Chapter 10
Twenty-first year in the life of Ilys of the Veil
The gardens were bathed in a soft silvery glow, the moonlight cascading over the cobblestones.
Ilys stood by the hedges, her figure shrouded in the black garment and veil that clung to her like a second skin.
The fabric caught the faint breeze, shifting just enough to suggest the sharp, elegant angles of her face beneath.
She heard the familiar cadence of boots against stone before she saw him.
Stepping out from the shadowed path, Jorrin’s dark jacket was tailored to his broad frame and his crisp white shirt caught the glow of the lanterns.
His high cheekbones were now more defined, carved by years of discipline and duty in the guard, though the boyish charm that once softened his expression still lingered faintly at the corners of his mouth.
He’d combed his chocolate hair into neat order, but the wind caught at the strands near his temple.
“You always pick the loneliest corners,” he said, gently teasing, though his gaze lingered on her as though she might disappear into the shadows.
Ilys turned her head toward him, though her veil concealed her expression. “Perhaps I like the company of my own thoughts.”
“Your thoughts,” Jorrin said lightly, stepping closer, “are weighty, homely little things. Let me send them away.” He stopped a short distance from her, his eyes searching the dark fabric obscuring her face.
“Decades of Veilmarches,” Ilys relayed, her voice light but edged with the memory of seemingly endless winters. “Yet I never quite learn how to fill the silence.”
“Grim will be home soon enough,” Jorrin assured. He moved closer until he stood within arm’s reach. The veil swayed, teasing at the mystery it concealed. Jorrin’s dark eyes lingered there.
Another breeze caught the veil, lifting it ever so before it resettled. Jorrin’s hand twitched at his side. Finally, he spoke, his voice softer now. “May I?”
After a long moment, she inclined her head just enough to grant him permission.
Jorrin’s fingers climbed unperturbed as they brushed the edge of the veil, the fabric yielding under his touch.
He lifted the veil inch by inch, until her face lay bare before him.
The lantern light danced across her sharp features, casting delicate shadows that accentuated the angles of her cheekbones and the curve of her lips.
Her eyes, dark and expressive, met his without flinching.
The scars etched across her left cheekbone and jaw caught the lantern light, faint but unmistakable.
Jorrin stepped forward, his expression shifting. Not pity, not fear, but awe. He reached out, fingers grazing the ragged edges of her scar, mapping its path like a devoted cartographer. His touch grounded, his calloused fingers gentle against the rough texture.
“Three years,” he whispered, his voice soft. “Still your skin clings to the memory.”
Ilys’s breath hitched, her eyes flickering with emotion that felt too raw to name. He cupped her face then, his thumb brushing lightly against her unmarred cheek, his touch grounding her in the moment. His lips met hers in a fierce yet fragile kiss.
When they parted, Ilys remained still, her veil resting forgotten in Jorrin’s hand. “You are dangerous,” she chided.
Jorrin’s lips curved into a faint, knowing smile. “Only because you let me be.” His forehead rested lightly against Ilys’s, their breaths mingling in the cool night air. The veil, still held loosely in his hand, a symbol of boundaries briefly cast aside.
“Tomorrow will be difficult, yes?” He pressed light kisses across her brow. “You hate him, don’t you?” he said into her skin, his lips brushing against hers.
Ilys let out a breathy laugh, though it held no humor. “The man Rowenna is to marry? I despise him.”
“You’ve never met him,” Jorrin accused, amusement coloring his tone as he pressed another kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“I do not need to,” she replied, her voice low against his lips. “Anyone chosen by Mother Inrith for a match is bound to be insufferable.”
Jorrin chuckled, the sound rumbling softly between them. “You are insufferable, as well.”
“And yet,” she whispered, pulling back just enough to meet his eyes, her own glittering with a sharp edge. “You’re here.”
He didn’t answer, only kissed her again, deeper this time, his hands coming to rest at her waist.
Tomorrow’s wedding loomed in the distance. Rowenna had insisted it be held in the Sanctum so that Ilys could attend, though the idea of standing amidst the ritual and revelry felt more like an ordeal than a celebration.
“So beautiful,” he teased, pressing her close. “Even when you’re sad. Don’t be sad. Don’t waste what little we have.” His plea rolled in raw, threaded with urgency. Since Jorrin had taken up the guard’s colors, their hours came in fragments, stolen from the jaws of duty.
