Chapter 39
He stood behind Baron, haloed in the trembling light of the Veil.
For a breath, her mind refused to name him. Then recognition struck, brutal and immediate.
“Grim?”
A million moments fluttered before her eyes, overlapping like leaves caught in a storm.
Grim adjusting her grip on a knife, his voice, fatherly and patient.
Grim reading by candlelight, the book balanced in one hand, the other tapping absently against his knee.
Grim’s rare, gruff laugh, hidden behind a shake of his head.
His arm around her shoulders after a long day.
Baron and Grim together, leaning close over a game board, speaking in low tones, their laughter filling the space between them.
A hundred—a thousand—mundane reflections, fragments of a life long lost, standing before her now in the form of this man.
No. Not man. Soul.
Grim was in the Veil.
He turned toward her slowly, eyes softening. “You’ve grown,” he said, voice rough as gravel worn smooth.
Her knees weakened. She surged forward, hands trembling as she reached for him. “You left me.”
Grim flinched. “That’s what they told you.”
Her voice trembled. “They said you couldn’t look at me after Baron. That you couldn’t bear it.”
Grim’s expression twisted—pain, guilt, something older than both. “No, Ilys. I never left you.” Grim shook his head slowly. “I could have borne anything but losing you. He knew that.”
Her pulse roared in her ears. “Then where were you?”
“The night Baron fell,” he started soberly, “they dragged me below the keep. Said the Veil demanded a reckoning. But it wasn’t the Veil.” His gaze drifted, as if he were watching it happen again. “He said I was collateral. I was to be kept until you were to take your successor.”
Ilys stared at him, throat burning. “You were there all that time?”
Her vision blurred, fury and disbelief crashing together in her chest, strangling the air from her lungs.
All these years, she had hated him. She had resented his absence.
She had mourned him in the ways one mourns the living: convinced that he had chosen to leave her behind.
But he hadn’t. He had been there. Trapped. Alone. While she—
“Only then, only after the next blade was chosen, would he ‘cleanse’ me.” His voice grew brittle on the word. “And he did.”
The Veil seemed to darken, its pulse shivering through the air like breath drawn through teeth. A stunned silence fell. Ilys’s heart pounded in her ears.
“Why would he—” Her words fractured, choking out between gasps. “The King killed you?”
Grim’s arms wound around her, pulling her close with his strong, iron-willed grip.
He didn’t speak. He just held her. Let her sob into his shoulder, let her fists curl into the fabric at his chest, let her mourn what had been stolen from them.
She wept. For the years lost. For the nights she spent cursing his name.
For the prayers she whispered to the Fates, begging to forget him.
She wept for the boy she had never known, for the man who had raised her, for the Veilwalker who had been used and discarded like a spare blade waiting to be drawn.
She sobbed, and Grim, steadfast, unmovable Grim, held her like he had never let go.
“Look at me, Ilys,” he commanded, shaking her from the sobs that wracked her body. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to block out everything, the unraveling of the world she thought she knew. But Grim wasn’t letting go.
Grim's grip tightened on her shoulders, grounding her. “Look at me, Ilys.” His voice called again, cutting through her sobs, stark and adamant. She squeezed her eyes shut, fighting the nausea rising inside her. Grim shook her once, sharply. “Eyes open.”
She obeyed, meeting his gaze.
“Why did he do this?” He repeated her question to her. “Because the Bargain was never for Death. It was for the King.”
Her stomach lurched. “What do you mean?”
“Death needed a servant, one to walk beside him when the world began twisting its own threads. Men had started weaving magic into the skein, pulling at fate to live longer, to cheat the end. The Veilwalker was born from that need, to keep the balance, to cut away what refused to die. That part was true, yes.”
He paused, gaze flicking toward Death, who stood silent and vast. “But when the King saw what Death required, he saw a way to turn it. The first Bargain he struck was not to save the kingdom—it was to save himself. Death would not come for the King at his natural end. The Veilwalker’s march each autumn, the rituals, the consecrations, they were meant to feed the illusion that it was all for balance.
But every step you took, every soul you claimed, was a tithe of power keeping him untouched by Death. ”
Her pulse quickened, dread rising. “But The Book… ”
“The Book of the Veil is a lie,” Grim said plainly.
“It speaks of protection, order, and sacred duty. But the King made it to serve his own ends. It is a crafted illusion.” His voice hardened.
“He reshaped reality. Death is cast as a villain, feared and hated. But Death demands no blind obedience. No terror. Only balance. The King twists it, using their deaths as lessons. Fear is his greatest tool. Faith is his strongest weapon.”
Ilys trembled, memories rising sharply of sitting cross-legged as a child, The Book heavy and reassuring on her lap.
Stories of duty and safety and purpose wrapped her in warmth, made her believe she was chosen, protected.
Her breathing quickened, nausea intensifying.
Those comforting truths she held so tightly were but a fragile fiction, easily shattered by Grim's cool veracity.
Ilys pressed a shaking hand to her mouth, overwhelmed.
She felt sick.
“It’s a lie,” she whispered, her voice cracking like ice thawing.
Grim’s expression did not change, an unsettling calm against the storm raging within her. “It always has been.”
Baron pulled her close, “We all believed it, Ilys. All of it, until it was too late.”
“So all of it—all of it was to keep him alive?”
