27. Hollow
Chapter twenty-seven
Hollow
Scarlett
The crown felt too heavy for her head, even now with them by her side. Even with the cheering echoing through the Crimson Palace and roses climbing the ancient stone like the realm itself had decided to breathe again.
Scarlett stood beneath fractured light pouring through stained glass windows, red and gold scattering across her skin like spilled paint. Below her, courts bowed. No more bloodshed, no crowns built on fear. The realm would survive.
Beside her, Maddox stood like a shadow sharpened into steel, scarred hands resting behind his back as if resisting reaching for her.
Arley lounged against the throne with foxish amusement glimmering in his eyes, silver white hair catching the sunlight.
And Ace looked at her like he still intended to start a war if she asked him to.
For the first time in years, Scarlett should have felt safe.
Instead, something hollow opened quietly beneath her ribs.
The celebration blurred around her, music, laughter, goblets raised high. It all sounded—distant. Like she was hearing it underwater. Then the room flickered, and Scarlett stiffened, just for a second.
A sharp pulse slammed through her skull, sudden enough to steal her breath. Her hand gripped the throne beside her as another image crashed violently in her mind—bookshelves.
Rain against the glass and a crack of thunder. It wasn't the crimson castle; it didn't even look like Underland—a library. The vision vanished instantly.
“Scarlett?” Maddox's voice cut low beside her. She blinked hard. “I'm fine,” but the lie tasted bitter. Because suddenly the Palace didn't feel entirely solid beneath her feet.
The celebration faded into quiet corridors and dying candlelight. Scarlett woke with a gasp. Darkness surrounded her. No velvet canopies, marble floors, or stained glass windows—they're all gone.
A ceiling fan turned slowly overhead. Rain tapping against the old drafty windows.
Her chest heaved violently as panic clawed through her ribs.
Scarlett sat upright too fast, tangled in soft blankets instead of royal silks.
A lamp glowed weakly beside the bed. Books covered every surface of the room.
Pages littered the floor. And on the desk near the rain-streaked windows sat a manuscript.
The Crimson Court By Scarlett Holloway
Her blood turned cold. “No,” she whispered.
The apartment was small. Warm but real in a way the castle had never been.
Worn wooden floors creaked beneath her bare feet as she stumbled toward the desk, hands shaking violently.
Maps, drawings, character notes. Ace Spade, Arley Hollow, and Maddox. Her breathing came in short and heavy.
“No, no, no—” She grabbed the manuscript pages desperately, flipping through scenes.
She remembers all the late nights, the coffee-stained pages, all the building of her story.
However, she also remembers living these scenes; she remembers the conversations.
She remembers the way living through these moments felt.
Arley laughing in gardens, Maddox training, the Crimson Deeps' power, kissing Ace in the forest. Her mother's death, Cyrus's violent reign.
The coronation, threats of war, all of it.
Every word she's built between the pages.
The memories of her life in Lunar Hollow are also very real.
Her bookstore, the familiar faces of her customers. She remembers being here, healing here.
A sob crawled up her throat as she grasped her night gown at the middle of her chest. Outside, thunder rolled across the sleepy streets of Lunar Hallow.
The town glowed softly beneath rainfall and amber streetlamps.
The quiet library, the small twenty-four-hour diner, and the fountain sat in the middle of the main street.
The florist shop and the handyman's forge.
The older facade of worn signs and awnings lining the buildings.
This was real, too. It had to be real. Scarlett stumbled backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed. Her eyes burned as she looked down at her trembling hands, no magic, no crowns, no kingdoms.
Just scars she didn't remember earning, and the unbearable grief of missing people who supposedly never existed.
Then, three sharp knocks echoed from downstairs below her bedroom. Scarlett froze, another knock slow and deliberate. The clock beside her bed flashed 3:13 AM.
Nobody visited the bookstore this late; the store's been closed for hours. Her pulse hammered in her ears. Rain thrummed harder against the windows as she moved carefully toward the staircase leading down into the dark bookstore below.
Another knock, the lights flickered with the lightning. And then a voice drifted through the storm from the other side of the door, a low, familiar voice. “Open the door, Scarlett.”
