Chapter 44 The Veil Between the Realms
THE VEIL BETWEEN THE REALMS
Light imploded before sound arrived. The air split down its center with a sickening crack.
Above, the oculus blazed white as wind poured down from nowhere and everywhere at once, tearing garlands from the rafters and ripping ceremonial flowers, their petals scattering like ash.
Torches flared, flames clawing the air in wild arcs.
The marble pedestal shrieked as it split apart, a jagged seam opening in the center of the throne room—a wound in the fabric of the realm.
The tear did not stop at the dais. It carved straight through the central aisle, slicing between benches, rending a path out the throne room doors and into the courtyard beyond, as if the very land itself were being unstitched.
Ella’s breath seized.
Hysteria swept through the throne room. Bodies surged toward the doors in a crush of silk and terror. Lords shoved past their own attendants, ladies lifted their skirts and ran, and guards fought to guide the spiraling crowd toward the outer halls. Someone screamed for the gods.
But a small knot of Orchid soldiers held their ground. She saw her father across the room shouting orders to the guards who hadn’t fled.
Demetrius reached Ella first, still standing on the dais. Nira stumbled up behind him, smoke coiling from her palms in thin gray ribbons. Marisol arrived at Ella’s other side, eyes wide but steady.
“We're with you, Your Majesty,” Demetrius said. None of his usual flourish colored the words. His voice was tight with determination.
Ella swallowed hard. “No. Not all of you.”
Their heads snapped toward her.
“Demetrius, Nira, go. Get the courtiers out. Your magic will not hold against this.” She touched Demetrius’s shoulder and then Nira’s trembling hand. “Your gifts will not help against creatures of the Veil. I have seen them. Save our people. That is an order.”
Demetrius hesitated, anguish flickering across his face. But he bowed and dragged Nira toward the fleeing crowd, smoke trailing behind them as they disappeared into the chaos.
Marisol stayed rooted beside Ella, flame flickering between her fingers like an instinct she could not suppress.
Jakobav appeared at Ella’s side in a rush of cold air and steel. His voice was low and certain. “You sure?”
Ella met his gaze. “Marisol can amplify flame. That could turn the tide. She stays.”
Marisol straightened, shoulders lifting with quiet pride.
Around them, Dravaryn steel answered the call. Maeren stepped in with her jaw set for war. Thane positioned himself at Ella’s left, blade drawn. She didn’t see Soren or Savina, but her gut told her they weren’t far.
They formed an imperfect half-circle around the split in the marble just as the wind bent inward and the seam pulsed.
The dais was wide enough to hold their line, yet suddenly it felt too narrow, too fragile, with the Veil’s wound carved straight through its heart.
Ella leaned forward and peered into the tear, revealing depths so dark they seemed to swallow the torchlight whole.
A howl rose from the darkness. Not a sound but a violation, a shriek she had heard once before and prayed never to hear again. It split the air like a blade. Every person standing stumbled back from the seam, instincts driven by terror older than reason.
A creature slid through.
Towering. Twisted. Human only in the cruel suggestion of its outline. Black sinew clung to ridged bone, a vertical seam glowing like an unhealed wound where a face should have been. It moved with a predator’s grace broken by the spasms of a marionette.
“Veil Leach,” Ella whispered—the word slipping out before the court could blink.
“Raise the flame shields!” her father roared, his voice cutting through the wind from across the throne room.
The guards obeyed, fire lifting in a unified wave, yet the blaze faltered even as it formed, their shields paling before the darkness that surged against them from the tear in the Veil.
The Leach moved sideways in a blur, faster than eyes could follow, and struck.
One guard collapsed with a wet, gurgling sound as the creature latched and drank, pulling not only blood but heat and color and the very spark of life, until nothing remained but a heap of fine ash crumbling over scorched marble.
Panic fractured the room. Screams filled the air as the remaining courtiers stumbled over toppled benches and fleeing guards.
She spotted her father pushing through the chaos, crossing the hall instead of fleeing, driving the remaining Orchid guards into a tight defensive line at the foot of the dais.
“Ella.” Jakobav’s voice was steady, an anchor in the chaos.
“I don’t understand,” she said, breath catching. “The red sun is still days away—we should’ve had more time.”
“Time’s gone,” Jakobav snapped. “Stay behind me.”
