Chapter 5: The Hollow Crown vol 2

Three days since Aldric had left him trembling on his bed, and Lucan was still waiting for the other boot to drop.

He walked back from the infirmary with his shoulders hunched against the evening chill, his satchel heavy with lecture notes that felt like stones against his hip. The Academy corridors stretched before him, torchlight casting flickering shadows across the ancient stone. Three days of waiting. Three days of watching corners. Three days of expecting the knife.

His boots scraped against the floor—too loud, he realized, too careless. He'd spent the afternoon in Etiquette and Statecraft, learning which fork to use when dining with a Duke of the Third Rank versus a Duke of the Second. As if that mattered. As if any of it mattered when Aldric's words still echoed in his skull: "Empty as a cold forge. Hollow as a beggar's cup."

Lucyfa had kicked him out of the infirmary with her usual wooden-spoon diplomacy. "Healer's orders, Prince. Visiting hours are over, and that girl needs rest, not your mooning face." But not before Hallah had threatened to climb out of bed and punch him herself if he didn't leave so she could bathe.

"I can't get washed with you sitting there like a stone gargoyle," she'd growled, her voice smoke and gravel. "Go to class. Learn something. Bring me notes so I don't fall behind while I'm stuck in this bed."

She was healing. The bruises had faded to sickly yellow. She could leave in a few days. But she was still hollow, still recovering from that twenty-percent burn, and the thought of her alone in that infirmary while Aldric's shadows moved through the Academy made his stomach twist.

He reached the Crown Spire. Climbed the stairs. His key scraped in the lock.

He pushed the door open.

And froze.

The room was wrong.

Darkness pooled in the corner—denser, blacker, somehow present in a way that defied the weak evening light filtering through the window. It didn't move. It didn't breathe. But it watched.

Lucan felt the hand before it touched him. Felt the air shift, the pressure of intent, fingers reaching for his mouth with a rag soaked in something chemical and sweet. His heart hammered against his ribs. Three days of waiting, and here it was.

He moved.

Ducked. Twisted. His exhausted body remembered Hallah's drills—feel the pattern, read the space, move before they strike—even as his mind screamed. The hand closed on empty air. He stumbled backward, hit the doorframe, tried to shout.

A voice came from the darkness. Not from the corner, but from everywhere — whispered, barely audible, the words sliding through the air like smoke through teeth, sweet with rot:

"This one... the Prince wants... alive."

Lucan's back hit the wall. "Who wants me alive?"

The shadow shifted, coalescing into something almost human. Tall, wrapped in void-black cloth that drank the starlight. Eyes gleamed above the weave—wet stones reflecting nothing.

"Shouldn't worry... about who..." it whispered. "Worry... about what comes... next."

Instinct took over. No thought. No planning. Just desperation and the memory of power.

Lucan reached for his reserve.

Found it scraped thin—thirty-five percent, the grey vision already creeping at the edges, the metallic taste of blood blooming at the back of his throat. The headache that had plagued him since yesterday flared, bright and sharp behind his eyes. He was depleted. Dangerously so. But he pulled anyway.

Spoke the words. Lingua Arcanum, the tongue of scales and smoke:

"Lux Draconis. Invoco. Surge."

The dragon came.

It erupted from him in a burst of shadow and starlight, smaller than before, weakened by his depleted state, but still terrible—scales like obsidian, eyes like burning coals, wings that scraped the ceiling and sent plaster dust raining down like snow. The wyrm lunged, jaws wide, lightning crackling between its teeth as it struck at the nearest shadow.

The bolt passed through the assassin like smoke through fog. Dissipated into the wall with a smell of ozone and charred stone.

The shadow man laughed. High. Manic. The sound echoing from everywhere and nowhere at once.

"We have wards against lightning, boy!" The voice shifted, suddenly clear, suddenly close. "We are aware of your magics! Your Lingua Arcanum tricks cannot touch us!"

Lucan didn't smirk. Didn't have the energy. But something cold settled in his chest—Hallah's voice in his head, drilling him on adaptation, on improvisation. Use what they expect against them.

"Are you," he rasped, his throat dry, his voice barely audible over the crackle of dying lightning, "aware of this?"

