"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 pullshe 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.
