Chapter 176: Hollow

I existed in a liminal space—somewhere between life and death, breath and suffocation, motion and paralysis. My body kept going through the motions: inhale, exhale, stand, sit. But living… living was something else entirely. I wasn’t doing that. Not really.

It felt as if the best parts of me—my heart, my certainty, my purpose—had been sealed away somewhere deep inside, locked behind the same unreachable veil where the twins now drifted.

I kept waiting for them to resurface so I could finally breathe again. Until then, I was only half there, waiting in purgatory.

“Luna.”

“Dominic. Daphne.” My voice came out thin, automatic, as if someone else were speaking through me. “Thank you for coming.”

Skye and Kairn had tried to reach them when I’d been taken, but they’d been away delivering Daphne’s pieces. By the time they returned to our region, the funerals were already over. All they could offer now were condolences—soft words that slid right off the numb shell I’d become without my mates.

“How are they?” Daphne asked gently, her hand warm on mine.

“There’s been little change,” I said, bluntly. I didn’t have the strength to soften anything. “The wounds are healing slowly, but they won’t wake. Damaris has no idea how to help them.”

“But they live,” Dominic added, trying to sound hopeful.

“If you can call it living,” I murmured. “Then yes. They live.”

In some ways, their state felt worse than death. Death was final. Clean. Absolute.

But this—this endless hovering on the precipice, this constant cycle of hope and dread and doubt—this was a new kind of torment. A hell without definition, without edges, without end. A living nightmare I couldn’t wake from.

“You should take a break,” Daphne suggested. I’d been sitting between the twins for two days straight, leaving only when my body forced me to—and even that was a struggle. Food tasted like ash. Water churned in my stomach. Sleep refused to touch me.

My gaze drifted away from Kairn and snapped to her, irritation flaring. How could she ask me to leave them? “People need to see you, Tyranni,” she continued softly, as if coaxing a frightened child. “They need to know they’re not leaderless.”

But they were. We were. Luna Vera was gone. And the twins… I didn’t know what the twins were anymore. Not alive, not dead, not reachable. And I was completely lost without them.

“I can’t…”

“You can,” she said, firmer this time. “Come on. I’ll help you shower, get you fed. Then we’ll go to the ceremonial hall. Together.”

Her hand closed around my arm—gentle, but unyielding—and I let her pull me away from the healing hall. My legs moved, but I wasn’t the one guiding them. I drifted beside her, barely aware of the people who stepped aside, bowing their heads as we passed.

Daphne spoke the whole way back to the house—not cheerful chatter, but soft, steady words meant to anchor me to something resembling normalcy.

“Would you like that?”

I blinked, realizing I’d missed whatever she’d said. She repeated it patiently. “I brought glazes for you. You can keep them for as long as you’d like. And I’ll fire your mug whenever you finish.”

The cup.

“Oh… yes. Yes, I’d like that,” I whispered, though the words felt distant, like they belonged to someone else.

We climbed the stairs together, her voice a quiet thread I clung to.

Until we reached the threshold of my room.

I stopped. Completely. My body locked up, breath caught in my throat. I couldn’t go in. Not there. Not into the space where I’d slept with them, laughed with them, lived with them, made love to them.

“Tyranni?”

I couldn’t answer. I just shook my head, frozen in place.

“That’s alright, Luna,” Juniper said, appearing as if summoned by my unraveling. She always seemed to know when I was about to break—when she was needed most. “You can come downstairs and use our room.”

Our room. Hers and Novic’s.

“I’ve never seen your room before,” I said suddenly, the thought startling me with its strangeness. I’d never even considered stepping into their space before.

“I know,” she replied, a small, understanding smile forming on her lips.

The pair worked in tandem, helping me downstairs, stripping me, and leading me to the shower. Some small part of me registered that I was disgusting; that I’d been wearing the same black dress for three days straight. But even that realization felt distant, like it belonged to someone else observing my life rather than navigating it.

I let them guide me because I didn’t have the strength to resist or comply—my body simply followed where it was placed. My limbs felt heavy, foreign, as if they belonged to a version of me I no longer inhabited.

Grief had hollowed me out so thoroughly that even shame couldn’t find a foothold.

The water came on in a muted rush, steam curling around my face. I stepped under it without thinking. Warmth hit my skin, but I barely felt it. It slid down my arms, my back, my legs, carrying days of sweat and dust with it, yet none of it reached the cold place deep inside me.

I stood there, unmoving, while Daphne and Juniper worked with quiet efficiency—adjusting the temperature, placing soap in my hand, reminding me gently to wash.

Their voices were patient, sympathetic. I obeyed each instruction a beat too late, my mind lagging behind my body. Take this—wash that—rinse here.

Sorrow had become a fog, thick and disorienting. Every thought drifted in slow motion. Every breath felt like a negotiation.

I kept waiting for something—anything—to break through the numbness, but nothing did. Not the water. Not the touch of their hands. Not the knowledge that the twins were still lying motionless in the healing hall, where I could do nothing but wait for them.

I scrubbed at my skin mechanically, watching suds swirl down the drain. It felt symbolic, though I couldn’t articulate why. Maybe because I wished I could wash away the dread clinging to me. Maybe because I wished I could rinse out the ache lodged in my chest. Maybe because I wished I could step out of the shower as someone who wasn’t drowning in uncertainty.

But when the water finally shut off, I was still me. Still hollow. Still suspended in that unbearable in‑between.

Juniper wrapped a towel around my shoulders with a tenderness that almost undid me. Daphne brushed damp strands of hair from my face, her expression soft with worry.

I didn’t have the energy to reassure them. I didn’t have the energy for anything at all.

I just stood there, dripping and silent, waiting for someone to tell me what to do next—because the only things I wanted, the only things that mattered, were still lying unconscious in that room I’d been forced to leave behind.