31. Eirene
THIRTY-ONE
EIRENE
Varkhul screams.
I feel it in my chest—not just hear it, feel it. His agony tears through me like a blade, doubling me over, driving the breath from my lungs. The Sovereign is tearing at him. Hurting him in ways I can’t see but can’t escape.
The brand sears against my skin. Not with the warm pulse I’ve grown used to—this is vicious, savage, as if someone is pressing a heated iron to my soul. I can feel the Sovereign’s claws digging into our link, trying to tear it apart, trying to sever what binds us.
If it succeeds—if it breaks Varkhul—I’ll feel every moment of it. Every shred of his mind being ripped away. Every fragment of his soul being consumed.
“Stop.” I’m on my knees again, hands pressed to my chest, trying to hold onto him through sheer force of will. “Stop, please—”
Another scream rips through our link. This one is worse—higher, more desperate, the sound of a man being broken piece by piece.
I can see it. Through whatever remains of our link, I can see glimpses of what the Sovereign is doing to him.
Varkhul suspended in darkness, chains of shadow wrapped around his limbs, his face twisted in agony as the entity forces him to relive every execution he’s ever performed.
The blade rising. The blood spraying. The light dying in eyes that begged for mercy.
He’s being tortured with his own guilt. His own sins. The very crimes I struggled to forgive him for—now used as weapons against him.
Surrender. The Sovereign’s voice is almost gentle. End his suffering. All you have to do is say yes.
I look at the tear in the Veil. At the Shadow Court beyond—glimpses of walls built from stolen memories, floors paved with grief, a throne room made of everything the boundary has consumed. At the darkness no human has ever entered and survived.
I think about the boy whose mother’s lullaby I stole. The farmer who can’t remember his daughter’s infant face. The young woman who lost her first kiss to pay for her passage through the gate.
I think about Varkhul. His hands, scarred from executions, but so careful when they traced the scars on my arms. His eyes, watching me without judgment even after I saw every sin he’d committed.
The rumble of his voice against my ear when he claimed me, when he pressed inside me and made me forget everything except the feel of him.
I think about waking up in his arms, still slick with sweat and blood, his tusks grazing my temple as he pulled me closer. The way his chest rose and fell beneath my cheek, steady as a heartbeat. The first time I’d felt safe in eight years.
I think about the brand over my heart—the claim that binds us, that makes his pain my pain, that turned two monsters into one impossible thing.
The Sovereign wants me to choose between the world and the man I love. It thinks I’ll sacrifice everything to save him. It thinks I’m weak, sentimental, easily manipulated by threats to the executioner I’ve claimed.
It’s wrong.
I’m not going to choose.
I’m going to take everything.
I reach for my knife.
The Sovereign’s stolen faces shift—confusion flickering across the surface of its form. It expected tears. Begging. A broken witch pleading for her lover’s life.
It didn’t expect me to draw a blade.
What are you doing? The amusement in its voice has curdled into uncertainty. You can’t fight me. Not here. Not—
“I’m not going to fight you.” I press the blade to my palm. “I’m going to come get him.”
You can’t enter the Shadow Court. The Sovereign actually laughs—a horrible sound, made of a hundred stolen voices. No human has ever crossed that threshold and returned. The darkness will consume you before you take three steps.
“Maybe.” I draw the knife across my palm. Blood wells—bright red against pale skin, the same blood that’s fed the Veil for eight years. “But I’m not just any human, am I? I’m the anchor. The door you want so badly. And doors open both ways.”
The Sovereign goes still. Its stolen faces freeze in expressions of dawning horror.
You wouldn’t. Its voice has lost all pretense of control. You’d die. You’d—
“I’ve been dying for eight years.” I let the blood drip from my palm onto the ancient stones.
The Veil responds—shuddering, shifting, the tear in reality widening just a fraction.
“Every night I bleed, I die a little more. Every memory I steal, I lose a piece of myself. This is just… finishing what I started.”
The mark on my chest pulses. I feel Varkhul’s awareness—dim and pain-hazed, but present. He knows what I’m planning. He’s trying to warn me, to stop me, to tell me not to throw my life away for his.
I ignore him.
I choose to walk into hell. I choose to face the darkness that’s been haunting my work since I first came to the Veilborder. I choose to save the man I love, even if it kills me.
I need to touch him again. Need to feel his arms around me, his mouth on mine, his body solid and real and alive. The thought of never having that again—of dying here without feeling his warmth one more time—is unbearable.
