Chapter Twenty-Six
Charred meat and smoke creep into my nose, replacing the fading sweetness of pollen. My head stirs as it’s lifted slightly, and my tight lips are pried open. A thick liquid slides into my mouth—slimy, salty, tingling like static. It worms its way down my throat before my body fully wakes.
“That’s it… drink up,” a soft voice murmurs.
The taste hits me like rot and iron. My muscles, limp only a moment ago, seize violently. I gag hard, coughing and sputtering the liquid back into the dirt. My mind snaps awake as if shocked, and the swimming vision clears; shapes sharpening like the moment you put on glasses.
I blink between heaves, trying to understand what’s happening—what happened—this place, this foul-tasting liquid, my senses slowly coming back to me.
I’m lying on a bed fashioned from the forest itself: a frame made of mismatched branches and stripped trunks, each a different shade—oak, ash, cedar.
A thick pelt, the skinned coat of some fluffy woodland creature, sprawls across it.
The fur brushes the backs of my legs as they hang off the edge.
Another hide lies on the ground as a soft rug, so plush I have the strange urge to sink my toes into it.
The colourings familiar. Greens and browns like the vultures from before. I must be dreaming.
My gaze lifts to a slope of tan fabric overhead. A tent. I’m inside a tent.
A low fire burns off to my right, crackling gently, pushing away the cold that always clings to the Hollow. Smoke rising through the small gap in the roof.
Then my eyes slide further—and freeze.
An entire wall, if you can call fabric stretched over sticks a wall, is lined from ground to ceiling with weapons. Dozens of blades in all shapes and sizes, each glowing faintly amber in the firelight. Some are serrated, some curved, some built for crushing, some for skinning—none of them kind.
My pulse spikes, jolting my hand with it, instantly flying to the bedding, patting frantically for my sword, but it’s not here.
Or anywhere near for that matter.
Panic climbs my throat.
The man in the corner has his back to me. He has broad shoulders and a stocky build, definitely someone who could overpower me in the Hollow. If we are still even in the Hollow.
He’s doing something with his hands—cleaning? Sharpening? I can’t see, and I don’t want to. Without my blade, I wouldn’t last two seconds if he decided to—
I need a plan.
Breathe.
Look.
Move.
My gaze flicks to the nearest small blade hanging on the wall. If I’m quiet enough, I could—
I push myself off the bed.
White-hot pain explodes behind my eyes. My knees buckle. The room reels sideways. Before I can steady myself, the man’s head snaps toward me.
He’s holding a knife.
He rises, approaching.
Panic strikes like a lightning bolt. The tent seems to shrink, the walls closing in, trapping me. My breath falters, then shatters entirely as I stumble backwards, desperate to put distance between us. But my head won’t stop spinning.
The tent bends. Warps. Changes. Melts just as the flowers did.
My heartbeat is so loud it thunders in my ears, bone-rattling, painful. I can’t get air. My chest heaves in shallow, useless gasps as the floor beneath me shifts—
The fire is gone.
The tent fades.
The forest pelts vanish.
And suddenly I’m back there.
Back in that cursed mountain.
Weak. Helpless. On the cold white marble floor.
The stinging smell of disinfectant floods my senses. The harsh lights above blind me. And he stands there—The General.
His scar, carved jagged down his face.
His boots, polished to a cruel shine.
His eyes—those menacing, merciless eyes that promised pain with every blink.
A predator.
A ghost.
A nightmare with a pulse.
And I am right back at his mercy.
“Miss me?” he taunts, dragging his blade across the marble walls with a sound so sharp it slices straight through my bones.
No, this can’t be happening… I beat him already in the cottage. I faced my fear…
“Stop!” I choke out as my heart slams violently against my ribs, “Let me go!”
My voice cracks as tears pool at the edges of my eyes, trembling and hot. It doesn’t matter how loud I shout—he keeps coming with his knife low and his steps steady. Intent unmistakable.
“Get away—!”
I try to lift my hands. Try to summon strength. But nothing moves. My limbs are trapped. Frozen. Betraying me.
Then—
“Whoa, whoa.”
A voice cuts through the nightmare like a blade through fog.
The General flickers. His face distorting and melting back into shadow.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” the voice says again, softer this time.
I blink hard, breath scraping my throat.
The mountain fades. The white floors dissolve. And the man standing in front of me is not the General.
It’s him.
The man from the tent. Wide-eyed. Hands empty. No weapon. No armour. No polished boots.
“Are you okay?” he asks carefully, concern written across his face
The question doesn’t land. Not at first.
