Chapter 11
She had avoided Jorrin for as long as she could. She slipped past him in corridors and pretended her gaze fixed anywhere but on his. But elusion would not hold forever. Any lie would do, so long as it cut deep enough to stop him from fighting for them.
That evening, she forced the words out. They were cold, merciless animals meant to wound.
She no longer loved him. They could never be together.
If she did not close the door now, and close it hard, her resolve might fracture.
His reply was no reply at all; only a long look with those soulful eyes, too gentle, too knowing, as though he saw through every piece of distance she had tried to put between them. But he relented, pressing his lips to her veiled forehead in goodbye.
Later, the fire in the common room had burned low.
The hour grew late enough that the Sanctum lay quiet, save for the wind sighing through the arches.
Ilys slipped inside expecting solitude. Instead, Baron sat sprawled on one of the long benches with her sketchbook balanced carelessly in his hands.
His boots rested on the table, his posture infuriatingly at ease.
Breathing through her nose, she moved to nudge at his legs until he relented with a grin, dropping them to the floor.
Still, he did not look at her, only flipped through the pages, his brow creased, weighing every line.
The faces stared back at them. Baron and Grim, Rowenna, and Jorrin. And beyond them, the others—the condemned and the lost, the faces of the Veil’s quiet harvest. Baron dragged a finger along one face, tracing the ink, memorizing its shape.
“You both hold it too closely,” he remarked. At last he glanced up, his expression cutting. “The guilt. The self-hatred. It’s suffocating.”
Ilys lowered herself beside him, her eyes on the sketch. She remembered that boy’s eyes, pleading yet resigned. She had thought Death cruel for ordering it. Thought herself worse for obeying.
“I’ve broken it off with Jorrin,” she confessed quietly.
Baron absorbed this without surprise, studying her instead of the book. Then he reached out, caught her chin between his fingers, and guided her away from the sketches. His touch firm but not unkind. It grounded her.
“Duty is not identity, Ilys,” Baron said, his tone neither cruel nor indulgent.
. His gaze cut through her resistance, adamant, willing her to believe him.
“Everyone bears duty, and everyone must decide how much of themselves they will let it consume. You—” he faltered, the next words paining him—“you have let it take everything. You have bled for it. Killed for it. Let it dictate every step of your life as if you were born for nothing else.”
She turned her face away, but he did not let her escape so easily. His fingers tilted her chin back toward him, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"You are lovely and kind,” he continued, low and insistent. "The Fates have no say in how you spend the time that is yours."
Her chest tightened. She wanted to believe him, yet her gaze slipped to the book again and to the faces she had tried to preserve, to understand. It would never be enough.
“You make it sound simple,” she bit back after a moment. “Separating the two.”
“It is not simple,” Baron replied, brushing a knuckle along her cheek.
“I will not lie and say I am not relieved by your choice. The story I told you of the Veilwalker was no silly fable. My father lived when it happened. If the King were ever to suspect you and Jorrin… or Grim and I… ” His jaw tightened, words hard to force out.
“Someone would pay for the distraction. The throne does not forgive divided loyalties. It is a messy, terrifying truth.”
Ilys thought of Jorrin—his warmth, his gentleness, the life still waiting for him—and felt the gravity of her choice settle more firmly.
“Let us speak of it no longer,” she begged.
Sensing her resolve, Baron turned the page with exaggerated care. He studied the drawing, then snorted. “You were not kind to my midsection here, you little bitch.”
Ilys barked out a laugh, sudden and sharp, and pressed closer beside him. Grateful for his ever present affinity for levity.
“You look strong,” she shot back, patting his stomach. “Formidable, even. That’s all muscle, obviously.”
Baron’s body shook with laughter as he dropped a paternal kiss to the top of her head. “Mm. Right.”
The hills lay bare in winter, stretched beneath a pale sky the color of bone.
Frost clung to the grasses in white lace, and the breath from Ilys’s mouth curled into the air like incense smoke.
She walked alone, wrapped in her black woolen cloak, her boots pressing silent paths into the frozen earth.
She passed through the familiar stretch of pine and barren alder, following the narrow deer trail that led beyond the outer walls of the Sanctum.
