And I realise, with a sickening twist in my gut, that the Hollow hasn’t just copied his face.
It’s copied what I love about him. It has copied the invisible parts.
And now I have to destroy one of them.
“River. Can’t you tell… with your twin bond?” I whisper, hoping—praying—that he’ll give me something solid to cling to. But he only shakes his head, eyes wide, breath shallow, his disbelief written in every line of his face.
“Everything is just—confused… I can’t—I don’t—” He stumbles over the words as if even language itself has abandoned him. His mouth stays parted, like he’s still waiting for an answer to form on his tongue, but nothing does.
The Hollow has been watching us. I canfeelit—it’s attention like cold fingers trailing down the back of my neck, cataloguing every soft spot, every fear, every break in our armour. It’s been studying us from the moment we stepped into its territory, memorising the cracks in our foundation. And now it has reshaped those notes into something monstrous—something so unforgivable I can barely draw enough breath to face it.
I have to kill one of them.
The realisation sinks through me like stones dropped into black water, heavy enough to drag my entire body down with it. If I choose wrong—if I even hesitate in the wrong direction—Ryder dies. TherealRyder. The one I—
I press my trembling lips together before the thought can finish itself.
I take a slow, deliberate step forward, feeling the weight of the sword at my side as if it’s suddenly doubled. My eyes drag back and forth between the two Ryder’s, searching their faces so desperately that it almost hurts to blink. They look identical… but that isn’t what terrifies me. What terrifies me is that theyfeelidentical. Same breath. Same stance. Same heartbeat in the air.
“Asha… please. It’s me. I love you.”
The words hit me like a blade slipped between ribs—quiet, devastating and impossibly tender. I feel them slide down my throat like something I should swallow whole, something warm and familiar and so deeply wanted that for a moment my knees almost buckle. If I could live in the sound of those words forever, I would know nothing but peace.
But peace is exactly what the Hollow would weaponise. That voice could be nothing more than a borrowed instrument.
“Don’t listen to him… that’s not me, Asha. You have to kill him.”
The other speaks with equal urgency, equal pain, equal desperation. And the moment his words land, my mind fractures. It feels like something inside me has splintered into a thousand jagged pieces, each one whispering a different possibility. My chest tightens until it’s hard to breathe. The world blurs at the edges, and for a second, I’m terrified I might faint and lose everything in that moment of weakness.
I clamp my jaw shut, holding myself together with sheer force, and I make myselfreallylook at them. I study the set of their shoulders, the subtle fidget of their hands, the way their chests rise and fall. I search for the smallest imperfection the Hollow might have missed.
But the forest’s craftsmanship is abhorrently flawless.
If I can’t choose by their bodies…
Then I will have to choose by what lives inside them.
“Ryder…” His name leaves me in a breath so thin it barely qualifies as sound. I don’t know where to look—left or right, truth or lie—because both Ryder’s stand before me wearing his face, his uncertainty, his quiet ache. “What did you say to me in the tub… after our first time—?”
“That I was done pulling away from you.”
They answer together.
The perfect synchronisation makes my stomach twist, but it isn’t their voices that catch me—it’s their eyes. One of them looks at me with pure, open love, steady and unwavering; the other holds something different behind the affection, a fleeting spark of guilt, a shadow the Hollow shouldn’t be able to replicate. It is gone almost as quickly as it appears, so fast I question whether I imagined it entirely, but the doubt digs its claws in deep. I can’t rely on instinct alone. I need more.
So I take another step forward, swallowing hard enough that the motion aches in my throat. “On the mountain,” I say slowly, letting the memory settle between us like smoke, “when your hands were around my throat… were you even sorry for what you were doing to me?”
The reaction is immediate—and violently different.
One Ryder breaks as if I’ve sliced a hidden seam down his centre. His eyes fill, shimmering and glassy, and he stares into mine with a devastation so raw it might as well be bleeding. “Of course I was… It’s the worst thing that ever happened to me.” His voice fractures, and then fractures again.
The other Ryder holds still; the only indication of his discomfort is the way his breath hitches, and his eyes drag away from my own.
I force my expression to harden, even though the act feels like carving stone from my own ribs.
“You were right,” I say, letting coldness seep into every syllable. “I’ll never be able to trust you again, not while the serum runs inside you. So what’s the point?” My voice drops, sharp as a blade. “I might as well kill you both before you kill me.”
The lie tastes bitter—poison in my mouth—but it’s the only weapon sharp enough to cut through the Hollow’s mimicry. If Ryder is truly Ryder, I know exactly how he will respond tothat kind of cruelty, because guilt is the wound he carries like a second heartbeat.
