“Not Ilys,” he ground out. Though not for the reasons the King believed he understood. “One day,” Grim promised, voice dark and quiet, “you will find yourself on the end of the sword.”
“Likewise, my friend.” The King leaned in close, fingers curling around the bars. “You should hope Ilys does not find her successor too quickly.” His eyes glinted, cruel with mirth. “Once we have that little failsafe, you’ll meet your god again soon enough.” He lingered there just long enough for Grim to feel the threat settle into his bones before he turned and swept away, leaving only the stink of torch smoke and the rattle of Grim’s breathing.
Grim sagged back against the wall, tasting blood on his tongue.
Let me die, he thought.Let me go. Let me follow Baron.
The months bled together and Grim had stopped marking the days—there were too many scratches on the wall already—and had begun to think perhaps they had simply forgotten him here.
Then one morning, the hinges shrieked and light spilled in. The King ducked into view, his expression gleeful, a boy with a secret he could not wait to share.
“You are a granddad, Grim,” he said brightly, as though announcing the birth of a child. “Ilys claimed her successor just this morning.”
The words hit like a hammer. Grim’s throat constricted.
The King tutted, amused. “You don’t seem proud.”
At a gesture, the guards unlocked the cell door. The clink of keys and rattle of chains sounded louder than the King’s voice. The door swung wide. The King stepped inside like a man entering a garden.
“You know,” he said conversationally, drawing a slim blade from his belt and stroking a thumb along its edge, “sometimes I get a little envious of you lot.” He crouched down until they were eye level, the blade glinting in the torchlight. “There really is no thrill like that of inflicting pain.”
Grim could not move, though every muscle in his body trembled with the urge to lunge.
“It’s time to cleanse you, Grim.” The King’s tone softened, almost reverent. “It’s time you met the Veil.”
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.”
