The Hollow Dark (The Anchored Duology #1)

Chapter 1

The worst thing about the dead was that they never shut up.

August cast an irritated glance over his shoulder as he slipped through a narrow gap between abandoned stone buildings.

The woman was still trailing him.

Gods, she was persistent.

August scowled as she caught up, and though he pretended not to see her, she kept droning on.

Something about poison and revenge, not that he was listening.

There was only so much complaining he could endure.

She’d reach the end of her tether soon enough.

Most could only manage a few blocks before they were yanked back.

The anchored had always been an unfortunate constant in his life.

Souls tethered to this world by something unfinished.

But just because he could see them didn’t mean he had any interest in helping them.

He understood the agony of confinement, of being unwillingly bound to a place.

He’d spent most of his life encased behind a viewing glass, feeling like a cross between a stuffy museum exhibit and a specimen in one of those traveling oddity shows.

However, he had more than enough problems to deal with without taking on theirs.

The dull thud of August’s footsteps echoed like a steady heartbeat down the empty streets, a beacon announcing his presence to the silent city. His nerves sparked as he scanned for any sign of movement, any hint that he was being hunted.

Tattered remnants of laundry flapped on a clothesline overhead, and a lone thread of smoke curled from a chimney. Bedwyck’s population had plummeted so much over the last two years that the dead seemed to outnumber the living. So many gone because of the elixir and the lost.

Mist shapes swirled behind grimy window panes like plumes of breath on a winter’s day, occasionally solidifying into faces. August did his best to ignore those. If he made eye contact, another anchored would latch on, and one was already too many.

Shadows stirred at the edge of his vision, sending his heart lurching to his throat. He stumbled back, hand closing around the dagger at his hip as a shape emerged from the mouth of an alley.

The figure’s head tilted to the side, a slow roll as though loosening a stiff neck. But it kept rolling, unnaturally, grotesquely, until it vanished altogether behind broad shoulders. Its edges blurred like smoke lingering in stagnant air.

August released a shaky exhale through barely parted lips.

It was just another anchored, not one of the lost. The anchored were simply tethered souls.

The lost were the brutal, violent repercussions of humanity’s greed.

While the former was an inconvenience, albeit one he would trade his soul to the God of Fortune to be rid of, the latter posed a significant conflict of interest: He preferred to keep his heart tucked safely in his ribcage, and the lost found that difficult to accept.

August continued on, but cold dread lingered like icy fingers trailing the back of his neck.

A cool breeze whispered down the narrow street, rustling a scattering of discarded posters and carrying the salty tang of seawater from the bay. The amber flames of the streetlamps stuttered and sent trembling shadows over the soot-stained walls.

Bedwyck felt suffocating, with its narrow streets and towering buildings blocking out all but a ribbon of the inky sky. He missed his own city. But he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t be that person again.

August drew his cloak tighter and hurried his steps.

Nearly there.

He’d been to Bedwyck a handful of times over the past two years, always in daylight, when his supplies were critically low.

But even in the dark, he had no trouble finding his way.

It looked much the same. Still damp, still sad, still grey.

And he’d had ample time to study the map purchased on his initial visit.

The Greyrock District made up the entire eastern border of the city, stretching from the massive factories of the East Docks to the Brightridge District in the south.

A river carved through its centre, and brothels punctuated every street.

Though, like most businesses in Bedwyck, they were boarded up now, rotting corpses in the graveyard that used to be a city.

In the heart of Bedwyck was the Trade District, where the last remaining shops stubbornly held their ground, fighting their inevitable deaths.

He needed to get to the apothecary before it closed for the night. While he couldn’t actually sell his soul to Geocraes for a solution, he could attempt to purchase one. Science was a far more reliable solution than divine intervention.

Dismissing the ever-present feeling of being watched, a side effect of his curse, he pressed on, eager to get out of the city.

Perhaps his sister was right. Maybe he was being rash.

This could have waited until morning. He tugged up his sleeve, studying the veins beneath his skin, thin and black and stretching down toward his elbow like eager tree branches.

