27. Eirene
TWENTY-SEVEN
EIRENE
Idon’t want to understand. I want to hate him.
It would be easier if I could hate him. Easier to process the horror in my head if I could assign it to a monster, a villain, a creature of pure malice who deserves nothing but contempt.
But the claiming won’t let me lie to myself.
I feel his guilt. Not performed, not manufactured for my benefit—real guilt, deep and abiding, that he’s carried for years without ever letting it show.
I feel the way each execution carved a piece out of him, left scars on his soul that will never fully heal.
I feel the doubt he couldn’t afford to acknowledge, the questions he couldn’t afford to ask, the humanity he buried deeper with every life he took.
He believed. That’s the horrible truth of it. He genuinely believed that what he was doing was necessary. That the order served justice. That the law existed to protect the innocent, even when it demanded the blood of the innocent to do so.
He was wrong. But he wasn’t evil.
Does that matter? Does intention absolve action? Does believing you’re doing right make the killing any less horrific?
I don’t know. I don’t know how to reconcile the man who held me against the stones with the executioner who watched a boy die for crimes he didn’t commit.
“And now?” The question comes out smaller than I intend. “What do you believe now?”
He doesn’t answer with words. Instead, he opens himself to the claiming—drops whatever walls he’s been holding up, lets me feel everything without filter or protection.
Horror. Deep, abiding horror at what he’s done.
The realization—finally acknowledged, finally allowed to exist—that some of his executions were unjust. That he killed innocent people in service to an order that cares more about control than justice.
That he’s been a weapon pointed at the wrong targets for twenty years, and there’s no way to take any of it back.
But beneath the horror, I feel resolve. Determination. A fierce, desperate need to be better than what they made him. To choose differently. To become the protector he wanted to be instead of the executioner they forced him to become.
It’s not enough. It might never be enough.
But it’s real. And the claiming doesn’t let either of us pretend.
“I’m not asking you to forgive me.” He holds my gaze, and his voice carries only what it carries—no performance, no armor. “I’m asking you to give me the chance to be different. To prove that what I did doesn’t have to define what I become.”
I study him across the small space. The scars on his arms. The iron rings on his tusks—one for every ten kills, I know now, a tradition among executioners. The careful blankness that’s been his armor for two decades, cracking apart to reveal the man underneath.
“And if you can’t be different? If the executioner is all you know how to be?”
“Then at least let me point the blade at things that deserve to die.” A ghost of dark humor crosses his features. “The Sovereign. Draveth, if he comes for you. The order itself, if that’s what it takes.”
“You’d turn against your own people?”
“I turned against them the moment I claimed you.” He steps closer—not touching, but close enough that I can feel his warmth, smell the smoke and metal scent of him.
“You’re my people now. You and this dying boundary and whatever future we manage to claw out of the darkness.
That’s what matters. That’s all that matters. ”
The mark on my chest pulses. I feel his sincerity like sunlight through clouds—warming, brightening, pushing back the shadows his memories have cast.
It’s not forgiveness. I’m not ready for that—might never be ready for that. But it’s acceptance. Of who he is. Of what we’ve become. Of the impossible, terrible, beautiful thing the claiming has made us.
“I can’t forget what I’ve seen.” I reach out, finally, and press my palm to his chest. The mark beneath his skin answers, flaring warm against my touch. “I can’t pretend your hands are clean.”
“I’m not asking you to.”
“But I can give you the chance to prove that the blood doesn’t define you.” I meet his eyes—no walls there now, none of the careful executioner’s blankness, just the weight of everything he’s carrying and the choice he’s made to carry it openly. “That’s all I can give right now. A chance.”
His hand covers mine, pressing it harder against his chest. I feel his gratitude—raw and overwhelming, more emotion than he’s probably shown in decades. And beneath it, I feel resolve hardening into certainty.
“A chance is more than I deserve.” His voice is hoarse. “I won’t waste it.”
The scream tears through the Veil without warning.
Not a physical sound—not the kind that ears can hear. This is deeper. Primal. A cry of agony that rips through the boundary itself, through the marks seared onto our chests, into the very core of what we’ve become.
Varkhul staggers. I catch him—or try to, my smaller frame doing little to support his massive body. We end up tangled on the floor, both of us gasping, both of us clutching at our chests where the marks are suddenly burning with foreign pain.
“What—” I can’t finish the question. The scream is still echoing, bouncing off the inside of my skull, carrying with it images I don’t want to see.
An orc in iron armor. One of the Veil-warden guards—I recognize the mask, the stance, the careful discipline that marks them as Varkhul’s former brothers.
