THE HOLLOW
fourteen: THE HOLLOW

        SHE HAD HESITATED. When he'd reached out his hand and offered her the world, she had hesitated. She had seen the darkness swirling in his eyes, heard its alluring call, and almost yielded to its promises. For a moment, she'd let herself consider what it might be like to embrace the darkness. His darkness.

Sometimes, it calls to her in the night, when she tries to sleep. The promise of more. The promise of power. So many times, she's almost bent to its will; anything to spite her father, to destroy him and that wretched court of his across the sea. She's nearly walked into the darkness and let it embrace her, with the hope that it might bestow her with a power incapable of faltering.

But she had always resisted.

Aleksander had offered out his hand. He'd offered her a place, a purpose, a role at his side. He'd offered her the Hollow - but only if she were tethered to him for eternity. If she yielded to him and his greed.

She knows every single one of his tricks. She's seen them first hand, and felt their brutal sting. Even when he'd proclaimed to love her, to want and desire and need her, she'd known he'd never meant it. And so she'd considered, as she'd hesitated, as she almost reached for his outstretched hand and let his shadows embrace her, consume all that lay before her. A lifetime at his beck and call, with the power of the Hollow coursing through her veins, only to wield in the interest of another who knows far too many of her secrets. Aleksander has his ways. He will never relinquish control so easily.

So she steps back, away from the empty promises, from the spidery tendrils of power that try to wrap themselves around her mind, and stares down her former lover like he might change his mind and gift her the Hollow as if it were merely insignificant.

His grin is feline as he beholds her. He cocks his head, raises his eyebrows, wills her to challenge him, if she dares. Inviting her to fight his control.

She's played his games and won, before now. She will triumph once again.

Lilia reties her cape around her shoulders. The bitter chill of his presence pushes in. She drums her fingers against the book in her pocket, a familiar, grounding weight beside her hip. "Take Ravka, take the continent, if you must. But leave me Kavatero and the Hollow, and you will have an ally across the ocean."

"And how do I know you won't betray me? How do I know you won't yield that power against me?"

"So paranoid," she purs, reaching a hand up to rest against his jaw. Her thumb taps against his lower lip and she inches forward, so close that she can smell the darkness dancing off of him. She lets it caress her face, her skin, comb it's fingers through her hair. She lets him inch closer, to shift her hips against his. "I thought that you, of all people, wouldn't be so afraid of others," she whispers against his mouth, before stepping away. Lilia's hand pats the book in her pocket, checking that it's still there — despite it all, she will make it back to Ketterdam, that she is sure of, and hand Rina the book herself — before fixing her eyes upon him. "Besides, do you not have your Sun Summoner?"

Aleksander stares for a moment. Dark eyes fix upon her face, enough to send a chill down the spine of a stranger. "You can have it if you can stand to touch it."

At the furrow of her brow, he chuckles. "The Hollow," he explains. "It's a volatile thing. No one can hold it more than a few mere seconds. Have you not heard the stories?"

She has, but they were so entangled with myth that she's not even sure what is truth and what is fiction. She knows it truly does exist — the proof is all there — and that it can burn people up from the inside but, beyond that, it's a mystery. There are so many stories about it — what it looks like, where it came from, what it does to those strong enough to endure it's power — that the uncertainty has woven an entangled web around it.

Lilia's mother had told her of it when she was a child. She was never one for stories, especially to a child born only out of spite. But she still spoke about it with reverence, or all the admiration that a woman with a heart as bitter as hers could muster, and seemed to think it were a holy thing, the creation of a dark God, millennia-old. From a time before the Black Heretic had created the fold. Though, she'd always been sure her mother feared it as much as she had worshipped it.

Her father despised anything like it. In fact, Lilia is sure he'd see it as heresy, if he were to dabble in such practices. She'd be strung up in the Capital's town square, hung for crimes against the crown, against nature.

But her father hasn't once stopped to see his daughter's hand reach for the darkness. She's desperate to see his face before her power chokes him from the inside.

"They're all children's tales, I'm sure?"

The Darkling hums. "Most, yes. But there's always a little truth to bedtime stories."

Lilia has heard stories of villages levelled by The Hollow, by a child who wielded its power and threw a tantrum one stormy night; another of a Princess whose lover was corrupted by its darkness, while trying to rescue her from a tower so high it touched the clouds, until it swallowed him while; of the old God who had created it — ancient, older than most, from a time when the Old Gods were worshipped over the Saints people now chose. He had spun all his hatred, sadness and wrath into darkness, a never-ending spool of ever-shifting thread, to use to bind his enemies.

The thread stole all that was good and precious, fragment by fragment, until there was nothing left. Nothing but evil and darkness and the shells of those unfortunate enough to cross the old God.

She doesn't remember his name, the God from those stories. She's sure it's probably seen as blasphemy to speak it. But she's also sure that, if the stories were even half true, her mother would have recited them to her as if they were gospel; she'd have celebrated some day of worship — the old God's day perhaps, some marked day hidden in one of the ancient heretic texts she clung to — and praised the God for the darkness he had created.

"And you have tried to wield it?"

"Of course I have tried." Another predators grin. His smile widens, the jaws of a predator ready to strike. "Do you take me for a fool, Liliana?" He purrs.

"Perhaps, in your old age, you have grown foolish."

Aleksander's gaze traces the shape of her beneath the cloak. A young girl too precious, too fragile, to withstand. "It's in the vault." He waves a hand in dismissal. "I'll be sure to send the help down there to collect what's left of you when its power consumes you."