Ilys pressed her forehead against his neck, forcing the dread of tomorrow away, clinging to this fragile present. “I won’t waste a second.”
And she tried. She really did.
The chamber smelled of sage, the air warm with candlelight and incense. Silken silver pooled across the floor like spilled moonlight.
Rowenna stood still in the center of it all, arms lifted as seamstresses adjusted the draping sleeves of the bridal garment.
Her blonde hair had been braided and wrapped into a low coil, the silver veil not yet lowered.
She looked mythic, like a story come to life, though her eyes flicked anxiously between the women fluttering around her like moths.
The bridal garment shimmered in the lamplight, woven with silver-threaded flax, dyed the pale gray of a storm-washed sky, in the tradition of Annon. Silver to reflect purity of heart and intention, to mirror the Veil itself: thin, delicate, radiant, and near invisible unless one knew how to look.
Ilys paused at the threshold, her own black robes stark against the soft brilliance of the room. Boots quiet against the stone floor, she stepped inside, and the seamstresses turned, bowing their heads.
“Leave us,” Ilys said simply. “A Veilwalker’s blessing must be given in private.” They filed out without a word.
Rowenna’s brows shot up. “What is a Veilwalker’s blessing?”
Ilys didn’t look at her until the door closed behind the last seamstress. Only then, she turned, letting her eyes settle on Rowenna’s face.
She gave a dry, tired smile. “It’s when I’m full of shit, but formal enough to be obeyed.”
Rowenna snorted. “I must be immune.”
Ilys tilted her head, stepping closer. “Yes, well. The wedding garb would indicate that.”
That earned a breathy laugh, and the tension in Rowenna’s shoulders seemed to ease. She stared down at the sleeves of her gown, brushing her palms against the embroidered fabric.
“I feel like a child playing pretend,” she confessed.
Ilys reached out and adjusted a loose strand of hair that had fallen from the braid. “A beautiful ghost.”
Rowenna met her gaze. Her eyes, always wide and dark, were teary at the corners. “I am terrified.”
“I know.”
“I have never even... kissed anyone,” she whispered.
Ilys’s smile faded into earnest empathy. “I know.”
“But I’m getting married.”
“Yes.”
Rowenna’s fingers twisted in the edge of her veil. “What if I don’t know what to do? What if I can’t pretend to like it?”
Ilys reached out to adjust the silver drape over Rowenna’s shoulder. “You do not have to pretend. Not for me, not for the King, not for the gods.” Her voice dropped to a careful rhythm. “Especially not tonight.”
Rowenna looked at her. Really looked. “What would you know of it?”
“Nothing,” Ilys said quietly. “But I know what fear feels like when it wears the mask of duty.”
Rowenna blinked fast, her lips pressing into a thin line. “Is it wrong that I want to run?”
“No,” Ilys confirmed, smoothing the silver fabric at her shoulder. “But it is brave that you won’t.”
She did not say what followed in her heart. She did not tell her to flee. She longed to give voice to Rowenna’s doubt, to feed it like kindling and let it burn bright.
Run, her thoughts whispered silently. Let us both abandon these cloaks of obedience.
Let us play at being men, loud, sure, untouchable.
Let us ravage the world and call it ambition.
Let our desire be a shield, wrapping us like a woolen quilt against cold expectations.
Let us make our own names feared so none may speak over us, none may say what we are or what we must become.
But she said none of it.
Instead, she touched Rowenna’s hand with familial emotion, and smoothed the veil over Rowenna’s face. “You look beautiful,” she said.
The candles flickered. Somewhere beyond the stone walls, a bell tolled to mark the hour.
“I wish,” Rowenna said, her voice cracking, “that I had known you in a different time and place. As just girls. Before veils and blades and wedding cloth.”
“You’d have found some other way to grow tired of me,” Ilys dictated. “I would bore you in every lifetime.”
Rowenna gave a shaky huff, half-sob, half-laugh, before lifting both hands to frame Ilys’ face. Her thumbs brushed lightly over her cheekbones. Veil to veil, she faced her juxtaposed likeness; oh, how Ilys loved the reflection it offered her.
“You are everything,” Rowenna said, fierce in her softness. “You are not something to tire of.”
