Page 29 of Orc's Veil

The vision shifts. I see the Veilborder—my Veilborder—but changed. The stones are inverted, pointing down into the earth instead of up toward the sky. The tear has become a doorway, yawning wide, bleeding darkness instead of light. And through that doorway, the Shadow Court pours into reality like infection flooding a wound.

Villages burning with black flame. Cities swallowed by living shadow. People running, screaming, falling—their memories torn from them, their identities consumed, their faces joining the millions already pressed into the walls of this nightmare realm.

And standing at the center of the breach, feeding it with her blood, a woman with silver-streaked hair and scars on her wrists.

Me.

You’ve been feeding the Veil so long that you’ve become part of it. A living anchor. A door that walks and breathes and bleeds. If I can bind you—make you bleed for MY purposes instead of the boundary’s—the Veil won’t just open. It will INVERT.

“You want me as a breach.” The realization crystallizes, cold and clear.

I want you as a door. One that never closes.

The vision releasesme as suddenly as it seized me.

I’m back at the stones, on my knees in the black soil, bile rising in my throat. My hands are bleeding—I must have clawed at the runes without realizing it—and the Veil is shuddering around me, responding to my distress.

“Eirene!”

Varkhul’s voice cuts through the fog in my mind. Then his hands are on my shoulders, turning me, pulling me up from the ground with careful strength. His face swims into focus—brutal features tight with concern, that orange-gold gaze moving over me quickly, checking for wounds.

“What happened? I felt—” He breaks off. His jaw tightens. “Pain. Fear. I thought?—”

“The Sovereign.” I manage the words through chattering teeth. When did I start shaking? “It spoke to me. Showed me things. The Shadow Court. What it wants.”

His grip tightens on my shoulders. Not painful—grounding. Real. A reminder that I’m here, in my body, at the boundary that’s still intact.

For now.

“Tell me.” His voice is rough with command. “Everything.”

So I do.

EIGHTEEN

EIRENE

We sit in the shadow of the central stone while I recount the vision—the voices, the accusation, the glimpse of the Shadow Court in its full horror. Varkhul listens without interrupting, his expression growing darker with every word.

When I describe the throne made of names, his hand finds mine. The gesture is instinctive, unconscious—I don’t think he realizes he’s done it until my fingers curl around his. The mark on my wrist pulses with warmth, echoed by the heat I can feel radiating from his chest.

We should pull apart. Should maintain the careful distance that’s kept us sane since the mark claimed us.

Neither of us moves.

“A living anchor.” Varkhul’s voice is low, contemplative. “That’s what it called you?”

“I’ve been bleeding for the Veil since I was eighteen. Eight years of feeding it, holding it closed, becoming part of its fabric.” I stare at our joined hands—his massive, scarred, built for violence; mine pale, slender, mapped with ritual cuts. “Apparently that means I’m not just a witch anymore. I’m a doorway. A breach waiting to happen.”

“You’re not a breach.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you.” He turns toward me, and the intensity in his gaze makes my breath catch. “I know you’ve spent eight years bleeding yourself empty to protect strangers who will never thank you. I know you’ve stolen memories to spare lives, carried other people’s grief in your own mind, sacrificed everything you are to hold back the dark.” His free hand rises, hovers near my face without touching. “Whatever the Sovereign wants to make you—you’re not that. Not yet. Not ever, if I have any say in it.”

The words should feel hollow. Should feel like the empty promises of a man who barely knows me, who was sent here to kill me, who has his own sins burning in his memory.

They don’t.