Page 12 of Orc's Veil

He wants to see. Wants to know if the charges against me are true.

The first crack in his certainty. I need to widen it.

“Fine.” I push off from the shelf. My legs protest—exhaustion and blood loss making every movement feel like wading through deep water—but I don’t let it show. “The stones are this way.”

I walk past him toward the door. Close enough that the warmth of him reaches me even through the cold air of the cottage—a pull I have no business feeling, no room to indulge.

Stop.I keep walking, step out into the perpetual twilight.He’s an executioner. A killer. You don’t get to want him.

But wanting isn’t a choice. The Veil doesn’t leave room for choices like that. I turned my face away.

He follows. I feel him at my back—a massive presence, heat and danger and barely leashed violence. His footsteps fall heavy on the black soil, and the Veil shudders with each impact.

The irony isn’t lost on me. The traitor witch, protecting the executioner from the boundary he serves.

The stones loom ahead,their carved surfaces still faintly luminous in the aftermath of last night’s crisis.

The tear has shrunk since I saw it last—my desperate bleeding wasn’t entirely wasted. But it’s still there, a wound in reality that bleeds pale light into the shadows beyond. Smaller than before, but not closed. Not healed.

“The boundary is damaged.” The executioner’s voice is flat, but I catch the tension beneath it. He can see what I see—the gap between stones, the wrongness of visible Veil. “How long has it been this bad?”

“Since last night. The boy’s passage tore it wider than I’ve ever seen.” I approach the central stone, feeling its warmth pulsein recognition. “It’s been getting worse for years. The bleedings help, but they’re not enough anymore.”

“The order says your practices weaken the barrier.”

I turn to face him. “The order is wrong.”

No softness now. No gentle act. I let him see the steel I’ve been hiding—the iron core that’s kept me alive while I bled myself dry for a boundary that will never be satisfied.

“Watch.” I draw my ritual knife from the sheath at my hip. The black iron gleams in the dim light, old and hungry.

He tenses, hand moving toward his own blade before he catches himself and forces his arm back to his side. The instinct is telling—he sees me as a threat, even now. Even exhausted and half-dead, I’m dangerous enough to make an executioner reach for steel.

Good. I want him to see me clearly. Not the soft witch. Not the victim. The woman who has survived at the edge of the world through sheer, bloody-minded determination.

I turn my palm upward. The cuts from last night have barely begun to heal—angry red lines crossing older scars. The knife finds fresh skin, a strip of unmarked palm that I’ve been saving.

I cut.

Blood wells immediately, dark and warm. I press my palm to the central stone, feeling the ancient channels accept my offering. The Veil drinks. I feel it pulling, drawing, feeding on what I give. The sensation is intimate in a way that should be disturbing—the boundary knows me better than any lover, understands my blood more deeply than anyone has ever understood my heart.

The tear begins to close.

Not fast. Not dramatically. But the edges of the wound creep toward each other, the tear narrowing. Reality mends itself, thread by bloody thread.

“You see?” I don’t look away from the closing tear. “This is what the order calls treason. Bleeding myself to hold back the dark.”

He doesn’t respond. I feel his gaze on my back—heavy, intense, calculating. Processing what he’s witnessing against everything he’s been told.

I turn. Meet that liquid-gold gaze with all the bitterness I’ve been swallowing for years. “The order doesn’t come here. The order doesn’t bleed. They sit in their Iron Citadel and pass judgment on things they don’t understand.”

I think of High Warden Kravos—the name I’ve heard in whispers from passing travelers, the authority behind my death sentence. I’ve never met him. He’s never set foot at the Veilborder. But he knows enough to condemn me.

“The order says?—”

“The order says I steal memories.” I step toward him. Blood drips from my palm, spattering the black soil between us. “And I do. Because the alternative is watching people die while the Veil takes its payment in blood and bone and screaming.”

“The order says I weaken the boundary. But I’m the only thing standing between this world and the shadow-realm. Kill me, and you kill everyone the Veil protects.”