No doubt the sickness was getting worse, but it wouldn’t have killed him to wait another day.

Procrastination had always been August’s go-to solution, his preferred defense against the world. He delayed, deflected, ignored until the problem went away. But this was too important. Too big.

An actual magic suppressor.

He was skeptical, of course. He liked to keep his expectations low.

It sounded too good to be true, so likely, it was.

And the newspaper he’d torn the ad from was older than he was.

Yet he couldn’t help the slight prickle of hope.

If this tonic could dampen his power, perhaps it could also heal the damage caused by it. Stop the darkness from poisoning him.

He wasn’t a wielder, of course, and his ability wasn’t exactly magic. But it was a close thing. And magic was dangerous. He’d tried to ignore it, to pretend he was normal, but it had sunk its claws into him all the same.

August was dying.

He’d tracked the sickness carefully, estimating how long before it consumed him completely. Spring was only beginning to take root, and without a cure, the next turn of seasons would be his last. He wouldn’t live to see autumn.

So, yeah, sure, venturing into Bedwyck at night for the slight possibility of a solution may not have been an ideal way to spend his eighteenth birthday, but neither was sulking in a decrepit cottage in the woods, waiting for the sickness to finish him off.

The anchored woman’s hollow voice interrupted his thoughts.

“Please. Help me.”

Go away, he pleaded silently. She was a distraction, and in this place, a distraction could cost him his life.

When the woman started to say something else, August let out an exasperated sigh and finally turned to face her.

Her grey eyes widened as hope bloomed in her expression.

She looked like a regular person—if that person had been completely drained of colour and shaded over in charcoal. A long nightgown hung loosely on her thin frame, untouched by the breeze.

“I can’t help you,” August said with a dispassionate shrug. “I’m dead, too.”

The woman’s brow creased. “You are not dead.”

“I am on the inside. Now leave me be. I have my own matters to attend to.” He turned and walked away, foolishly hoping that would be the end of it.

But of course, she followed.

“Mo Aesling—”

The word struck like a match, igniting a firestorm of images. A castle, a festival, a beautiful boy with a sharp smile. Anger flared, sudden and searing.

He whipped around so fast, it made his head spin. “Do not call me that.”

The woman stretched and twisted, her angles sharpening to points.

Her eyes were black and bottomless, rot spreading from the sockets.

The stench of decay burned August’s nose.

A gash of a mouth split the peeling grey of her face, and as she lurched forward with unnatural speed, her plangent wail sliced through him like a blade.

His blood turned to ice, fear pinning him in place.

“Stop!” It was meant as an order, but it came out as a shaky plea.

August knew what came next. His hands shot up to cover his ears, trying to keep her out, but the whispers were already there, the sound like wind beneath a door.

He used to believe that seeing and hearing the dead was unbearable, that there couldn’t possibly be anything worse. This was a recent change, and it was, in fact, much worse.

The whispers coalesced into a low voice inside his skull, rough like stone against stone; an eerie echo of someone else’s memories.

“I am sorry, my love,” the voice said, not sounding the slightest bit sorry. “But this is how it must be.”

Something twisted in August’s stomach, and the pain came on like a wave, stealing the air from his lungs. He collapsed to his knees, hands splayed on the damp cobblestones as panic tightened like a noose around his throat, tighter and tighter and tighter.

Please stop. The words were stuck in his throat, unable to make it to his raw and blistered mouth. The sharp tang of metal coated his tongue as his stomach clenched in an agonizing knot. Around him, the world spun viciously, and he pressed his forehead to the damp ground.

Just when he expected his heart to give out, the pain abruptly stopped.

For a long moment, he didn’t dare move.

Not dead, he assured himself. I’m not dead.

When he was sure it was over and his breathing finally settled, he dragged his gaze up. The anchored woman was gone.

“That was a splendid choice!” he shouted to the empty street, his voice ricocheting off the stone facades. “Now I’m truly eager to help.”

He cursed under his breath and struggled to his feet, legs unsteady from the phantom poison’s lingering effects. He pulled his cloak tight, vision swimming and head throbbing, and pushed deeper into the city.