The Hollow Queen

The cold from the stone floor seeped through my thin slippers, but it was the heat behind my ribs that made me tremble. Lord Kaelen’s body lay slumped against the tapestries, his eyes wide and colorless, stripped of the sapphire light that had defined his lineage for three centuries. I didn’t just feel the stolen power; I tasted it—a sharp, metallic chime on the back of my tongue that hummed in rhythm with my own slowing pulse.

"Elara, look at your hands."

Prince Soren’s voice was a jagged blade in the silence of the solar. I didn't want to look. I wanted to keep the warmth of Kaelen’s winter-magic coiled in my belly, a shield against the suffocating emptiness that had been growing since I drained the stable boy three days ago. But my fingers were already moving, dancing of their own accord.

Faint, crystalline frost sparked under my fingernails. My skin wasn’t pale anymore; it was translucent, the veins beneath the surface glowing with a sickly, borrowed indigo.

"He was trying to kill you," I whispered, though the lie felt like ash. Kaelen had been reaching for a glass of wine, not a weapon. 

"He was breathing, and then he was a husk," Soren said. He took a step toward me, his boots crunching on the glass I’d shattered when the first surge hit. He didn't look horrified. He looked hungry. "The transition is accelerating. You aren't just taking their magic anymore, Elara. You’re taking the blueprints of who they are."

"I'm still me." I backed away, my heel dragging through the heavy velvet of the rugs. 

"Are you?" Soren tilted his head. "Earlier this morning, you couldn't stand the smell of cedar. Kaelen burned it in his hearth every day for forty years. Now, you’re leaning toward the embers like a cat. Tell me, do you remember your mother’s face, or do you remember the way Kaelen’s mother used to braid his hair in the summer of the Great Thaw?"

I searched for my mother. I reached for the memory of her hands, rough from the herb gardens, smelling of rosemary and damp earth. Instead, a memory of a silk-draped bedchamber flooded my mind—gold lace, the scent of expensive sandalwood, and a woman with silver hair singing a song in a language I shouldn't know. 

I choked on a sob that felt like someone else’s grief. "Get out."

"You need me to stabilize the flow," Soren insisted, reaching for my arm. "If you don't vent the excess, the frost will seal your heart before sundown. You’re a vessel with a hairline fracture, Elara. Let me help you distribute the weight."

I lashed out. I didn't mean to use Kaelen’s gift, but the winter-magic surged like a cornered animal. A wave of absolute zero whipped through the room. The wine in the decanter exploded as it froze instantly; the tapestries blackened with rime. Soren flew backward, his shoulders hitting the oak door with a dull thud. 

He slid to the floor, gasping, white vapor curling from his lips. A patch of frost bloomed across his chest, turning his royal doublet brittle. 

"Stop," he wheezed, his teeth chattering. "You’re... losing... the limit."

I stared at my palms. The indigo glow was fading, replaced by a dull, leaden grey. The Hollow was screaming again. It didn't want Kaelen’s ice anymore. It had tasted it, processed it, and now it was discarded waste. The hunger was back, sharper than before, gnawing at the space where my soul used to live.

I walked toward Soren. I didn't feel the cold of the room anymore. I felt the radiant, golden heat of his own bloodline magic—the Sun-King’s fire. It called to the emptiness inside me like a siren. 

"I can't stop it," I said, my voice sounding hollow, layered with the echoes of a dozen people I’d emptied. 

Soren looked up, and for the first time, I saw the terror he’d been masking with ambition. He tried to summon a flame to ward me off, but his hands only sparked feebly. I was already dampening his field. I was the vacuum. I was the end of the line.

I knelt over him, my shadows stretching long and distorted across the frozen floor. I reached out, my fingers hovering just above his throat. The heat from his skin was the most beautiful thing I had ever felt.

"Elara, please," he choked out. "The crown... we were going to rule together. You need a King."

I tilted my head, mimicking the way he’d looked at me moments ago. A strange, cold realization settled in my mind—a thought that didn't belong to the girl from the herb gardens. 

"Queens don't need kings," I said, the words vibrating with a power that wasn't stolen, but forged in the vacuum of what I’d become. "They need fuel."

I pressed my hands to his neck. The gold light flooded the room, blinding and fierce, and as Soren’s scream died into a rattling gasp, I felt the girl named Elara slip one more inch away into the dark.

The heavy thud of boots echoed in the hallway outside. The King’s Guard. They were late.

I stood up, the Sun-King’s fire roaring in my veins, melting the frost off the walls in a blinding burst of steam. I didn't look back at the two husks on the floor. I walked toward the door, my reflection in the shattered mirror showing a girl with eyes like dying stars.

I threw the doors open to a line of leveled pikes.

"The King is dead," I declared, and as I raised my hands, the air began to burn. "Long live the Queen."