The Hollow Heart by Marie Rutkoski

NIRRIM

I CAN’T BE PARTED FROMSid. I don’t want to leave her side. It doesn’t matter how much I beg her, or shake her, or even howl. She does not wake up. She has slept for nearly a month.

The eeriness unsettles everyone in the palace. My counselors, like Rinah, tell me that Sid is as good as dead, that I need to mourn and forget her. Sid breathes shallowly, but her limbs are as rigid as wood, and her mouth cannot be pried open to accept food or water. No one understands how her skin maintains the glow of life. Her eyelids do not flicker, like those who dream. She is lost to this world, lost to me, and it feels brutally unfair, because surely I should not feel the torment of her loss. The god of thieves took my heart, and yet I am still filled with longing, still aching with grief.

I have imprisoned Mere, Annin, and Morah. I wanted to murder them, to rend them to pieces, but Other Nirrim could not stop staring at Sid, and then finally I could not either, and somehow I lost my anger.

Sid would not want you to punish them, Other Nirrim murmured.

I touched Sid’s cheek, the freckle beneath her eye. The three women who had been my friends watched me do it.

“She left me again,” I said, my throat tight. For the first time since I had traded away my heart, tears slid hot down my face. “I thought she had come back forever, but then she saw me, and could not bear to stay.”

“She left for you,” Morah said. “Sid is like this because of you.”

I ordered the guards to take her and the two other women from my sight.

Maybe this was what the tree meant, when it told my fortune. If you wish to rule alone, you must destroy her. Maybe, unwittingly, I already caused Sid’s destruction, and now all that is left for me is loneliness.

I hear a far-off bursting rumble. The ground trembles. The windows of my bedchamber shatter. Through the shards of glass, I see fires burning in my city, and then I see a hurtling black ball plummet from the sky and slam into a building.

I have never seen a weapon like this.

I rush through the palace, shouting for my guards to follow, and step out into the street. Above the sound of chaos and destruction, I hear a musical warble.

It is my Elysium, diving toward me. A message is tied to its leg. Fingers trembling, I unroll it. I do not understand every word, but its meaning is absolutely clear.