He spoke the words. Not lightning. Not binding. Fire. Transmutation. Lingua Arcanum, the tongue of ancient wyrms and burning skies:

"Draconis Ignis. Transmutare. Fortis!"

The words felt like swallowing coals. Like his tongue was turning to ash in his mouth. The dragon screamed as the spell took hold—scales igniting from within, obsidian becoming ruby, smoke becoming pure, incandescent flame. The creature transformed, becoming a creature of living fire, burning wings and teeth like heated iron.

Lucan felt his reserve plummet — twenty percent, fifteen, ten, the numbers falling away beneath him.

The hollow emptiness scraped against his organs. Metallic taste thick in his mouth. Violent shaking in his hands that made his vision blur. His heart stuttered, missed a beat, and for a moment he thought it would stop entirely.

He was dangerously low. Skating the edge of collapse. Metabolic crash whispering in his veins.

But he held the magic tight. Forced the transformation through sheer, desperate will.

The shadow man had no time to scream.

The dragon—creature of pure flame, burning wings, incandescent teeth—struck. The assassin caught fire while still cloaked in darkness, the blackness burning away like paper to reveal flesh beneath, then char, then ash. The screams came high and terrible, filling the room with the stench of burning hair and cooking meat.

Lucan wanted to retch. His stomach heaved. Vision swimming at the edges—grey creeping in, heart palpitations, the warning signs of metabolic crash. His body was starting to feed on itself to maintain the magic, biological draw beginning, the cold sweat of metabolic failure beading on his forehead.

He clamped down. Fought it.

There was one more.

He could feel the second presence trying to slip away along the wall, sliding toward the door, toward escape. A whisper of fabric against stone. The creak of a floorboard.

He wouldn't allow it.

"Draconis. Ignis. Persequere," he commanded, each word costing him, burning the last dregs of his reserve.

The blazing dragon turned. Fire trailed from its wings like banners. It struck—jaws snapping shut around the fleeing shadow, and for a moment the black cloak held, resisting, some magic woven into the fabric, some ward against flame.

But fire devours all.

The cloak burned away. Revealed what lay beneath.

A frail old man, thin and pale, eyes wide with surprise rather than fear. He didn't scream. Simply stood there as the flames engulfed him, silent, accepting, until the heat took his breath and his flesh turned to gray ash that drifted down like snow.

The dragon dissipated.

The fire consumed the last of Lucan's reserve—dropping him into the single digits, then the hollow emptiness where biological draw began. His heart stuttered. Fluttered. His vision tunneled to a pinprick, the grey overwhelming, nausea hitting him like a hammer.

He was alone in the smoking room with two piles of ash and the certainty that he had just killed two men.

A bad feeling crawled up his spine. Cold. Urgent.

Not guilt—later for that.

Fear.

If they'd come for him, if Aldric had sent them, then who else had the Crown Prince targeted?

Hallah.

Lucan stumbled toward the door. His legs were water. His vision narrowed, tunneled, darkness creeping in from the edges. He grabbed the doorframe, hauled himself upright, and ran.

---

The bathwater had gone cold, raising gooseflesh along her arms, the stone leeching warmth from her spine.

Hallah scrubbed the last of the dried blood from her hair, watching it spiral down the drain in pink ribbons. Three days of lying in that damn bed, three days of Lucan's worried hovering and Lucyfa's sharp tongue, and finally—finally—the nurse had left her alone long enough to wash herself properly.

She felt ready. The bruises had faded to sickly yellow, the ribs only twinged when she breathed too deep, and her reserve had climbed back to forty percent. Not enough for combat, maybe, but enough to walk without swaying. Enough to feel like herself again.

Not until your reserves crest fifty, Lucyfa had said, wagging that wooden spoon like a scepter. Until then, you're still my patient, and you'll do as you're told.

Hallah snorted, sinking deeper into the wooden washbasin. Since when had she ever done as she was told?

She was reaching for the towel when she felt it—a shift in the air, a pressure against her temples like a storm front rolling in. Then the sound: a soft thud from the outer room, followed by the whisper of steel leaving leather.

