21. Eirene
TWENTY-ONE
EIRENE
The chains are cold against my wrists.
Iron, ancient, inscribed with warding runes that glow faint blue in the darkness. Varkhul found them in the storage cellar beneath my cottage—relics from the boundary witches who came before me, tools designed to protect the keeper from the very forces she guards against.
He’s not using them to execute me. He’s using them to save me.
Somehow, that makes it worse.
“The Sovereign can reach you through the Veil.” His voice is rough as he secures the final clasp around my left wrist, binding me to the central stone.
“You said it yourself—you’re part of the boundary now.
A living anchor. If the Sovereign forces a breach while you sleep, these wards keep you anchored here.
They won’t reach your mind—but they can’t reach your body through warded iron. ”
“And prevent me from moving.” I test the chains, feel them hold firm. The runes pulse in response, warm against my skin, humming with magic older than the current boundary. “You’re imprisoning me to protect me.”
“I’m buying time.” He doesn’t meet my eyes as he checks the clasps, as his massive hands move over the iron with careful precision.
“Draveth arrives in two days. The Sovereign is pushing at the boundary every hour. If it gets into your head while you’re vulnerable—if it twists you against your will—”
“It wins.” I finish the thought for him. “I become the door it wants. The breach that never closes.”
“Yes.” Now he looks at me. The intensity in his gaze steals my breath—a focus so complete it strips away everything else, the mark pulsing on his chest the only thing behind it. “I won’t let that happen.”
The chains rattle as I shift position, trying to find comfort against the cold stone.
There is none. The central monolith rises behind me, twice my height, carved with symbols that hurt to look at directly.
I’ve spent eight years bleeding at its base.
Now I’m chained to it like a sacrifice waiting to be claimed.
“I never thought I’d be someone’s prisoner.” The words come out before I can stop them. “Not after all this. Not here.”
Varkhul goes still. I see the conflict cross his features—the understanding that what he’s doing, however well-intentioned, is still a cage.
“It’s temporary.” His voice has softened, lost some of its commanding edge. “Once we deal with the Sovereign. Once Draveth is—”
“Dead?” I raise an eyebrow. “You’re going to kill another executioner? One of your brothers in the order?”
“If I have to.” No hesitation. No doubt. “I’ve chosen my side, Eirene. Draveth will be standing on the other one.”
The certainty in his voice makes my chest ache. He’s thrown away everything—his position, his reputation, his entire identity—for a woman he barely knows. A woman the mark chose for him, without either of our consent.
“What do you want?” I barely recognize my own voice. “From me. From this. What do you actually want, Varkhul?”
He doesn’t answer right away.
His hand finally makes contact—fingertips brushing my jaw, tracing the line of my cheekbone with a gentleness that seems impossible from hands that have killed so many.
The touch sends heat flooding through me, pooling low in my belly, making the chains rattle as my body involuntarily arches toward him.
His thumb traces my cheekbone, slow and deliberate. An answer without words.
My throat tightens. The chains feel heavier, the stone colder, the darkness pressing in from all sides. And yet—
And yet his hand is so close. And his gaze is all heat and want. And the mark on my wrist is singing with warmth that has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with want.
“I want to understand.” The words come out low, each one deliberate, as though they cost him something to say. “You’ve spent eight years bleeding for strangers. Stealing memories so people can live. The order calls you a traitor, but you’re the only reason the Veil hasn’t fallen.”
“Understanding isn’t wanting.”
“No.” His thumb traces my lower lip, and I forget how to breathe. “It isn’t.”
The air between us has gone thick, charged with the same energy that crackles before a storm. The marks are pulsing in unison—his on his chest, mine on my wrist—and I can feel his heartbeat as clearly as my own. Fast. Unsteady. Hungry.
“I want—” He stops. Swallows. His hand drops from my face, and the loss of contact is almost painful. “I want things I have no right to want. Things that will get us both killed if I’m not careful.”
“Then be careful.” I don’t know why I’m pushing. Don’t know why I need to hear him say it, need to see the wanting in his eyes match the fire burning in my chest. “Or don’t. But stop pretending this is just about protection.”
His jaw tightens. For a moment, I think he’s going to retreat—going to rebuild those walls of discipline and duty that have been crumbling since he arrived at the boundary. Going to be the executioner instead of the man.
