Chapter 23 Olivia
OLIVIA
It starts with a dream.
At first it’s harmless—nonsense like anybody else’s subconscious stew. But then the colors get wrong. Too sharp, too deep. The black in those dreams isn’t black—it’s that sick, slithering shade from the Veil, the one that eats light and leaves whispers in its wake.
I see the cave, sealed tight, but in the dream it breathes. Rocks pulse like lungs. Roots twist into mouths. A voice calls, not loud, not urgent, just there. I wake slick with sweat, tongue coppery, ears ringing like I’d been standing too close to Burnout’s amp stack.
The first time, I laugh it off. Stress. Trauma. The body has memory, and mine is loud.
But then it happens again.
Objects start moving in the library. Not flying off shelves or anything dramatic—no, this is subtler, scarier.
I set a book down on the counter, turn to grab another, and when I face back, it’s six inches to the left.
Pens roll the wrong direction. The lamp hums too low, like it’s trying to harmonize with a frequency no one else hears.
Peggy Sue teases me about being scatterbrained, and I force a smile. But my skin prickles every time I walk past the old shelf where I stacked the orc texts. Something about those bindings feels… hungry.
Kursk notices first.
We’re sitting at the kitchen table one night, him sharpening a blade he swears he doesn’t need anymore but “can’t let go of the habit.” I’m writing out the week’s event schedule for the library, my hand cramped from notes. He leans over, squints, then frowns.
“What’s that?” he says, voice low.
“What’s what?” I mutter, not looking up.
“Your arm.”
I glance down. My skin glows faintly in the lantern light—thin lines, curling symbols, faint like old scars. But they move. Shift. Runes etched where no ink has touched, burning just under the skin.
I jerk my arm back, heart stuttering. “I—no, that’s just—”
“Don’t lie,” he growls. Not angry at me—angry at whatever this is. His tusks catch the light, jaw tight. “That’s Veil-mark.”
The room feels colder. My stomach flips.
I shove my sleeve down. “It’s nothing. It’ll fade. Just leftover magic. It happens.”
His eyes bore into mine. “This is not like broken glass or spilled ink, Olivia. This is not something you dismiss.”
I want to yell at him, to tell him I don’t need protection. Instead, I grab my mug and down the rest of my tea like it’ll wash the fear away. It doesn’t.
That night, the dreams get worse.
I fall asleep curled against him, his arm heavy across my waist. But the moment I drift, I’m back in the cave.
The air is wet, sour, thick with rot. I hear water drip but it sounds like heartbeats.
The Vorfaluka’s shadow stretches across the walls—longer than it should be, taller than any beast could stand.
And then someone else is there.
Chief Rand.
Not flesh, not bone—just a shimmer, a voice with form. His eyes like embers, his mouth carved from stone. His presence makes the dream heavier, more real.
“Olivia Wilkins,” he says.
My throat tightens. “Chief—”
“You carry it still,” he interrupts. “A fragment. When you pierced yourself to follow him into the beyond, the Veil did not let you leave empty-handed.”
I glance at my arms. The runes burn hotter in dreamlight, crawling up to my shoulder, glowing like brands. They throb with every beat of my heart.
“No,” I whisper. “No, we sealed it—”
“You sealed most of it,” Rand says, voice thick with sorrow. “But the Veil is not broken glass you sweep away. It is smoke. It lingers. And now it lingers in you.”
I want to scream. I want to wake. But my legs root to the cave floor, my mouth dry as ash.
“What does it mean?” I choke.
He looks at me, his gaze a weight I can’t bear. “It means the fight is not finished.”
And then I wake, gasping, Kursk’s arm around me, his chest rising and falling steady as if nothing’s wrong. The room smells of him—iron, sweat, the faint pine he always carries back from the woods. The runes under my skin flicker once, like lightning behind clouds, and fade.
I curl into him, pressing my forehead against his chest. I don’t tell him yet. I can’t. My body shakes.
His breath stirs my hair, calm, steady.
But inside me, the Veil stirs too.
Kursk has been pulling away again.
At first, it’s subtle. He doesn’t touch me as much. He lingers outside longer after chopping wood, sitting under the pines until the night swallows him whole. He sharpens a blade that doesn’t need sharpening, polishes armor he’ll never wear again.
I know the signs. I’ve seen them before—this orc idea that sacrifice is the only love worth giving. That stepping back is noble. That silence is strength.
It makes me want to scream.
Tonight, in the library, I finally do.
“Enough,” I snap, slamming a book closed so hard the echo rattles the glass panes.
He looks up from the table where he’s been sitting, hands folded like a mountain that refuses to move. “Enough of what?” he asks, voice flat.
“Of you pretending distance is protection,” I spit. “Of you turning into a ghost in the same damn room. You think I don’t see you? You think I don’t feel you pulling away?”
His tusks catch the lantern light when he frowns. “Olivia—”
“No,” I cut him off. My heart is hammering, my palms sweating, but I won’t back down. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to decide for me what risks I take, who I love, what I fight for. I didn’t fall in love with you just so you could leave again, dumbass.”
The word echoes off the high ceiling. He blinks, caught between anger and something rawer.
He exhales, heavy, a sound like rocks tumbling down a cliff. “I’m terrified,” he says, voice rough. His hands clench on the table edge until the wood groans. “Of hurting you. Of failing you. Of being… unworthy of this. Of you.”
The silence after feels sharp. I see it in his face—the fear he doesn’t show anyone else. The fear that lives beneath his scars.
My anger softens. I walk to him, press my palm against his cheek. His skin is warm, rough under my hand. “Then don’t hurt me,” I whisper. “Just stay.”
His eyes close. He leans into my touch like a man starved.
We stand there a long time, the scent of ink and paper wrapping around us, lantern flames hissing soft. His forehead rests against mine, his breath mingling with mine.
That night, back at the cabin, I write in my journal by candlelight. My hand shakes, but the words spill easy:
I used to believe in stories. Now I live in one.
I close the book, set it on the table, and crawl into bed beside him. He pulls me close, no distance now, no silence. Just warmth, scar to scar, heart to heart.
Outside, the shadows linger for a while at the edge of the clearing. But by midnight, they slip back into the trees.
And for once, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, love is enough to hold them there.