Identical.
The same scrapes, the same dirt-smudged cheek, the same ragged breath.
Everything inside me drops—my stomach, my lungs, my thoughts—like the ground has fallen away and I’m suspended in freefall.
River stands stiff beside me, shock carved into every line of his face. “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me…”
Both Ryder’s speak at once, their voices overlapping like a reflection on water disturbed by wind:
“Asha—listen to me—don’t go near him.”
I instinctively step back, and both of them lurch forward in perfect sync, as if the forest itself is mocking my panic.
My pulse stutters painfully, a disjointed rhythm I can’t get back under control. My skin feels tight, too small for my body, and for a moment, I swear I can feel the Hollow watching with a predator’s patience.
One Ryder flinches, brows knitting with that familiar crease he gets when he’s scared he’s losing me. “Asha, it’s me. You know me. Youknowme.”
The other’s voice carries the same note of desperation, the same cadence that used to make me turn toward him without thinking. “Come on, Asha, it’s me. Don’t listen to him.”
Exactly like him.
Perfectly like him.
Even the ink black veins spidering up his arm like bolts of lightning. Each stroke carved with precision.
The riddle pulses through my mind, steady and merciless:
Two wear his face—one truth, one lie.
Choose your Ryder.
Kill the other, or the real one dies.
My breathing becomes thin and fragile, like I’m trying to inhale through a cracked ribcage. My hand trembles around the hilt of my sword, and the tattoo on my palm pricks—not enough to warn me, not enough to guide me, just enough to remind me it exists.
I want to scream.
I want to run.
I want to beg the Hollow to take my memories, my strength, my place in the world—anything but this choice.
But I force myself to lift my chin, swallowing down the terror even though it scrapes like broken glass on the way down.
“Okay,” I whisper, though my voice wavers. “If one of you is him… then say something only Ryder would say.”
Both of them inhale sharply.
“This is ridiculous, Asha. You know me,” one says, rolling his eyes just the way Ryder always does when I ask a question he finds hopelessly obvious.
But the other steps forward too, tension pulling his brows together in the exact pattern I’ve memorised since the moment I met him—the lines he gets when he worries about something he won’t say out loud.
“Kill him already so we can get the fuck out of this place,” he snaps—sharp and impatient, laced with that familiar edge of bravado he uses when he’s terrified and trying not to show it.
A short, disbelieving laugh pushes out of me before I can stop it, brittle at the edges.
Of course, he’d say that.
Of course, Ryder’s idea of comfort in a life-or-death situation would be sarcasm and profanity.