Ace
Scarlett froze, every nerve in her body locked tight as the storm rattled the windows of the library below. Her pulse pounded so hard it blurred the edges of her vision. No—it wasn't possible. Underland wasn't real, Ace wasn't real. None of them were. Lunar Hollow was reality.
Another knock sounded through the back hall of the store, slower, patient.
Like whoever stood on the other side already knew she would open the door, eventually.
Scarlett forced herself down the narrow staircase, one trembling step at a time, her hand dragging along the uneven paint on the walls for balance.
The old store groaned softly around her, moonlight and the storm shadows stretching long across rows of bookshelves.
The front door stood at the far end of the room beneath the flickering gold glow of the entry lamp. And someone was standing behind the frosted glass. Tall, broad shoulders, still as death. Her breath turned shallow.
“This isn't real,” she whispered to herself. Somehow, she knew whose silhouette was on the other side of the door.
Wet footprints. A trail leading inward from nowhere. Like the storm itself had walked into the building. Scarlett stopped cold. The lights flickered violently overhead. And suddenly—the mirrors lining the reading nook darkened.
Not a reflection, but forests. For the briefest second, she saw frost-covered trees moving inside the glass.
Then a hand slammed against the front door. Scarlett gasped. “Open it,” the voice said again, lower now. Rougher. “Before I break it down.”
He was really there. Something inside her cracked apart at the sound. Because gods help her—she knew that voice. She knew the weight of it. The danger in it. The way it wrapped around her spine was like smoke and ruin.
Scarlett’s fingers shook as she reached for the lock. The second it clicked open, the door shoved inward hard enough to slam against the wall. Ace stepped inside like the storm itself.
Rain soaked through dark clothing unfamiliar to her eyes, yet somehow unmistakably him.
Black coat. Boots heavy with mud. Water dripped from strands of dark hair hanging across his forehead.
He loomed over her in height, his shoulders just as broad as she’d written it.
His tattoos bloomed upward from the collar of his shirt, visible but unmoving.
But it was his eyes that stole the air from her lungs. Same dark storm with unbearable intensity she’d always known.
“You can’t be here,” she said, struggling to convince herself.
It had to be exhaustion or stress. Another dream was clawing its way out of her subconscious after finishing the manuscript.
Because Underland wasn't reality. The crimson court did not exist. Maddox, Ace, Arley—they were characters.
Pieces of stories she'd built from grief and old wounds.
Lonely nights spent trying to survive herself.
Weren't they?
Scarlett forgot how to breathe. Because it was him. Not inspired by him. Not resembling him. Him. The scar beneath his jaw. The cruel curve of his mouth. The unbearable way he looked at her like she was something he’d crossed realms to destroy himself for.
“You…” Her voice cracked apart. “You can’t be here.”
Ace’s expression twisted sharply into confusion at the sound of her fear. “There you are,” he said instead, like he hadn’t heard her at all.
Scarlett stumbled backward instinctively. “No.”
He followed immediately. “Scarlett—”
“No.” She shook harder now, panic climbing fast enough to choke her. “You’re not real.” Something dangerous flickered across his face then. Hurt first. Then anger swallowed it whole.
“You think I crossed realms for a woman who made me up?” The room trembled.
Books rattled softly on nearby shelves. Scarlett stared at him in horror.
Because she knew that voice. Knew that temper.
Knew exactly how his eyes darkened when emotions turned too sharp beneath his skin. She had written it.
Gods. She had written him. Ace took another step forward, slowly, gaze dragging across her face like he was memorizing changes he didn’t understand.
“You look different,” he murmured.
Scarlett’s throat tightened instantly. Because she was older. Not twenty-one like she’d written in Underland. Thirty-three.
Thirty-three and standing in the middle of her tiny bookstore, while a man she had loved into existence looked at her like she’d abandoned him.
Her hair wasn't the long, flowing red curls she’d written about, but shorter, just past her shoulders.
“There are years of difference here, I’m not the woman I wrote alongside you anymore, Ace,” she whispered.
Ace frowned immediately. “What? What are you talking about, Scarlett?”
Scarlett wrapped her arms around herself tightly. “For you, it was months, maybe even days?” Silence answered her. And that silence told her everything.
His expression sharpened with confusion. “You disappeared after the coronation.”