Chapter 6: Six - Fated to the Hollow King

Ilanded on something soft.

When I rubbed my fingers across it, the material felt like velvet, buttery soft, the furrows moving back and forth beneath my fingertips. I lay on my back, blinking against the darkness. Lifting a hand above my head, I found nothing but air. So I sat up. Slowly. Carefully.

The hands that had snatched me were gone, but my thoughts careened wildly. What had I done? I’d been so bold as to speak those words aloud, and now I regretted it.

A glow bloomed, a halo of candlelight, slowly brightening. A shadow moved, a shape, a man, stalking the perimeter of the room, much like Maraid had with the sage. Movements in parallel, but he carried a candlestick, lifting it to the chandeliers that hung in the room. There were five or six of them. He took his time, letting the light unfurl.

It was him.

I knew before I could see him clearly.

So it had not been my imagination. He existed. And now I could ask him all the questions. Unless he meant to keep me here. Unless I were his prisoner.

But he hadn’t captured me the other night; he’d only asked me to stop the dance. There wouldn’t be another dance for three weeks, and he couldn’t know whether I’d listened to his request. It was of the utmost importance that I glean information from him and do it without fear.

I leaned back, realizing I sat on a velvet couch, large enough for two. It stood in the center of the round chamber. A piano hunched to one side, covered in vines, a stack of books and music on top of it, the keys covered in gray dust. Untouched.

On the floor were crushed petals, roses I thought, that had died, dried, and been left where they fell. A pungent odor came from them, and when the man moved, his footsteps impossible to hear, the floral sweetness thickened. I thought I might be sick on the scent.

Candles, dripping with wax, crowded every surface. A table strewn with parchment and sculptures, candles guttering low, the wax running long. Great bolts of cloth, velvet and perhaps silk, were heaped in every corner. As the light grew brighter, I made out no obvious door, no way to leave the chamber. It was a circle of solid stone. Was I trapped in his world?

I raked my memory for stories, wishing I’d had a chance to read the book of legends I’d taken. It lay in my room now, tucked under a pillow. I’d planned to light a candle and read it tonight from cover to cover.

Now? I waited, watching him, coming up with a plan. It was no use to run; I’d have to coax him into letting me go. Not let him seduce me, but keep to my logic, my sound reasoning.

Unless I were in a dream.

I placed two fingers on my wrist, pinching the skin tight. Pain shot up my arm. The scene did not waver. Not a dream.

At last, he finished his work, blew out the flame, and leaned the taper against the wall. Then he approached me.

He moved like the wildcats that haunted the mountainside, easing along a ledge, silent and certain. His clothes billowed around him as though they were trying to keep up, but those green eyes held me captive.

In the full light, shadows revealed what they’d hidden the first time. He was tall. Lean. Gaunt. As though he had been hungry for a long time.

My lips went dry, a sudden thirst rising in me that had nothing to do with water as he neared.

“Release me,” I commanded. “I am a Rift Dancer, charged with protecting the city. The Veiled Wardens are hunting you. When they find you, they will not be kind.”

“They will not find me,” he said matter-of-factly, sitting back in a velvet chair. He studied me, one leg crossed over the other.

“If I’ve found you, so will they.”

“Do you think, if anyone could find this place, it would already be raided, burned, condemned? But you see, like I told you before, we aren’t in your world anymore. You opened a gate when you danced. When you made the mistake. I came through it. Now we are on my side of the seam.”

“Is that why I’m trapped in this chamber with you? You didn’t bring me here last time.”

“No. I thought you might listen to me, but you fled instead.”

“Is that why you killed Rift Mother, to get me to listen to you?”

He uncrossed his legs, leaning forward, earnest. “I didn’t kill her. As I told you, I’m trapped here. How could I escape to kill when you haven’t fully freed me?”

“I will dance again. I will close the rift, and you’ll be locked here with the rest of the demons.”

He smirked, stretching his long fingers, and that eerie clicking came again. Like claws moving up a wall. “They aren’t demons. We aren’t demons. I’ve already told you this. It is tiresome to repeat myself. But you were bred on propaganda; you wouldn’t recognize the truth even if it danced in front of you.”

Words of protest died on my lips. Crossing my arms, I leaned back into the velvet, which was soft on my bare skin. I was surprised to find myself indignant, insulted by his comment. But I was the one in the precarious situation. “If I listen to you, will you let me leave?”

“No.”

“No?” I bolted forward. “How unfair of you to keep me here against my will.”

