Page 24 of Orc's Veil

Eirene looks up when I enter. She doesn’t seem surprised to see me. Her gaze is shadowed with exhaustion, and the mark on her wrist glows faintly in the dim light.

“Your guards are watching the cottage.” Her voice is low, pitched not to wake the child. “Three of them. The other three are at the stones.”

“Yes.”

“They think you’ve been compromised.” She rises, movements stiff with fatigue.

The silver in her hair catches what little light filters through the window. “They’re right, aren’t they?”

I don’t answer. Don’t need to.

“I’ve delayed the execution.” I keep my voice low, matching hers. The cottage feels smaller with both of us awake in it, the space between us charged with awareness I can’t ignore. “Told them I need documentation before the sentence. Evidence for the archives.”

“They believed that?”

“No.” I move further into the cottage—away from the door, away from prying eyes, closer to her than I should allow myself to be. “But they obeyed. For now.”

She studies me. That pale gaze sees too much—strips away the armor and the rank, finds the man underneath. The man who has spent twenty years believing in laws that might be lies. The man who has executed innocents without ever asking if they deserved to die.

“You’re risking everything.” It’s not a question.

“I know.”

The question hangs between us. I could give her the practical answer—that the claiming makes killing her impossible, that my own survival depends on hers, that the Veil needs her blood more than it needs my obedience. All of it true. All of it insufficient.

“More lives ended than I’ve ever let myself count.” The words come out rough, dragged from places I’ve kept locked away.

She waits. Patient. Silent.

“I never asked if they were guilty.” The confession feels like bleeding. Like cutting myself open and letting the darkness pour out. “Never questioned the evidence. Never wondered if the order might be wrong. I just… obeyed. Because obedience was easier than doubt.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m standing in a hovel at the edge of the world, watching the woman I was sent to kill tend a stolen child.” I meet her eyes. Let her see the truth I’ve been hiding from myself. “Now I’ve seen what mercy looks like. And I can’t pretend the order’s justice is anything but convenience dressed in law.”

She moves toward me. A single step. The mark pulses between us, warm and insistent.

“I expected a blade.” Her voice has dropped, gone soft and intimate. She gestures at the space between them, at the markpulsing on her wrist, at everything this night has become. “Not… this.”

“I feel.” The admission costs me. Exposes a weakness I’ve spent two decades burying. “I’ve just learned to ignore it.”

“Can you ignore this?” She lifts her wrist. The runes pulse in time with my heartbeat—our heartbeats, synchronized now, bound by magic neither of us chose. “Can you pretend the mark doesn’t exist?”

“No.” I reach out—the motion instinctive, unavoidable. My fingers close around her wrist, covering the mark, feeling its heat against my palm. Her pulse jumps beneath my grip—fast, unsteady, matching the chaos in my own chest. “I can’t ignore it. Can’t fight it. Can’t pretend I don’t feel you in my blood every moment since it sealed.”

Her breath catches. I see her pupils dilate, see the flush that creeps up her pale throat. The claiming pulses between us—not just heat now, but hunger. Recognition. The mate-claim demanding acknowledgment, demanding completion, demanding things I have no right to take.

“This is dangerous.” She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t break the contact. If anything, she steps closer, close enough that I can smell the herbs and blood and twilight magic that cling to her skin. “We barely know each other. We should hate each other.”

“Should.” I let the word hang. “But you don’t.”

“No.” A whisper. An admission. “I don’t.”

The Veil screams.

SIXTEEN

VARKHUL