Her hand froze.

Not alone anymore.

She moved silently, years of living rough in Anchorage teaching her how to be quiet when quiet meant survival. She rose from the water, droplets cascading off her skin, and grabbed the medical gown draped over the chair. It was thin—gods, it was thin, barely more than a sheet of cotton that clung to her damp skin and hid absolutely nothing. But it was better than naked, and she had no time for modesty now.

The door to the bathing room stood ajar. Through the gap, she saw them: three men in black robes, faces hidden, blades gleaming. And behind them, a fourth figure in plate armor, heavy and silent, blocking the exit.

On the floor near the door, Lucyfa lay in a spreading pool of blood. Her chest rose, fell, rose again—slower each time, the rhythm of someone drowning in their own lungs.

Hallah didn't think. She reached for her reserve and pulled, speaking the words of the Blessing in a whisper:

"Lux Sanatio. Manus Divina. Vitae restituere."

Lay on Hands.

Golden light burst from her palms, lancing across the room to envelop the nurse. Lucyfa's body arched, a gasp tearing from her throat as the healing magic knitted torn flesh and staunched internal bleeding. Twenty percent of Hallah's reserve vanished in an instant, leaving her hollow, trembling, down to twenty percent and falling.

Too much. Too fast. But she's alive.

The armored figure turned. The three robed men shifted, spreading out in a fan, trapping her between the washbasin and the wall. Hallah had no armor. No Gold Rush. No holy symbol but the orichalcum gorget that felt like a collar around her throat.

She grabbed the only weapons within reach: a bar of harsh lye soap and a woolen sock from the pile of clean laundry.

Her biker past served her well. She slipped the soap into the sock, gripping the open end, and began to swing it in a tight circle—building momentum, letting the weight distribute. An improvised flail. Better than nothing. Better than prayers.

"Well," she said, her voice smoke and gravel, "come on then."

The first robed man lunged, knife leading. Hallah sidestepped, pivoted on her heel, and slammed the soap-filled sock into his temple with a crack that echoed off the stone walls. He staggered, knife clattering to the floor, but the second man was already moving, flanking her from the left, and the third from the right.

Surrounded. Outnumbered. Out of options.

She could feel her heart hammering against her ribs, the hollowness in her chest where her reserve should be—empty as a cold forge, just like Aldric said.

The armored figure raised a hand, and the air went cold. Not winter-cold, but grave-cold, the chill of the void that waited for sinners.

Hallah did the only thing she could. She reached deep—deeper than training, deeper than sanity—and touched the power that had marked her since the arena.

"Syltherion, sancteimpermand judex aeternel! Crimereveal videvoir, fateweave pende, sinpeccata pense! Luxmière verité, pondus justicéger, tela temporis—révélé!"

Weaver's Judgment.

Time stopped.

Not literally—the robed assassin still charged toward her, blade raised to gut her like a fish—but Hallah could see him now, really see him, as the scales of judgment materialized behind him in golden light. For each sin he had committed, the scales tipped. For each life he had taken, years etched themselves across his face.

She saw it all in a heartbeat:

His first kill—a boy from his village, eight years old, who had teased him about his crooked teeth. He'd held the child's head under the river until the struggling stopped. He'd been twelve.

The beggar on the streets of Valeris, throat slit for a copper coin.

The merchant who'd haggled too hard, poisoned wine, a slow death over three days.

A hundred murders. A thousand petty cruelties. The weight of them crushed the scale, crushed him, and Hallah watched as he aged decades in seconds—skin withering, hair whitening, eyes going milky with cataracts as the weight of his own evil consumed him from within.

He collapsed mid-stride, a desiccated husk, his soul weighed and found so heavy it had dragged him straight to the threshold of death.

But the cost—

Hallah felt ice flood her veins. Her nose erupted, hot blood spilling down her lips, her chin, splattering the white medical gown crimson. Her heart fluttered, missed a beat, fluttered again, a bird trapped in a cage of breaking ribs. Her vision tunneled, grey creeping in from the edges, and she felt herself falling, falling, the stone floor rushing up to meet her.