That faint smile again. “I will make a bargain with you.”

“Name your terms.”

“Ah, but you see, this is difficult. Because when I release you, you’ll have free will to walk the world above, and I can only find you by shifting into the hollow places in between. The lingering threads of the seal that let me through.” He stood. “So let me show you what will happen if you don’t keep your terms, because I suspect you mean to leave me to my fate.”

“Wait,” I protested. “A bargain is a bargain. I will be true to my word.”

“We shall see,” he said over his shoulder.

He walked to the piano with that same prowling stride and sank onto the bench. Blowing dust from the keys, he set one hand to them.

A low chord rang out.

My body went tight.

My eyes closed against my will.

He played another chord.

A distinct need rose in me to stand and dance. The need was not mine; it was beneath my mind, in the muscle of my thighs, the arch of my feet, the low tug in my belly.

A third chord brought me to my feet.

The horror of it settled over me, slow and cold.

He is the master, and I am the puppet.

A presence folded around me as he kept playing. A voice slipped in beside my ear, low and warm and unbearably intimate. Come to me. Gazelle. Dance for me.

I didn’t realize I was in a dancer’s pose, arms raised above my head, one leg poised to take a step toward him.

Just as suddenly as it had come, the lure released me.

My arms dropped to my sides. I staggered, panting as though I’d just concluded practice. My indignation was gone, replaced by terror. He had some insidious control over me. But the worst of it was the fact that I’d come close to walking into his arms and believing it was my own idea. Part of me still wanted to.

He rose from the piano, dust streaking his clothes. “Now we shall talk terms.”

I wanted to hurl dead flowers at him and demand my release, but it would not further my cause for freedom. Instead, I lowered myself back onto the velvet, fighting to steady my breathing.

Moving to the desk, he sat down and took a quill, leaning over a piece of parchment. “Next full moon, you will dance a new dance. An unsealing. Breaking the barrier that keeps us trapped here.”

I twisted my fingers in my skirt, grasping at his words. “Us?”

“My people.”

I reined in my fear. “Demons?”

He snarled, baring his teeth. “No, not demons, but that is what you were taught, is it not?”

“Yes. I am a Rift Dancer. I dance to keep the barrier sealed, to keep the demons from returning to feed on us. I know they are real because I’ve seen them. They slaughtered my family, my father and mother, my older brother and my…my younger sister. That’s why I came here to dance. To devote my skills to keeping the monsters away.”

He put down the quill.

Lifting his head, he looked at me. His eyes were tired, his shoulders slumped, and he seemed thinner than when I’d just entered. “Whoever killed your family was not my people. We’ve been here, sleeping in a restless slumber. I only woke recently when the spell broke.” A pause. “We aren’t the only monsters who exist, Gazelle.”

The use of my name knocked something loose in me. I looked away. “You call yourself the Hollow King,” I said after a moment. “I have never heard the legend. What does it mean?”

His shadow stirred of its own accord, crawling along the wall. I tried not to look at it, but I glimpsed the shape of a man, a crown on his head. This time, there was no clicking sound.

He sighed.

“We are old,” he said. “At least, my people are. There was a time when gods and mortals dwelled together, though they weren’t supposed to. Instead of keeping themselves apart, the lesser gods, with less magic, began to cavort with humankind, and a new race was born. Demigods. Something less than a god, yet more than a mortal.”

He looked at his hands. “They called us the Hollow Ones because we were not fully anything. The gods cast us out. The mortals cast us out. So we dwelled in the shadows, in the remote, quiet places of the world, beneath hills and under mountains. We built ourselves a new world, a kingdom of our own in the hollows. It was beautiful, enchanting. We came and went as we pleased, up to the surface, the mortal realm, but never higher, never to the celestial realms of the gods. We knew our place, and we took our pleasures where we could find them.”

His voice softened. “And the gods forsook the land; they left it to the mortals, only interfering occasionally, as they were asked. And the demigods, the Hollow Ones, bored and ever mischievous, played tricks on the mortals. Bargains, mostly, small ones, some larger. We became such a menace that the mortals cried out against us.”

He smirked, but it soon faded. “Finally, a king was appointed to govern us. It lasted for a time, and then we were unruly again. The mortals cried out, and so, after generations of this, the king made a bargain with a mortal queen. He gave her the key to great magic. A bargain. The mortals would dance, a special kind of dance, on the night of the full moon, and the door between realms would be sealed. The seal would weaken every thirty days, but the dance would close it again. It was the intent of the king to teach his people a lesson. A discipline. Six years the bargain was to last. Long enough to teach his people to behave.”

