Chapter Forty-Five
The first thing anyone noticed was the cold changing its mind.
It wasn’t the sharp, punishing cold of the Hollows that had bitten at skin and breath since we arrived.
This was something else deeper and steadier, as if the ice itself had drawn in a breath and decided to hold it.
The fissure glowing beneath the fallen orc dimmed, its blue light pulling inward.
The horn’s echo faltered, not silenced, but interrupted, like a thought cut off mid-sentence.
And then the ice parted.
It didn’t shatter or falter.
Parted.
The towering walls of the Glacial Hollows shifted aside with a sound like ancient stone being persuaded rather than forced, their jagged edges smoothing just enough to form a narrow passage.
Frost spiraled upward in lazy, deliberate curls, catching the light and scattering it into a thousand pale prisms.
A figure stepped through.
Gideon didn’t rush.
He didn’t sneak. He walked forward with the calm assurance of someone who knew exactly how much attention he commanded and had decided to use it sparingly. His boots crunched against the ice, the sound absurdly loud in the sudden hush that followed his arrival.
“Enough!” he called, his voice cutting cleanly through the chaos, through the growls and shouts and the shriek of shadow overhead. “This is the work of the Priestess.”
The words landed like a spell cast without magic.
Everything stopped.
The orcs froze mid-motion, weapons half-raised, eyes snapping toward him in unison. The shadows recoiled sharply, pulling back as if burned, their forms blurring and thinning at the edges. Even the Hollows seemed to still, the hum beneath the ground dropping to a low, uncertain murmur.
I stared.
My heart slammed so hard against my ribs it hurt.
Gideon.
Here.
In the Hollows.
A hundred thoughts collided in my head—how did he get here, why would he come now, what was he risking—but none of them mattered in that moment. What mattered was the way the orcs reacted.
They knew him.
Not as a hero. Not as an ally.
But as a constant.
He’d been the face of Shadowick. It’s controller. The man who had walked their borders and their nightmares for years. The one whose name carried weight even when spoken in anger.
The older orc at the front of the line snarled softly, his gaze narrowing as Gideon approached.
“You,” he rumbled. “Shadow-walker.”
Gideon inclined his head slightly, a gesture that wasn’t respect but acknowledgment. “I’ve been called worse.”
Keegan shifted beside me, and his eyes never left Gideon.
“She uses moments,” Gideon continued, his voice carrying easily without magic. “Fragile ones. She waits until everyone is just beginning to listen—then she breaks something important and lets fear finish the job.”
Keegan’s gaze stayed on Gideon’s, and for the first time ever, it wasn’t filled with hatred, but with something more complicated, possibly reluctant admiration.
Gideon stopped several paces from the fallen orc leader, his gaze flicking briefly to the body on the ground before returning to the older orc.
“If you believe this witch did that,” he said, gesturing loosely in my direction, “then you don’t understand how the Priestess works.”
A murmur rippled through the orc ranks.
My throat tightened painfully.
Nova moved then, seizing the opening with the precision of someone who’d lived her entire life reading moments like these.
She rushed forward, staff in hand, dropping to her knees beside the fallen orc leader without hesitation.
Her hands glowed softly as she assessed him, her expression focused, urgent.
“He’s alive,” she called out. “Barely.”
That word—alive—sent a visible shock through the orc line.
I stumbled forward a step, my knees threatening to give out. Relief hit me so hard I nearly sobbed.
The older orc hesitated and nodded once, allowing Nova space.
“Help him,” he said gruffly.
Gideon watched her work, his jaw tightening.
“That blast wasn’t meant to kill,” he said quietly. “It was meant to provoke.”
Gideon’s gaze flicked toward me, and for the briefest moment, the cocky edge I’d come to expect wasn’t there. What I saw instead was something rawer.
Concern.
Regret.
Resolve.
The older orc took a heavy step forward, his gaze moving between Gideon, Nova, and me. “If this is her doing,” he said, “then why should we trust any of you?”
“Because,” Gideon said calmly, “if she wanted you dead, you would be.”
A harsh truth. An effective one.
“She wants you angry,” he continued. “She wants you marching. She wants you to break the balance so she can step in and ‘restore’ it on her terms.”
The orc’s grip tightened on his weapon, but he didn’t raise it again.
“And you,” he said slowly. “What do you want, Shadow-walker?”
Gideon didn’t answer immediately. He glanced at me, then at Keegan, then at the Hollows themselves.
“I want her stopped,” he said. “And right now, that means you listening instead of charging.”
