37. Eirene
THIRTY-SEVEN
EIRENE
Boundary witch.
The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere—the walls, the floor, the air itself. The Sovereign has been watching. Waiting. Letting me come to it instead of trying to stop me.
The darkness behind the throne begins to shift. Coalesce. The stolen faces that make up the entity’s form emerge from the shadows, cycling through features I recognize—the mother whose lullaby I took, the farmer who lost his daughter’s infant face, the bride who can’t remember her vows.
Everyone I ever saved. Everyone I ever doomed.
You came. The Sovereign’s voice is a chorus of stolen grief, arranged into a mockery of welcome.
Its pale luminescent eyes fix on me with terrible attention.
I wondered if you would. After everything I showed you—every life your mercy cost, every soul your blood has fed—I wondered if you would still try to save him.
“You don’t know anything about what I would or wouldn’t do.” I keep walking toward Varkhul, closing the distance between us step by bloody step. “You’ve been watching me for eight years, and you still don’t understand.”
Don’t I? The entity circles around me, its massive form moving with that unsettling grace. I understand guilt. I understand sacrifice. I understand the desperate need to be forgiven for sins that can never be absolved.
“Then you should understand this.” I stop, turning to face the Sovereign directly. The freed souls within me pulse with anticipation. “I’m done asking for forgiveness. I’m taking redemption instead.”
And how do you plan to do that? The stolen faces arrange themselves into an expression of condescending amusement.
You’re one witch—wounded, bleeding, half-dead from the power you’ve consumed.
I am centuries of stolen lives. I am the darkness that has been growing since your ancestors first broke the Veil. What could you possibly do to hurt me?
I smile. There’s nothing gentle in it.
“I could give you back everything you’ve stolen.”
The Sovereign goes still. Its stolen faces freeze in place, the cycling of features stopping for the first time since it manifested.
What?
“Every memory you’ve consumed came from me.
” I raise my bleeding hands, let the power coursing through my veins become visible—a glow that starts at my wounds and spreads outward, illuminating the throne room with light the color of dawn.
“I took them. I fed them to the Veil. And through the Veil, you ate them. But they’re still mine. They remember who gave them away.”
The forbidden rite had shown me this. Not as instruction, but as understanding, sudden and complete: the boundary keeps traces of everything it has ever consumed, the way scar tissue keeps the shape of an old wound.
The memories were never truly destroyed.
They were stored. And I am the Veil’s living record now. Its blood. Its keeper.
“I am the Veil. Every memory it ever consumed left a trace in its fabric—and its fabric is my blood now. I’m not returning them whole. I’m returning them as fire.”
I reach for the souls I’ve been carrying. The ones I freed in my journey through the Court, the ones who gave themselves to my ritual, the ones who have been waiting centuries for a chance to escape.
And I call to the ones still trapped.
The walls of the throne room begin to shake. The floor of severed ties cracks and heaves. The souls the Sovereign has consumed for hundreds of years—not just my victims, but everyone who ever paid a tithe to the Veil—feel my power reaching for them.
And they answer.
Stop! The Sovereign’s voice has gone sharp with fear. You can’t—you don’t understand what you’re doing—
“I understand perfectly.” I pour more power into the call, feel the trapped souls straining toward me, feel the Sovereign’s form beginning to unravel at the edges as its fuel starts to escape.
“I’m doing what I should have done eight years ago.
I’m taking responsibility for every life I’ve touched.
Every memory I’ve stolen. Every price I’ve extracted in the name of mercy. ”
The first souls break free.
They burst from the Sovereign’s form like light through cracks in a dam—brilliant, beautiful, impossible to contain. Each one that escapes takes a piece of the entity with it, strips away a layer of its stolen power.
The Sovereign screams.
Behind me, I hear Varkhul laughing—a raw, painful sound, but genuine. “That’s my witch.”
More souls escape. Dozens. Hundreds. The throne room is filling with light as the consumed lives flee their prison, as centuries of stolen grief finally finds release.
But the Sovereign isn’t done yet.
The entity lashes out.
Not at me—at Varkhul. The shadow-chains around him tighten, dig deeper, and I feel his scream echo in my own chest like a blade through flesh.