Instead, he leans forward and presses his forehead against mine.
“It’s not.” The words are barely a whisper, meant only for me.
“It stopped being about protection the moment I felt our blood mix. The moment the Veil settled for the first time in years because we were standing side by side. The moment I realized that killing you would mean killing a part of myself I didn’t know still existed. ”
My heart stutters. The chains feel lighter suddenly, the stone warmer at my back. Because he’s here—this massive, brutal, broken man—kneeling in front of me like I’m precious instead of condemned.
“Varkhul.”
“Tell me.” He pulls back just enough to meet my eyes, and the desperation in his gaze undoes me. “Tell me what you carry. The memories, the voices, all of it. I want to know what you’ve given to this boundary. What it’s cost you.”
I should refuse. Should keep the darkness locked away, should maintain the careful walls I’ve built around my own horrors. No one wants to hear about the stolen memories that live in my head, the grief that isn’t mine but feels like it is, the faces I see every time I close my eyes.
But he’s looking at me like I’m the only thing in the world that matters. And the chains around my wrists are cold, but his presence is warm. And I’m so tired of carrying this alone.
So I tell him.
“The first memory I stole was a mother’s lullaby.”
I stare past him, into the darkness beyond the stones, where the Veil shimmers with its dying light. “I was eighteen. Still learning. A family had wandered too close to the boundary, and their youngest—a boy, maybe five—was dying. The Veil wanted blood. His blood. All of it.”
Varkhul doesn’t interrupt. He stays crouched before me, a solid presence in the dark, listening with an intensity that makes me feel seen in ways I haven’t felt in years.
“The witch who trained me—she’d died the year before.
I was alone, untested, terrified. And this boy was looking at me with eyes that trusted me to save him.
” I laugh, but it comes out hollow. “So I tried an old technique. A forbidden one. I offered the Veil a memory instead of blood. His mother’s memory of singing him to sleep. ”
“It worked.”
“It worked.” I meet his eyes again. “The boy lived. His mother couldn’t remember the song anymore—couldn’t remember the feeling of holding him, rocking him, loving him in that specific way.
But they both survived. And I thought… I thought I’d found a way to spare people. A mercy that wasn’t murder.”
“But it wasn’t.”
“No.” The word tastes like ash. “Every memory I take lives in me first. Just for a moment—long enough for the Veil to claim it. But during that moment, I feel it. I become it. That mother’s love, that warmth, that bone-deep certainty that her child was the most precious thing in the world—” My voice cracks.
“I felt all of it. And then I watched the Veil consume it, and I knew it was gone forever.”
Varkhul’s hand finds mine—the one that isn’t chained. His grip is warm, grounding, an anchor in the storm of memories threatening to pull me under.
“How many?”
“Hundreds.” I can’t look at him now. Can’t bear to see the judgment that must be forming in his expression. “Hundreds of memories, each one precious to someone. Some days I can’t tell which griefs are mine and which belong to strangers I saved.”
His grip tightens. “Eirene—”
“Are they wrong?” I finally meet his eyes, and I see—not judgment.
Not disgust. Sorrow. Recognition. A man who understands what it means to carry deaths that weren’t your choice.
“I’ve stolen pieces of people’s souls, Varkhul.
I’ve carved holes in their hearts and called it mercy.
The order is right to call me a traitor.
The Sovereign is right that I’ve fed it with every stolen moment.
I’m not a hero. I’m just a different kind of monster. ”
“No.” He releases my hand, cups my face instead, forces me to hold his gaze. “You’re a woman who has given everything—her blood, her peace, her mind—to protect people who will never know her name. That’s not monstrous. That’s sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice that feeds the enemy.”
“Sacrifice that’s kept the enemy contained for eight years.
” His thumbs brush my cheekbones, wiping tears I didn’t realize I’d shed.
“The Sovereign would have broken through long ago without you. Every memory you’ve taken, every tithe you’ve paid—they’ve held the darkness back. You’ve held it back. Alone.”
“Not anymore.” The words escape before I can stop them—an admission I’m not sure I’m ready to make.
His expression shifts. The sorrow gives way to a fiercer intensity, more possessive. “No. Not anymore.”