Chapter 37
The March
They rode hard through the bitter wind, its teeth gnashing at their faces, skeletal shadows of trees clawing long across the snow-laden path.
Ilys’s legs ached, her wound throbbed with each stride of her horse, and her face stung with icy spray.
The pain, the weariness, all of it fell away when she saw it.
The Divide.
The land broke clean in two. A wall of green forest stretched before them, sun-drenched and impossible, the trunks of ancient trees standing sentinel in the crisp light.
Where frost ended, spring began. No thaw, no mud, no gray slush; the line between the boundary was sharp, as though winter itself had been carved away by an unseen hand. A wound in the world.
Spire balked, ears flattening, hooves striking the frozen ground. Death’s mount snorted as well, stamping the earth, eyes rolling white. Neither animal wished to cross.
"Step down, Ilys,” he instructed, dismounting with fluid ease as he led her into the sun-drenched greenery.
Ilys slid from the saddle, boots crunching in snow. At the threshold she paused, breath clouding in the cold, eyes fixed on that unnatural shimmer where one season bled into another. Then she stepped forward.
The moment her boot crossed, winter fell away.
Warmth enveloped her, moss breathing beneath her feet, golden shafts of light dripping through high boughs.
The forest closed around them, and the pulse of the Veil whispered at the edges of her skin.
It did not feel like entering another place, but another body.
Living. Watching. Leaves rustled though no wind stirred.
Bark shivered beneath her fingertips when she brushed it.
More than once, she swore she heard her name whispered low, breathed through the weave of branches.
And then, like a mirage taking form, the portal loomed.
An impossible monolith, neither stone nor glass, shifting at the edges like the veil of a dream. The light within it flickered, unsteady, like an untrustworthy reflection. As they approached, she lifted her hand, fingers grazing the bark. The wood was warm beneath her touch, thrumming.
The doorway to the Veil.
Death turned to her, holding out a length of black silk, folding it carefully over his palm before reaching for her hand.
"I will take the mantle of my godhood,” he said quietly. "It is required for this."
Ilys swallowed, watching as he looped the silk around her wrist and knotted it with careful precision.
His fingers moved deftly, securing the fabric with an ease that suggested long practice.
Then, without hesitation, he bound his own wrist and pulled the silk taut, knotting it over and over again until the black threads coiled against his skin like vines.
"These are the bindings of our bargain,” he instructed. "You cannot release them. The Veil will cull you. It will take what is not secured."
She flexed her fingers, feeling the silk bite against her pulse. "That is ominous."
"But true." He raised a brow, finishing the last knot. "So heed me, Ilys."
She turned back to the doorway, the surface shifting like dark water
The silk jerked suddenly as he yanked it close. She stumbled forward, colliding against his chest, breath catching as the warmth of him crowded her senses. His hand steadied her, firm at her back.
He bent his head, lips brushing against the line of her jaw, words breathed into her skin. “Do not loosen it. No matter what. Promise me.”
Her pulse thrummed wildly beneath the binding. “I promise.”
He exhaled raggedly then drew the length of silk taut between them, bound his own wrist, and pressed the knot until it cut against his flesh.
And together they stepped into the Veil.
The Veil did not open—it swallowed.
Air folded around them, the tether pulsing at her wrist once, twice, before settling into a rhythm not her own. The limitless scene caressing her skin as if stepping into the hollow chest of a creature vast and alive.
At first there was forest. Trees arched high overhead, their trunks smooth as bone, their branches carpeted with black leaves that whispered as she passed.
Not in wind—there was no wind here—but in voices, faint and sibilant, echoing her name.
She clenched her jaw, refusing to glance too long at the shifting bark, but she swore the knots in the wood bent into the shape of eyes.
Flowers carpeted the moss, but as her boots brushed against them, they folded closed, retreating from her touch.
The scent landed sharp—too sharp—like herbs crushed between impatient fingers.
Her pulse drummed louder, and the silk at her wrist answered, tightening.
She looked up to find Death’s back just ahead, but when she blinked, he was impossibly far, a shadow dissolving between the trees.
The tether stretched and lengthened, threads trembling.
Then the forest ended.
