Ryder’s eyes flicker, searching my face for the meaning beneath the words.
“It wants to break us apart,” I say, the truth settling cold and certain in my stomach. “Because it knows it can beat us this way… when we’re fractured, when we’re doubting each other, when we’re too busy fighting ourselves to see the real danger.”
A breath shudders out of me, and I step closer to them both, letting the weight of everything we’ve survived press into my voice.
“Because it knows we’re stronger together.”
The words don’t echo, but they feel like they should—like the forest itself hears them, weighs them, tests them against its twisted nature. And for the first time since the trial began, something in me steadies.
Because I believe it.
And I think, somewhere deep beneath the bruises and hurt feelings and unresolved pain—they do too.
Chapter Thirty
We take advantage of the weak spot in the Hollow while we still can—using every stolen second of borrowed magic before the forest shifts again and devours it whole. I’ve already healed Ryder’s bruised eye, though he still refuses to meet my gaze fully. Yet when my fingers brushed his cheek, I swear I felt him lean into the touch—just barely, just enough for my heart to catch. For a fleeting moment, it felt like the Hollow, the serum, the trial… none of it had ever existed. Like we were still us.
But moments like that don’t survive long here. Not in a place engineered to starve anything gentler than fear.
River flinches when I press my hand to his swollen jaw, but his eyes… they don’t flinch at all. They hold. They cling. They search mine like they’re desperate to find something—clarity or hope, an answer I don’t have. His lips part, the beginning of a confession trembling on them.
Something that could ruin everything.
“Don’t—”
I stop him before the words can spill out and stain the air between us. My voice cracks like a branch underfoot. His expression tightens, a flicker of pain shadowing the soft hope that had begun to rise there.
“It didn’t mean anything,” I force out, but River doesn’t look away. His eyes still watch me carefully as if he is studying me, hurt swimming in the hazel.
“….Not to you.”
The words land like a stone in my stomach, heavy and final. He takes my hand, and the contact is so unexpectedly tender that my eyes sting instantly, betrayal and guilt sparking at the edges of my vision. But before a single tear can fall, he lets go. And then he turns and walks away with a heaviness in his shoulders that feels like it’s dragging my heart with him.
We pass more of the carved symbols, each one making my lungs loosen a little, as if every mark is proof the Hollow hasn’t twisted our path or bent the world beneath our feet. My gaze drifts to the new tattoo stamped into my palm. In the dim, shifting light, it shimmers with shades of amethyst and electric blue whenever I flex my fingers—like it’s alive, like it sees more than I do.
If only it could grant the clarity it promises. If only it could tell me how to make Ryder forgive me for not trusting him… or how to help him forgive himself for what he cannot control.
And River… Gods, River’s heart feels as exposed as the fresh ink on our skin—raw, cracked at the edges, held together only by hope he shouldn’t still have. Every time I glance at him, I see it fraying a little more.
I hate it.
I hate that the trial asked me to choose between truth and trust, and in choosing, I hurt both of them in different ways.
My tattoo pulses faintly with each heartbeat—amethyst and blue, a promise of protection… but not wisdom.
If magic could mend hearts as easily as skin, I’d pour every ounce I have into fixing this.
But the Hollow doesn’t deal in mercy, and neither does love, not when it’s tangled and sharp-edged like this.
The branches seem to stretch and curl around us, snagging at our shirts like clawed hands begging us to turn back. It feels almost intentional, as if the Hollow senses we’re slippingfrom between its teeth and refuses to let the bile it’s swallowed rise from its throat. Every rustle sounds like a warning. Every whisper of leaves feels like a plea.
My sword hangs at my side in the holster Ryder fashioned from twisted Hollow vines. It fits almost too perfectly. He’d tied it around my waist with white-knuckled force, his jaw tight, eyes somewhere far away, as if his thoughts had wandered into the worst possible places and dragged his hands with them.
He didn’t even realise how constricted my breaths had become until I told him I couldn’t quite inhale. He loosened it instantly, the guilt in his eyes flashing so quickly I almost wondered if I imagined it.
“See that over there.” Ziek points toward what looks like a large red rose bouncing through the underbrush, darting toward us with almost childlike curiosity. At first, I can’t help blinking in confusion—flowers don’t move like that. Flowers don’tchoosetheir direction. But the closer it gets, the more my jaw slackens. It’s not a rose at all.
It’s a creature.