...

She's been to this vault before. Aleksander had shown her the pieces hidden here on one of her first visits. Probably a way to soften her up, to lure her between his sheets. Back then, he'd believed her to be close to her father, but she could trace back the moment things turned sour between them to him realising she held no favour with the King of Kavatero.

His daughter she may be, but she is nothing but an inconsequential sire. A burden on his resources that he can't cast aside, lest he be struck down by her mother's dying curses. He would deny her, if he were able to, but her father is superstitious and deeply religious — it's how her mother managed to snare him in the first place — and he's petrified that some force will kill him if he does, even despite her mother's death. Only leaving on her own terms spared him from the vile woman's wrath.

The vaults hold all manner of Grisha and saintly artifacts; a vial of blood from Sankta Anastasia, said to cure all ailments, the paintbrush of Sankt Gerasim and a scale from the dragon which Sankt Juris slew. Aleksander has always refused to tell her how he'd come to acquire such items, items that would surely be worshiped and revered across the word.

Though, she supposes it doesn't matter. All that matters is the Hollow.

Maybe she's naive for believing he would ever hand it over to her willingly, and maybe there's a trap lying in wait when she find it in this labyrinth, but maybe-

It calls to her the moment she opens the door. A strange wordless humming, heavy, pressing, dragging her forward. Her feet then to lead and her head spins, a fog of delirium sweeping across her vision. It knows she's her for it, it can feel it in the air, smell her desire like it's a physical thing. It knows all, it's aware of everything. And it's here and it calls to her ... it calls ... it calls ...

The room is a maze before her, all around her. Glass-encased podiums of dark, carved stone and tall, oak bookshelves with leather-bound tomes. Stretching, warping, the air is thick, presses in on her chest. Walking is like walking through quick sand or through the strongest of winds.

The vault is beneath the Little Palace, only accessible through the Darkling's chambers. His own personal, private collection, and Lilia isn't even sure that the King knows it exists. Her own father would probably see it as heresy, that these Saintly relics were locked away beneath the Grisha palace, away from the eyes of pilgrims and worshippers. Despite its location, the ceiling is vaulted and high, large, swooping aches carved in the whorls of flames and waves and wind. Grisha-made, no doubt, and incredible grand for a place so few would get to see.

She wanders through the labyrinth, listening to the call of the Hollow.

But then she sees it, at the end of a pathway, one that seems to stretch, growing father away the closer that she gets. Her footsteps as slow as molasses.

Until she's finally upon it.

It's all far less grand than she'd anticipated.

She'd assumed it would be in the most elaborate of boxes, one laden with gold and silver. One intricately carved with stories of the Hollow and the danger it would bring. Instead, it sits inside a rickety old box. The carvings are faded; Lilia can barely make them out, the old curls and curves of a story.

It's beautiful — breathtaking, devastating, and she can hardly stand to look at it for too long — but it's underwhelming, on the outside.

But, somehow, it calls to her.

A whispering. A lullaby, a beckoning call, a war cry, a siren's lament. Beautiful and dark and evil. Smoke curling. It wants her and every single part of her.

'Princess of Kavatero,' it whispers from inside its box. A sweet and evil voice, male and female, light and dark. Endless and echoing, filling the room and her head. Delightful and singing, humming and terrible. 'Hidden princess, queen of the darkness, won't you come to me?' It sung. 'Lady of a thousand faces, silver-tongued liar, will you yield me like so many before you couldn't?'

It knows her, everything within her. It can see into her soul, into her heart. It knows all of her secrets and her desires. She could hide nothing, even if she tried.

'The Darkling couldn't. With all his power. I burned him, with fire and ice.' The Hollow hissed, a low sound like a serpents warning before a strike. 'But you, would-be Queen- maybe you can stand to touch me?'

A hand reaches for the box. It's hers, she doesn't realise it straight away.

A chill slips down her spine. A spider creeping, crawling across her skin.

The walls around her feel like they're closing in.

The air around her pulses. Electricity prickles her fingers. It grows hot, burning her fingers, a heatless, sneering fire; and then it's burning, but with the cold, like her hand rests upon a glacier.

Her body stills in rebellion. She wants to pull her hand away or, at least, some part of her does. The rest — the part that wins out — won't let her move or even look away. Her arm tries to yank itself backwards but invisible hands shove her forward and her palms press against the the Hollow.

And Lilia screams.

...

        The darkness is cold. Freezing. Lilia can feel it in her bones. There is nothing. Nothing but the cold and the shadows, and the endless void of nothingness that stretches out before her.

It's like a darkness she's never known. Aleksander has shown her darkness; darkness and pleasure, whispered to her through it all. But the Hollow's darkness was a living, breathing thing. It exists everywhere, and all around her.

And, now, she's falling. Down and down and down and down and she can't stop it. There's nothing to hold onto. Nothing to keep her safe. She reaches out a hand, grasps at the ink black air, trying to find something, anything, to stop her descent. But there is still nothing, and there will always be nothing.

Distantly, she's screaming. But there's nothing but silence in her ears. A great, terrible silence. An angry, lashing, brutal silence. Her throat is raw. The taste of blood fills her mouth.

The Hollow steals everything away.

Then it gives it all back.

A/N: SEASON TWO? MY ONLY STATEMENT: WESPERJSKDOAJDKWJSN

okay but seriously i fucking love this show