Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Ilost track of the days. Even with an open window, the mountain air stirring me, I sank into a depression. Sacred Mother no longer needed to force the bottle between my lips. I took the medicine—the drug, whatever she chose to call it—and let myself drift on a sea of numbness.
When I surfaced into lucidity, my thoughts spun in despondent circles. Where had I gone wrong? Was I damaged somehow, broken by what had happened to me as a child? By the demons that took my family? And if my own mind had turned against me, how could I ever find the truth?
During those long, bad days, my only visitor was Sacred Mother.
Sometimes she came by daylight to watch, always hidden in folds of white, her face covered with that veil.
Occasionally, I woke at night to shadows in my room, monsters that drew near and took my limbs, biting, drawing blood.
And I could do nothing because I was tied up, a helpless victim.
In the morning, I’d re-examine my wounds, wondering if my nightmares were real. Was a Soul Drinker loose in the palace? Stealing my blood at night, consuming my body and soul? Or was I imagining things again, my mind raving.
When I didn’t dream of the bloodletting, my thoughts were full of dancing, and the very idea of the Hollow King made me ache.
I desperately wanted him to be real, wanted him to be my excuse, the door, the way out of this place.
I wanted to feel that emotion again, the joyous pleasure of dancing I’d felt with him, in his kingdom, in his arms.
I dreamed of the world between, the hollows, and wished myself back there. Sometimes I startled awake with his name already on my lips, calling for the Hollow King to let me in. But the walls did not shift. The stones did not open.
One morning, the door opened. Instead of Sacred Mother on the other side, it was Betta. She had lost weight, her plump curves gone, her cheeks hollow. There was an exhaustion in her eyes, and when she looked at me, I had the strangest sensation she was about to weep.
“Time to get up, Gazelle,” she said. “The full moon is in two weeks. Sacred Mother would have you dance.”
A bitter laugh burst from me. “Me? I’m wounded and, apparently, insane. How can I dance?”
Betta didn’t argue. She crossed the room and yanked back the blankets, her nose wrinkling. I must have reeked. She undid the bonds keeping me tied to the bed.
“Can you walk?”
“I haven’t tried.”
Betta picked up an empty bottle, sniffed it, and set it down with distaste. Then she leaned close, almost whispering. “You can choose to let me help you, or you can lie here and rot.”
It was tempting to lie back and rot because what was the point if everything I’d done had been in vain?
But some part of me, buried deep, was still there. Still fighting. So I rolled out of bed, still floating on a high from the drugs. Betta took my hand and led me, stumbling, from the room.
I spent days in the pools, soaking and shivering, only to be taken by fever as the withdrawal set in.
I couldn’t dance. I couldn’t do anything but lie on a cot in a dark room and empty my belly, then return to shaking, shivering, emptying it again.
It was luck, I thought dimly, that they had spirited me away from Sacred Mother.
That I was alone, in peace, and at last, slowly clawing back some of my own sanity, my own mind.
And that was how I found myself the next full moon, walking on my own two legs, and sitting down as part of the crowd.
I was too weak to dance. Standing upright and walking for even a few minutes took all my strength.
I had to rebuild, and it worried me. It also made me wonder what the night would bring.
If I could not dance, would the ritual be enough to seal the gates?
I sat as the moonlight spilled down, and the drums began. I swayed, my body remembering the steps, a yearning rising in me to take back what I’d lost.
Straightening, I studied the dancers, moving under Sacred Mother’s watchful eye.
Perhaps I imagined it, but there in the midst of celebration, I saw the tiredness of their faces, the tremors of their limbs.
This was not the beautiful ritual we’d crafted but something forced, made of fear of death and punishment.
I didn’t know what to do or how to stop it, but I knew, with a sudden clarity, that something had to end this charade.
Was that why my actions had become wild?
Had I been searching for a reason to change all of it?
What were we doing with our lives? Why had we ever told ourselves that this beautiful land, riddled with demons, was a place to make our home?
I stood, just as a tremor shook the ground.
At first, I thought it was only me, losing my balance.
But no, a deep bellow rolled up from below, the layered cry of something dark and vast. Not a cry of pain, but one of rejoicing. A celebration.
A shadow rippled near the dancers, and then something long leaped out. Red eyes glowed. Claws clacked across the stones, and two horns reared out of its head.
Screams rose as it moved, and the people around me shot to their feet, scrambling, running, fleeing as fast as they could. Mothers snatched up their children and ran. Men shouted for the Wardens. Arrows flew, and I screamed then, for a few struck the dancers instead of the horned shadow.
My heart slammed into my throat, and I stood helpless as the demon shattered the ritual. It was worse than anything I’d imagined, and I wondered, sickly, if it was the same demon who had taken me in the tunnels before I was saved—likely by the Wardens.
It dove through the crowd, snarling, a red tongue hanging out of its mouth while the Wardens grabbed their spears and thrust at it, trying to force it back to the catacombs.
How did one kill a demon?
Fresh screams came, and a second demon hurled out of the shadows.
Then a third. A fourth.
The scent of iron filled the air, and I wanted to run, to hide, but my feet were rooted to the ground, locked in my own horror. I was back there again, a little girl, with the screams rising around me as my family was torn apart. And all the light inside me guttered out.
This was why I danced. To protect the city, the people, from this fresh horror. I’d failed, and here it was, happening again.
Tears streamed down my cheeks.
As I stood there, a flash of white caught my eye.
I pivoted, turning toward the top of the amphitheater where the stairs led out, back to the palace.
Sacred Mother stood at the top, her white garments still clean, her veil snapping in the wind.
She wasn’t shouting or running or screaming.
She simply stood there, head tipped back, arms lifted high, as though she were relishing what was happening below her.
As though none of this surprised her, and she was enjoying the pain she inflicted.
It came to me so suddenly that anger jerked me out of fear.
Sacred Mother.
The Soul Drinker.
She’d drugged me. Come to me at night. Drank my blood. Made me weak. Bent every effort on destroying me instead of healing me. She wanted this day to come. Death and devastation. Demons and blood.
And all at once, I understood why. The dance only mattered if the demons were real.
Take away the terror that clawed up out of the rift, and there was no reason for a dancer to give up her soul, no reason for a city to kneel to the woman who held the monsters at bay.
Her power fed on our fear, so she fed our fear in turn.
When the dread wore thin, or when a dancer slipped her leash, she opened the door a crack and let the dark remind us why we needed her.
The demons had never been her enemy. They were her oldest bargain, and the price of keeping them was paid in us.
I was certain, so certain, that Sacred Mother was behind it all that a rage such as I had never felt filled me with strength. I turned to march up the stairs, ready to rip off her head. To beat her to death for what she’d done. The strength of my own anger frightened me.
A boom sounded behind me as stone crumbled. More shouts came.
Shouts. Not screams.
My fixation on Sacred Mother wavered.
I glanced over my shoulder, unsure of what I’d see.
Then I went still and turned around completely. Staring in shock. My breath gone.
The demigods were fighting the demons.