Page 60 of Orc's Veil

But she’s already coming. I can feel that much—the faintest echo of her determination pulsing through what remains of our link. She’s in the Shadow Court. Bleeding herself dry to reach me. Walking through hell because she refuses to let me face it alone.

Yes.The Sovereign’s voice is silk over poison.Let her come. Let her see what you really are—hanging in my chains, screaming like all the others you’ve killed. Let her watch as I tear the last of your claiming away and leave you hollow.

THIRTY-FOUR

VARKHUL

The torture intensifies.

The Sovereign doesn’t just tear at the mark—it twists. Tries to turn what Eirene and I built into a weapon. I feel it probing at the magic, looking for cracks it can exploit, ways to use our claiming against us.

This pain has no precedent. It doesn’t strike like a wound or burn like shadow-venom—it reaches into the space where Eirene lives inside me and presses there, trying to corrupt what I feel into something the Sovereign can use.

Such a beautiful thing, this claiming you’ve forged.The entity’s voice has gone thoughtful, contemplative.She feels what you feel. Shares your pain, your pleasure, your guilt. What would happen, I wonder, if I made you feel hatred instead of love?

Cold dread washes through me. “What are you?—”

If I can twist your claiming into hatred instead of love… she would feel it.Feel her beloved executioner turning against her. Feel the man she saved becoming her enemy.The Sovereign’s pleasure is obscene.The betrayal alone might break her. And a broken boundary witch is so much easier to control.

“No.” I thrash against the chains, feel them tighten in response. “No, I won’t let you?—”

You don’t have a choice.The claws sink deeper, and I feel the Sovereign’s influence seeping into the mark like venom into a wound.You’re mine now, executioner. Your sins are mine. Your love is mine. And soon, your claiming will serve my purposes instead of hers.

I fight. With everything I have, I fight. Not with my arms—those are useless in the chains.

Not with my blade—the Sovereign had dragged it through with me. I could see it embedded in the floor below: wrenched from my grip when the shadows pulled me through, then placed there deliberately by something that understood what a blade means to a man who has used one for twenty years. A reminder. A taunt. I fight with my mind. My will. The part of me that chose Eirene over the order, that decided to be better, that refuses to let the darkness win.

The Sovereign pushes. I push back. We’re locked in a battle for my soul, and I’m losing—slowly, inevitably, inch by inch.

Then I feel her.

Not just the faint echo I’ve been clinging to—Eirene, fully present, blazing through what remains of our link. She’s close. So close I can almost taste her magic, smell the copper of her blood, feel the determination that drives her forward through the darkness.

She’s freeing them. The souls trapped in the walls, the memories the Sovereign has consumed—she’s giving them back. One by one, she’s tearing the entity’s power away.

I feel the Sovereign’s attention split—part of it still focused on me, on breaking my will and twisting my claiming. But part of it is turning toward her now, recognizing the threat she represents.

Clever girl.The words are a growl, all pretense of control abandoned.She thinks she can unmake me by freeing my prey. She doesn’t understand—she can’t understand—how many I’ve consumed. How much power I’ve built.

“She doesn’t need to understand.” I feel the words rising from some place deep inside me, some well of defiance I didn’t know I had. “She just needs to keep fighting. And so do I.”

I stop trying to protect the mark. Stop fighting to keep what’s left.

Instead, I open myself to Eirene completely. Let her feel everything I’m feeling—the pain, the cold, the guilt, the love. I pour it all into our shared mark, a flood of raw emotion that burns through the Sovereign’s claws like acid.

The entity recoils. Not from the pain—from the love. The genuine, unguarded, overwhelming love I feel for the woman walking through hell to save me.

What—what is this?—

“This is what you wanted to twist.” I’m smiling now—a predator’s smile, sharp and certain. “This is what you thought you could turn into a weapon. But love isn’t like guilt, Sovereign. It doesn’t break when you push on it. It gets stronger.”

The Sovereign screams—a sound of pure fury that shakes the walls of stolen memory, that cracks the floor of severed ties, that makes the darkness itself tremble.

And somewhere in the Shadow Court, walking through the nightmare landscape with blood dripping from her hands and determination blazing in her eyes?—

Eirene smiles too.

I can sense her response—her fierce, savage joy at hearing the Sovereign’s pain. At knowing that our love is hurting the thing that tried to use it against us.