These Hollow Vows (These Hollow Vows 1)

Mordeus roars in pain, and everything moves in slow motion—his snarl as he grabs a handful of my hair, the hot, sticky blood from his chest pouring onto my fingers, and the keening cry of the young girl who’s fallen to her knees behind him.

Mordeus strikes with his bloody blade, aiming for my gut and finding his mark, but he falls to a heap on the ground before he can drive it home.

With shaking, bloody hands, I help the girl to her feet. “Do you have a safe place to go until I can get back to you?” Countless humans, he said. All just waiting to feed Mordeus’s power and extend his cursed life.

She nods. There are tears running down her face. “My sister,” she chokes out, and I realize she’s looking at the body of the first girl on the floor. The one I didn’t think fast enough to save.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. I’ve sacrificed so much to save my sister, but I let hers die. “So very sorry.”

She sinks to the floor to smooth her dead sister’s hair from her face, and the sight threatens to tear away my numbness. I don’t have the luxury for the pain or the terror that want to claim me. I have to go.

I snap a thread on my goblin bracelet.

Bakken’s eyes go wide when he surveys the scene before him, his gaze locking on the false king who is dead on the floor in a pool of his own blood.

“Take me to Finn’s catacombs.” I wipe my hands on my skirt, my stomach roiling at the smell of blood and the feel of it under my fingernails and soaking the silken sleep clothes that cling to my skin.

Bakken steps back and shakes his head. “You ask too much.”

“I always pay,” I say between clenched teeth. I squeeze the handle of the dagger in my hand so hard the threads in the hilt bite into my palm. “Take me to the shadow prince’s catacombs.”

“The location is a highly guarded secret. This isn’t your average information.”

Without thinking, I wrap my fist around my hair and use the bloody knife to sheer it all off. I shove the handful of hair toward him. “Here.”

His eyes bulge, and spittle drips from the corner of his mouth as he takes it from me. “Yes, Fire Girl.”

I close my eyes, prepared for the nausea that comes with moving through the world with a goblin, but it doesn’t help. When the world stops weaving beneath my feet and I open my eyes, I’m surrounded by darkness so deep even my eyes can’t quite make out where we are.

“I leave you now, Fire Girl.”

I sense more than see Bakken disappear, and I don’t try to stop him. The air is cold and smells of damp earth. We must be deep underground.

Mordeus thought he could drug me to convince me to bond myself to him. Then he thought he could use innocents to force me. Which means that Mordeus is as untrustworthy as everyone said and as devious as I feared. But I was prepared for Mordeus to be devious.

I wasn’t prepared for the same from Finn.

All this time, that’s why Finn helped me. He was hoping I would fall for him and eventually trust him enough to bond with him. He planned to claim my life force and with it the magic crown I didn’t even know I carried.

I believed I had friends here, actually felt less lonely than I did in Fairscape. But Sebastian is the only real friend I have, and I have broken his trust too many times to count.

Slowly, my eyes adjust and I have to bite back a sob. I don’t know what I expected to see. These are his catacombs. Of course the dead are kept here. But even so, I never expected this.

The catacombs hold row after row of glass coffins. I rush forward. The woman inside the first one is young—probably my age—and her long blond hair is pulled over one shoulder, her eyes closed. Her hands are folded across her stomach.

She wears a soft white gown of lace and looks like a bride ready for her wedding. I put my hands on the glass—to push it aside, to wake her up, to . . . Save her?—it won’t move.

I press my hand against the glass. “No.”

I step to the next and see a young man. He has sunken cheeks and sallow skin. He was probably starving when he offered himself to Finn. Maybe he was like me and had a younger sister relying on him. Maybe he handed his life over so someone he loved could survive.

Coffin after coffin, human after human, these catacombs tell a story of a monster who was willing to take the lives of men and women to protect his own. When I come upon a coffin with a familiar face inside, I lean on it and choke back a sob.