Page 34 of Orc's Veil

I’ve just cut the last thread tying me to the life I knew.

And standing here, alone at the edge of the dying Veil, I find that I don’t regret it.

TWENTY

VARKHUL

Ifind Eirene at the central stone, bleeding.

Not the careful, controlled bleeding of her nightly rituals—this is desperate. Frantic. She’s opened both wrists, both palms, and the blood is pouring out of her faster than I’ve ever seen. It runs down the channels carved into the stone, feeds into the Veil, disappears into the hungry darkness of the boundary.

The tear is spreading.

I can see it now—not just the wound in reality that’s been growing since I arrived, but new tears, smaller ones, opening along the seams of the Veil like stitches popping in rotting fabric. The boundary is failing. Whatever the Sovereign did last night, whatever it showed her, it’s accelerated the collapse.

“Eirene!”

She doesn’t respond. Her eyes have gone completely dark—pupils swallowed by black, seeing whatever it is that boundary witches see when they’re deep in the Veil’s embrace. Her lips are moving, forming words I can’t hear, prayers or pleas or bargains with a barrier that’s dying despite everything she gives it.

I cross to her in three strides. My hands close on her shoulders, careful not to touch the bleeding wrists, and I shake her—gently at first, then harder when she doesn’t respond.

“Eirene. Come back. Look at me.”

Her eyes snap to mine. The blackness recedes, leaving gray irises that are wild with exhaustion and fear. She’s shaking—I can feel the tremors running through her, the cold that’s settled into her limbs from too much blood loss.

“Varkhul.” Her voice is a rasp. “The Sovereign—it’s coming. It’s been pushing all night, tearing at the weak points. I can feel it on the other side, waiting?—”

“Stop.” I grab her wrists, pressing against the cuts to staunch the bleeding. She hisses at the pressure but doesn’t pull away. “You’re killing yourself. This won’t work.”

“It has to work.” She tries to pull free, but she’s too weak—I can feel the lack of strength in her muscles, the way her body has started to give out. “The boundary needs blood. My blood. If I stop now?—”

“If you stop now, you’ll survive. If you keep going, you’ll be dead before noon.” I don’t soften the words. She needs to hear them. “The Veil can have my blood if it’s so desperate. Not yours. Not anymore.”

Her eyes widen. “Your blood is poison to the boundary?—”

“You showed me that. Let me help.”

She stares at me. I can see the calculation happening behind her exhausted eyes—the pragmatic witch weighing odds, measuring costs, deciding whether to trust the executioner who was sent to kill her.

“The order.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Kravos. The executioner they’re sending?—”

“Won’t touch you.”

I release her wrists—the bleeding has slowed, clotting—and draw my blade. The execution blade catches the pale light of the dying Veil, and for a moment I see my reflection in the steel: an orc who has broken every oath he ever swore, standing at the edge of the world, ready to fight the darkness.

“I’m not letting anyone execute you. Not Draveth. Not the order. Not the Sovereign itself.” I meet her gaze and let her see everything—no armor, no careful blankness, nothing between her eyes and the truth of what I’ve chosen. “Not anymore.”

She stares at me. Her lips part, but no words come out. The mark on my chest blazes with heat, echoed by the matching mark on her wrist—both of them burning, both of them singing with recognition.

“You’ll die.” Her voice cracks. “They’ll come for you.”

“I already have.” I sheathe my blade. Reach out and cup her face in my hands, tilting her chin up so she has to look at me. Her skin is cold. Too cold. The blood loss has done more damage than she wants to admit. “I sent my guards away. Destroyed Kravos’s spirit. Cut every tie to the order I could reach. There’s nothing left to throw away, Eirene. Nothing except this.”

“This?”

“You.” The word comes out rough. Raw. “The mark. Whatever this is that’s burning between us. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to fight it. But I know that I’d rather die defending you than live as the weapon that killed you.”

Her breath catches. Tears spill down her cheeks—not from grief, I think, but from relief. From the shock of being chosen instead of condemned.