Chapter 14 Hardin
HARDIN
Her scent still clings to me.
Lavender and rain-damp skin and the faint burn of candle smoke from the kitchen table, where the wax melted in long golden rivulets down glass jars, catching shadows and holding them hostage against the wall.
The table creaked like it hadn’t been touched in years.
Her fingers were soft, curious, trembling only once.
And I remember the sound she made—barely a breath when I kissed her shoulder.
But morning breaks sharp and cold, and I don’t belong in her house anymore.
I’m already gone before the kettle boils.
The Hollow doesn’t warm the way it used to.
The trees stay still too long now. The wind hovers at the edges of the wards like it’s listening to my guilt.
I push harder into the forest than I need to, following a path lined with gnarled bark and stone teeth, straight to the roots of the place I swore I wouldn’t return to unless I had blood to spill.
The council lives behind old growth and time-stained stone.
The oldest ones don’t sleep, not really.
They just sit in the hollows of carved-out trees and wait for questions that shouldn’t be asked.
I know the path to the tribunal seat by heart.
Seven steps through the blue moss. Five breaths past the ironwood arch.
Three knocks against the sigil-sealed gate.
When the wood splits open, Brekka is waiting. She’s still tall as ever, pale bark skin threaded with veins of gold magic, long white hair braided back in ceremonial cords.
“You stink of her,” she says.
“I didn’t come for judgment.”
“Then you came for something worse.”
She leads me down into the grove where the elder stones form a ring around the deep flame.
The other council members begin to gather as word of my presence spreads.
Old souls. Faded eyes. Names that haven’t been spoken aloud in decades.
There’s no warmth here, only truth, and the brittle weight of keeping ancient things from waking.
They don’t sit. They don’t ask questions. They wait for me to speak.
“I took her to my bed,” I say.
The words fall like stones.
No one gasps. No one flinches. But the flame in the center flares taller, casting long, reaching shadows over the stone floor.
“You’ve claimed her,” Brekka says.
“I haven’t marked her.”
“You didn’t need to.”
Silence again. The kind that tastes like disappointment and fear rolled into one.
“She’s bound to the Hollow now,” Brekka continues. “Her blood woke it. Your touch sealed it.”
“She didn’t ask for this.”
“None of us did,” the oldest among them says, a voice like breaking bark.
I shift my stance, weight braced, breath low. “Tell me what it means.”
“If the Hollow accepts her, it will change everything,” Brekka says. “It could unravel protections older than you. Than me. Than this soil.”
“And if I leave her?”
“It might stop the unraveling. But only if the bond hasn’t rooted.”
I exhale through my nose. That bond has rooted. I feel it like a brand behind my ribs.
“You’ve seen her daughter’s mark,” Brekka adds. “That child is a keystone. She’s why Korrak is circling. Why the Hollow is stirring. She’s not just bloodline. She’s prophecy.”
The word lands hard in my gut.
“She doesn’t know that.”
“She will.”
“What do I do?”
Brekka’s expression softens, not with kindness, but with exhaustion.
“You already know.”
I don’t go back to the cottage for two days.
I run the wards. I double the iron stakes and walk the fog line until my feet blister in my boots.
I hunt the woods for traces of Korrak’s presence and find a carved crescent in an alder tree near the southern ridge.
A mark of watching. He’s patient, always has been.
He likes to let people feel safe before he shatters them.
The second night, I sleep beneath a root arch, barely dozing, listening for the Hollow’s breath. And I dream of her.
She stands in a garden blooming too fast. Every flower opens the moment she looks at it. Her hands are glowing. And Mari dances between trees where the trunks bend to let her pass.
When I wake, my hands are shaking.
I pack my things. Leave the woods. Walk the steps back to her door.
She answers after the second knock, still in the same sweater she wore that night, eyes wide and a little relieved before she catches herself and tries to stand taller.
“Hardin,” she says.
I nod, say nothing.
“Are you… alright?”
I look away. “Can we talk?”
She lets me in. The house smells like rosemary and something baking, like she’s tried to keep moving forward. The fire crackles in the hearth. Mari’s not here. Likely at Elodie’s for the afternoon. The silence between us stretches thin.
I speak first. “What happened the other night… it was a mistake.”
Her face doesn’t crumble. It hardens. Not like stone. Like bark. Like something still growing but scarred.
“Right,” she says. “Of course.”
“I shouldn’t have let it happen.”
“You didn’t ‘let’ anything happen, Hardin. I wanted it.”
“I know.”
“And now you’re what? Regretting it?”
I clench my fists. “I’m protecting you.”
She laughs once, bitter and low. “By disappearing for two days and then showing up to tell me I was a mistake?”
“It’s more than that.”
“Then say it.”
I do.
“If I stay close to you, the Hollow may unravel. The protections may fall. You and Mari… you could be targeted by more than just Korrak. The council said it’s already begun.”
She turns away. Her shoulders are tight, voice strained.
“I don’t care what the council said. I care what you feel.”
I don’t respond.
“I opened my heart to you,” she says, softer now. “And you—”
“I don’t get to have a heart anymore.”
She turns then, steps close enough that I feel her heat again, the way her presence tugs at something I’ve buried too deep to name.
“You’re not cursed,” she whispers. “You’re just scared.”
I don’t answer.
She nods slowly. “Alright, then. Get out.”
I stand there for a long moment. Then I leave.
But I don’t go far.
I circle her house that night from the woods, watching the light in her window flicker out just past midnight. I hear her sobs through the stone walls.
And I keep watching, even as my chest burns with the choice I made.
Because if being away from her keeps her safe, then I’ll stand in every shadow, night after night, and never let her know just how much it kills me.