And then someone else is there.
Chief Rand.
Not flesh, not bone—just a shimmer, a voice with form. His eyes like embers, his mouth carved from stone. His presence makes the dream heavier, morereal.
“Olivia Wilkins,” he says.
My throat tightens. “Chief?—”
“You carry it still,” he interrupts. “A fragment. When you pierced yourself to follow him into the beyond, the Veil did not let you leave empty-handed.”
I glance at my arms. The runes burn hotter in dreamlight, crawling up to my shoulder, glowing like brands. They throb with every beat of my heart.
“No,” I whisper. “No, we sealed it?—”
“You sealedmostof it,” Rand says, voice thick with sorrow. “But the Veil is not broken glass you sweep away. It is smoke. It lingers. And now it lingers in you.”
I want to scream. I want to wake. But my legs root to the cave floor, my mouth dry as ash.
“What does it mean?” I choke.
He looks at me, his gaze a weight I can’t bear. “It means the fight is not finished.”
And then I wake, gasping, Kursk’s arm around me, his chest rising and falling steady as if nothing’s wrong. The room smells of him—iron, sweat, the faint pine he always carries back from the woods. The runes under my skin flicker once, like lightning behind clouds, and fade.
I curl into him, pressing my forehead against his chest. I don’t tell him yet. I can’t. My body shakes.
His breath stirs my hair, calm, steady.
But inside me, the Veil stirs too.
Kursk has been pulling away again.
At first, it’s subtle. He doesn’t touch me as much. He lingers outside longer after chopping wood, sitting under the pines until the night swallows him whole. He sharpens a blade that doesn’t need sharpening, polishes armor he’ll never wear again.
I know the signs. I’ve seen them before—this orc idea that sacrifice is the only love worth giving. That stepping back is noble. That silence is strength.
It makes me want to scream.
Tonight, in the library, I finally do.
“Enough,” I snap, slamming a book closed so hard the echo rattles the glass panes.
He looks up from the table where he’s been sitting, hands folded like a mountain that refuses to move. “Enough of what?” he asks, voice flat.
“Of you pretending distance is protection,” I spit. “Of you turning into a ghost in the same damn room. You think I don’t see you? You think I don’t feel you pulling away?”
His tusks catch the lantern light when he frowns. “Olivia?—”
“No,” I cut him off. My heart is hammering, my palms sweating, but I won’t back down. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to decide for me what risks I take, who I love, what I fight for. I didn’t fall in love with you just so you could leave again, dumbass.”
The word echoes off the high ceiling. He blinks, caught between anger and something rawer.
He exhales, heavy, a sound like rocks tumbling down a cliff. “I’m terrified,” he says, voice rough. His hands clench on the table edge until the wood groans. “Of hurting you. Of failing you. Of being… unworthy of this. Of you.”
The silence after feels sharp. I see it in his face—the fear he doesn’t show anyone else. The fear that lives beneath his scars.
My anger softens. I walk to him, press my palm against his cheek. His skin is warm, rough under my hand. “Then don’t hurt me,” I whisper. “Just stay.”