Nova leaned back on her heels, sweat beading at her brow.
“He’ll live,” she said softly, nodding toward the fallen leader. “But he’ll need time.”
A collective breath seemed to pass through the valley.
My emotions crashed over me all at once—relief, fear, anger, gratitude, disbelief.
“This isn’t over,” I whispered.
“No,” Gideon agreed quietly. “It’s just been delayed.”
The older orc studied all of us one last time.
“We came to meet you, to listen to you, to help in any way we could. We understand the mines and swamps where you live are being destroyed in seen and unseen ways.” I drew a breath. “All I wanted was for you to know that we see you and we want to hear you. Stonewick is here to help.”
The orc took in my words but didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
“The destruction came when you did.”
“The Priestess wanted to turn you against us before you heard our message.”
The orc’s tusked mouth twisted into something like a grim smile, and his shoulders sagged a fraction, as if the weight of it had finally registered.
“You speak of balance,” he said, voice rough as gravel dragged through water. “Easy words for those whose lands still breathe.”
I swallowed, stepping forward before I could overthink it.
“We’re just beginning to understand what is happening in your land and in the shifter’s land. We have a hunch it is the Priestess attempting to create insecurities and drive you to her, where she would ask for heavy payment in order to return your land to what it once was.”
His tusked gaze snapped to me.
“Our streams ran clear once,” he continued, ignoring me for the moment. “Game came when called. The soil fed us without demand. The rocks spoke to us. Now?” His jaw clenched. “The roots rot. The earth drinks magic and gives nothing back. Children dream of food they’ve never tasted.”
A murmur rippled through the gathered orcs. Not anger this time. Something worse.
Hunger.
I felt it then, not in my stomach, but in my magic. A thin, gnawing pull, like the land itself was starving and magic itself was being destroyed.
Gideon inhaled slowly beside me. When he spoke, the arrogance was gone entirely.
“She did that on purpose,” he said.
The older orc’s eyes burned. “You accuse your own?”
“I accuse a Priestess who feeds on fracture,” Gideon replied. “Shadowick doesn’t rot by accident. Neither do your mines or swamps.”
He turned, gesturing toward the scarred ground beyond the Hollow.
“She seeded hunger because hunger makes soldiers. It creates desperation and desire. It asks people to march when they should be thinking.”
“And Stonewick?” the orc demanded. “You thrive while we starve.”
“No,” I said quietly. “We’re cracking. It’s just slower.”
I knelt, pressing my palm to the earth. The cold bit through my skin.
“The Wards were never meant to hoard magic,” I said. “They were meant to circulate it. Flow outward. Somewhere along the way, that flow was severed.”
The ground beneath my hand pulsed, but it was weak and uneven.
The older orc stared at me. “You feel it.”
“Yes.”
His grip loosened another notch.
“Our scouts followed the decay,” he said. “It leads toward Shadowick. Always Shadowick. But we learned Stonewick was siphoning what little remained. That you built walls and drank deeply while we withered.”
“It’s not true. I would tell you if that was the case. The Priestess planted those stories to create the distrust, make you feel you had nowhere to go but to her.” Gideon barked a humorless laugh. “But you have a choice.”
He stepped closer to the orc, close enough that I tensed.
“She needed you angry at the wrong village because if you ever turned your eyes where the rot truly begins…” He shrugged. “She’d be finished.”
Silence fell heavy, and the older orc said quietly, “My son collapsed yesterday. Too weak to stand. He is nineteen.”
Something cracked in my chest as Stella and the others raced to us.
“Where is he?” Stella asked.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, knowing how inadequate that was.
“Nodlya can take you there,” he said, waving at a slightly smaller orc, possibly his wife.
“What do you plan to do, Stella?” I asked.
“Fix him.”
I looked back at the orc. “Would that be okay?”
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” Nodlya said, glancing at the leader. “But if it will heal our son.”
“Do it,” the leader said. “Whatever it takes.”
I swallowed hard and watched Stella and several other vampires follow Nodlya.
Gideon reached into his coat and withdrew something small and dull. It was an old stone charm, etched with fractured runes.
“This was taken from the Shadowick border,” he said. “Placed there recently. It leeches vitality. Not just magic but will. Your lands didn’t fail. They were fed on. My guess is she’s been placing these all over our magical lands.”
The orc’s breath shuddered.
Nova crouched beside me, fingers brushing the Hollow’s edge.
“If the flow is restored,” she said, “the land can recover. Slowly. But it must be untangled.”
“And that requires cooperation,” I added. “Not marching. Not blood.”