“Baron,” she tried at last, tentative.
Rowenna looked up, disgusted. “The captain? He’s a million years old.”
Heat climbed into Ilys’s cheeks. It wasn’t his face that drew her. He treated her kindly, kinder than most. She sometimes wished he could be her father; on the loneliest nights, she even let herself believe it.
Rowenna’s gaze softened, but her confident resolve remained. “Try again. Someone nearer your age.”
Ilys sifted through the halls in her mind, uncertain, then found herself picturing the stablemaster’s son, Jorrin, with hay in his dark hair and that unshakeable grin that always seemed to make room for her.
“Jorrin,” she delivered.
Rowenna’s smile returned, pleased and approving. “Now that, I understand.”
No candles burned in the Study Wing chamber, but pale, grudging light teased from the narrow windows. The priestesses sat silently in their stiff rows, while Mother Inrith spoke.
“The Veilwalker walks with Death. You understand this?”
Ilys nodded, urging her mind to disengage from the muffled noise in hallways beyond. How she longed to leap from the chilly stone floor and join anything else. Swallowing the dry air, Ilys chided the child inside.Focus, she iterated.Gods, Ilys.
Mother Inrith continued, oblivious to the battle for attention. “From the first frost of autumn to the last thaw of winter, you will leave the city and cleanse Annon with Death at your side. You will seek those who have bound themselves against fate: Cursed kings. Priests who have written their names out of The Book of Endings. Warriors anchored to relics. You will strike them down so their souls may be taken. When you return to Annon, you will not rest—you will answer Death’s summons here, carrying out executions the King himself cannot touch. This is your charge.”
Ilys’s fingers curled against her thighs. She had been chosen when she was so small she could barely stand, before she could remember what her own name had been. That name was gone now, lost somewhere she could not reach, and in its place wasIlys the Veilwalker, a name she would live and die under. One day it would be written in the great books read aloud to the Faithful, her life condensed into a line of service:Ilys, Keeper of the Veil, Rider with Death, Executioner of the Faithless.
The Mother’s eyes stayed on her. “You will not marry. You will not bear children. You will not serve as the women of the temple do. You were born to the Bargain, not to the womb. That is all you are, and all you must be.”
The words lodged in Ilys’s chest. She tried to picture herself as the girl she might have been were it not for the robe, theblade, and the temple’s walls closed around her. The image slipped away.
When the lesson ended, she did not return to her room. Her feet carried her past the cloisters, down the worn path to the garden behind the Sanctum, a place where the walls felt farther away. The garden behind the Sanctum had gone feral, untouched by shears and steeped in golden light. Here, the air felt lighter. Her spine uncoiled, her mind stilled, and the world seemed impossibly small and endlessly wide all at once.
She’d fashioned wings from two bent branches, a scrap of ribbon, and her veil. They sagged and scraped the ground, yet in her mind they floated, dignified, catching the wind.
Through the tall grasses she ran, scratchy stalks brushing her legs. She leapt from stone to stone, mud clinging to the hem of her skirt. A giggle escaped her, startling sparrows into the air, and oh, how she longed to follow—higher and higher, past the clouds, across the spacious, open sky.
She closed her eyes, pressing the feeling into herself like a fossil into amber.
In her mind, she was never alone. The King would watch her fondly from his dais, declaring,Be careful, my beloved.Grim and Baron follow behind, laughing at her mischief, pride unspoken but certain.This one’s mine,they would think.
She climbed onto the cracked altar beneath the ash tree, wings trembling in the wind.
Ilys, the bird, was loved. Ilys, the bird, was safe. Ilys, the bird, could fly.
Chapter 3
That evening, Mother Inrith’s measured voice rang through the hall. “Put her in ceremonial dress. The King will arrive shortly.”
The priestesses bowed their heads in silent acknowledgment before rising to carry out her order.
Mother Inrith turned to Ilys. “You must be still,” she enjoined. “The King values reverence.”
Ilys fought to sit as the priestesses worked, but her body hummed with excitement.
The King! How she adored him.
Swift and practiced hands pulled layers of black muslin over her shoulders, fastening the silver clasps at her throat, pious in their grazing of skin.
“Your hands, Veilwalker,” one ushered. She obeyed.
They slid the gloves over her fingers, their fabric black as night, embroidered in thread so fine it shimmered when it caught the light. The Veilwalker’s hands must rarely be seen,The Book dictated. To look upon them is to look upon Death’s judgment itself.
