arc up from the ground in a half ring, tall, pale, and smooth. Stone or old wood that forgot it was wood. Lichen coats them in thince. I can see where people scraped, burnedb, /bcleaned, and scraped again. The center of the ring is ck dirt with a sheen like oil. There’s old wax, old ash, and a shallow groove where a bowl sat and bled something sticky into the soil. I don’t have to ask if this is the ce. It feels like the center of the bruise, and every part of me wants to step back even as my body moves forward.

    Helena stops at the edge. Good. She doesn’t cross. She lifts a hand and points to a spot near the center. “There,” she says. “I drew the circle with salt. I set iron at the quarters. I used your wardstone. I used the blood, only a drop of blood. I said the names. I asked for a guardian. Not her.” She swallows. “I thought I could step out if I was wrong.”

    My father’s jaw locks. He doesn’t answer her. He flicks his eyes to me without moving his head. I nod once. I go first.

    15:44 Fr, 15 bAug /b

    The dirt holds under my boot. The air is heavier inside the ring, not by much, just enough to make breath feel like work. I don’t step all bthe /bway to the center. I stop with room around me, cuffs in front of me, shoulders loose, attention open but tight. I listen.

    Something moves behind the ribs. No branch cracks. No foot drags. It’s more like a shift of weight, like a curtain sliding over stone. A curl of shadow thickens between two of the pale arcs. It spills across the ground and gathers itself. ck haires first, longer than it should be, heavy, glossy like wet ink. It rolls over the dirt and then lifts. Bare feet hover above the ground, clean and pale. The hair licks at the ankles bas /bif it wants to climb.

    She takes the shape of a woman because it’s a sharp edge to use. Skin like milk left under the moon. A mouth too soft. Eyes that open and don’t belong to human faces. They’re dark at the center and too bright around the edge, like coals with frost on them. There’s a shimmer at her ankles that I know on sight as a binding. It catches the light with a thin ripple when she leans. It holds. She can’t step past it.

    I shouldn’t be surprised she has a body. I still am. She shouldn’t be this solid without someone paying for that weight. Someone did.

    bAD /b

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