14. Eirene
FOURTEEN
EIRENE
Varkhul stands at the edge of the stone circle, silhouetted against the darkened sky. The bandage on his arm—the one I wrapped after our blood mixed—is dark with old stains. His armor gleams dully in the moonlight, and his hand rests on the hilt of his execution blade.
He doesn’t draw it. Doesn’t move toward me with violence in his posture. He just… watches. Studies me with that molten stare, conflict and curiosity warring in the harsh planes of his face.
His jaw tightens. I’m pushing—I know I’m pushing—but I can’t stop. The exhaustion and the stolen memories and the hours ticking down toward my death have stripped away my caution, left me raw and reckless and spoiling for a fight I can’t win.
“You’ve killed hundreds of people for them.” I stop an arm’s length away, close enough that the stillness between us has weight—the kind that exists just before something breaks.
His hands clench at his sides. I see the muscles in his forearms flex, the restraint it takes not to reach for his blade. He steps back. A single stride that puts distance between us, jaw locked, gaze gone hard and inward.
“The law is wrong.” I step into his space. Too close. Dangerously close. “You know it’s wrong. You’ve known since you watched me heal the Veil instead of tear it. Since you felt our blood mix and the boundary settle for the first time in years.”
“You don’t know what I’ve felt.”
“Don’t I?” I tilt my head back, holding his gaze, refusing to be intimidated by the sheer size of him. He towers over me—more than a foot of height difference, shoulders twice the width of mine—but I’ve spent years facing down the darkness. One orc executioner doesn’t scare me.
What he makes me feel is far more dangerous than fear.
“I felt it too.” The words come out low, intimate. A confession I didn’t mean to make. “When our blood touched. The heat. The settling. The Veil recognizing us as… as a balance.”
His breath catches. I see his chest stop moving, see the careful stillness that speaks of iron control stretched to its breaking point. “That was the boundary. The magic. Nothing more.”
“You’re lying.” I reach out—reckless, stupid, unable to stop myself—and press my palm flat against his chest. Through the leather and steel of his armor, I can feel his heart pounding. Fast. Unsteady. Matching my own. “You’re lying to yourself, and you know it.”
The heat beneath my palm flares.
It happens without warning.
One moment I’m standing there, hand pressed to Varkhul’s chest, anger and exhaustion and desire tangled into a knot I can’t unravel. The next, light blazes between us—bright enough to make me cry out, hot enough to sear through armor and flesh.
His mark. I can see it now, glowing through the leather of his armor, pulsing with a light that hurts to look at. The runes—because they are runes, I realize, ancient symbols I don’t recognize—are writhing, shifting, burning themselves deeper into his skin.
He gasps. Staggers. His hand comes up to grab my wrist—not to push me away, but to anchor himself, his grip iron-tight and trembling.
And my wrist burns.
I scream. Can’t help it—the pain is blinding, consuming, fire and ice and electricity all at once. I try to pull away, but Varkhul’s grip holds me in place, and the burning intensifies, spreading up my arm, down into my palm, searing itself into my flesh with deliberate, agonizing precision.
When it finally stops—seconds later? hours?—I’m on my knees in the black soil, gasping, tears streaming down my face. My wrist throbs with residual heat. And on the inside of my forearm, where no mark has ever been, a new brand glows faintly in the darkness.
Runes. The same runes that burn on his chest, now seared into my skin.
“No.” Varkhul’s voice is hoarse. He’s still holding my wrist, staring at the mark with an expression I can’t read. Horror? Awe? Both? “That’s not—it can’t—”
“What is this?” I twist my arm, trying to see the mark clearly. The runes pulse with a soft glow, fading slowly, settling into my flesh like they’ve been there forever. “What did you do to me?”
“I didn’t—” He releases my wrist like it’s burned him. Steps back. His hand goes to his chest, pressing against the armor over his own mark. “The mark. It’s… it’s claimed you.”
“Claimed me?” I push myself to my feet, swaying with exhaustion and shock. “What does that mean? What is a mark?”
He doesn’t answer immediately. His jaw works, muscles tensing and releasing, and I can see him fighting for words. Fighting for control. Fighting against whatever this mark means, whatever it’s done to both of us.
“Among orcs,” he finally says, “the mark forms between mates. Fated pairs. It can’t be forced or faked—it appears when two souls recognize each other. When the claiming chooses.”
