Chapter 27
Death is dying.
Death is dying.
Death is dying.
Ilys instinctively placed items in her bag, preparing for the journey. Lift an item. Death. Tuck an item. Is. Lift an Item. Dying.
The words punctuated each movement, every breath. How ironic. How cyclical. How gratifying. After his announcement, the rest of the conversation blurred in Ilys’s memory. She had agreed; for Death’s last march, she would not seek to end his life, as long as she would not be asked to end any others.
But she wished she had asked more questions. How did a god die? What came after? Who would fill the role?
She snapped the bag shut, urging composure to follow. There would be an entire journey’s worth of questions. She had to think of Hanna. Of Morrigan. She must prepare everything and everyone for her departure. Gone were the days of slipping away, without warning.
She smoothed the fabric of her veil, then slipped the satchel over her shoulder.
How strange, that her entire life could be reduced to what fit inside this single bag.
The thought made her skin prickle, as though she were wearing a garment too tight.
Squaring her shoulders, she crossed the corridors toward the courtyard where Elspeth would already be waiting with Hanna.
At this hour, they would usually begin training.
Today, it became the place they would say goodbye.
The moment Hanna caught sight of Ilys, she wriggled free of Elspeth’s grasp and ran to her.
“Elsie says you’re leaving,” she said, her voice small and wounded.
Ilys could almost see the quiver of her lower lip beneath the veil. She had meant to tell Hanna the night before, but the melancholy stirred by thoughts of Baron had drawn her mind elsewhere.
Ilys rested a hand on the small Veilwalker’s head. “We spoke about this possibility, remember? I promise it won’t be long.”
“We’ve never been apart!” Hanna cried, clutching at her sleeve. Ilys nearly laughed at the protest. They had been apart—Hanna had lived the first five years of her life without her—but the girl clung to her now as though Ilys were the only world she had ever known.
Ilys knelt, her veil brushing against Hanna’s, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “I have to go, little one, but I’ll be back soon. You’ll wish I had stayed away longer, just so you wouldn’t have to endure my silly exercises.”
Hanna flung her arms around Ilys’s leg, pinning the dark fabric to her calf and thigh.
Morrigan had crept close without a sound and now pressed his head against Ilys’s other leg, as though anchoring her in place.
For a moment they were a small, fragile family huddled together on the cobblestones beneath a flat, gray sky.
Beyond the gates, Death’s silhouette waited. He wore no godhood today. Only the shape of a man whose mortal eyes fixed on them, quiet and somber. Ilys forced herself to ignore him.
She slipped the sketchbook from her satchel and pressed it into Hanna’s arms. “For when you miss me.” Then, glancing at Elspeth, who lingered a few paces behind, she added, “I’m sure Elspeth has plenty of stories about Grim she’d be happy to share.”
Hanna clutched the book to her chest and squeezed tighter with her free arm, as though sheer will might keep Ilys from leaving.
Lost in the moment, Ilys barely registered Mother Inrith’s approach until the woman’s hand closed over Hanna’s arm, prying her free.
The Mother’s voice cut through the courtyard, sharp and brittle with age.
“Let us not confuse duty with emotion. Say farewell to the Veilwalker, Hanna.”
Obedient as ever, Hanna allowed herself to be led away.
Ilys fought the instinct to intervene, shoving the discomfort down, layer by layer, until it settled like a stone in her chest. Weakness could not be shown, not today.
Gabriel’s ascension to his new role proof enough of that.
She closed her eyes, inhaled once, and turned toward the gates.
Hanna’s muffled whimpers followed her, but she pretended not to hear.
Ilys led Spire from the stables to stand beside Death’s waiting mare, her hand gliding down her pale mane in a calming motion meant as much for herself as for the horse.
“To be so missed,” Death remarked.
Ilys glared at him through the veil. “Do not speak to me of her.” She swung onto Spire’s back and tilted her head, urging him to mount and ride.
The air beyond the Sanctum swelled with the icy morning frost, stinging Ilys’s cheeks.
Only when the walls had faded into the mist behind them did she let herself breathe more freely.
Death rode at her side, unusually quiet, his mortal frame outlined starkly against the gray horizon. He seemed smaller like this.
“What shall I call you now?”
He shrugged. "I am still Death."
"No,” she challenged, tilting her head. "Death intimidates. Death is eternal. You are a silly, pithy mortal now."
