When Calista woke up she immediately knew something was wrong. It should have been a blissful awakening with her body still sore from their coupling and her skin covered in marks.

  He told her he loved her.

  She had been too exhausted to say it back, and she wanted those to be the first words out of her mouth. But when she sat up she could see through the soft moonlight filtering through gaps in the ancient curtains that the bed was empty.

  She sat a moment in confusion, her hand brushing through to smooth her long hair. It would get tangled if she didn’t take care of it soon, she thought. Calista wanted to focus on anything other than the growing dread in the pit of her stomach. Sorin wouldn’t have just left her.

  The walls in the room shook suddenly and she let out a surprised gasp. In the distance she could hear the sounds of parts of the castle crumbling. She fixed her robe and slipped out of the bed, her bare feet cold against the marble of the floor.

  “Sorin!” She called, “Sorin, where are you?” Tentatively, she pushed the door open and looked into the uncertain gloom of the halls.

  “He’s where he’s supposed to be.”

  She stared in shock at the stranger walking towards her, his figure gradually getting more visible, the closer he came.

  The castle played tricks. The castle conjured images and figures. It replayed parts of Sorin’s memory and she had witnessed it at times. But never as clear as this, and never communicating with her.

  The man had long red hair, the color of blood. His eyes gleamed orange in the dark hallway.

  Calista stepped backwards. He had horns. Long spiraling black horns. He was naked apart from body paint and jewelery. He wore gold on his wrists, ankles, even on his waist.

  And, she noted, he had a tail. One which was flickering back and forth as he waited for her to acknowledge him.

  “Maelzar,” she said finally. The sigil painted on his chest was an ancient one, but she knew it well from her research. “Or his emissary. Are you..corporeal?”

  “Oh very good, it isn’t completely stupid,” he sneered at her. “No moon witch, I am not corporeal, or not yet anyway. You’ll need to ask your paramour to release me.”

  She stared at him for a moment, her mind working as quickly as it could. “You said Sorin is where he’s supposed to…”

  The information fell into place and she took off running before even finishing her sentence, her bare feet padding down the long halls as she raced to the throne room where she had first met Sorin. No, when she had first met the Hollow Knight. Cold, emotionless, empty.

  Her heart pounded as she pushed the giant doors. They were heavier than she remembered. But then it had always been Sorin who opened them for her.

  “I’m sure you already know…” Maelzar’s voice came from behind her.

  “These doors are meant to be opened by two knights. Yes! I know!” She turned around and glared at him, and he showed her a mouth full of sharp teeth. She simply scowled instead of giving him the reaction he wanted.

  “Mortal, you could at least play along,” he sighed and clicked his claws against each other as if this was all very tiresome to him. Even though he claimed to have no physical form, she gave him a very wide berth as she moved to take the servants' passage.

  She hesitated. It was pitch black in the passage, and that’s when the castle was most likely to conjure up an image, a memory, or even change its routes entirely, which would leave her wandering around trapped in its bowels.

  “Scared of the dark? Sounds like you could use a dragon.” He walked through her.

  Calista shuddered as Maelzar’s presence passed through her, leaving a chill in its wake. She clenched her fists, forcing her feet forward into the darkness. The dragon's form in front of her served as a lantern, and at least he gave her enough light to see by.

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  The narrow servant’s passage smelled of dust and old stone, the walls closing in around her as she ran. The only sound was her own breath, sharp and quick, echoing back at her in strange whispers.

  The castle wanted her to be afraid. It wanted to keep her away.

  But she had spent too much time within these walls not to recognize its tricks. She could feel the way the corridors tried to shift beneath her feet, the way doors she had once passed through easily now stood sealed or led into unfamiliar chambers. The castle was trying to make her doubt, to trap her in its depths while Sorin—no, while the Hollow Knight—was lost to her again.

  She wouldn’t allow it. Maelzar paused as the path forked. “Where to?”

  Her fingers brushed against the cold stone, tracing a path she had memorized long ago. Three steps forward, a turn, five more before another passage opened to her right. She moved with certainty, even when the darkness pulsed like a living thing around her. All of her little maps, her notes, they hadn’t been for nothing.

