13. Eirene
THIRTEEN
EIRENE
Dawn is hours away. I should be preparing to die.
Instead, I’m crouched in the black soil at the edge of the Veil stones, watching a family stumble toward their deaths.
There are four of them—a mother and father, two children clinging to their hands. The older child might be ten, the younger no more than six. They’ve wandered too close to the boundary, drawn by the Twilight Gate’s siren pull, and now they’re showing the first signs of Veil-sickness.
The mother’s eyes have gone glassy, unfocused. The father keeps looking over his shoulder at shadows that aren’t there. The children are crying—quiet, exhausted tears that speak of hours spent lost in the boundary’s embrace.
If they stay much longer, the shadow-exposure will kill them. Their minds will fracture, crack apart under the pressure of the Veil’s attention. I’ve seen it happen before—travelers who lingered too long, who emerged from the boundary as hollow shells, breathing but empty.
The boundary doesn’t care why they’re here.
I push myself upright, ignoring the protest of my exhausted body. The executioner is back at my cottage with the Stray Boy, standing guard while the child sleeps off the last of his shadow-sickness. Varkhul’s guards patrol the perimeter of the stones, iron masks gleaming in the perpetual twilight.
None of them have noticed the family yet. Good. What I’m about to do will only make my death sentence worse—if that’s even possible.
I’m already walking toward them.
“Stop.” I pitch my voice low, calming, the way you’d speak to a frightened animal. “Don’t go any closer to the stones.”
The father spins toward me, eyes wild. His hand drops to the knife at his belt—a pitiful weapon, useless against the threats that lurk at the Veilborder, but he grips it like a lifeline. “Who—what—”
“I’m the boundary witch.” I hold up my hands, palms out, showing the fresh bandages wrapped around my cuts from the night’s bleeding. “I can help you. But you need to trust me.”
The mother clutches her children closer, her glassy gaze sharpening with maternal fear. “The witch? The one who steals—”
“Memories. Yes.” No point in lying. If they’ve heard of me, they’ve heard the stories. The rumors. The carefully cultivated fear that the order uses to justify my execution. “I take memories instead of blood. It’s the only way to pay the tithe without dying.”
The father’s grip tightens on his knife. “We’ve heard what you do. Stealing pieces of people’s souls. Leaving them less than they were.”
“Yes.” I don’t flinch from the accusation. It’s true, after all. Every word of it. “And your other option is to let the Veil take your children’s blood instead. All of it. Down to the last drop.”
Silence. The mother’s face has gone pale. The father’s knife-hand trembles.
The older child—a girl with tangled dark hair and her mother’s chin—tugs at her father’s sleeve. “Papa. The shadows are getting closer.”
She’s right. At the edge of my vision, I can see them gathering—not Veilspawn, not yet, but the lesser shadows that feed on fear and confusion. They’re drawn to the family’s distress, circling like wolves around wounded prey.
“I can take small memories.” I keep my voice steady, unthreatening. “Moments that won’t leave scars. A song. A kiss. A birthday celebration. Small prices for your lives.”
The mother looks at her husband. He looks at his children. The younger one—a boy with his father’s coloring and a gap-toothed smile that breaks my heart—is crying harder now, pressed against his mother’s leg.
“Do it.” The father’s voice cracks. “Take what you need. Just… get my family out of here.”
I nod. Kneel in the black soil. Pull the ritual knife from my belt—the ancient blade that’s been cutting memories free for generations.
And I begin.
I start with the father.
He flinches when I press my fingers to his temples, but he doesn’t pull away. His heartbeat thunders under my touch. The memory surfaces quickly—a summer song, something half-remembered from his own childhood, the kind of tune you hum without knowing why. Bright and simple and entirely replaceable.
I take it. The Veil drinks.
The mother is harder. She clutches her children even as I work, her eyes never leaving their faces.
What I find in her is the memory of the younger one’s first steps—the child tottering across a flagstone floor, arms windmilling, face brilliant with the shock of his own balance.
The mother doesn’t know I’ve taken it until it’s already gone, already feeding the boundary.
Her expression doesn’t change. She’ll never know why that memory of him feels distant now, slightly out of reach, like a word she can’t quite find.
I take it anyway. I’m sorry. The Veil drinks.
The children are easiest—shallow roots, small losses. A birthday with a sugared cake. An afternoon chasing river-beetles through the mud behind a barn. Gone before they can register the absence. The younger one yawns when I finish with him, already forgetting he was frightened.
The Veil settles. The boundary hums. Satisfied, the way it never quite is when I feed it my own blood alone.
The family lives.
“Follow the path east.” I point toward a gap between the stones, a safe route away from the boundary. “Stay away from the shadows. Don’t stop until you reach the ridge—the Veil’s influence ends there.”
The father hesitates. His hand moves toward his belt, and for a moment I think he’s reaching for his knife—but no. He’s pulling out a coin. A small copper piece, worn smooth with handling.
“It’s not much.” He holds it out to me. “But it’s all I have to offer.”
I close his fingers back around the coin. “Keep it. Buy your children something sweet when you reach the next village. Let them have a new memory to replace the ones they lost.”
His eyes shine. Grief or gratitude—I can’t tell which. “The stories about you. They’re not—they don’t—”
“Go.” I turn away before he can finish. Before he can say I’m not the monster he expected. Before his gratitude can make me feel like I deserve anything other than the execution waiting for me at dawn. “The shadows are getting restless.”
The family leaves. I watch them go—four figures disappearing into the dim haze, moving toward safety, toward life, toward a future they’ll never know I gave them.
The stolen memories settle in my chest. The father’s song. The mother’s kiss. The children’s small joys. They’ll fade eventually—absorbed by the Veil, digested, forgotten—but for now they’re mine. Another family’s warmth to carry alongside all the others.
I’m so tired.
“This is why they want you dead.”
The voice comes from behind me. Deep. Rough. Familiar in a way that sends heat prickling across my skin.
I don’t turn around. “How long have you been watching?”
“Long enough.” Footsteps in the black soil. He’s moving closer, his massive presence pressing against my awareness like heat from a forge. “I saw you take the memories. Saw the family stumble away, alive but diminished. Watched you commit the crime you’ve been sentenced to die for.”
Now I turn. Face the executioner, spine straight. If he’s going to kill me for this, I want him to see exactly what he’s destroying.
“Yes.” I meet his burning gaze without flinching. “This is why they want me dead. And this is why I’m still alive.”