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.
Chapter 38
The last year in the life of Grim of the Veil
People mistook Grim’s gruffness for a lack of feeling. They could not have been more wrong. He was well-read, quietly poetic, and possessed a capacity for love so vast it frightened him—truly terrified him. He loved Baron. He loved Ilys. He even loved their crooked, bloodstained life. So when they had wrestled him to the ground, knees digging into his back, the grit of the stone floor biting into his cheek—it surprised the King, this range of emotion. Grim’s chest heaved, but no air seemed to reach him. His hands throbbed where the splintered wood had cut them.
Baron.
He twisted against the guards, teeth bared, until their force crushed the fight out of him. The chamber was too still now, except for the wet sound of steel parting flesh. His vision blurred. He felt the moment break inside him like a bonesplintering. The sound of Ilys’s voice, so young and obedient, struck him harder than any blow. She was becoming exactly what he had made her to be.
When they dragged him down into the bowels of the keep, he did not resist. The cell was narrow, chilled, and the door shut with a finality that echoed in his ribs. He sat with his back against the wall, his veil twisted in his hands. He did not pray. He had no words left for the Veil. He only had Baron's hazel eyes, staring through him, and the image of Ilys with blood on her hands.
It should have been him on his knees.
Weeks passed before the King finally came.
Grim had almost forgotten what light looked like. His cell smelled of iron and mildew, his hair hung in his face, his veil lay in tatters at his side. The chains around his wrists had rubbed the skin raw, but he hardly noticed anymore. He had begged the guards for death every day when they passed by. None had answered him.
When the door opened on a grind, he thought they had come to grant him that wish.
Instead, the King stood framed in the doorway, haloed by torchlight, with his hands clasped loosely behind his back. His robe trailed the floor like a living shadow.
“I knew you were perhaps not my most loyal Veilwalker,” the King said softly, almost musing, “but I did not expect you to be the most stupid.”
Grim lifted his head, his lips cracked and bleeding from disuse. “This is not stupidity,” he spat, voice low, feral. “This isa man who has peeled back every lie. Every falsehood you’d beg the world to believe is scripture.”
The King tilted his head, regarding him with mild amusement. “And what do you think is a lie?” he asked, glancing sidelong at the guards flanking him as though sharing a private joke.
“All of it.” Grim bared his teeth in a sneering smile. “Outside of Death. Outside of the Veil itself. All the pieces that give you power.”
The King’s mouth curved in mock sympathy. “I know you were made for cutting, Grim. But I had hoped you were not so simple of mind.”
“You would question the deity who told me this himself? You would question Death?”
The King’s expression sharpened, the indulgent curve of his lips curling into cruelty.
“You lie.”
Grim surged forward, the chain clattering. “Death tires of your crooked Bargain,” he snarled through the bars. “He’ll find a way to be rid of you soon enough.”
“The Bargain is good for everyone,” the King cooed, almost pitying. “He would be a fool to break it.”
“It serves you and you alone, you immortal bastard. You promise them bounty. You promise them protection. Yet what does that Bargain really say?” Grim spat. “Death will not come for you at your natural end. You cut the blameless down, escape age and discomfort, and expect no end to such an imbalance?”
The King laughed, a low, delighted sound. “Death cannot harm me, Grim. And you remain here, under my lock and key, eating my food, sleeping on my stones. Who should cull me, then? You?” He paused, then smiled like a wolf. “No, perhaps not you. Perhaps Ilys?”
Grim’s stomach twisted.
“My darling girl,” the King said, as though savoring the words. “Do you think she has it in her? She just killed your lover and still you think her capable of rebellion?”
Grim’s face went slack, a mask of iron.
