THE SON-IN-LAW WHO WOULDN'T BURN

CHAPTER 3: THE PRICE OF WAKING

The light didn't feel like light. It felt like hot, melted glass had been poured into Cole's chest and was spreading through every part of his body.

His back lifted off the salt floor. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His lungs wouldn't work. His fingers curled so tightly that the ropes cut deeper into his wrists, but he barely felt them.

Above him, the guard on the rope was screaming.

Cole heard the man's boots kicking against the walls of the shaft. Then came the sound of him struggling to climb.

"Pull me up! Pull me up! The whole thing is falling apart!"

The rope pulled tight and shot upward. Dust fell from the roof. The small square of orange light disappeared as the guard was pulled out of sight. Then everything went still.

Cole lay on the ground, shaking in the white light. He began counting his heartbeats because he needed something to focus on.

Eleven. Twelve.

By fifteen, the burning had started to fade. By twenty, it had turned into a deep ache that seemed to reach his bones. It felt as if something was moving inside them.

He pulled in a deep breath. His ribs still hurt, but not nearly as much as before.

"There," the voice said.

It sounded different now. Closer, and a little tired.

"That's the worst part over. You can breathe now."

"I'm... breathing." Cole coughed. "Is this what breathing is supposed to feel like?"

"It will soon. There's more inside you now than there was a minute ago. Your body just doesn't know what to do with it yet."

Cole slowly pushed himself up on his elbows.

His ribs still hurt when he moved, but the sharp pain was gone. He moved his toes, then lifted his tied hands and looked at his wrists.

The skin was healing right before his eyes. The red marks left by the ropes had turned pink. Even those marks were slowly fading.

"Okay," he said, his voice rough. "That's creepy."

"It's a small thing. I'm only fixing the parts of you that would have killed you."

"Is that so?"

Cole lowered his hands. He tried to sound calm, but his heart was still beating hard.

"Who are you? Tell me properly this time. I want a name."

The voice went quiet for a moment.

Then it answered, almost shyly.

"The last place I lived was called the Hollow. The people who put me there stopped using my real name. After a few thousand years, I stopped missing it. Hollow will do."

"Hollow." Cole said the name again. "That's a terrible name."

"It's the truth."

"You said it would hurt. You didn't say it would feel like I swallowed a storm."

"I said a lot of things." The voice sounded dry again. "You agreed very quickly."

"I had a man climbing down a rope to kill me."

Cole rubbed his face. His palm felt wet. When he looked at it, he saw tears on his skin.

He hadn't even noticed himself crying. It wasn't from the pain. The tears had simply come.

"Where's Elise?" he asked. "You said you could hear her."

"I can hear through the stone, and the house above us is built on stone."

Hollow went quiet for a moment, as if listening.

"She's alive. She's still in the salt chamber. Her hand is broken. Two fingers, maybe three. Your uncle Garrick is shouting at her to stop looking into the hole."

Cole's jaw tightened.

"She's not going to stop."

"No. She isn't."

He let out a slow breath.

Cole had learned something during his three years in the Vance house. The quiet ones often lived longer because they knew when to speak and which questions to ask.

"Now tell me the catch."

"Yes. Now is the time."

Hollow no longer sounded warm or friendly. Its voice was calm and careful, like someone explaining something serious.

"I live inside you now. You'll hear me and feel me, but nobody else will be able to see me. In return, I'll give you power. Real power. The kind the Vances only pretend to have.

"But your body isn't ready to hold all that power at once. It has to be opened little by little. We call each stage a Gate."

"A Gate?"

"A door inside you that has been shut your whole life. Break one, and you grow stronger. Break another, and you grow even stronger. There are nine Gates in all."

"And the catch?"

"You must break a new Gate every thirty days. No more. No less."

Cole waited for him to say more, but the voice went quiet.

"And if I don't?"

"I take your soul."

The words hung between them.

Somewhere deeper in the cave, a crystal made a small cracking sound as it cooled.

"You take my soul?" Cole asked.

"I eat it. That's the only way I can stay alive if my host fails. I won't lie about that."

Cole stared at the black chain hanging from the roof.

"You could have told me that before I agreed."

"You would have agreed anyway."

"That's not the point."

His voice came out harder than he meant it to. The white light along the walls seemed to flicker.

Cole swallowed his anger. It felt like a stone stuck in his throat.

"How many days do I have?"

"Thirty. Starting tonight."

"What's Gate One?"

"I'll teach you when the time comes. You don't need to worry about it for the next few weeks. For now, you need to hide. Don't let anyone find out what you are."

Cole almost laughed.

"That I can do. Three years in that house taught me how to hide."

A small sting touched his left wrist.

He looked down.

The old servant brand was glowing. It was the rough scar left on his skin from the mark the Vance family had burned into him.

A thin white line began to form around it. Little grains of white appeared one after another, like salt forming from water. The line grew around his wrist until it joined itself and closed with a tiny click.

Two small marks appeared inside the white ring. They changed until they became numbers.

30

"What is that?"

Cole turned his wrist. The ring moved with his skin and felt warm against it.

"Take it off."

"I can't. It's there to help you keep track."

"Keep track of what?"

"How many nights you have left."

Hollow's voice softened a little.

"Every morning, the number will go down by one. When it reaches zero, either you've broken the Gate or you haven't."

Cole tried to slide a fingernail under the ring, but there was no space. Its surface was smooth as stone.

He pressed harder.

A line of heat shot up his arm, and he quickly pulled his hand away. Then he opened and closed his fingers.

"Anyone who sees this will know something is wrong with me."

"Yes. Keep your sleeves down."

"Great. I'm a servant. I wear short sleeves for a reason. They like to see the brand."

He pushed himself up. His legs shook beneath him, but they held his weight.

"Eleven minutes into this partnership, and I'm already hiding things from my own family."

"They're not your family."

"No," Cole said quietly. "They're really not."

Neither of them spoke for a while.

Cole sat in the white light with his hands resting in his lap. He thought about all the people who had stood on those salt steps that night and laughed at him. He thought about how many of them would go to bed with full stomachs.

Then he remembered the blood on Elise's hand. The same hand she had used to hold his wrist.

"You said you were the only one in this cave who could save me," he said at last. "Does anyone else know about you? Could someone come looking for you?"

"The elders above know this cave exists. They don't know what's inside it."

Hollow paused.

"Not all of them."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one I can give you for now."

Cole closed his mouth.

He had noticed how Hollow spoke. Its words were true, but it always seemed to leave something out.

He knew that trick. After three years with Garrick, he had learned how to spot a lie, even when the person telling it didn't say anything false.

"Tell me one more thing," he said. "How many people have you done this to?"

Hollow didn't answer right away.

When it finally spoke, its calm voice was gone. What remained sounded old. Very old.

"Eleven hosts before you. The last one lasted sixty-one days."

Cole's mouth went dry.

Above him, ropes began sliding down through the crack in the roof.

One scraped aga

inst the stone. Then another. Soon, there were three, then four.

Boots swung into the small square of orange light.

Garrick's voice soon followed, loud and cheerful again.

"Bring him up. Alive. We have a ritual to finish.”