Page 14 of Hollowed

“They call it a ledger,” he murmured. “But that implies debt.”

He didn’t look at me.

And somehow that made it worse.

“This isn’t a balance.”

His hand paused on a blank page.

I watched his throat move as he swallowed.

“It’s a witness.”

He set the quill to the edge of the parchment.

I couldn’t breathe.

“What are you doing?” I whispered.

He didn’t answer.

He wrote the first letter.

I felt it like a touch to my ribs.

The second.

A breath caught between my legs.

The third.

A cry in the back of my throat.

He finished the name.

My name.

Not the one the convent used.

Not the one my mother hissed like a curse.

The one I had never spoken aloud.

He said it.

Soft.

So quiet it almost didn’t exist.

And yet it thundered inside me.

“Aven.”

I sobbed.

It wasn’t pain.

It wasn’t joy.

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