A short laugh escaped him. “How good of you to remind me.” He thought on it, his hands loose around the reins. “I do not know that a name is worthwhile for the time I have left. Names are for natural creatures. I no longer know what I am.”
“I have questions,” she noted. He did not respond, but looked at her from the side of his eyes thoughtful, urging the queries from her mouth.
“When will you die?”
“Endeavor to not sound so eager, Ilys.” His voice petted the s, exaggerating the silkiness of her name.
“When?” she repeated, haughty and bored. Inside she clamored for answers.
“I know not the exact moment, but I will not live to see another Veilmarch. This is all I’ve been told.”
“How will you die?” she badgered, already moving on. It was macabre, the detached way she spoke of his death, and she reveled in it.
Death leaned back, his face half in shadow, and for once he did not wear a smile. “You know of the Veyth, don’t you?”
Ilys frowned, surprised. “The threads? Of course. Every child of the Sanctum learns them. The Fates weave the Veyth and cut them when it is time for a soul to pass.”
“Good,” he said softly, as though she had passed some test. “Then you know there is not one thread for each person, but one thread for all. A single skein, endless, looping back on itself. When a mortal dies, their knot is severed and their portion of the thread feeds the weave again.”
She swallowed, uneasy. “And you?”
He turned his palm up, staring at it as though he expected to see it fray.
“Gods are not cut. We are unraveled. Slowly. Strand by strand.” His voice dropped lower, almost conspiratorial.
“My Veyth is already loosening. You’ve seen it.
I am less than I was. A fiber is taken from me, spinning it toward the one who will replace me.
One day there will be nothing left to pull.
The world cannot bear two of me. So it thins me out until I am gone, and my successor is whole. ”
Her fingers twitched at her side, aching for her dagger, yet finding no one to stab.
“And you simply let this happen?”
His mouth curved, wry and tired. “What else is there to do, little Veilwalker? To resist the Veyth is to snarl the whole weave. Better to be unraveled cleanly than to tangle the world.”
“So noble from the mouth of a creature of cruelty.”
“Cruel? What have I done that is so cruel?”
“You take those that displease you. Simply because you can.”
“I listen to the fates, Ilys. There is no abstract emotion driving my decisions. The one time I faltered, the one time I acted outside of my domain, was the day I saved you. And look what it has cost me.”
“What do you mean?” she pried.
He spared her a drill glance, his mare trotting ahead.
The rain came down gradually at first, a drizzle that misted against their faces as they rode.
But by the time the sun had sunk behind the curtain of storm clouds, the heavens opened in earnest, spilling sheets of cold, unrelenting water over the land.
The dirt path beneath them softened into a slick mess of mud, their horses slogging through it with heavy, labored steps.
Ilys was miserable.
Her clothes clung to her. Her veil, drenched and useless, stuck to her face, water running in thin rivulets down her neck, collecting in the folds of her cloak.
She curled deeper into herself, hunching her shoulders against the downpour, but it did little good.
Ahead of her, Death rode just as silently, his dark figure barely visible through the veil of rain.
Just as wet, just as cold, he did not complain and it irritated her beyond comprehension.
A crack of thunder rumbled overhead, rolling through the sky like distant war drums.
Then his voice carried through the storm.“We will stop here,” he called.
She could barely make out his form as he veered off the road toward a small, weather-beaten inn nestled against the trees. The building sat dark and low to the ground, its slanted roof dripping from the storm, the narrow windows teasing light.
Too cold to argue, she heeded.
By the time she reached the inn, her hands were numb, her legs sore from gripping Spire’s slick coat.
Death had already dismounted, his mortal form shadowed beneath the rain, his hair plastered against his forehead.
He turned as she swung down from the saddle, barely composing herself before his hands were on her, firm but careful, guiding as her feet hit the ground.
She shivered violently, the cold settling deep in her bones.
Without a word, he pulled his cloak from his own shoulders, the heavy, sodden fabric hanging dark with rain, and wrapped it around her.
She scowled, gripping the edges, water pooling at her fingertips.
“You think you are helping,” she nit-picked, her voice rough with discomfort, “but your cloak might as well be a body of water itself.” She shrugged off his touch, shaking out the drenched fabric, annoyed at the gesture, annoyed at him, annoyed at all of it.