18. Eirene
EIGHTEEN
EIRENE
We sit in the shadow of the central stone while I recount the vision—the voices, the accusation, the glimpse of the Shadow Court in its full horror. Varkhul listens without interrupting, his expression growing darker with every word.
When I describe the throne made of names, his hand finds mine. The gesture is instinctive, unconscious—I don’t think he realizes he’s done it until my fingers curl around his. The mark on my wrist pulses with warmth, echoed by the heat I can feel radiating from his chest.
We should pull apart. Should maintain the careful distance that’s kept us sane since the mark claimed us.
Neither of us moves.
“A living anchor.” Varkhul’s voice is low, contemplative. “That’s what it called you?”
“I’ve been bleeding for the Veil since I was eighteen.
Eight years of feeding it, holding it closed, becoming part of its fabric.
” I stare at our joined hands—his massive, scarred, built for violence; mine pale, slender, mapped with ritual cuts.
“Apparently that means I’m not just a witch anymore.
I’m a doorway. A breach waiting to happen. ”
“You’re not a breach.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” He turns toward me, and the intensity in his gaze makes my breath catch.
“I know you’ve spent eight years bleeding yourself empty to protect strangers who will never thank you.
I know you’ve stolen memories to spare lives, carried other people’s grief in your own mind, sacrificed everything you are to hold back the dark.
” His free hand rises, hovers near my face without touching.
“Whatever the Sovereign wants to make you—you’re not that.
Not yet. Not ever, if I have any say in it. ”
The words should feel hollow. Should feel like the empty promises of a man who barely knows me, who was sent here to kill me, who has his own sins burning in his memory.
They don’t.
“The mark.” I force myself to address the unspoken thing between us. “It’s making you feel this way. Making you protective. We can’t trust—”
“The mark doesn’t create feelings.” His voice drops lower, rougher. “It reveals them. Amplifies what’s already there.”
The admission hangs between us. I see the cost of it in the tension of his shoulders, the set of his jaw. He’s not a man who admits to feeling anything. Twenty years of executions have taught him to bury emotion, to become the blade the order needed him to be.
And yet.
“What was already there?” The question escapes before I can stop it. “Before the mark. When you looked at me—what did you feel?”
He doesn’t answer right away. His hand is still near my face, close enough that I can feel the heat of his skin.
“Confusion.” The word comes out rough. “The order painted you as a monster. A traitor. But when I arrived—when I saw you bleeding at the stones, exhausted, barely able to stand—” He breaks off.
His jaw works. “You looked at me without fear. Like you’d been expecting death and had made your peace with it. And I thought…”
“What?”
“I thought: this woman is the bravest person I’ve ever seen.” His hand finally touches my face—just a brush of fingers along my cheekbone, lighter than I would have expected from a man his size. “And I wanted to know why. Wanted to understand how anyone could give so much and still stand.”
My throat tightens. I’ve spent so long being the boundary witch—the one who bleeds, the one who steals, the one who holds back the dark—that I’ve forgotten how to be seen as anything else.
But he sees me. Not the role. Not the sacrifice. Me.
“Varkhul—”
“Don’t.” He pulls his hand back. The loss of contact is sharper than it should be. “We can’t afford this. Not now. Not with the Sovereign watching, waiting for weakness.”
He’s right. I know he’s right. The mark is a vulnerability—a crack in both our armors that the entity will exploit the moment it gets the chance.
But his hand is still holding mine. And neither of us is letting go.
The Sovereign speaks again as darkness deepens around the stones.
Varkhul has gone to check on his guards—or what’s left of them.
Two more deserted during the day, taking horses and supplies, fleeing back toward the Iron Citadel with reports that will seal both our fates.
The remaining four watch the perimeter with nervous energy, jumping at shadows, muttering prayers to gods that have no power at the boundary.
I’m alone at the stones when the presence returns.
He’s growing attached to you. The executioner who was sent to end your life is now bound to it. Quite poetic.
“Stay out of my head.”
I’m not in your head. I’m in the Veil. And you—as we’ve established—are part of the Veil. Which means I’m part of you. A pause. Does he know? Does the executioner understand what his mark is doing to the boundary?
I don’t answer. Don’t need to. The Sovereign can feel the truth through our shared fabric—the way my heart stutters at the question, the fear that’s been gnawing at me since the mark burned into my wrist.