And there, down the gentle slope, where the rocks bowed inwards and the earth cupped itself into a shallow hollow, lay the winter pool. A spring still fed it, so it did not freeze entirely. The surface rippled faintly, steam lifting where warmth clashed with cold.
She stepped close, boots crunching softly, her gloved hand drifting to the clasp at her collar.
Breath slow, she slipped the cloak from her shoulders.
Then her gloves. Her tunic. Her underthings.
Each layer peeled away like bark from a tree, until she stood naked in the winter air, body pale against the dark trees, scars like pale river-etchings across her skin.
The cold bit into her all at once, sharp and merciless.
She did not resist the shudder that took her.
She needed to feel it, this proof of flesh. Proof of life. Proof of reality.
A quiet laugh escaped her, breathless and sharp, and she stepped into the pool.
The shock of it stole her voice. She ducked under quickly, knowing hesitating would make it worse, and surfaced with a gasp, arms curling around her chest. It hurt and the ache burned through her, bright and cleansing.
She drifted through the water in dawdling strokes, her hair streaming behind her like ink.
Steam curled up around her, blurring the edges of the world.
She floated on her back, lips tinged blue, but eyes open to the sky.
Above her the clouds drifted, swollen with the snow that had yet to fall.
“I am here,” she whispered, to no one.
To the wind.
To Grim, if he could hear her.
To Rowenna, wrapped in silver, tucked into a new life she did not choose.
To the little girl who had once yearned to fly.
Her teeth chattered as she emerged, pulling herself back onto the frost-bit stone.
Her bare skin steamed against the cold, hair sticking to her back in frozen ropes.
She did not rush to dress. She stood there instead, looking out over the glade, her arms loose at her sides.
She had imagined this kind of solitude so often.
A life where no one waited to command her, no hand reached for her blade, no Fate whispered at her heel.
Was it a virtue to sacrifice, or simply a transgression dressed in duty?
She pulled her cloak back over her body, fingers fumbling with the cold, and tied it tightly at her throat.
The frost crunched beneath her bare feet as she walked the winding trail back toward the Sanctum.
Her clothes were bundled beneath one arm, wrinkled, and speckled with pine needles.
Only her heavy cloak and black veil shielded her from the cold, and even then, the wind slipped through the gaps, teasing her skin with icy fingers.
Her hair hung in wet ribbons down her back, strands catching the wind like dark ribbons.
She felt flushed, alive. The kind of warmth that followed a plunge into freezing water came over her, a breathless clarity pulsing through her limbs. Her cheeks burned, and her body hummed from the inside out.
As the forest thinned, the long stone wall of the Sanctum came into view, rising gray and silent against the sky.
At the edge of the road, a black carriage waited, wheels dusted with frost, the emblem of the Ebon Choir etched in gleaming silver on its door.
An attendant waited beside it, tall and thin in the black cassock of the inner order.
His pallid face betrayed no emotion, and he held his hands clasped with careful precision behind his back.
“Veilwalker,” he said crisply, giving her a shallow bow. “There is an execution scheduled at dusk. Death has called you to attend.”
Ilys stopped a few paces from him, shifting the bundle of clothes beneath her arm. “Not yet,” she said, voice mild.
He blinked, his brow tightening. “The order comes from Lord Veylen’s seat. It is expected.”
She tilted her head, the veil shadowing her expression. “I said, not yet.”
He paused, measuring how far he dared to press. “Veilwalker... with all reverence, I must insist.”
A grin ghosted across her lips beneath the veil.
In one swift motion, she opened her cloak. The wool parted to reveal bare, flushed skin beneath, still damp from the spring, still touched by winter’s bite. Her scars glinted like pale ink across her ribs and hips.
The attendant's breath caught audibly. He recoiled as if struck, turning his face with a sharp, sputtering sound.
Ilys barked out a laugh, low and full in her chest, wild and wicked. “You insisted,” she said.
She wrapped the cloak around herself again, tying it loosely at her throat, amusement curling a smile across her mouth. The attendant stammered indistinctly and stepped hurriedly toward the carriage, suddenly fascinated with the buckles on the side door.
