27. Hollow #2
The coronation. The last scene. The final chapter.
Scarlett felt sick; none of this made sense.
To him, she's the woman he’s fallen in Love with, the Queen who’s reunited the realm.
They weren't just characters stepping neatly from a story; this was real.
They were real. She could feel the pain in his confusion.
“You thought I ran,” she whispered, not a question or accusation, just the painful understanding of what he must have believed when she vanished.
“A rabbit hole opened,” Ace said carefully, watching her like she might break apart in front of him. “One second you were there. The next—gone.”
Scarlett looked toward the staircase leading up to her apartment. Toward the manuscript sitting unfinished beneath the lamp. Or maybe not unfinished anymore. “I didn’t run,” she whispered.
Ace’s jaw tightened. “Then explain what happened.”
She laughed softly then. Not because it was funny. Because it sounded insane. The sound made Ace visibly uneasy. Scarlett walked past him slowly, bare feet creaking against old floors as she climbed the stairs toward the apartment above. She could feel him following close behind her.
Watching.Waiting.
The manuscript still sat exactly where she’d left it.
Ace stopped cold when he saw the title. Scarlett picked up the stack of pages with trembling hands. “I need to understand this before the others get here,” he said quietly.
Scarlett’s expression changed instantly with shock. “Others? All three of you?!”
“Well, of course, all three of us. Scarlett, have you gone crazy? Are you unwell? We’re bound to you. Of course, we’d all come for you. Even if I did try to leave them behind, Gods know they wouldn’t let me have you to myself.” Ace let out a faint chuckle, his features a little softer.
Too late. Movement shifted outside below. Heavy footsteps. A familiar laugh muffled by rain. Scarlett’s pulse nearly stopped. Because, of course they came too. Of course, stories this alive would never stay buried once the ending had been written.
She heard them at the same moment he did. Her entire body went still. Slowly, she looked back toward the rain-soaked window below the apartment loft. A heavy knock shook the store’s door downstairs. Followed by another. Less patient this time.
“Little Rose,” Arley’s voice called faintly through the storm, warm amusement threading through it even now, “Either you open this door willingly, or Maddox is about to discover modern property destruction.”
A loud bang rattled the front entrance. “He’s already discovering it,” Arley added, his voice lined with annoyance at Maddox’s brute mentality.
Scarlett’s breath caught painfully in her chest. Maddox and Arley, real. Here. Not ink, not imagination, not dreams twisted from trauma and loneliness.
She gripped the manuscript tighter to stop her hands from shaking. Ace noticed immediately. His gaze dropped to the pages in her arms before lifting slowly back to her face.
“You know something,” he said quietly. Scarlett looked faint; all of this was overwhelming her. Another slam echoed from downstairs.
“Scarlett!” Maddox’s voice this time—hoarse, furious, desperate enough to splinter something inside her. “Open the fucking door.”
Her knees nearly buckled at the sound. Twelve years.
Twelve years of dreaming and writing about their voices and what her life with them would be like. Her grief clawed through her subconscious and into the pages. And now they were downstairs. Alive.
Ace moved toward her slowly, eyes narrowing. “What’s wrong?”
Everything. Scarlett swallowed hard as realization hit. “You think Underland is real.”
Ace stared at her like the statement itself was insane. “Because it is.”
The library lights flickered. Rain hammered harder against the windows. Scarlett looked down at the manuscript in her hands—the worn pages filled with the magic of Underland and the men she had loved so fiercely. She had given them entire souls in her mind.
“I wrote Underland,” she whispered. Ace went completely still. Another violent bang shook the library downstairs. But neither of them moved.
“What are you talking about, Scarlett?”
Scarlett forced herself to look at him. “I wrote about you, about all of it, in my book. Underland isn’t real, Ace.” Her voice cracked under the weight of it. “The stories just… came.”
Ace’s expression hardened instantly. “Scarlett.”
“I’m serious,” she continued.
“No.” He shook his head once, sharp and disbelieving.
She opened the manuscript with trembling fingers and shoved it toward him. Ace grabbed the pages automatically, eyes scanning lines of text—His own words stared back at him. Conversations. Battles. Moments no one else would know and have written about. His face drained slowly of color.
“That’s impossible,” he said flatly.
“It’s all made up, it’s my dreams, my hopes, my nightmares,” Scarlett admitted shakily.
