Her throat tightened as her mind drifted to the song, the warning she had hummed since girlhood. She hesitated, fingers gripping the sill, then let the words slip past her lips, barely more than a whisper.
She took a breath and whispered the next verse of the song:
Speak your wishes, speak your grief
And shadowed hands may grant relief
But mark this truth and pay your dues…
Before she could sing the last line, the candle on her table guttered, its flame bowing out as a chill swept the room. The shadows in the corners thickened, stirring. She staggered back, clutching her mother’s shawl as though it might shield her from what she’d awoken.
“It was a song,” she told herself fiercely. “Only a song.”
The window shutters slammed shut and Alora shrieked, lurched back until she caught herself on her bedpost. Enough moonlight trickled in, falling over the mirror of her bureau.
A reply formed in its surface in slow eerie letters:
For once he wakes, he wakes for you.
Alora froze, her pulse jolting wildly at the words on the mirror. It was the last lyric in the verse.
A chill coursed over her skin. She had not truly expected an answer. A part of her had not fully believed. For a long moment she stood motionless, staring at the letters until they evaporated like a breath fading from glass.
Alora swallowed, questioning if this was truly happening.
Her next breath caught as new letters appeared on the mirror, each one deliberate and slow, as if drawn by an invisible finger.
What is it you desire?
Her lips trembled. “Who are you?”
You have sung my song and called me forth. I am the hollow with many names. You know who I am. Alora.
Her heart raced at the sight of her name.
She did not need the stories whispered in taverns to tell her the truth. Her soul already knew.
“The God of Shadows…”
The mirror rippled as if in answer. The air thinned, stealing her breath. Alora stiffened at the sudden cold presence behind her, a breath on her nape.
She didn’t move. Didn’t dare look.
The shadows moved around her, and she could almost feel a hand gently toying with a curl of her hair.
Then it wasn’t the mirror that answered, but a voice slipping into her mind like rich smoke.
If darkness called … would you answer?
Alora cried out and the shadows dissolved, vanishing from the room all at once.
The shutters flung open again, spilling moonlight across the chamber. Alora’s heart pounded so hard it threatened to break free.
But the presence was gone, and the mirror’s surface reflected her pale, terrified face.
And yet, when she lifted a trembling hand to her hair, she found a single golden lock twisted neatly into a fairy knot.
CHAPTER 8