Continue, and I’ll tear him apart. The Sovereign’s voice has lost all pretense of control.
It’s afraid now—genuinely afraid—but fear makes monsters desperate.
Every soul you free, I’ll take a piece of him.
His memories. His mind. The mark that binds you.
Stop now, or watch me destroy everything you love.
The chains tighten further. Varkhul’s face goes gray with pain, his body convulsing against the shadow-bindings. I can feel his agony through our link—sharp and terrible and designed to break me.
It almost works.
For one terrible moment, I hesitate. The souls I’ve been freeing pause in their escape, feeling my uncertainty, responding to my fear. The Sovereign’s form stabilizes slightly, the bleeding power slowing as I waver.
Then Varkhul opens his eyes.
“Don’t stop.” His voice is a rasp, barely audible over the chaos of escaping souls and the Sovereign’s increasingly desperate screams. “Don’t you dare stop for me.”
“It’s killing you—”
“Then let it kill me.” His gaze burns through the pain, raw and unwavering, holding mine with all the force of his will. “You have one chance to end this. One chance to destroy the thing that’s been feeding on your mercy for eight years. If you stop now—if you let it win because of me—”
“I can’t lose you.” The words tear out of me, thick with tears I didn’t know I was crying. “Varkhul, I can’t—”
“You won’t.” He smiles—that same predator’s smile he gave me when he first claimed me, when he pressed his palm to my chest and branded me as his. “But you will never forgive yourself if you sacrifice the world to save one executioner.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. And I hate him for it—hate him for being noble, for being willing to die, for loving me enough to choose my conscience over his life.
But I’m not going to let it come to that.
I close my eyes. Feel the power coursing through me—the freed souls, the boundary magic, the love that burns in the claiming mark over my heart. I feel Varkhul through our link, his pain and his determination and his absolute faith that I can do this.
And I realize the Sovereign has made a mistake.
It’s using Varkhul’s pain to control me. But our claiming goes both ways. Every moment of agony the chains inflict flows through our link—
And so does my power.
I reach into our shared mark. Not to comfort Varkhul, not to shield him from the pain—to arm him. I pour the boundary magic into him, feel it flow from my blood to his, feel it flood his body with the same power that’s been burning through mine.
The shadow-chains sizzle. Smoke. Begin to dissolve.
No— The Sovereign’s voice is pure panic now. That’s not possible—you can’t share power through a claiming—
“Our claiming isn’t like anything you’ve seen before.” Varkhul’s voice is stronger now, fueled by the magic pouring into him. The chains around him shatter—one, two, three—falling away like cobwebs before a flame. “We were made to destroy things like you.”
He drops to the floor, lands on his feet, and straightens to his full height.
Even after everything—the torture, the memories, the chains—he’s still terrifying. Still the executioner who’s ended hundreds of lives. Still the weapon the Veil-warden order forged and I reclaimed.
But now he’s my weapon.
Our eyes meet across the throne room. The freed souls swirl around us like a living storm, their light mixing with the blood still dripping from my wounds. The Sovereign is shrieking, its form unraveling further with every soul that escapes.
He crosses to me in three strides. His hands find my face—rough, scarred, trembling slightly—and he tilts my chin up to look at him. For a moment, we just breathe. Just exist in the same space, alive, whole despite everything.
Then his mouth crashes into mine.
It’s not gentle. It’s desperate and fierce and tastes of blood—his, mine, impossible to tell the difference.
His tusks graze my cheek as he deepens the kiss, one hand sliding into my hair, the other pressing flat against the small of my back to pull me closer.
I grab fistfuls of his ruined shirt and hold on like he’s the only solid thing in this nightmare realm.
The Sovereign screams louder. We ignore it.
When we finally break apart, we’re both breathing hard. His forehead rests against mine, his breath hot on my lips.
“You came for me.” His voice is rough, wrecked.
“Every time.” I press one more kiss to the corner of his mouth, tasting the promise. “I’ll come for you every time. Now let’s finish this.”
And Varkhul smiles at me—that fierce, savage smile that makes my heart race and my blood sing.
“Ready to end this?”
I smile back. Feel the power building in my blood, the souls crying out for vengeance, the claiming mark blazing with shared purpose.
“Let’s kill a god.”