6. Varkhul
SIX
VARKHUL
She shouldn’t be standing. She’s lost too much blood—I can smell it, the copper-sweet scent of her filling the air. Any normal person would have collapsed hours ago.
But she’s not normal. The boundary has marked her, changed her, transformed her into a creature that can survive what would kill anyone else. I see it in the silver threading through her hair, in the way her eyes have gone dark at the edges—pupils dilated wide, almost swallowing the gray.
She smells good.
The thought comes unbidden, unwanted, and I shove it down with savage force. She smells of blood and exhaustion and twilight magic gone wrong. She smells of everything I’ve spent my life executing. She should not smell good.
“The order has been watching you.” I fall back on facts, on evidence, on the solid ground of duty. “For years. Documenting your crimes. Building a case.”
“I know.” She takes a step toward me. Just one, but it’s enough to make me aware of how close she is. How small. How breakable. “I’ve known since they started sending observers to count the travelers I save. Since they began tracking every memory I’ve taken to spare someone’s life.”
“You admit to the thefts.”
“I admit to survival.” Her chin lifts higher. “Mine. Theirs. The whole damn world’s, if the Veil falls.”
Defiance. I’ve seen it before—in criminals who think they can argue their way out of the blade, in traitors who believe their cause justifies their crimes. It never works. The sentence is what it is.
But I’ve never seen defiance mixed with this kind of bone-deep weariness. This resignation that has nothing to do with fear.
She expected me. She’s been waiting for death, and she’s chosen to face it standing.
“The order doesn’t care about survival.” The words come out before I can stop them. Not accusation—observation. “They care about control.”
Her gaze sharpens. That soft gray turns cutting, assessing, reading a truth in my face I didn’t mean to show. “Dangerous words for an executioner.”
“Observation. Not opinion.”
“Is there a difference?”
I don’t answer. Can’t answer. The mark is screaming at me now, heat pulsing in waves that make it hard to think, hard to focus on anything but the woman standing an arm’s length away. I want to step closer. Want to touch the dried blood on her skin and see if it’s as warm as it smells.
What is happening to me?
“You’re different.” She tilts her head, studying me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle. “The other orcs who’ve come to the border—they recoil from me. The Veil pushes them away, and they let it. But you…”
She trails off. Frowns.
“But I what?”
“The Veil hates you.” She says it simply, factually, no judgment in her voice. “I can feel it reacting to your presence, trying to push you out. Your blood is poison to the boundary.”
“I’m aware.”
“But you’re still standing here.” Her frown deepens. “Still pushing forward, even though every step damages what you were sent to protect.”
I have no response to that. She’s right—I’ve felt the Veil thinning since I arrived, felt the barrier weakening under the burden of my ancestry. Every moment I spend here makes things worse.
But I can’t leave. Can’t retreat. Can’t do anything but stand here and burn while she holds my gaze with those measuring eyes.
“Sir.” Korvax’s voice cuts through the tension. My guard stands at the edge of the stone circle, posture stiff with unease. “Message from the encampment. Bound spirit delivery.”
I turn away from Eirene with more effort than it should take. The mark screams at the separation—irrational, impossible, but undeniable.
The bound spirit hovers beside Korvax—a wisp of captured soul, sealed in a glass vial, pulsing with the pale light of enforced servitude. I take the vial. Break the seal. Let the message pour into my mind.
High Warden Kravos’s voice fills my skull, cold and certain.
Eirene Marrow is to be executed at dawn. No delays. No exceptions. The breach is too dangerous to permit the traitor witch to live. Her continued existence weakens the boundary more than her death ever could. Complete your mission, Executioner. The order is watching.
The spirit dissipates. The message ends.
Dawn. Hours away. Enough time to prepare, to verify, to follow proper procedure.
I turn back to Eirene.
She hasn’t moved. Still standing in the shadow of the central stone, blood drying on her skin, exhaustion written in every line of her body. But her gaze is alert. Calculating.
“The message.” Not a question. “Your orders.”
“Dawn.” The word tastes wrong in my mouth. Bitter. “You’re to be executed at dawn.”
She nods. Slow. Unsurprised. “Then you have a choice to make, executioner.”
“The sentence stands.”
“The sentence is death.” She takes another step toward me.
Close enough now that I can see the pulse beating in her throat, can smell her blood warm against the cold air—herbs and something deeper underneath, entirely too distracting.
“But the boundary doesn’t care about sentences.
It cares about blood. And right now, my blood is the only thing holding it shut. ”
Behind her, the tear in the Veil pulses. Widens slightly. The pallid glow intensifies, and through the gap, I catch a glimpse of vastness and darkness, an awareness watching with hungry attention.
She’s not lying. The boundary is dying, and she’s the only thing keeping it alive.
The order wants her dead anyway.
I force the thought down. Shove it into the same dark place where I keep everything else that might interfere with duty.
The woman I’ve been sent to execute is watching me, waiting, certain of truths I can’t yet see.
“You have until dawn.” The words come out rough, wrong, nothing at all what I meant to say. “We’ll discuss the order of operations.”
Her eyes widen. Just slightly. Just enough to show that I’ve surprised her.
Then she smiles.
It’s not a happy expression—there’s too much weariness in it, too much knowledge of what’s coming. But it transforms her face. Softens the sharp lines of exhaustion. Makes her look, for just a moment, dangerously beautiful.
Beautiful. The word echoes in my skull. A traitor witch covered in dried blood, and you’re thinking she’s beautiful.
The mark blazes bright enough to hurt.
“Follow me.” She turns toward a small structure at the edge of the stones—a cottage, barely more than a hovel, crouched in the shadow of the monoliths. “There’s a child inside. A traveler. He stumbled through the Gate tonight, and I need to see that he’s still breathing.”
“A child.”
“I saved his life.” She glances back at me, chin lifted, daring me to comment. “Stole a memory to do it. Add it to the charges, if you want.”
She walks away without waiting for my response.
I follow.
I shouldn’t. I should stay at the stones, secure the perimeter, maintain the professional distance required of my position.
I definitely shouldn’t be trailing after a condemned witch, watching the way she moves despite her exhaustion, noticing the slim line of her shoulders beneath blood-stained fabric.
My guards exchange glances behind their iron masks. I feel their confusion, their unease. This isn’t how executions work. The condemned doesn’t lead. The executioner doesn’t follow.
“Secure the perimeter,” I tell them without turning around. “No one approaches the stones until I give the order.”
They obey. They don’t question—not yet. But I can feel the reports already forming in their minds. The messages they’ll send back to Kravos if I give them reason.
Let them. The thought surprises me with its vehemence. Let them report. Let them question. I need to understand what’s happening here before I swing the blade.
But the Veil settles as she walks. The screaming fades. The tear shrinks, just slightly, held closed by her presence alone.
And my mark burns.
Burns for her.
I don’t understand it. Don’t want to understand it. But I follow anyway, into the shadow of the cottage, where a stolen child sleeps and dawn waits with its inevitable blade.
Just another number, I tell myself. Just another execution.
But the fire in my chest calls me a liar.
And through the tear in reality, a vast and patient intelligence turns its attention toward the executioner who just made a very dangerous choice.