68. Hollow Victory
Hollow Victory
Two weeks since I drove a blade through Olinthar's heart. Two weeks since the tear swallowed Thatcher whole. Two weeks of forgetting he was gone when I woke, then drowning all over again.
I stood in the shadows at the edge of Saltcrest, hood pulled low, watching colored ribbons dance in the wind.
Music spilled from the square—the same fiddle songs Sulien used to hum while mending nets.
Henrick played. Children ran past me, sticky fingers clutching festival sweets, their laughter like glass in my ears.
They were celebrating the end of Olinthar's reign. The end of the Trials. The rise of their savior king.
The cottage looked exactly as I'd left it months ago—weathered blue paint peeling in the same places, the crooked shutter Thatcher never fixed still hanging at its drunken angle.
Only now, someone else's laundry flapped on the line.
Someone else's child played in the yard where we once practiced with wooden swords.
I pressed closer to the window, breath fogging the glass. Inside, a woman stirred something on the stove. A man sat at our table— Sulien's table—teaching a boy to tie the same knots my father taught us. The child's tongue stuck out in concentration, small fingers fumbling with the rope.
Life had simply flowed into the spaces we left behind. Like water filling a hole in sand.
In the square, they'd erected a new fountain where the old well used to be. Water sparkled in the late afternoon sun, children splashing each other while their parents gossiped and drank. A banner stretched overhead: "Freedom's Light Burns Eternal."
I wanted to tear it down.
Instead, I drifted closer to the dancing.
That's when I saw him.
Marel spun a red-haired girl in the center of the square, both of them laughing at some private joke.
His hands sat easy on her waist. Comfortable.
When she stumbled over the steps, he caught her with the same gentle strength that once steadied me.
That crooked smile—the one I used to trace with my fingers—bloomed across his face as he whispered something that made her blush.
She was pretty. Fisher's daughter, probably.
I waited to feel something.
Good for him. I always knew he’d find someone if I ever scrounged up the courage to leave, or let him go. Released the snare I’d selfishly allowed him to endure.
Now I stood here at the window of my old life.
The celebration continued around me as I made my way through the village.
Past the baker's shop where Thatcher used to steal sweet rolls, always leaving coins when he thought no one was looking.
Past Lira's cottage where she'd bandaged our scrapes and never asked how we really got them.
Past all the little pieces of a life that didn't exist anymore.
I'd escaped from the divine realm while everyone fussed over Xül's wedding and found myself here. I couldn’t bear being in Voldaris today.
The past two weeks blurred together in my mind.
Morthus before the Twelve, his voice carrying that particular gravity that made gods listen.
"Moros lives. For years, he wore Olinthar's face while we sat at his table, sought his counsel, trusted his judgment.
Every secret we shared. Every weakness we revealed.
All of it feeding an enemy we thought long dead. "
He'd let that sink in, master of the pause.
The pantheon had listened in silence as he painted the picture. A Primordial who'd learned their every fracture. Who'd dragged my brother into the fabric between realms. Who would return because that's what ancient evils did.
The power shift happened in gestures, not words. Davina's subtle nod. Syrena's hand on Morthus's shoulder. Even Sylphia stepped closer to show support. When Thalor followed, that was it. Four of the Twelve backing him.
Enough to discourage any challenges. Enough to crown a new king without a fight.
Fear, it turns out, was the great uniter. I watched through my haze as old rivals suddenly found common ground. Centuries of division crumbled because there was something worse than each other to fight.
They'd believed him because leaders like Morthus didn't just tell the truth—they made you feel it in your bones.
By the time he'd proposed his reforms, with four domains already behind him, they were grateful for the direction. For someone to tell them how to feel safe again.
The greater good, written in necessary sins. A new king rising from the ashes of the old. And I sat there wondering if we'd simply traded one tyrant for a cleverer one. If Morthus had saved me or just found me a prettier cage.
And through it all, I'd sat silent. Olinthar's power had settled into my bones like molten lead. It made me one of the most powerful beings in the divine realm.
It also made me the emptiest.
I'd hated the spark of him in my blood. Now I carried the whole fire. The universe, it seemed, loved its cruel symmetries.
Somewhere above, Xül was probably speaking vows to a woman he didn't love. Binding himself for the sake of stability. Another sacrifice on necessity's altar.
I'd thought about forever with him. About the promise in his eyes when he called me starling. About feeling safe in his Bone Spire. But forever was a concept I couldn't grasp anymore. How could I think about eternity when I couldn't feel anything past the next breath?
The emptiness where Thatcher should be was a physical ache, a phantom limb that woke me screaming. Our twin bond—once a river of shared thought and emotion—had become a single fraying thread leading nowhere. I could feel that he existed, impossibly far and faint. Like hearing the echo of an echo.
I knew I should have been angrier. Should have been tearing the divine realm apart stone by stone.
Should have been anything but this walking corpse going through motions.
Sometimes, late at night, I'd dig my nails into my palms until they bled, trying to feel something—anything—as purely as I used to feel everything.
Half my soul was gone, and no amount of divine power could fill that void.
But gods, I wanted it to. I wanted to feel the rage that should have been burning me alive.
I wanted to care about Xül's marriage with the fierce possessiveness that would have once driven me to violence.