Every time your marks flare—every time desire sparks between you—the Veil weakens. The mark is poison. You’re already doing my work for me.
“You’re lying.”
Am I? Feel the boundary, boundary witch. Feel what happens when your blood sings for his.
I don’t want to. Don’t want to confirm what I’ve been dreading since the mark claimed us both.
But the Sovereign doesn’t give me a choice.
It reaches through the thread that binds me to the Veil, that makes me a living anchor, and forces me to perceive the boundary the way it does. To feel every tear, every thin spot, every place where reality has worn through.
And I feel the damage the claiming has done.
Every time the mark has flared—every moment of desire, every accidental touch, every heated glance between Varkhul and me—the Veil has thinned. Not dramatically. Not catastrophically. But persistently. Consistently. A slow erosion that’s been happening since the mark sealed itself into our skin.
We’re killing the boundary. By wanting each other, we’re killing the only thing standing between the world and the Shadow Court.
Now you understand. The mark is my ally. The more you love him, the wider I can tear. The more you deny your desire, the more it consumes you—and the more the Veil feels your suffering. Either way, I win.
“Then I’ll break it.” The words come out desperate. Hollow. “There must be a way to—”
Break an orc’s claiming mark? Laughter ripples through the Veil—dark, mocking, terrible.
The mark cannot be broken. It cannot be denied, cannot be suppressed, cannot be wished away.
It exists until death—and sometimes beyond.
Your only options are to feed it or fight it, and both paths lead to my victory.
I sink to my knees in the black soil. The Sovereign’s presence presses against my mind—heavy, patient, certain, already tasting triumph.
The Sovereign’s answer was the same as before. Surrender. Save him. Become the door.
“I won’t.” The words are barely a whisper. “I won’t let you—”
You don’t have to decide now. I have centuries of patience. Centuries of hunger. You have days—maybe hours—before the order sends more executioners. Before the boundary weakens past the point of repair. Before everything you’ve sacrificed to protect comes crashing down around you.
The Sovereign fades. The voices go silent. The Veil settles back into its familiar hum, as if nothing has happened.
But everything has changed.
I stay on my knees in the black soil, staring at the mark on my wrist—the runes that pulse in time with my heartbeat, with his heartbeat, with the slow dying of the world I’ve given everything to protect.
The mark is poison. Loving him might destroy everything.
I’ve never been in love before.
And I don’t know how to stop.
Varkhul finds me there an hour later.
He doesn’t ask what happened—the mark must have told him enough. He simply drops to his knees beside me, armor creaking, and pulls me against his chest without a word.
I should push him away. Should tell him what the Sovereign revealed—that every touch weakens the Veil, that every moment of desire feeds the darkness we’re trying to hold back. Should put distance between us before we doom the world with our wanting.
Instead, I press my face against his armor and let him hold me while the boundary shivers around us.
“The Sovereign spoke to you again.” His voice rumbles through his chest, through my body, settling into my bones. “I felt it. Couldn’t hear the words, but I felt your fear.”
“It told me—” I stop. Swallow. Start again. “It told me things. About the mark. About what our… what we’re doing to the Veil.”
His arms tighten around me. “What things?”
I should tell him. Should lay out the impossible choice the Sovereign has given me—surrender or fight, either way the darkness wins.
But his heart is pounding beneath my cheek, steady and strong. His arms are wrapped around me like he’s trying to shield me from the entire Shadow Court with just his body. And the mark on my wrist is burning with warmth that should terrify me but doesn’t.
“Later.” The word comes out broken. “I’ll tell you later. Right now, I just—”
“I know.” He presses his lips to the top of my head—not a kiss, exactly, but close enough. “I know.”
We stay there, tangled at the base of the central stone, while the Veil hums its dying song around us. Two people caught in a trap with no good exits—people who should be enemies, who should be executioner and condemned, who should be anything other than what we’re becoming.
The Sovereign is right. The mark is poison. Every moment we spend like this weakens the boundary.
But right now, with his arms around me and his heartbeat in my ear, I can’t bring myself to care.
Maybe that makes me selfish. Maybe that makes me weak.
Or maybe—just maybe—it makes me human.
And that’s a thing the Sovereign, for all its stolen memories and devoured lives, will never understand.