His tone turned hard. “The mortal queen betrayed him. When the six years ended, she did not break the seal. She kept dancing. She kept her people safe and our people locked away. The king was patient. He waited. But his people were not. Eventually they turned into shadows, crying out against the mortals, and their kingdom fell into decay. They fell into hunger, then, at last, into an endless slumber. And there they remain.”

He sank into the telling of the story as though it were a burden he alone carried. I stared at him, the curve of his shoulders, the gauntness of his face, the weariness in his eyes. Was he the king who’d made the bargain, been betrayed? Here in the shadows, in the floral decay and flickering candlelight, it was easy to believe his tale. Hollow Ones. Not demons. A lesson meant to be taught. A betrayal. A mortal queen.

Except—

We had no mortal queen. Not for decades. Old families governed through councils and votes, the Sacred Palace no longer a home for royalty but for the dancers. I should not believe his beautiful tale, nor the words that spun from his gilded tongue. If any of it were true, I needed to validate it at the Hall of Records.

I weighed my words carefully. “If all this is true, what would you have me do?”

He picked up the quill again. “Dance a new dance, one that I will teach you. You must teach it to the other dancers, and during the next full moon, release us.”

“Terms of a bargain usually include a benefit for both parties.”

That smirk again. Faint. Almost rueful. “The dance is killing you.”

My hand went to my throat. “That is the sacrifice of a Rift Dancer.”

“To dance to death? I think not. It is an honor to lift magic from the soil, to bless your city with it. But that is not what you’re doing. You’re using your soul to seal the rift, to feed something else. Someone else.”

“It is an honor,” I repeated.

“That’s what they tell you.” He set the quill down, his emerald eyes hard as flint. “You’re like the warrior who goes to battle, to lay down their life for their family, their country. That is honorable. But if the cause is a lie, the sacrifice is pointless.”

I rose. “I’m not sure I should accept the terms of your bargain without confirming the truth.”

“I’m afraid you won’t be able to leave until you sign.” He pushed the parchment toward me.

I hesitated.

He sensed it and rose, stepping back deliberately, distancing himself from the desk.

I leaned over the parchment, reading quickly. But he had explained in full, there was nothing new on the document.

I stood, reluctant to sign. “Why me?”

“A question I’ve wondered myself.” He took one step closer. “But you’ve felt it too.”

“Felt what?”

He approached, and the warmth of him reached me, the sheer intensity, making me want things I’d never wanted before. Rift Dancers never married, never left the Sacred Palace to enjoy the kind of relationships the people did. There was a time when we could choose, and most of us, orphaned, alone, chose the dance over starting a family. I’d never once regretted it, until now, and it made me deeply uncomfortable.

He stood so close I felt the heat of his breath brush my cheek, but I did not step back.

When he placed his hand over mine, I gasped. I felt him, as though he were part of me yet outside me. The hunger in his bones, the desperation, the hope bleeding out of his heart, the thump of his pulse, the longing in his soul. And something else, strange and almost effervescent. It fizzed within him, the same sensation that rose in me sometimes when dancing, but far stronger.

I closed my eyes, struggling to withstand his touch. Aware I was slowly losing control.

His voice came low in my ear.

“Tell me, do you feel that?”

“I feel it.”

He didn’t move, but neither did I.

There was something dangerous about his touch, yet familiar, almost comforting. And within it I recognized a vulnerability.

“Will you give me two days to confirm your tale? Then I’ll return and sign your bargain?”

Disappointment cut through me, sharp like a blade.

I opened my eyes as he let go.

Those green gems shone only inches away, searching me for truth or lies.

“One day. You’ll need to sign in blood, promise to return.”

“Or you’ll woo me here with your music?”

“Yes.”

I considered. “Sign and you’ll free me?”

“You have until tomorrow night. Same time. It doesn’t matter what you do, or don’t find; you will come.”

“I will.”

Stepping back, he took up a fresh piece of parchment and scrawled across it. Then he pricked his finger with the tip of a knife and signed, turning the parchment to me.

I hesitated only for a moment, reading carefully, then I followed his example and signed.

Pain laced through my chest, and I pressed a hand to it.

“It’s the magic,” he explained.

“I have one question before you release me.”

“Ask.”

“You’ve given me your title, but what is your name?”

“Airen.”