Because that’s what love is, isn’t it? Not the claiming mark burning on my chest. Not the magic that ties our souls. Love is the choice to keep choosing someone, even when it hurts. Even when it’s terrifying. Even when every rational part of you is screaming to run.
I didn’t choose to fall for an executioner. Didn’t choose the mark, didn’t choose the claiming, didn’t choose any of the magic that wound us so tightly we can’t tell where one ends and the other begins. But I’m choosing now. I’m choosing him.
And that choice—that single act of will—matters more than all the destiny and magic and ancient prophecy in the world.
I cut deeper. Blood pours now—not the careful offerings I’ve made for eight years, but a flood of crimson that soaks into the stones, that feeds the Veil until the boundary shakes with power.
The tear widens. The Shadow Court beckons.
Stop. The Sovereign’s voice has gone desperate. You don’t know what you’re doing. The Court will consume you. It will—
“Then stop me.” I meet its pale eyes—those points of luminescence that have watched so many souls die. “You’re so powerful. So ancient. So hungry. Stop me from walking through that door.”
It doesn’t move.
It can’t. I see it in the way the stolen faces flicker, the way its massive form trembles with suppressed motion.
The Sovereign can’t stop me because if it touches me now—if it interferes with my blood offering—the Veil will seal the tear and trap it in the Shadow Court.
My blood is the key. And I’m using it to open a door it can’t close.
“I thought so.” I step toward the tear. “You need me willing. You need me choosing to serve you. But I’m not going to serve you, Sovereign. I’m going to destroy you.”
With what? The Sovereign’s voice drips with contempt, but I can hear the fear beneath it. You’re a bleeding girl with a knife. I am centuries of stolen power. I am the darkness that has been growing since your ancestors first broke the Veil. What could you possibly have that could hurt me?
I smile. It’s not a kind smile.
“Every memory you’ve consumed came from me. Every soul you’ve devoured was mine first—stolen by my hands, fed to the Veil by my blood. I gave them to you.” I pause at the edge of the tear, the Shadow Court yawning before me like a hungry mouth. “And I can take them back.”
The Sovereign’s faces cycle through expressions—confusion, realization, terror. It understands now. It sees what I’m planning to do.
I step through the tear.
The Shadow Court swallows me whole.
Cold.
The first sensation is cold—not the chill of winter, but an absence of warmth so profound it seems to steal the heat from my blood. The darkness presses in from all sides, thick and hungry, tasting me with invisible tongues.
The air here—if it can be called air—tastes of grief and forgotten things. Every breath fills my lungs with the residue of stolen memories, the raw burden of centuries of consumed lives. I feel their sorrow pressing against my mind, their rage, their desperate hope for release.
But I’m still bleeding. And in this place, blood is power.
The shadow-creatures that swarm toward me—drawn by the scent of fresh crimson—recoil when they get close. My blood burns them. Eight years of feeding the Veil have made me toxic to the very darkness I’m walking through.
I press forward. The wound on my palm drips steadily, leaving a trail of brightness in the gloom. Ahead, I can feel Varkhul—his presence a beacon of warmth in the frozen dark. He’s still alive. Still fighting. Still holding on.
Hold on, I think at him, pushing the thought through whatever remains of our claiming. I’m coming. Just hold on a little longer.
The Shadow Court reveals itself as I walk.
Walls built from stolen memories—I see faces pressed into their surfaces, mouths open in silent screams, eyes tracking my passage with desperate hope.
These are the souls the Veil has consumed.
The lives the Sovereign has devoured. All of them trapped here, aware and suffering, fuel for an entity that will never let them go.
Unless someone takes them back.
I reach out and touch the nearest face—a woman, young, her features frozen in an expression of loss. A memory surfaces: her mother singing her to sleep, the same lullaby the Sovereign used to torment me. I remember taking this memory. I remember the price she paid to cross the boundary safely.
I give it back.
The magic burns through me—painful, purifying, a reversal of every theft I’ve committed in eight years of mercy. I feel the memory leaving me, feel the space it occupied in my mind emptying out, feel myself becoming just a little bit lighter without the burden of her stolen grief.
The woman’s face shifts, her expression changing from despair to peace. Then she’s gone, released, no longer part of the Sovereign’s prison.
One soul freed. Thousands more to go.
But I’ve made a start. And every soul I free weakens the Sovereign, strips away another layer of its stolen power.
Behind me, the Sovereign roars. It’s felt the loss—the first crack in its armor of stolen power. The sound echoes through the Shadow Court, shaking walls built of memory, cracking floors paved with grief.
I smile and keep walking.
Varkhul is waiting.
And I have a monster to kill.