  “Determined little moonling,” Maelzar mused from just behind her, his dim glow a surprisingly comforting presence at her back. “I can see why he likes you.”

  Calista ignored him, pressing on. The air grew heavier, thick with the scent of old blood and something deeper, something ancient. Then, a flicker of light ahead. Not the pale glow of the moon or the warm golden flicker of candlelight, but something unnatural. Red, searing, shifting.

  The throne room.

  She burst through the archway into the vast chamber, her breath catching in her throat.

  Sorin was seated on his throne, dressed in his gleaming black armor once more. His head was bowed, black hair falling over his face like a shroud. But she knew the moment she saw him—this wasn’t the man she had spent the night with. The air around him was wrong, his presence hollow in a way that sent ice through her veins.

  The sigils carved into the throne pulsed with molten light, tendrils of energy snaking around his wrists, his throat. Holding him. Binding him.

  “Sorin!”

  He did not move.

  Maelzar’s voice curled around her like smoke. “Only the form remains. His soul has been liberated. A part of him will remain with you. It won’t be much consolation, however.”

  “No,” she whispered, taking a step forward.

  I’m sorry, he had told her at the end of their lovemaking. Calista took a few more determined steps before she stood in front of her lover. She placed her hands on the cold steel plate of his shoulders and shook him. His hair moved back slightly showing that his eyes were closed. He looked to be peacefully sleeping. Not knowing what else to do she climbed into his lap, a place which had felt so safe to her.

  But his arms did not move to wrap around her, and his armor felt cold against her cheek. He did not call her little moon or weave his fingers through her silver hair that he loved so much. She covered her mouth and let her tears fall silently, not wanting the dragon to witness her private moment of grief.

  Maelzar prowled around the sigils scorched into the stone, his tail flicking like an agitated serpent. “Moon witch, stop your crying and get over here. These bindings are your people’s work. He’s beyond saving, but I still have a chance.”

  Calista’s breath hitched, but she forced herself to wipe her face with the back of her hand. “Calista,” she corrected, her voice steadier than she felt. “My name is Calista.”

  Maelzar let out a sharp breath, eyes rolling. “Well, Calista, perhaps you’d like to remember that I am a victim here too. I may have been a lazy guardian dragon, but I never did a damned thing to deserve being locked away for a thousand years.” His claws scraped against the stone, frustration radiating from him.

  The hall groaned around them, a deep, splintering sound. The walls cracked, dust and debris cascading from the ceiling.

  Maelzar snapped his fingers in her face. “Get it together before we both become nothing but rubble and a sad footnote in some scholar’s book of legends!”

  Calista inhaled sharply and nodded, forcing herself to her feet even as the ground trembled beneath her. “Fine. I’ll see if I can help you. But when I do, you’ll leave me here with him.”

  Maelzar bared his sharp teeth. “Spare me the theatrics.”

  Ignoring him, Calista knelt, brushing away the layer of dust that had concealed the markings the first time she was here. As soon as her fingers traced the sigils, recognition struck like a bolt of lightning. Her stomach twisted.

  “I know these bindings,” she murmured. Her heart pounded as the realization took root. “This ritual—it was created by my queen…” She trailed off, horror dawning. “But that would mean—”

  A voice cut through the chaos, rich and unwavering. “Yes.”

  From the crumbling entrance, a silver-haired woman stepped forward, descending the broken steps as though the world weren’t collapsing around her. Behind her, her knight followed, his expression unreadable. On his shield was the mark of the sacred flame.

  Maelzar stiffened. The flames at his tail blazed higher, his entire form darkening, shifting into something more monstrous. His voice deepened, the air warping around him. “Lyra.” His gaze snapped to the knight beside her, his growl reverberating through the room. “And the traitor.”

  Lyra didn’t flinch. She regarded him with the detached calm of someone who had long accepted her sins. “That is my ritual,” she said to Calista. “And I am the one who condemned them both to an eternity imprisoned in this place.”