Chapter 30 Appetite
The grand hall had emptied. Nobles had drifted away one by one, faces pale and movements sluggish, as if the very act of being near Solis drained something vital from them. Only Darius, Mara, Veth, and Solis remained at the long center table.
Solis watched Darius with quiet fascination. "You stayed."
"I wanted to talk," Darius said simply. "Without the audience."
Veth crossed her arms, suspicious. "This feels like a trap wrapped in silk."
Mara said nothing, but her golden eyes never left Solis.
Solis smiled faintly and gestured toward a smaller private chamber off the main hall. "Then let us speak privately, Darius Valeborn."
He followed her. Mara and Veth stayed close behind but did not enter the room when Solis closed the doors, leaving the three of them in quiet seclusion.
Solis sat gracefully across from him. Plates of untouched food still surrounded her. "Ask your questions. Most men demand answers about my power. They want to know how to weaponize famine. You... feel different."
Darius studied her. "I am not here to weaponize you. I want to understand you. Why does nothing satisfy? Not the food. Not the worship. Not even time itself."
Solis traced a finger along the rim of an untouched golden goblet. "Because everything eventually becomes the same. I taste the most exquisite dishes and they turn to dust on my tongue. People worship me as Famine and it feels hollow. Centuries pass and every joy, every sorrow, every victory feels... borrowed. Temporary. Empty."
Darius leaned forward slightly. "So your famine is not about starvation of the body."
"No," Solis whispered. "It is absence. The meaning has been drained from existence. I walk among people who have everything they need to live and yet they feel nothing. I did not take their food. I simply revealed how little it truly matters."
She picked up a perfect peach and held it to the light. "Beautiful, is it not? Yet when I bite into it, there is no sweetness. Only the memory of sweetness I can no longer reach."
Darius listened without interrupting. He did not try to fix her. He did not offer empty comfort. He simply paid attention.
"What about you?" Solis asked, turning the question back on him. "You carry two of us already. Plague and War. Do you not feel the hunger growing inside you? The need for more?"
"I feel the strain," Darius admitted. "But I am not chasing satisfaction through power. I am chasing an ending to the system that made you this way."
Solis laughed.
It was quiet at first, almost surprised, then it grew into something genuine and warm. A real laugh. The sound filled the chamber like sunlight breaking through long darkness. For the first time in centuries, Solis laughed.
Mara, standing just outside the door, tensed immediately. Veth looked deeply suspicious, eyes narrowed.
Solis covered her mouth, still smiling. "You are dangerous, Darius. Not because of the power you carry. Because you listen. Because you see. Most men want me to fill their hunger. You... you seem to want to understand mine."
Darius gave her a small smile. "Understanding is the only way forward. I will not use you as a weapon. I will not demand you become something you are not. But I will ask you to walk with me. To find something that might finally satisfy you."
Solis studied him for a long time. The sorrow in her eyes remained, but something else had joined it. Curiosity. Interest. A spark of something almost like hope.
"You are the first person in centuries who has not run from my emptiness," she said softly. "The first who did not try to fill it with his own desires."
They spoke for hours. About the emptiness. About meaning. About what it meant to exist when nothing ever felt enough. Darius answered her questions honestly. Solis probed deeper with elegant, razor-sharp wit. Their conversation became a careful dance of intellect and vulnerability.
Outside the room, Veth paced. "This is taking too long. I do not like it."
Mara remained still. "He is reaching her. In a way no one else ever has."
When Darius finally stood to leave, Solis rose with him.
As he reached for the door, a sudden, crushing wave of hunger hit him. Not ordinary hunger. Something deeper. Lethal. His knees buckled. He collapsed against the doorframe, gasping.
Everything inside him screamed with absence. The world felt hollow. Meaningless. The two powers he already carried surged wildly, trying to fight the new emptiness flooding through him.
Solis stood behind him, voice barely a whisper.
“Oh.”
Very quietly.
“You can feel me.”
Darius gripped the doorframe, breathing hard. The hunger gnawed at something deeper than his body. It reached into his soul and found it wanting.