Page 16 of Hollowed

For this.

For him.

For the sound of my name spoken not like a curse, but a vow.

And for the first time, I didn’t just believe it.

I began to carry it.

Not like ash.

Like heat.

ChapterFour

I didn’t sleep.

I couldn’t. Not with the weight of my name pressed against my chest. Not with the shape of his voice still echoing behind my ribs. I held the book to my body like it might disappear if I loosened my grip.

He hadn’t left.

But he hadn’t touched me again either.

He knelt near the hearth where the fire had been coaxed into stillness. His hands rested on his thighs, palms up. He looked like a statue of something once feared and now forgotten—sacred and sharp, burned into history without explanation.

I watched him from the slab.

Naked beneath the wool.

Named.

Still not knowing what I belonged to.

He turned his head. Slowly. As if he’d felt me looking.

His eyes didn’t search. They saw.

My breath caught.

He rose.

One motion. Soundless.

I sat up.

The book slid down my lap.

He didn’t speak as he approached. He didn’t need to.

Everything in me had already begun to answer him.

He stopped just before me.

Still towering.

Still robed.

But something in his expression had changed. Or maybe I had finally earned the right to see it. The restraint wasn’t gone. It had just shifted. From control to offering.

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