Page 19 of Orc's Veil

I look at her. Really look, for the first time since I arrived at the Veilborder. Not at a target. Not at a criminal. At a woman who has bled herself hollow for a world that condemned her for it, who stands defiant even now, who carries the Veil’s desperate hope in her scarred and bleeding hands.

She’s beautiful. The thought comes unbidden, unwanted, and I can’t push it away. Not conventionally beautiful—not the soft prettiness of court ladies or the polished elegance of merchant daughters. Hers is a beauty forged in sacrifice. Sharp-edged. Dangerous. The kind of beauty that cuts you open and doesn’t apologize for the blood.

“Some things are worth throwing away.”

She stares at me. The Veil whispers her name again—softer now, almost content. And beneath my armor, where she can’t see, the mark pulses in answer.

But for the first time since I received my orders, I’m not counting the hours until execution. I’m not thinking about the sentence, the blade, the blood I’m supposed to spill.

I’m counting the moments until our blood might mix again.

THIRTEEN

EIRENE

Dawn is hours away. I should be preparing to die.

Instead, I’m crouched in the black soil at the edge of the Veil stones, watching a family stumble toward their deaths.

There are four of them—a mother and father, two children clinging to their hands. The older child might be ten, the younger no more than six. They’ve wandered too close to the boundary, drawn by the Twilight Gate’s siren pull, and now they’re showing the first signs of Veil-sickness.

The mother’s eyes have gone glassy, unfocused. The father keeps looking over his shoulder at shadows that aren’t there. The children are crying—quiet, exhausted tears that speak of hours spent lost in the boundary’s embrace.

If they stay much longer, the shadow-exposure will kill them. Their minds will fracture, crack apart under the pressure of the Veil’s attention. I’ve seen it happen before—travelers who lingered too long, who emerged from the boundary as hollow shells, breathing but empty.

The boundary doesn’t care why they’re here.

I push myself upright, ignoring the protest of my exhausted body. The executioner is back at my cottage with the Stray Boy,standing guard while the child sleeps off the last of his shadow-sickness. Varkhul’s guards patrol the perimeter of the stones, iron masks gleaming in the perpetual twilight.

None of them have noticed the family yet. Good. What I’m about to do will only make my death sentence worse—if that’s even possible.

I’m already walking toward them.

“Stop.”I pitch my voice low, calming, the way you’d speak to a frightened animal. “Don’t go any closer to the stones.”

The father spins toward me, eyes wild. His hand drops to the knife at his belt—a pitiful weapon, useless against the threats that lurk at the Veilborder, but he grips it like a lifeline. “Who—what?—”

“I’m the boundary witch.” I hold up my hands, palms out, showing the fresh bandages wrapped around my cuts from the night’s bleeding. “I can help you. But you need to trust me.”

The mother clutches her children closer, her glassy gaze sharpening with maternal fear. “The witch? The one who steals?—”

“Memories. Yes.” No point in lying. If they’ve heard of me, they’ve heard the stories. The rumors. The carefully cultivated fear that the order uses to justify my execution. “I take memories instead of blood. It’s the only way to pay the tithe without dying.”

The father’s grip tightens on his knife. “We’ve heard what you do. Stealing pieces of people’s souls. Leaving them less than they were.”

“Yes.” I don’t flinch from the accusation. It’s true, after all. Every word of it. “And your other option is to let the Veil take your children’s blood instead. All of it. Down to the last drop.”

Silence. The mother’s face has gone pale. The father’s knife-hand trembles.

The older child—a girl with tangled dark hair and her mother’s chin—tugs at her father’s sleeve. “Papa. The shadows are getting closer.”

She’s right. At the edge of my vision, I can see them gathering—not Veilspawn, not yet, but the lesser shadows that feed on fear and confusion. They’re drawn to the family’s distress, circling like wolves around wounded prey.

“I can take small memories.” I keep my voice steady, unthreatening. “Moments that won’t leave scars. A song. A kiss. A birthday celebration. Small prices for your lives.”

The mother looks at her husband. He looks at his children. The younger one—a boy with his father’s coloring and a gap-toothed smile that breaks my heart—is crying harder now, pressed against his mother’s leg.

“Do it.” The father’s voice cracks. “Take what you need. Just… get my family out of here.”