“It’s just coping mechanisms. When I was younger, things happened to me, and writing became…
” She swallowed hard, panic of coming face to face with all of them washed over her.
“An escape.” She looked away from him, unable to meet his eyes after the admission.
Downstairs, wood cracked loudly. Maddox was genuinely breaking down the door. Scarlett barely heard it, her pulse thundering in her ears so quickly.
“I started writing about kingdoms first, somewhere, anywhere but here in reality that I could escape to,” she continued. “Then magic. Then all of you.” Her eyes burned now. “I …..I created you.”
Ace looked furious. Not at her. At the implication.
“You think I’m fictional?” he asked darkly.
“No!” Scarlett stepped toward him immediately. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then, explain it to me.”
She couldn’t. Because how could she explain something she barely understood herself? How did she explain that every horrible thing she survived before coming to Lunar Hallow, somehow became woven into Underland?
That Cyrus carried the cruelty of real men.
That wars became metaphors for helplessness.
That Maddox’s rage and protection was a warped hope to feel that protection from the harshness of the real world.
That Arley was hope and laughter that made life worth living for.
That Ace was every terrifying, consuming want she’d ever tried to deny herself.
But somewhere along the way, the stories stopped being stories for her.
And became everything to her. A final crash exploded from downstairs, then silence. Scarlett inhaled sharply as heavy footsteps moved through the store below.
Ace slowly handed the manuscript back to her without looking away from her face. “We’re finishing this conversation,” he said quietly.
Then Maddox’s voice thundered from downstairs. “Scarlett.” Not shouted this time. Worse, he sounded broken.
Scarlett moved before she could think better of it. The manuscript slipped from her hands onto the bed as she rushed for the stairs, heart thundering violently against her ribs. Ace followed close behind, but she barely registered him.
All she could hear was Maddox. That voice. Gods, she remembered crying over that voice in the middle of empty nights, convincing herself she was mourning people who had never existed. Now he was downstairs.
Scarlett reached the bottom of the staircase, just as Maddox stepped into view through the destroyed shop doorway. The sight of him stole the air from her lungs, and tears began to build in her eyes.
Rain soaked through his regalia, water dripping from his hair down every sharp line of his features she knew so well.
He looked exactly like she remembered and entirely different all at once—harder somehow.
Sharper around the edges. Like grief had carved him into something more dangerous while she was gone.
Then his eyes found her. Everything in him stopped. Scarlett’s breath hitched on a sob painfully. “Maddox…”
His expression cracked. Not fully. But enough for her to see what those months meant to him, what without her had done to him.
He crossed the library in seconds. Scarlett barely had time to inhale, before his hands framed her face roughly, almost desperately, like he needed proof she was solid beneath his palms.
“You disappeared,” he said hoarsely. The words gutted her.
“I never left you,” she leaned into his palm.
“You vanished.” He placed a chaste kiss on her temple. His voice broke harder this time.
Behind him, Arley stepped carefully through the broken doorway, his hair soaked from the storm, red eyes immediately finding Scarlett with relief.
“Oh,” he breathed softly. “Found you, Little Rose.” That nearly shattered her completely to hear the nickname from his lips in real life.
Scarlett laughed once through sudden tears, overwhelmed and exhausted, she was unable to process any of this fast enough. Maddox’s thumbs brushed beneath her eyes instantly.
“You’re crying.” He whispered.
“So are you,” she whispered back. That earned the faintest twitch of his mouth. Then, Maddox noticed Ace standing near the staircase behind her. The warmth vanished immediately. The room turned dangerous.
Maddox’s jaw flexed once. “You.”
Ace crossed his arms slowly. “Good to see you survived.”
“Oh, he definitely wants to kill you,” Arley sighed, shutting the ruined front door behind himself. “Honestly, I’d wait until after the emotional reunion before starting the testosterone festival,” he chuckled.
Scarlett let out a startled laugh despite herself. Arley smiled instantly at the sound, like he’d been waiting years to hear it again. Then his gaze shifted past her—to the manuscript in Ace’s Hand. His expression changed. Slowly.
“What’s that?” he asked quietly.
Scarlett froze. Ace’s eyes narrowed slightly. Maddox looked between all of them, instantly sensing the shift in tension. Scarlett’s stomach twisted hard. Because there it was. The moment everything broke.