A ripple of unease passed through both sides.
“This ground will not allow slaughter,” Lady Limora said calmly, though her eyes glittered with something sharp. “But it will not protect fools either.”
The ice shifted again. It didn’t rise or fall. It merely tilted and subtly changed the slope of the valley so that no group held the higher ground. The effect was disorienting, forcing everyone to adjust their footing, to look down, to remember the land wasn’t theirs to command.
The Hollows weren’t choosing a side.
They were narrowing the moment.
A sharp crack echoed through the mist as one of the ice walls shed a shard, the translucent piece striking the ground between the orcs and my group. It didn’t shatter. It embedded itself upright, glowing faintly from within.
A marker.
A boundary.
The older orc inhaled sharply.
“The ground demands terms,” he said.
Before I could answer, the air shifted again, this time above us.
The shadows recoiled suddenly, not retreating entirely, but pulling back as if something larger had just entered the board. The sky dimmed a fraction, light thinning, and for a heartbeat, I had the unmistakable sensation of being watched frombeyondthe valley.
It wasn’t from Shadowick, but from somewhere older.
“Maeve,” Keegan said quietly. “This isn’t just her anymore.”
I swallowed, eyes locked on the hovering shadows as they twisted uneasily, no longer bold, no longer fully obedient.
The Hollows had stepped in.
And whatever rules were about to be enforced, no one here—orc, vampire, shifter, or witch—was entirely prepared to pay the price they demanded.
Chapter Forty-Four
The valley held its breath.
The older orc still stood at the front of the line, weapon lowered just enough to signal hesitation without surrender. Around him, the others shifted uneasily, boots grinding against frost, shoulders rolling as if they were trying to remember how not to charge. The shadows had pulled back to the edges of the sky, no longer bold, no longer falling freely, and the Hollows hummed beneath us with a low, watchful resonance that made my teeth ache.
For the first time since we’d crested the ridge, the orcs were listening.
I felt it in the way their gazes flicked between me and the land itself, in the way their anger no longer had a single, clean direction. Confusion had crept in, and with it, the fragile possibility of understanding.
The older orc tilted his head slightly, studying me with eyes that had learned patience the hard way.
“If you didn’t send the dark,” he said slowly, “then name the hand that did.”
I opened my mouth to answer.
I never got the chance.
The air above me ignited.
It wasn’t fire. It wasn’t lightning. It was light, pure, searing, impossibly bright, erupting directly over my head like a star being born.
The force of it knocked the breath from my lungs, my knees buckling as the glow intensified, compressing into a blinding spear of radiance before I could even think to shield myself.
“No—!” Keegan shouted.
