Caleb’s face drained of color. “That’s not ours,” he breathed.
Nova stared at the glowing crack in the earth, her expression unreadable. “That’s not the Priestess either.”
The horn sounded again, louder this time, echoing through the Hollows and into my bones.
And as something vast began to move beneath the ice, I realized with a sickening drop in my stomach that the battle we were fighting, orc against witch, shadow against light, had never been the real danger at all.
Whatever was waking beneath the Hollows didn’t care who started the fight.
It only cared that enough power had gathered to feed it.
Chapter Forty-Five
The first thing anyone noticed was the cold changing its mind.
It wasn’t the sharp, punishing cold of the Hollows that had bitten at skin and breath since we arrived. This was something else deeper and steadier, as if the ice itself had drawn in a breath and decided to hold it. The fissure glowing beneath the fallen orc dimmed, its blue light pulling inward. The horn’s echo faltered, not silenced, but interrupted, like a thought cut off mid-sentence.
And then the ice parted.
It didn’t shatter or falter.
Parted.
The towering walls of the Glacial Hollows shifted aside with a sound like ancient stone being persuaded rather than forced, their jagged edges smoothing just enough to form a narrow passage. Frost spiraled upward in lazy, deliberate curls, catching the light and scattering it into a thousand pale prisms.
A figure stepped through.
Gideon didn’t rush.
He didn’t sneak. He walked forward with the calm assurance of someone who knew exactly how much attention he commanded and had decided to use it sparingly. His boots crunched against the ice, the sound absurdly loud in the sudden hush that followed his arrival.
“Enough!” he called, his voice cutting cleanly through the chaos, through the growls and shouts and the shriek of shadow overhead. “This is the work of the Priestess.”
The words landed like a spell cast without magic.
Everything stopped.
The orcs froze mid-motion, weapons half-raised, eyes snapping toward him in unison. The shadows recoiled sharply, pulling back as if burned, their forms blurring and thinning at the edges. Even the Hollows seemed to still, the hum beneath the ground dropping to a low, uncertain murmur.
I stared.
My heart slammed so hard against my ribs it hurt.
Gideon.
Here.
In the Hollows.
A hundred thoughts collided in my head—how did he get here, why would he come now, what was he risking—but none of them mattered in that moment. What mattered was the way the orcs reacted.
They knew him.
Not as a hero. Not as an ally.
But as a constant.
He’d been the face of Shadowick. It’s controller. The man who had walked their borders and their nightmares for years. The one whose name carried weight even when spoken in anger.