He’s on the road east, a sleeping child slumped across his saddle, putting distance between himself and the boundary.
He doesn’t see the shadow until it’s already inside him.
The Sovereign doesn’t attack from outside.
It slides through a crack in the Veil—thin as a hair, invisible to anyone not looking for it—and pours itself into the guard’s body like smoke filling an empty room.
The orc has one moment of terrible awareness, one second to understand what’s happening, before the entity consumes him from the inside out.
I feel it. Gods help me, I feel every moment of his death.
The guard’s name was Korvax. He had a sister in the Iron Citadel. He collected painted stones—bright colors to offset the gray of the Veilborder. He doubted his commander, suspected treason, but he was loyal to the order above all else.
I know all of this because I feel the Sovereign tear it away.
Memory by memory. Piece by piece. The entity rips Korvax’s life from his mind and devours it, growing stronger with each fragment it consumes. His childhood. His training. His first execution—he was sick afterward, vomited behind the platform while the other guards looked away.
The Sovereign eats it all.
And because I am part of the Veil now—because the claiming has made me a living piece of the boundary—I feel every bite.
“Korvax.” Varkhul’s voice is gutted. He felt it too—I can see it in his face, the horror and grief and helpless rage. “One of my guards. The one who questioned me about the mark.”
“The Sovereign killed him.” My voice sounds distant to my own ears. “Consumed him. It’s… it’s using his memories now. Adding them to the others.”
I had known since the Sovereign showed me the vision. Knowing and feeling it are different things.
“It’s not your fault.” Varkhul’s hand finds my cheek, turns my face toward his. He felt my realization—felt the guilt crashing through me. “You didn’t know.”
“Does that matter?” I throw his own logic back at him. “Does intention absolve action?”
He doesn’t have an answer. Neither do I.
Outside, the Veil hums with the echo of Korvax’s death. The boundary is stable—our claiming saw to that—but I can feel the Sovereign pressing against it now, stronger than before, bloated with fresh memories and stolen life.
It’s testing us. Testing the new barrier we created. Looking for weaknesses it can exploit.
And it’s patient. It’s been patient for centuries. It can afford to wait until we make a mistake.
The executioner and the witch. How sweet. How tragic. You think your claiming makes you stronger, but all it does is give me more ways to hurt you.
Varkhul’s arms tighten around me. I feel his fury—hot and helpless, a warrior with no enemy he can strike.
I wonder which of you will break first. I do so enjoy watching hope die.
Then silence. Thick and heavy, pressing against the walls of the cottage.
I look at Varkhul. He looks at me. And in the space between us, in the claiming that binds our souls as surely as any chain, I feel a new understanding take shape.
We’re not going to survive this by being good. We’re not going to win by being pure or righteous or morally superior to our enemy.
We’re going to survive by being us. The only executioner who ever broke an order’s claiming. The only boundary witch who turned a monster’s weapon against it. Two people bound by blood and magic and a choice no one in the order’s history has ever made.
Maybe that’s not enough. Maybe we’re too damaged, too compromised, too soaked in the blood of innocents to be anyone’s salvation.
But we’re all the Veil has. And we’re not going to let it fall without a fight.
“The other guards.” Varkhul’s voice has gone hard. Professional. The executioner resurfacing, tempered now by grief and purpose. “I dismissed five more when I chose you. They’ll be at the encampment, waiting for Draveth. If the Sovereign can reach them—”
“It will pick them off one by one.” I finish the thought, seeing the strategy clearly. “Grow stronger with each death. By the time it attacks us again, it’ll be twice as powerful.”
“We need to warn them.”
“They won’t listen. Not to you—not after you chose me over the order.”
“Then we make them listen.” His jaw sets. “Or we kill the Sovereign before it can reach them.”
Kill the Sovereign. A creature made of centuries of stolen memories, fed by every soul the Veil has consumed since its creation. A thing that exists in the space between worlds, that can possess guards from the inside, that’s been growing stronger with every tithe I’ve ever taken.
It’s impossible.
But so was surviving last night. So was the claiming. So was any of this.
“Then we kill it.” I square my shoulders, feel the mark on my chest pulse in agreement. “Before it kills everyone else.”
Varkhul’s hand finds mine. Our fingers intertwine, blood-stained and scarred, marked by sins neither of us can erase.
But maybe we can atone for them.
Maybe that’s what redemption looks like—not forgetting the blood on your hands, but using those hands to protect what’s left.
Outside, the dawn that never quite arrives grows lighter. We have work to do.