The words hit me like a physical blow.
“Mates.” My voice comes out strangled. “You’re saying I’m your—that we’re—”
“I’m saying the mark has chosen.” His heated stare meets mine, and I see my own shock reflected there. My own fear. My own desperate, unwanted spark of heat. “I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t want—”
He stops. Swallows. His hand is still pressed to his chest, and I realize with a start that I can feel it—the echo of pressure, as if his palm is against my own heart.
Oh gods.
I look down at my wrist. At the runes still glowing faintly, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. In time with his heartbeat, I realize—because I can feel that too now, a second rhythm layered beneath my own, steady and strong and utterly foreign.
The claiming has chosen. And now we both have to survive it.
“This changes nothing.” Varkhul’s voice is rough, strained. He’s pacing now—long strides that eat up the distance between the stones, restless energy pouring off him in waves. “The order doesn’t recognize claimings between orcs and humans. Even if they did—”
“Even if they did, I’m still sentenced to die.” I finish his sentence, watching him move. My wrist throbs with every step he takes, the runes responding to his agitation. “The claiming doesn’t save me from execution.”
He stops. Turns to face me, and I see the torment in his expression. The conflict that’s been building since he arrived at the Veilborder, cracking wide open now, impossible to hide.
“No.” The word comes out low, vehement. “It doesn’t save you from the order. But it means—” He breaks off. Runs a hand over his face, tusks catching the moonlight. “If you die, I die with you.”
I go still. “What?”
“The mark ties mates to each other.” He doesn’t look at me. Can’t seem to look at me. “Life force, essence, soul—whatever you want to call it. If one half of a claimed pair dies, the other follows. Minutes later. Hours, if they’re strong.”
“So if you execute me…”
“I kill us both.” Now he meets my eyes. His gaze is raw, stripped of all the careful control he’s worn since he arrived. “The claiming has made it impossible for me to follow my orders. Even if I wanted to kill you—even if I convinced myself it was the right thing to do—”
“The mark wouldn’t let you.”
“The mark would kill me for trying.”
Silence falls between us. The Veil hums at the edge of my awareness—that strange new song of balance and recognition, stronger now that the claiming has sealed itself into both our skins.
I should feel trapped. Furious. Violated by magic I didn’t ask for, bound to a man who came here to end my life.
Instead, I feel… relieved.
The realization startles me. But it’s true. For the first time since I heard the executioner was coming, I’m not counting down the hours until my death. I’m not alone in facing what’s ahead.
“Kravos will send another executioner.” I break the silence, forcing my mind back to practical concerns. “When he learns you’ve failed to carry out the sentence.”
“He’ll send a dozen.” Varkhul’s voice is grim. “And when they learn about the claiming, they’ll try to kill us both. A claimed executioner is compromised. Useless. The order will see me as a traitor.”
“So we fight.” I lift my chin. Hold his gaze with defiance I don’t entirely feel. “You and me. Claimed. Trapped. But alive.”
He studies me for a long moment. I feel his emotions through the new mark on my wrist—not clearly, not yet, but in impressions. Turmoil. Resolve. And beneath it all, banked like coals beneath ash, a heat that has nothing to do with anger.
“You’re not what I expected.” The words seem dragged out of him against his will. “The order painted you as a monster. A traitor. A witch who would doom the world to satisfy her own mercy.”
“And now?”
He moves toward me. Slow. Deliberate. Each step sends a pulse of heat through my wrist, through my chest, through parts of me I’ve kept locked away for years. He stops an arm’s length away—the same distance that separated us before the claiming flared, before everything changed.
“Now I think you might be the only thing standing between this world and the darkness.” His voice has dropped, gone rough and intimate. “And I think the claiming chose better than either of us could have.”
My heart stutters. The mark on my wrist flares with warmth—not pain this time, but heat. Desire. Recognition.
“Dawn is coming,” I whisper. It’s all I can manage.
“Yes.” He doesn’t move closer. Doesn’t touch me. But his gaze drops to my lips for just a moment—a flicker, barely visible—before returning to my eyes. “And we have a lot to discuss before it arrives.”
He turns. Walks away. And I’m left standing at the edge of the Veil stones, wrist burning, pulse racing, trapped in a claiming I didn’t choose with a man I should despise.
The Veil hums around me—settled, satisfied, whispering my name with need instead of hunger.