I squeeze my forearm—hard. Hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to tether myself to the present. Pain blooms under my fingers, familiar and grounding. I glance around—the tan fabric walls, the glow of the small fire, the heavy pelts.
Real.
This is real.
“He’s not here,” I whisper, mostly to myself. “He’s not here…”
“Who’s not here?” he asks, brushing a few strands of blonde hair from his eyes.
I flush, heat rushing to my cheeks. Gods, he probably thinks I’m unhinged.
“Who are you?” I fire back instead, retreating a step, just out of reach. “And were you trying to poison me?” I cough, the foul sting of that disgusting liquid still coating my tongue.
He lifts his hands in surrender. “I’m Ziek.” He offers his hand—steady and gentle. “And no, I wasn’t poisoning you. Actually,”—a small laugh escapes him—“I just saved you.”
I hesitate, taking his hand gingerly. He guides me back toward the bed, supporting my shaky steps. As he moves, I finally place him—the bright blue eyes, the same ones that hovered over me when a stranger carried my limp body through the forest.
“You’re lucky I found you when I did,” he says, jerking his head toward the dark trees outside. “You were kissed by the Lady of Death.”
His eyes smile at me, soft and knowing.
My confusion only deepens. “Lady of Death?” I echo.
The words brush cold fingers down my spine.
“The yellow flowers,” he says, cocking a brow. The edge of his hood casts a shadow across the top of his forehead, making his sapphire eyes stand out even more. “They’re silent killers. Carnivorous, in fact.”
He steps toward a low wooden table and picks up a small object—my cup, I think. “They lure you in with their beauty, but their pollen is deadly. It sends you into an eternal slumber and melts your insides so they can drink you dry.”
An eternal slumber.
My stomach drops. How long had I been out?
My vision blurs for a moment with rising panic.
“My friends… where are they?” I push to my feet, too quickly, and the ground tilts under me, the room wobbling like it’s made of stretched canvas.
“They’re safe,” Ziek says firmly, steadying me with a hand on my arm. “They all drank the same elixir I gave you.”
My heart slows by a fraction—still racing, but no longer galloping toward terror. They were safe. They were alive.
“That stuff was an elixir?” I glance down at the brown cup resting beneath the table. The thick grey sludge at the bottom looks like something scraped from a swamp. I can still taste it—metallic and bitter, like rotten blood. I drag my tongue across my teeth like that might help.
“Yes,” Ziek says with a wry grimace. “It’s foul—I won’t argue that—but it’s the only thing that reverses the pollen’s effects.”
He tugs his scarf down from his nose and chin, revealing the rest of his face. Strong features softened by a kind of reluctant warmth. A light stubble cradles his jaw, threads of silver tarnishing the brown.
“It can have some adverse side effects,” he adds, nodding toward the shadowed corner where I’d broken down moments earlier. “Like that vision you just had—still, it’s better than becoming putty.”
“I should get going,” I say, my gaze catching on my bag slumped in the corner. “Thanks for… saving us.”
I push to my feet—too sudden. The ground whirls again, my vision blurring at the edges like wet ink bleeding outward. My knees wobble, and the whole tent seems to sway with me.
Ziek rises halfway, hands ready, though he doesn’t touch me yet. “You really should rest. At least until the elixir finishes working.”
“I don’t have time to rest.” The words come out thin and stubborn, scraping against the back of my throat.
His jaw tightens. “If you go out there now, you’re going to get yourself killed.” He gestures toward the tent flap, voice firm but not unkind. “Trust me—I know.”
The sincerity in his eyes gives me pause, a flicker of something raw and unguarded. I try to hold my resolve, but my legs buckle again, betraying me.
“Alright,” I breathe, the fight draining out of me. “Fine.”
He steps forward—slowly, carefully—as if approaching a startled animal. His hand hovers near my arm before he finally supports me back to the bed. The moment I sit, the fabric sighs under my weight, and so do I.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Just… give it a minute.”
And for once, I don’t argue.
“Now, are you gonna tell me what a girl like you is doing in a place like the Hollow?” he asks, his eyes tracing mine.
“Girl like me?” I echo, unsure whether to bristle or shrink. The words land somewhere between insult and truth.
He lifts a shoulder. “Young. Naive.” No malice—just observation.
And that somehow stings more. I was na?ve—na?ve enough to trust the beautiful flowers that masked the Hollow’s blemishes.
I thought they were stunning, like a constellation scattered across the night sky.
But they weren’t stars. They were more like acne, erupting across an already miserable canvas.
And, like everything in this place, they were dangerous.