She stepped down from the dais. Her crown didn’t shift, as if it knew this was the hour it had been set for.
Fire leapt to her hands from where it always waited.
She cast it in a clean, blinding line, and the flame struck the Leach, burning white.
The creature swelled, then came again with a renewed hunger.
Fuck. Did it just get bigger?
Jakobav spun around her and met it head-on, blade flashing, a single vicious strike that carved through its lunge and forced it sideways.
Another scream split the air. A second Leach spilled out, taller than the first, its claws gouging the stone as it righted itself.
Something echoed down the length of the seam, a distant shriek carried from far beyond the courtyard as if answering the one inside the hall.
Fuck. How many other creatures are crawling out of this tear across the realm?
“Savina!” Jakobav commanded without turning.
Savina appeared next to him and lifted her hands.
The floor didn’t just respond. It bowed to her.
The marble convulsed, heaving upward with a force Ella felt in her teeth.
Black pillars of stone erupted from the ground like the jaws of the gods.
One Leach was caught mid-lunge, trapped before thought could even form behind its faceless skull.
The black pillars slammed shut with a sound like mountains grinding, like the realm itself snapping its teeth. When they tore apart again, nothing was left—only a smear of shadow and a rain of crushed stone dust drifting down like black snow.
Ella’s breath punched out of her.
The shockwave rippled outward, cracking the marble into a spiderweb that raced across the room.
Savina stood at the center of it all, jaw clenched, chest heaving, the floor still trembling beneath her boots.
Guards stumbled back with strangled cries, as though the ground might rise again and devour them.
Shit. No one here has ever seen Dravaryn stone power.
The Veil truly had cracked—Savina was able to use her soil-forged magic here in Orchid.
Gods. Ella had watched breaches tear through the world like paper. But she’d never seen a mortal woman command the ground with that kind of strength.
More Leaches climbed from the tear, dragging themselves over the broken marble.
Fights erupted everywhere at once, Orchid guards and Dravaryns locked against the creatures in a dozen frantic clashes.
One broke free of the chaos and lunged for Ella, its glowing seam splitting open as it came for her.
She didn’t think. She only moved.
Her hand closed on the hilt of the blade Thane had gifted her. The serpent-carved handle fit her grip with unnerving perfection—still far too regal to have ever belonged to Thane.
She slashed upward in a clean arc. Steel sang, and when the Leach met the Velmirian edge, its shadowed form split apart—riven into two staggering halves that twitched and tried to knit back together, only to fail and collapse into ash.
A spray of black ichor struck her cheek, hot and foul, stinging where it touched her skin.
“Damn,” Thane muttered, appearing beside her, awe softening his grin. “I always suspected you two would get along.”
The Leach’s death scream funneled back into the breach, and the seam yawned wider as though dragged open by its echo.
Jakobav had moved to the far end of the dais, pushing her father back from the tear. His sword was drawn, his commands cutting through the chaos as he forced the remaining guards into a line to shield the throne—to protect her father.
Her breath caught. The man destined to rule her kingdom’s oldest rival was now standing between her father and death.
Another creature came, and the breach convulsed, tearing wider as something immense forced its way through. The whole hall seemed to hold its breath. A sound rose from the depths, a layered shriek that raked across the stone. For a moment it sounded like one monstrous thing clawing its way upward.
Then the darkness broke apart.
Not one creature. Many. A cluster of Leaches crawled over each other, their limbs tangled, their seams glowing as they dragged themselves toward the surface in a single heaving mass.
Screams tore through what remained of the crowd. Orchid guards rushed forward, forming a line at the base of the dais. The moment the first Leach broke free of the tangle, they struck, flames surging from their palms in a unified blast.
Ella moved before she could think. She threw out her hands and poured her fire into theirs, forcing the line higher, hotter, brighter. Heat surged across the marble in a blinding wave.
At first, it seemed to work.
Then the Leaches began to swell.
Their bodies expanded as if filling from within, black sinew stretching over bulging ridges. Their seams brightened, glowing a sickly, pulsing gold. The creatures shuddered, drinking in the flame like starving animals.
One of them lifted its head, distended and glistening, and let out a wet, gorging hiss.
They were feeding.
They were growing.
And Ella realized with dawning horror that the Orchid fire was making them stronger.