But he wanted to make August understand—to hurt, even if it meant hurting with him.
“You did,” Felix answered. “Hundreds, maybe thousands. All those people in the market square. Wielders, nobles, vendors, my ma.” He hadn’t meant to say the last one out loud. He clenched the locket tighter as pain knotted in his chest. “The tear swallowed blocks of the city. All the people inside those buildings. Entire families. Dead. Because of you.”
August’s face tightened, the words striking just as Felix intended.
“You’ll pay for it, as you should. I’ll make sure of that. Just have the decency to stay alive long enough to stop that thing from killing more.” He loosened his grip on the locket.
When he opened his hand, August sat up straight.
“Where did you get that?”
“The Gilded Mortar,” said Felix. “Well, the Hollow Dark side of it. Why?”
Something flickered across August’s face. “That’s not possible. The Hollow Dark is empty.” He slid off his bedroll to move closer, eyes on the necklace.
“Mostlyempty,” Felix corrected. “This was the only thing inside the room.”
When he reached out to take the locket, Felix snapped his hand closed.
August rolled his eyes. “I’ll give it back.”
Felix hesitated, turning it one more time in his palm before handing it over. He expected August to flinch at the frigid cold. To at least question it. It always sent a jolt through Felix.
But August’s blatant lack of reaction was telling.
“You’ve found one before.”
“In my room at the castle,” August confirmed, rubbing his thumb over the smooth face of the locket. He opened the clasp to look inside, and when he found it empty, closed it again and handed it back. “I’d forgotten all about it until now. I didn’t realize it was from the other side.”
That made no sense. “How did you not? You said nobody else knew about the Hollow Dark, so you must have been the one to bring it back.”
August’s expression was turbulent. “I must have,” he agreed. “So, why don’t I remember finding it?” His gaze lifted to something Felix couldn’t see, as if he expected an answer to appear there. But he said nothing else, so Felix tucked the locket away.
“Sleep, Aesling. I don’t need you complaining that you’re tired the whole way home.”
Felix unlatched his prosthetic and set it aside, then leaned back and folded his arms.
He hadn’t meant to drift off, but dreams found him anyway, full of spreading darkness and screaming and death.
August lay flat, using his bunched-up cloak as a pillow and staring at the ceiling as the lamps in the drafty cellar caused the shadows to flicker overhead. Cobwebs hung in the corners, and the wooden boards were edged with rot.
Sleep had already claimed the others, but for August, it felt like a distant, unreachable thing. The unnatural chill of the locket still clung to the skin of his palm, and he traced the outline with his finger.
His thoughts were stuck on the ring. He hadn’t thought about it in so long, but it felt significant now, knowing where it had come from. The sudden need to have it back was a deep, nagging thing. It was from the Hollow Dark, and August felt like, in some strange way, that made ithis. Like he was connected to it.
Where was it now? When had he found it the first time? Why didn’t he remember?
He was twelve years old the first time he went to the Hollow Dark. The night the anchored woman tried to push him from the window. The memory of that night was vivid in his mind. Therewas no ring then. He was sure of it. But he didn’t go through the veil again until after Lottie found the ring in the wardrobe.
It made no sense. He was missing something. It was sitting right there, just out of sight, like an anchored clinging to his periphery. Whenever he tried to look directly at it, it would vanish into smoke.
He pressed his palms against his closed eyelids, digging through his memories of the year prior to the night he’d first opened the veil, but it felt like dredging through murky water. Crisp memories mixed with strange, blurred faces and missing pieces. Moments in time stitched roughly together with wrinkles in the fabric. So much of that year was a haze.
Why?
He’d always blamed it on grief, assumed his mind couldn’t handle the loss of his father. But the explanation seemed so flimsy now. There were moments, even before his father’s death, where the memories followed the same pattern. Missing pieces patched over.
“You should leave,” Lottie said, shaking him free of his tangled thoughts.