So this is where I die, she thought, distantly. In a bathtub, wearing a sheet, bleeding from my nose like a stuck pig.

Through the narrowing dark, she heard it—faint, desperate, tearing:

"HALLAH! HALLAH, HOLD ON! I'M COMING!"

Lucan.

She tried to answer, but her mouth wouldn't work. Her body wouldn't obey. The last thing she saw before the black took her was the armored figure stepping over the withered corpse of his companion, raising a blade that gleamed with poison and starlight, and the distant, pounding sound of boots on stone.

Then everything faded to black.

---

Lucan ran.

Down the hall, past the staring portraits of his ancestors—kings and queens who had never looked so judgmental, so disappointed. His boots slipped on the stone. He caught himself on a tapestry, nearly tore it from the wall. The corridor blurred, torchlight smearing into orange streaks.

He passed a guard. The man shouted something—Prince? Your Highness?—but Lucan didn't stop. Couldn't stop. His heart hammered against his ribs, each beat a reminder of how little he had left, how empty he was, how desperately he needed to reach her.

The Academy stairs. Three flights. Five. He lost count, bouncing off walls, leaving smears of soot and sweat. His lungs burned. His vision greyed. The infirmary. He had to reach the infirmary.

He burst through the doors. Wood splintered against stone. His legs gave out. He caught himself on a chair, sent it skidding across the floor.

"HALLAH!"

The word tore from his throat, ragged, desperate.

Silence answered.

Then—a sound. Wet. Choking. The drip of something thick.

Lucan forced his head up.

The infirmary was chaos. White curtains slashed, fluttering like ghosts. Lucyfa's desk overturned, papers scattered like fallen leaves. And in the center, by the bathing room door—

Hallah.

She was on her knees. The medical gown—thin, sodden, clinging to her frame—was splattered crimson. Blood poured from her nose, down her chin, pooling on the stone floor beneath her. Her hands trembled, fingers twitching, trying and failing to find purchase on the wet floor.

The withered corpse of the assassin lay nearby, shrunken and grey. And standing over her was a figure in plate armor. Heavy. Silent. Raising a blade that gleamed with poison and starlight.

"HALLAH!" Lucan screamed again, pushing off the chair, stumbling forward.

The armored figure turned. The helmet was etched with the broken crown sigil of Aldric's personal guard. For a moment, Lucan saw his brother's face in the reflection of that polished steel—saw the smile, the emptiness, the hunger.

Then the figure moved. Not toward Hallah. Toward the window. Toward escape.

"Stop—" Lucan reached for magic that wasn't there. Reserves scraped empty. His vision greyed, knees buckling.

He fell.

Crawled.

"Hallah... hold on..."

She didn't answer. Her eyes were open, fixed on something beyond him, beyond the room. Her chest rose, fell, rose again—slower each time. The rhythm of someone drowning in their own lungs.

Lucan reached her. His hands found her shoulders—warm, too warm, fever-hot from the spell-cost. He hauled her up, pulled her against his chest, felt her blood soak into his shirt.

"You're okay," he lied, the words ragged, broken. "You're okay. I'm here."

Her eyes focused for a moment. Found his. Her mouth moved, trying to form words, but only blood came.

"Don't talk," he whispered. "Don't talk. Just breathe. Just—"

Her head lolled back. Her eyes rolled up.

"HALLAH!"

He shook her. Gently at first, then harder. "No. No, no, no. Stay with me. Stay—"

Footsteps. Running. Shouting.

Guards. Finally.

Lucan held her tighter, pressed his forehead against hers, felt the sticky warmth of her blood mixing with his sweat. "You don't get to die," he whispered, the words fierce, desperate, a prayer and a command. "You don't get to die in a bathtub. Not after everything. Not after—"

Her chest stopped rising.

"Hallah?"

Silence.

"Hallah, please—"

A gasp. Sudden, violent. Her body arched, a spasm running through her, and then she was breathing again—ragged, wet, but breathing.

Lucan laughed. It sounded slightly hysterical.

Through the narrowing dark, through the grey that threatened to take them both, he held her. And whispered, over and over, the words of a promise he intended to keep:

"I'm here. I'm here. I'm not leaving."