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Chapter Seventy-Eight: The Truth About the Hollow

Author: Orion Vale
last update publish date: 2026-09-11 17:49:10

The darkness just waited. That was new. Last time, it came for us. Now, something had changed, and I could feel it in my bones.

"You wish to understand," the Hollow said, the words settling into all three of us at once, layered and strange, neither hostile nor especially gentle, simply present. "I confess, I did not expect that request either. Fear, I have grown accustomed to. Ambition, considerably more so. Understanding is a rarer visitor."

"We can't choose anything honestly," I said, "withou
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  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Twelve: Everything I Still Had

    I didn't cry. I wish I had. It would have been easier. Instead, I stood in Sterling's war room, my sister staring at me with that polite, distant look she used to give strangers at court. And inside me, everything just went silent. Sharp. Like the world was holding its breath."Bianca," I said. "Look at my face.""I am," she said, gently. "I'm sorry. I'm usually good with faces.""You are. You're the best I've ever seen." My voice didn't shake. I don't know how. "Remember when we were nine? You cut my hair while I slept because you wanted us to match. Mother screamed for an hour. You told her I begged you to do it."Bianca's brow furrowed. Not recognition. Something worse. Like she was reaching for a memory and finding nothing there."That's a strange thing to say to a stranger," she said, but her fingers pressed to her temple, like she was trying to force the memory out."Ivy." Rhys had moved beside me. "Stop. If you push, you may only make it worse.""Or maybe better." I turned to C

  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Eleven: The Silence Afterward

    Three days after the Hollow vanished, the kingdom started losing pieces of itself.No one noticed at first. That was the worst part. A baker in the capital stared at her own street and couldn't remember its name, even though she'd walked it every day for thirty years. Two of Rhys's warriors argued over a drill they both knew by heart, but neither could say who taught it to them. In Sterling, a little girl asked for her father. Her mother opened her mouth to answer, then froze, lost, and the question slipped away like it had never been asked.I only understood because of the mark burning on my skin.It woke me before dawn on the fourth day. Not warm this time, cold. A thin, silver line of ice across my palm. And with it, a gut-deep certainty: something had been holding a door shut, a door I never even knew was there. Not the passage. Something deeper. Something the Hollow had guarded so quietly, we didn't even feel its absence until now."Say the names," I told Rhys, sitting up in the

  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Ten: What Remained

    The crack didn't collapse. It simply stopped.No violet light. No explosion. Nothing like the scorched circle that once swallowed Kaelan and Serrin. The ancient wall just went dark and silent. The seam closed itself, gentle and final. That gentleness felt worse than any blast. Like something huge had just let go, careful not to break anything, but gone all the same.I stood at the ward line, my hand flat against stone. Cold. For the first time since we fixed it, the stone was just stone. I felt nothing. No warmth. No patient attention. No heavy, grieving presence deciding if we were worth it. Just emptiness."Ivy." Rhys's hand was on my shoulder. I didn't remember him moving. "Ivy, look at me.""It's gone," I said. My voice didn't sound like mine. "It chose us, and it's just gone."Nobody spoke. The crowd behind us was silent. The kind of silence that means everyone knows something huge just happened. Something you can't fix or talk over. Something you don't dare interrupt.Corvin mov

  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Nine: Moonrise

    By midafternoon, everyone in Sterling knew. The kind of news that was too big to shout, so it just crept through the pack, quiet and heavy. As the sun started to sink behind the trees, half the pack was already there, standing just back from the ward line. Warriors, healers, and people with no gifts or bloodlines people who had no reason to be here except that, after everything this year, they’d decided what happened at this boundary belonged to all of us.Bianca showed up from the capital with Yselle at her side, both of them windburned and barely making it in time. Emberly came too. She looked pale, but she was steady, shaking her head at anyone who tried to tell her to stay back and rest."She has a right to be here," Aster said, in the last moments before she let go of her granddaughter's voice entirely, exhausted past the point of holding the shape any longer. "Whatever is decided tonight, it will shape what she carries for the rest of her life. I will not have her learn of it se

  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Eight: The Hour Before

    I didn't get to prepare. Not the way I wanted. No time for Corvin to chase down one last translation, or for Serrin to warn me about everything that could go wrong. No time for Rhys to say the things I could see burning in his eyes. If he said them now, it would only make this harder for both of us.All that was left was the ward line, the crack, and that strange, heavy light you get an hour before everything changes for good."I'm going with you," Rhys said. It wasn't a question, and I didn't try to make it one."I know," I said."I'm going with you," Kaelan said from my other side. I didn't have to look to know what passed between them. It wasn't rivalry anymore. Not even the truce they'd built. Just two men who'd spent a year learning that neither of them would let me walk into this alone. Both of them close enough to catch me if I fell."The bond," Corvin said quietly. "If you're both going Ivy, I don't know what stepping this close to the boundary alongside both forms of connecti

  • MARKED BY FATE: THE ALPHA PRINCE'S REGRET   Chapter One Hundred and Seven: What I Wouldn't Ask

    Silence crashed down on us. The question hung there, heavy and sharp, daring me to answer. It wanted the truth, not permission. That realization hit harder than anything the Hollow had said so far. It wanted an answer. Just an answer."No," I said.Something rippled through the crack. Surprise. It hadn’t expected me to answer so fast. I could feel it, sharp and real."I won't ask you to disappear for us," I said again, my voice stronger this time. "I don't care what the six decide. I don't care what it costs me. I'm not going to be the one who trades your existence for my own safety and pretends that's a win. I spent this whole year learning what that really means. I'm not about to forget it just because things got hard.""Ivy." Corvin's voice was careful behind me. "If the Hollow doesn't intervene""Then we find another way," I said, staring straight at the Hollow. I needed it to hear me, no filters, no softening. "I mean it. I already refused a ritual that tried to erase my will, in

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