Page 8 of Orc's Veil

I don’t answer. Don’t trust myself to answer.

She rises.

It’s a slow process—unsteady, her legs threatening to buckle, her hands leaving crimson smears on the monolith as she braces herself. She’s smaller than I expected. The top of her head barely reaches my chest. Her frame is slight beneath blood-soaked clothes, fine-boned and fragile-looking.

The scars on her arms catch the moonlight. Dozens of them—thin white lines from wrist to elbow, each cut precisely placed, a map of every night she has bled for the boundary. Some are fresh, still pink and swollen. Others have faded to pale traces. Evidence of years. Evidence of dedication.

Evidence of crimes, according to the order. Every scar is a forbidden rite. Every mark is treason.

But she stands. Faces me without flinching. Tilts her chin up to meet my gaze with a defiance that makes the fire in my chest flare hot enough to hurt.

“So perhaps we should discuss the order of operations.”

SIX

VARKHUL

She shouldn’t be standing. She’s lost too much blood—I can smell it, the copper-sweet scent of her filling the air. Any normal person would have collapsed hours ago.

But she’s not normal. The boundary has marked her, changed her, transformed her into a creature that can survive what would kill anyone else. I see it in the silver threading through her hair, in the way her eyes have gone dark at the edges—pupils dilated wide, almost swallowing the gray.

She smells good.

The thought comes unbidden, unwanted, and I shove it down with savage force. She smells of blood and exhaustion and twilight magic gone wrong. She smells of everything I’ve spent my life executing. She should not smellgood.

“The order has been watching you.” I fall back on facts, on evidence, on the solid ground of duty. “For years. Documenting your crimes. Building a case.”

“I know.” She takes a step toward me. Just one, but it’s enough to make me aware of how close she is. How small. How breakable. “I’ve known since they started sending observers to count the travelers I save. Since they began tracking every memory I’ve taken to spare someone’s life.”

“You admit to the thefts.”

“I admit to survival.” Her chin lifts higher. “Mine. Theirs. The whole damn world’s, if the Veil falls.”

Defiance. I’ve seen it before—in criminals who think they can argue their way out of the blade, in traitors who believe their cause justifies their crimes. It never works. The sentence is what it is.

But I’ve never seen defiance mixed with this kind of bone-deep weariness. This resignation that has nothing to do with fear.

She expected me. She’s been waiting for death, and she’s chosen to face it standing.

“The order doesn’t care about survival.” The words come out before I can stop them. Not accusation—observation. “They care about control.”

Her gaze sharpens. That soft gray turns cutting, assessing, reading a truth in my face I didn’t mean to show. “Dangerous words for an executioner.”

“Observation. Not opinion.”

“Is there a difference?”

I don’t answer. Can’t answer. The mark is screaming at me now, heat pulsing in waves that make it hard to think, hard to focus on anything but the woman standing an arm’s length away. I want to step closer. Want to touch the dried blood on her skin and see if it’s as warm as it smells.

What is happening to me?

“You’re different.” She tilts her head, studying me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “The other orcs who’ve come to the border—they recoil from me. The Veil pushes them away, and they let it. But you…”

She trails off. Frowns.

“But I what?”

“The Veil hates you.” She says it simply, factually, no judgment in her voice. “I can feel it reacting to your presence, trying to push you out. Your blood is poison to the boundary.”