I wanted to hurt the way you're supposed to hurt when everything you love is ripped away.
Instead, I was just... this.
I made my way to the cliffs. Where I'd first lost control and brought the stars down for Marel. Where everything had begun to unravel.
The path was exactly as I remembered—worn smooth by generations of fishermen's boots, treacherous in the growing dusk if you didn't know where to step. But my feet found their way without thought. Some things the body remembered. Always would.
The ocean stretched before me, vast and indifferent. Waves crashed against rocks that had stood since before the gods drew breath and would stand long after we were dust. There was something honest in that constant. In knowing that some things simply endured.
"I thought I might find you here." That velvet voice dragged across my skin.
"Shouldn't you be at your wedding?"
"The ceremony ended an hour ago." His footsteps crunched on the gravel as he moved closer. Each step careful, like he was walking on glass.
"And you're here."
There was a long pause. When he spoke again, his voice was rough. "I couldn't stay there. Couldn't pretend when I could feel—" he cut himself off.
"You should go back. Your wife will wonder where you've gone."
"Let her wonder." Bitterness crept into his voice, but there was something else underneath it. Something that sounded like grief. "She got what she wanted. They all did."
We stood in silence, watching waves paint the rocks with foam. The space between us hummed with unspoken words, uncrossed distances.
"I'm sorry," he said finally, and the words came out broken. "For everything. For the marriage. For not being able to—" his voice caught. "Gods, Thais, I'm so fucking sorry."
"Don't." The word came out flat. "You did what you had to do. We all did."
"Thais—"
"I can't be what you need." I kept my eyes on the horizon. "Can't be what anyone needs. Not anymore."
"That's not true."
"It is." I turned to face him then, letting him see the hollow thing I'd become.
His eyes searched mine, and I watched something shatter in them. His hand rose toward my face, then dropped. Like he was afraid to touch me .
"You're still in there. Dimmed, maybe. Grieving. But not gone."
"Half of me is gone." My voice carried on the breeze. "The part that knew how to feel things. How to hope. It's with him, wherever he is."
I wanted to reach for him and feel my heart race.
Wanted to kiss him and taste his lips. Wanted to rage at him for marrying her, to scream until my throat bled, to feel betrayal like a knife between my ribs.
But the thought of doing that was terrifying.
Having all of it consume me at once. I couldn't.
And this ghost of desire was just another reminder of what I'd lost.
He reached for me—slow, careful, like approaching a wounded animal. When I didn't move, his arms wrapped around me, pulling me against his chest. I let him. Didn't hug back, didn't pull away. Just stood there while he buried his face in my hair.
"I will find a way to fix this," he whispered, his voice low and fierce.
"There is no fixing this."
His arms tightened around me, and I felt the way his breathing had become carefully controlled. Too controlled. Like he was holding back an ocean.
"My heart will only ever beat for you." The words came out rough, edged with darkness. "You own me completely. You always will."
I wanted to feel something at that confession. Wanted to tell him he deserved better than my emptiness. Wanted to care that he'd just married someone else an hour ago and here he was, holding me like I was his whole world.
I wanted to weep. To shatter. To let his words break me open so I could finally, finally feel the grief that sat like stones in my chest. I knew it was there—could sense its weight, its shape, the way it pressed against my ribs with every breath.
The loss of him. The loss of Thatcher. The loss of any future where we all survived this intact.
It was all there, buried under this terrible numbness .
"I know," I said against his chest.
He went completely still, every muscle in his body strained. "Thais, please—scream at me. Hit me. Hate me. Anything but this."
"I can't."
We stayed like that while the sun bled out over the ocean. Two broken things holding each other up.
He just held me while the waves crashed.
When he finally spoke again, his voice had gone cold. "You said you can't feel anything. But I can feel it all, Thais. Every bit of pain you're carrying. It's—" He stopped abruptly, jaw working.
I pulled back to look at him. His eyes were pure darkness.
"What do you mean?"
His hand rose to my face, fingers barely grazing my cheek. The touch was so gentle it hurt. "Nothing. I just... I know you, Thais Morvaren."
I looked out over the darkening ocean. Thatcher was out there—not in this realm, maybe not in any realm that currently existed. But he lived. I knew it with the same certainty I knew my own name.
"He's falling," I whispered. "Further every day. Like gravity itself is pulling him away from me."
“He’s still out there, Thais. And he’s strong. He has primordial blood running through his veins,” Xül said. “Wherever he is, he’s a reckoning for anyone who gets in his way.”
I squeezed his fingers once—all the affection I could manage. We stood together as darkness claimed the sky. Somewhere beyond the horizon, beyond reality, was Thatcher.
I'll be waiting for you.
One of the last things he’d said to me. I pulled away.
"Stay with me," Xül said suddenly. "Don't go yet. We can stay here as long as you want."
"It only makes it more difficult," I reminded him. "I can't give you what you need."
"I don't need anything from you." His voice was fierce. "I just need you to exist. To be here. To let me help carry this until you can carry it yourself again."
"And if that's never?"
"Then I'll carry it forever." He said it like a simple fact. Like the sun rising. "That's what loving someone means."
Love.
What a cursed, vicious thing.