“Yes,” Grim said. “And to make certain no one could undo it.”
Baron broke it first. “You cannot go back there. Not after this.”
“I can’t leave,” Ilys whispered. “Not when he’s still on that throne.”
Baron reached for her hand, his voice gentle, pleading. “You can. You must. You are the last thing he cannot claim. If you stay, he’ll hollow you out until there’s nothing left to fight with.”
Grim said nothing, but the look in his eyes told her he agreed.
Ilys’s breath trembled. “There’s a girl,” she said suddenly. “At the Sanctum. Her name is Hanna.”
Baron’s brow furrowed. “Hanna?”
“My successor.” The word broke her. Ilys turned sharply, staggering as dizziness swept through her.
Her vision blurred, shadows creeping into the corners of her eyes.
Her breath came raggedly, painfully, each inhalation scraping against the hollow pit that had opened in her chest. A tremor spread through her fingertips, unsteady hands clutching at anything solid, trying desperately to anchor herself as reality fractured around her.
“What have I done?” she whispered, voice raw, pleading, desperate for answers she feared would never come. She looked up, eyes wild, wide, wet with confusion and anguish. “Why?” she demanded, her voice edged with disbelief and despair.
Baron caught her before she fell. “Easy,” he murmured, one hand steady at the back of her neck. “Easy, love.”
“Listen to me, Ilys,” he said, voice low, deliberate, each word a tether. “What’s done can be undone. But not by blood, not by rage. Take her. Take the girl and go.”
“You want me to run while he still sits on his throne?” she demanded, voice raw. “You want me to pretend none of it happened? That you—Baron, that you—”
Baron caught her hands, steady but gentle, his expression soft with sorrow. “I want you to live,” he said quietly. “For once in your life, Ilys, live for something other than him.”
She shook her head, gasping for breath, tears streaking her cheeks. “He killed you. He chained Grim. He made me—” Her voice faltered, breaking on the memory. “He made me everything he wanted.”
Baron gave a faint, rueful smile. “Then stop being what he wants.”
Before she could speak, the Veil pulsed, the sound of a heartbeat that wasn’t hers. Death stepped forward, the air tightening, his godhood weighing down the light.
Ilys spun, her fury snapping loose. “No,” she snarled, stepping between them. “No, no, no—you will not take them!”
Death’s gaze was unreadable, still as carved obsidian. “It is not my will, Ilys. You know this.”
“You knew!” she screamed, shoving against his chest. The hum of his being vibrated through her palms, a living current that made her bones ache.
“You knew all of it, and you let me believe! You let me think I was chosen, that it meant something sacred. You let me kill for him. For a lie. You—” her voice broke, trembling— “you lied to me.”
Her fists struck his chest again and again, useless against eternity. She cursed him, cried his name with venom, until her strength crumbled into sobs. And still, Death did not stop her.
Behind her, arms gathered her in. Grim. “Ilys.”
The sound of his voice steadied her, fragile as it was. She turned, eyes red and wet.
Grim cradled her face in his hands. “He is not at fault for this,” he said gently. “When I learned the truth, I bound him to silence. I thought it was mercy.” His gaze wavered. “I was wrong.”
“You made me a murderer,” she choked.
“I was blind in my complacency,” he confessed.
Her breath caught painfully, her fingers gripping his wrists.
Grim swallowed, his tone trembling. “You were always mine, Ilys. Not as a weapon. Not as a creed. Mine to protect. My brave one. My clever one.” His voice cracked. “My dear one.”
He pressed his lips to her forehead. She felt a tear, his, fall against her skin. “My stubborn girl. My fierce girl.”
Ilys looked between them, trembling. “You can’t both leave me.”
Baron smiled. “We’re not leaving you,” he said. “We’re peeking around the corner. You’ll catch up one day far from now, when you’re good and ready.”
“I don’t even know where to go,” Ilys whispered.
His broad grin deepened as he stooped to press a kiss to her forehead. “Do what you’ve never been allowed to: choose. Find a place to sleep, then a reason to wake. That’s where you start. It’s no trouble at all.”
Ilys’s breath hitched, breaking sharply, tears falling pursy and fast, soaking into his coat, pooling over his heart. Her breath hitched, her body shaking. She could feel it now, the Veil drawing them back, the light dimming at their edges.
“Please don’t—” she whispered.
All the sudden she was nine years old once more, staring at a doorway that sought to thieve everyone she loved.
Baron leaned into her ear. “Say the blessing,” he ushered. “Nice and slow. One could fall asleep.”
Ilys froze. The words caught somewhere between her ribs. Her lips parted, but nothing came at first, only a shuddering breath, the ache of knowing what came next.
Baron’s thumb brushed her hand. “Go on,” he said softly. “You know it.”
She swallowed hard, eyes shining. Then, barely above a whisper:
“Where the fire dims, you will rest.”
Grim’s hand found hers and squeezed three times, the old signal of comfort. She nearly wept at the tenderness of it.
“Where the water stills, you will wait.”
Their voices met, the old blessing that belonged to them alone—unsanctioned, unspoken in any temple, a prayer for partings and quiet nights.
“Where the stars gather,” they said together, “you will be known.”
Through her tears, she watched helplessly as they stepped into shadow, dissolving like smoke into darkness, leaving only emptiness in their wake.