A plain opened wide, its earth dark and oiled slick.
Each step sank fractionally, the ground shuddering faintly beneath her boots.
She froze, breath shallow. The soil pulsed, a second heartbeat beneath her feet.
She bent, palm grazing the ground, and nearly cried out when the drumming leapt up her arm.
The Veil throbbed with its own life, tethered to hers.
A bell tolled.
The sound reverberated across the plain, not distant but close, like it had been struck beneath her ribs. Each chime rattled through her bones, rolling outward, urging her forward. She obeyed without thinking, each step landing in rhythm with the next peal.
How long she walked, she could not say. Minutes bled into hours, then into a blur beyond measure.
Her legs did not ache, yet her thoughts frayed, thinning at the edges.
Memories slipped loose—Hanna’s face, the Sanctum’s corridors, even Baron’s laugh—all dissolving, smoking like parchment in fire.
She clenched her fists, trying to drag them back, but the more she grasped, the more they unraveled.
Ahead, Death’s form flickered again. Close. Then far. Then impossibly small against the horizon. The tether slackened suddenly, nearly falling away from her wrist. Panic slashed through her. She yanked it tight, stumbling forward until it pinched her pulse once more.
Death. Her mind cried his name. Death.
The figure turned, only half his profile catching the glow. She gasped, breath ragged, willing him to pause. Slow. Wait for me.
His answer coiled through the binding, low and resonant, vibrating against her skin. Then keep pace, Ilys.
Ass, she pushed through the bond.
A ripple of warmth traveled up the tether, subtle but undeniable. She felt the god chuckle, the bond deep, amused, indulgent. It disarmed her, left her raw. How much of the mortal man she was falling in love with still lived inside this godhood? Or had they always been one and the same?
They reached a river. Not water, but liquid light, shallow and slow-moving, silver as Rowenna’s wedding veil.
The tether dragged through it like ink, leaving dark streaks that swirled and vanished beneath the current.
She waded in, gasping at the sudden cold that burned her skin.
A laugh echoed from beneath the surface, low and familiar.
Baron’s. She bent sharply, searching the glow for a glimpse of him, but the river swallowed the sound, carrying it away.
Her breath faltered. She staggered, and for one terrifying moment she thought the silk had slipped again.
But then Death tugged, steady and sure, pulling her out.
She lifted her gaze to him, his godly form flickering in the starlit glow, and she let herself soften. To see not only the immortal weight he bore, but the man beneath it. And in his pull she felt the rarest of things: the ache of being cared for. Guided. Led. Safe.
On the far bank, the air lightened, and she found herself in a field that stretched into endless night.
The sky sprawled black velvet, the stars hanging low and impossibly close, bright enough to burn.
They shifted as she walked, constellations bending, tilting, reshaping in her periphery.
The longer she looked, the less they resembled stars at all.
Ilys’s throat tightened. She felt she could cry.
She had brushed against this closeness before: running wild through summer fields, breathless with the sting of grass against her shins, standing before the waves, their endless rhythm rising to swallow her smallness whole.
In those fleeting instants, she had thought she understood the vast and unknowable.
But here, beneath this sky, she came nearer still. Her heart ached with it, brimming, spilling over. Looking into the blaze of false stars, she felt as though she were touching the fabric of human life itself threaded through with sorrow and joy, pain and wonder, woven into eternity.
The bell tolled again. Louder. Sharper. And the people came.
Not at once, but in fragments. They slipped in and out of her vision like reflections on rippled glass, until more gathered, stepping from every curve of hill and hollow of glade.
They were not wisps. Not shadows. Whole.
As they had been in life. Some wore fine garments, the embroidery at their hems catching the starlight.
Others walked barefoot, their hands still dirt-stained, as though they had just left their work.
A man passed, smiling softly, a book tucked beneath his arm.
A woman carried a bundle of herbs, plucking leaves absentmindedly between her fingers.
A child knelt in the flowers, hands outstretched, catching a tiny bug unseen between his palms. Garments catching starlight.
Rings dropping from hands as mist. Belongings falling useless to the ground.
The line stretched on, moving with quiet purpose toward a horizon she could not yet see.
