Page 52 of Orc's Veil

Eirene is running toward me. Her hands are blazing with twilight magic, blood streaming from fresh wounds she’s torn open. She’s going to reach me—I can see it in her eyes, that desperate determination I’ve come to know so well.

But the Sovereign is faster.

“No—” The word tears out of me as the shadows close around my face. Through the narrowing gap, I see Eirene reaching for me. See the terror in her gold-threaded eyes. See her mouth forming my name.

Then darkness. Complete. Absolute.

The shadows drag me through the tear in the Veil.

The last thing I feel is the mark on my chest—burning, blazing, screaming with the agony of separation. Eirene’s presence in my mind stretches thin, thinner, until it’s just a thread. A whisper.

Then even that is gone.

And I fall into the Shadow Court, alone.

Cold.

The Shadow Court is cold in ways that have nothing to do with temperature. It’s cold in my bones, my blood, my soul. The chill seeps into me from all directions, numbing flesh and thought and hope.

I try to move. Can’t. The darkness has me—not just holding me but invading me, sliding between my muscles and my bones, wrapping around my organs with possessive hunger.

I’m suspended in nothingness. Chains of pure shadow wrap around my limbs, holding me spread-eagle in the void. The mark on my chest aches with distance. Eirene is out there—I can feelher, faintly, a warmth at the edge of my frozen awareness. But she’s so far away. So impossibly far.

Below me, glimpses of darkness—faces, an immensity of faces, pressing against surfaces I can’t name, their mouths moving in screams I can’t hear. The Sovereign’s domain. I feel its weight even from up here, the sheer accumulated mass of everything it has consumed.

So many executions. Such a pretty number. Such a wealth of sin.

I don’t respond. Don’t have the strength to respond. The cold is stealing everything—my will, my defiance, my ability to think clearly.

Let me show you what you’ve done, executioner.A face forms in the darkness before me—the twelve-year-old boy, the one who asked if he’d done bad.Let me show you every life you’ve ended. Every question you refused to ask. Every moment of doubt you buried beneath duty and discipline.

The memories come.

Not like Eirene felt them—not filtered through the claiming, softened by time and distance. These are raw. Immediate. The Sovereign forces me to relive them as if they’re happening now, trapping me inside each execution while it watches and feeds.

Steel descends. Blood sprays. Eyes go dim.

Again. And again. And again.

I scream. The sound echoes in the void, swallowed by darkness, heard by no one except the thing that’s consuming me.

This one was innocent.The Sovereign’s voices chorus as the gray-haired woman’s execution plays out.This one begged for mercy. This one had children waiting at home.

“Stop.” The word comes out broken. Barely a whisper.

You didn’t stop.The darkness presses closer.Why should I?

The memories keep coming. The torture keeps going. And somewhere across the Veil, I feel Eirene screaming with me—feeling everything I feel, suffering as I suffer.

That’s what finally breaks through the cold. Not my own pain—I’ve learned to bear pain. But hers. Her agony, reaching me through the claiming even here, even now.

The Sovereign is hurting her by hurting me.

And she’s coming.

I feel it in the mark—faint but unmistakable. Determination blazing through the thread that still connects us. She’s not going to leave me here. She’s not going to let the Sovereign win.

She’s walking into hell to save me.