Chapter Eleven – The Queen's Teeth
(Raven's POV)
The Hollow was gone.
But the silence it left behind was worse.
It wasn't peace. It was the kind of silence that comes after a scream—raw, echoing, waiting to be filled with something worse.
Darius leaned against the wall, clutching his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, dark and thick. "We need to move," he said, voice tight with pain. "They'll send more."
I nodded, but my body felt wrong. Too light. Too heavy. Too… sharp.
The mark on my chest still glowed, pulsing like a second heartbeat. My skin itched, burned, shimmered. I could feel something beneath it—something ancient and hungry.
Something with teeth.
We moved through the compound's lower levels, past shattered doors and scorched walls. The alarms had stopped, but the red emergency lights still pulsed, casting everything in a hellish glow.
Darius limped beside me, his breath ragged. "We're close. There's a tunnel—leads out through the old catacombs."
"Why do you even have catacombs?" I asked.
He gave a grim smile. "You think the Order buries its mistakes above ground?"
I didn't laugh.
Because I was one of those mistakes.
We reached a rusted gate, half-buried in rubble. Darius shoved it open with a grunt, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling into darkness.
I hesitated.
The air that rose from below was thick with rot and something worse—something sour and metallic. It smelled like old blood and broken promises.
"You sure about this?" I asked.
"No," he said. "But it's the only way."
We descended.
The catacombs were worse than I imagined.
Bones lined the walls—skulls stacked like bricks, femurs lashed together with wire. The floor was slick with moss and something darker. The air buzzed with whispers, too faint to understand but too loud to ignore.
Darius lit a torch. The flame flickered, casting long shadows that danced like ghosts.
"This place is wrong," I said.
"It's where they kept the first generation," he said. "The ones who didn't survive the binding."
I stopped walking. "You mean the other girls?"
He nodded. "They tried to make more like you. But none of them lived."
I swallowed hard. "And they buried them here?"
"No," he said. "They fed them to the Hollow."
A scream tore through the dark.
Not human.
Not animal.
Something in between.
We froze.
Another scream. Closer.
Then a voice, high and broken: "Help me…"
I turned. "Did you hear that?"
Darius grabbed my arm. "Don't listen. It's not real."
"But—"
"It's not real, Raven. It's them. The ones who didn't make it. The ones who still remember."
I shook him off. "I have to see."
"Raven—"
But I was already running.
The corridor narrowed, twisted, opened into a chamber lit by flickering blue fire.
And there they were.
Dozens of them.
Girls.
Or what was left of them.
Their bodies were twisted, broken, fused with shadow. Some had too many limbs. Some had none. Their eyes glowed faintly, their mouths sewn shut with silver thread. They crawled along the walls, the ceiling, their movements jerky and wrong.
One of them turned to me.
Her face was mine.
"Raven," she whispered, voice leaking through the stitches. "You left us."
I stumbled back. "No… I didn't know."
"You forgot," another hissed. "You let them take us."
"I didn't—"
"You were the first," a third said. "The strongest. The chosen."
They began to crawl toward me, their hands outstretched. "Take it back," they chanted. "Take it back. Take it back."
Darius burst into the chamber, sword drawn. "We have to go!"
"I can't leave them," I said.
"They're not alive."
"They remember."
"They're not you."
I turned to him, eyes burning. "They were."
The girls shrieked, their voices rising into a single, piercing wail. The walls cracked. The floor buckled. The blue fire flared.
And then they lunged.
Darius moved fast, slicing through the first wave. Shadow-blood sprayed, hissing as it hit the ground. I backed away, heart pounding, the mark on my chest searing.
One of the girls grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were bone and ash. "Take it back," she whispered.
I looked into her eyes.
And I remembered.
The lab. The chains. The screaming. The fire. The wolves.
I remembered the pain. The fear. The moment they carved the mark into my skin and told me I was theirs.
I remembered the others—girls younger than me, older than me, all of us screaming in the dark.
I remembered their names.
And I remembered what they took.
I screamed.
The mark on my chest exploded with light.
The chamber shook.
The girls froze.
I stepped forward, glowing like a star. "You want me to take it back?" I said. "Then give it to me."
They screamed again—but this time, it wasn't rage.
It was release.
Their bodies dissolved into ash, into light, into memory. The shadows peeled away. The blue fire dimmed.
And I stood alone.
Darius touched my shoulder. "You okay?"
"No," I said. "But I will be."
He nodded. "Come on. We're almost out."
We reached the final gate.
Beyond it, the forest waited—dark and wild and free.
But as we stepped into the clearing, the sky split open.
And the Elders descended.
Twelve of them. Cloaked in shadow. Surrounded by wolves with eyes like fire.
"You've gone too far," Lysara said. "You've broken the seal. Released the Hollow. Defiled the sanctum."
"She's not your prisoner anymore," Darius said, stepping in front of me.
"She's not a prisoner," Virek said. "She's a queen."
They all bowed.
To me.
I stared, stunned. "What is this?"
"You were never meant to be a weapon," Lysara said. "You were meant to rule."
Darius turned to me, eyes wide. "They're not here to kill you."
"No," I said slowly. "They're here to crown me."