It was endless. River and plain and forest emptied themselves into this single procession, every figure drawn by the same inexorable pull.
Their steps rose and fell together, soft as rain, yet the sound thundered in her chest. The tether at her wrist vibrated with it, each footfall a pulse through her blood, through the earth, through the stars themselves.
They followed him. Not like subjects trailing a king, nor mourners behind a bier, but as though he were the tide and they the sea itself: pouring forward, unresisting, inevitable. The Veil bowed to him, opened for him, its rhythm keeping time with his stride.
Ilys stood at the edge of it, breath ragged, overwhelmed by the immensity of what she witnessed. This was no solemn duty. No sacred ritual. This was the world’s climax, the truest truth hidden beneath every scripture and lie: all life flowing into his hands, all threads drawn to their end.
Ilys’s gaze swept the procession, dazzled and undone by its immensity—until a sharp sense pierced through the perfume of crushed grass and cold starlight.
A scent.
Leather darkened with rain. Tobacco smoke clinging to wool. A note of iron, faint as memory. Her lungs seized. She knew that smell as surely as her own skin.
Baron.
Her head snapped toward the line, eyes raking desperately across the endless procession until she saw him.
Broad shoulders. The familiar slope of his jaw.
And his hair, auburn still, though muted now with strands of copper fire catching the strange starlight.
He walked with the same unhurried stride she remembered, boots leaving no mark upon the grass, gaze fixed on the horizon where Death led them.
“Baron.” The name tore out of her, ragged, wild.
The tether yanked taut as she surged forward, silk burning her wrist. She shoved through the silent figures, vision tunneling. “Baron!” she cried again, louder, desperate, running now, heart pounding against her ribs.
This time, he faltered.
The turning felt like revelation. His eyes, when they found her, shone with the far glow of constellations. The procession dissolved around them. There was only him.
He stepped toward her, out of the rhythm, out of the tide, breaking the procession’s perfect order. With each pace, the scent of him grew stronger, the memory of his warmth, his low laugh, the press of his hand at her back.
“Ilys.”
Her name on his lips nearly undid her. She stumbled forward, clutching at him, tears spilling hot down her cheeks. His hands—familiar, callused, real—rose to cup her face. The tether at her wrist thrummed in protest, vibrating and recognizing the trespass.
She pressed her forehead to his, breath trembling, half joy, half ruin.
Baron swayed against her, disoriented, his gaze flicking back to the endless line of souls as though seeing it for the first time. His voice faltered. “I was just—”
“What?” Ilys gasped. Her grip tightened. “What is it?”
Confusion darkened his eyes. “I don’t remember… coming here.”
Her stomach dropped. He didn’t remember dying. Heat surged sickening through her chest, all she had done pressing in hard and merciless. All the words she had never thought she’d have to say tangled in her throat.
“Baron,” she forced out, voice cracking. “You are in the Veil.”
He blinked at her, then laughed softly, rubbing a hand across his face. “Yes, I know, my girl. Of course I know.” His smile flickered, crooked, achingly familiar. “I was just with Grim.”
Her breath caught. “Baron,” she rasped, desperate now. “You are dead. I killed you.”
At that, he stilled. His gaze cut into hers, searching, steady, strangely gentle. “Ilys,” he said quietly, firmly, punctuating every word. “I know.” He brushed her tears with his thumb, shaking his head faintly. “My sweet girl. Don’t cry.”
The guilt she had carried like armor shattered. It poured out of her in sobs as he pulled her close, his voice a balm against her ear. “Come,” Baron urged softly. “Shhh. Enough. Let us find Grim.”
Her body stiffened. She pulled back, staring up at him, confusion cutting through her grief. “Why do you keep saying that?” Her voice cracked, sharp with fear. “Baron—we’re in the Veil. He’s not coming.”
He stopped then, truly looking at her, his gaze pouring into the girl he had raised, heavy with a tenderness she had almost forgotten.
His lips parted, the question falling like a stone. “Do you not know?”
And as she followed the tilt of his head, the world behind him rippled. Reality mottled and reformed until out of the glow, just behind Baron’s shoulder, she saw him.
Grim.