She started walking again, back toward the Sanctum gates, her bare feet slapping softly against the snow-kissed path. Behind her, the attendant stood rigid and dismayed, likely reconsidering every life choice that had brought him to this unfortunate morning.
Ilys only laughed to herself, dry and brittle, a sound shaped by years and tempered by loss.
Age had mottled her reverence, made her bold and unwieldy.
No longer the solemn girl they once dressed in ink and blood, she had grown older, one-and-twenty now, and stranger too—looser in the bone, quicker to bite.
And cheekier, when the mood took her.
She looked back once over her shoulder, her dark veil fluttering with the motion.
“Tell them I’ll be there before the blade dulls,” she called.
And then she disappeared into the gates, humming softly, leaving behind a trail of melting footprints.
The city had grown heavier of late. Too many guards lined the streets.
The rebellion that had flared in the villages had not been quenched.
It was festering, smoldering. Refugees trickled through the gates with hollow eyes and bones pressing sharp against their skin, while those already within the walls fought over scraps of bread.
Hunger haunted every alley. Sickness carried on the wind.
Ilys observed the crowd pressing in, their faces gray and drawn. She knew that look. Not devotion. Not reverence. A quiet, rotting hatred.
Why? The thought gnawed at her as it had for months.
Why had the Bargain not held? Why, after centuries of sacrifice, did famine still rot the harvest and plague still crawl through the streets?
She had bled for the Veil, killed for it, and given her hands, her heart, her very name.
And yet the kingdom starved. And yet the children died coughing blood into their mother’s arms.
Ilys waited at the foot of the dais, as she had done countless times before. Snowmelt clung to her veil, and mud and slush bled into the hem of her robes.
A ripple of voices carried through the square, a low murmur of agreement that pricked at her skin.
Ilys’s mind flashed back to the riot, to her body curled beneath fists and boots, breath crushed from her lungs.
She saw that same fury in their eyes now, as clearly as she saw the guards shifting, knuckles white on their spears.
They no longer believed. Not in the King. Not in the Veil. Not in her.
“Traitor,” Lord Veylen announced behind her, his voice carrying over the stonework. “Spy. Poisoner of Faith. Desecrator of the Veil.”
The prisoner twisted, bloodied lips curled in contempt. “Your Veil is rot,” he rasped.
Ilys paused, just a step below the prisoner. Her fingers tightened on the hilt.
“I know what you are,” he said, eyes locking with hers through the veil. “Beneath your mask, beneath your names and prayers. I know what you really are.”
She fought the fallible sentiment threatening her resolve. Raised the blade.
The prisoner screamed before the knife touched him. Fear marked many, but fury set him apart: a raw, howling defiance that filled the execution square and set the onlookers shifting, uneasy in their boots. The sound carried through the Capitol like a crack in the stone.
He lunged.
It happened too fast, the bonds snapping, the guards shouting, her body reacting before thought could catch up.
He threw himself at her with desperation and ruined pride.
The blade caught him low, too low, not in the heart.
Blood erupted across her front, warm and immediate.
It splattered the veil, painted the temple’s holy sigil across her chest in arterial red.
He crashed into her and they both went down.
She hit the stone hard, air knocked from her lungs.
He writhed on top of her, choking, clawing at her arms, his mouth a gory snarl.
She screamed.
Not in pain. Not in fear.
In rage.
The blade came down again, into his neck this time. Again. Again. It caught between bone. She twisted. She felt something snap.
He convulsed. Shuddered.
Stopped.
The square mourned and when she rose, her robes clung to her like a second skin, soaked through in crimson.
Her veil drooped, half-torn, exposing one hollow eye.
Her gloves had split at the seams from gripping the blade so tightly, and blood ran in thin rivulets down the inside of her wrists, warm and indistinguishable from the man’s.
A woman’s voice cracked out, “Murderer!” before being drowned by the hiss of others trying to hush her. The guards shifted nervously, shields raised, eyes sweeping the crowd, expecting a riot to break at any second. Ilys felt their stares sear through her veil: hungry, accusatory, unblinking.
Veylen approached at last. “Well done,” he said, his smile crooked. “So thorough. So... zealous.”
She didn’t look at him.
She looked down.
At the ruin she had made.