Page 44 of Orc's Veil

I consider the question. Twenty years of executions. Every death etched into the iron on my tusks, a tally I’ve never let myself look at directly. I’ve never been afraid of death—not my own, not anyone else’s.

But now I have someone worth living for.

“Yes.” The admission costs me nothing. She already knows everything I am. “But fear isn’t going to stop me. Nothing is going to stop me from protecting what’s mine.”

Her hand finds mine, fingers intertwining, blood mingling where our wounds still seep.

“Yours.”

“Mine.”

The word settles between us—not a cage, but a promise. Not a chain, but a choice.

As I hold my claimed mate against the ancient stones, as the Veil hums with new power and the darkness retreats to regroup?—

I know that whatever comes next, we’ll face it the way we faced this night.

Bleeding. Burning. Claimed.

And utterly, irrevocably each other’s.

TWENTY-SIX

EIRENE

The claiming is worse than I imagined.

I feel him. Not just when we’re touching—not just when his hands are on my skin or his breath is warm against my throat. I feel him constantly. Unavoidably. A dark presence in my mind, as familiar now as my own heartbeat, as inescapable as the blood flowing through my veins.

We’re in my cottage, the thin walls doing nothing to keep out the chill of pre-dawn air. Varkhul is asleep on the narrow bed—the first sleep he’s allowed himself since the attack, his massive form taking up so much space that I barely fit beside him. His breathing is steady. Deep. The rhythm of a man at peace.

The Stray Boy is gone. Korvax had taken him east—before the guards were dismissed, before any of us had chosen our sides. I hadn’t asked him to, not in words. But Varkhul had seen to it, pressing the name of a miller called Sorem into Korvax’s keeping: two villages past the ridge, whose wife had taken in boundary children before and asked no questions. Even then, even while choosing his loyalties, Korvax had done that much. Through the Veil I could feel the moment the boy crossed the ridge line and out of the boundary’s reach—a small absence, a thread going slack, the way a held breath finally releases. Hewould reach them by dawn. He would be safe. That, at least, had been managed.

I’m not at peace.

The consummation had sealed the link between us deeper than either of us understood—and now that Varkhul slept, his conscious walls down, his mind was open in a way it had never been while he was awake. Because even in sleep, his mind pours into mine. Not words. Not coherent thoughts. Fragments. Shards of memory that cut as they pass, bleeding images into my consciousness like water through cracked stone.

And the memories aren’t gentle.

I see a woman kneeling in chains, her hair gray with age, her eyes bright with defiance. She’s accused of practicing blood magic—forbidden rituals, they called it. Treason against the Veil. Steel flashes. Blood sprays. Her defiance doesn’t falter even as the light leaves her eyes.

I see a man begging. Tears streaming down his face, hands reaching for the executioner who stands unmoved before him. He has a family, he’s saying. Children. A wife who’s sick. He didn’t mean to cross the boundary—he was just trying to find medicine. The sword descends. His tears dry to salt on dead cheeks.

I see soldiers. Witches. Boundary-crossers and oath-breakers and people whose only crime was being in the wrong place when the order needed a body to execute.

I see them all.

The memories flood through me in an endless tide, and I can’t make them stop.

I pull away from him.Physically. Emotionally. As far as the tiny cottage allows.

It doesn’t help. The mark on my chest burns in protest, demanding proximity, demanding the warmth of his body against mine. But I can’t—I can’t be near him right now. Not while his sins are pouring into my skull, painting the inside of my eyelids with blood.

I press my back against the far wall and slide down until I’m sitting on the cold floor. My hands are shaking. When did my hands start shaking?

Another memory crashes through me. This one is different. This one is?—

A child.