Tears slipped from Ilys’s eyes, dancing for no one to see. The room felt small. Her clothes too tight. Why had she leapt towards adulthood, only to find loneliness waiting, patient, on the other side.
Rowenna drew a shaky breath.
Ilys leaned close, pressing their foreheads together, veils brushing like wings in the air between them.
“No matter how strange it feels,” Ilys whispered, “you are not alone in it.”
They stayed like that a moment longer, two girls who had grown too fast, still searching for softness in a world that had carved them into shapes they never asked for.
Then Ilys stepped back. “I’ll be in the second row,” she said, voice light. “I have all my daggers with me.”
“Naturally.”
“If you pull your veil three times I will know you find him ugly and I will dispose of him,” Ilys promised, half in jest.
Rowenna let out a watery laugh. “Of course you will.”
And when Ilys slipped from the room, back into the shadows of the hall, the scent of sage and silvery light already followed her like a memory.
The Sanctum shimmered, fractured beams streaming through high-arched windows and pooling across the stone floor.
Incense hung saccharine in the air, sweet and cloying to the room.
The congregation gathered, their dark robes blending into the shadows of the towering chamber walls.
All eyes faced the altar, where Rowenna knelt beside her groom, bathed in the watchful gaze of the Ebon Choir.
The officiant stood behind them cloaked in black robes stitched with violet thread.
At his throat, the Choir’s insignia gleamed, catching the light like a sliver of moon.
He stood motionless, hands resting lightly on the ceremonial blade before him, its hilt wrapped in ebony and its metal inlaid with ancient sigils that shimmered faintly in the glow.
“Sealed in the first days,” Lord Hastell began, his voice deep and resonant. “Spoken in the last. Unbroken until the end of all things.”
The congregation echoed him in low unison. The sound rolled through the chamber like thunder on distant hills.
Rowenna and her betrothed knelt before the altar as the Ebon Choir member lifted the blade high above them.
“The Veil did stir, and from its depths came the shadow. And the shadow did speak.”
Even hidden, Rowenna stood tall, tension flickering in the line of her shoulders. Her plain groom knelt beside her, rigid and unreadable. Perfect. Lifeless.
“Bound upon flesh and soul, sealed in shadow and breath” intoned the officiant, his voice serene. “Through this union, you will stand together, not as one soul, but as two, tethered by the threads of the Fates.”
Rowenna’s voice lightened the room. “Before the Veil, I name you. Before the Fates, I claim you.”
Her groom repeated the words, “Before the Veil, I name you. Before the Fates, I claim you.”
Rowenna’s words harbored an intensity that her groom’s delivery lacked. “Through shadow and breath, I bind you,” Rowenna promised.
“Through shadow and breath, I bind you,” echoed her groom, the words falling flat.
“Through death and beyond, I keep you,” they spoke in unison, their voices merging as the blade dipped to rest between their clasped hands.
The Choir member pressed the blade down gently, his tone low and reverent as he concluded, “And the Veil bears witness.” A ripple of murmured approval moved through the congregation.
Ilys watched as Rowenna rose, the silver veil shimmering as it caught the lamplight. To the world: a union. To Ilys: a performance scripted in someone else’s hand.
Ilys’s gaze drifted across the room, seeking him. Jorrin stood near one of the arched windows, his face partially illuminated by the pale light streaming in from outside. Ilys’s chest tightened at the concealed profile.
The vows, the finality of the blade’s touch, the veiled promises of a future Rowenna would now claim, it all pressed against her like an immovable force. She could not tear her eyes away from Jorrin, even as the murmurs of congratulations rose around them.
He would never kneel before an altar with her.
He would never speak vows in her name. And she, in turn, would never step into the light of such a union.
Her path had been set long ago, her place carved out of duty and shadow.
If they were ever to meet at the altar, it would not be for vows but for judgment, with a blade in Ilys’s hand.
A clarity struck, cold and merciless. What was she doing?
There was no happy end, no future to build.
She was a Veilwalker. Her brief, fragile mortality had fooled her into weakness and into grasping at human thoughts that had no place in her.
She mourned Rowenna’s presence already; now, in this moment, she began to mourn Jorrin as well.
At that moment, his attention found her. But Ilys turned away.