The door opened without haste. The King stepped through, his silhouette backlit by torchlight. He wore his ceremonial robe, black and heavy, embroidered with the silver threads of the Veil’s sigil. A priest’s raiment, not a ruler’s.
Behind him came the guards, silent and grim, bearing the brazier and its tools. Hooks. Chains. Irons carved into sacred shapes.
Ilys did not look up.
“I bring doctrine,” the King said, his voice calm, almost soft. “And correction.”
No answer.
He stepped towards her, eyeing the torchlight that caught the edge of her face, the blood drying at the temple from yesterday, the bruises blooming like ink beneath the skin.
He knelt beside her, robes pooling.
“I thought perhaps you had time to reflect,” he confessed. “You once loved scripture. You carriedThe Book of the Veilwith reverence. I remember your hands shaking when I first allowed you to read from it aloud.”
Still, she said nothing.
The King turned toward the brazier. He selected a brand, thin and curved, shaped like the Eye of the Veil. He held it over the coals. The metal began to glow.
“You were my finest creation, Ilys. The sharpest blade I ever honed.” His voice lowered. “But you are not blameless in this ruin.”
The iron hissed in the flame.
He turned and approached her again.
“I offer you mercy,” he said. “Pain, yes, but mercy too. A chance to return. A chance to serve again. I can make you holy.”
No reaction.
Her gaze remained lowered, eyes half-lidded, her hair hanging like a shadow across her cheek. She looked like stone.
He pressed the brand to her shoulder.
The sound it made was an obscene, a wet hiss, the sear of scorched flesh. The pain surged like fire into her chest, her spine.
She did not scream.
He watched her face closely. Sweat clung to the roots of her dark hair. Blood at the corner of her lip where it had cracked open. But no sound. No plea. No prayer.
Another brand, this time to the forearm.
Still, no response.
A guard shifted uncomfortably behind him.
The King stepped back. His hands were trembling. He dropped the brand into the brazier with a clatter and turned toward her again, teeth bared in grimace.
“You believe your silence is power. That it shields her. That it protects you.”
She stared at the wall past him. A thread of blood rolled down her wrist and pooled at her knee.
He struck her. The sound split the cell, shrill as breaking glass. Her head turned with the force, dark hair spilling forward to hide her face.
She blinked once, eyes wet but unyielding.
He crouched again, voice now a growl wrapped in scripture. “And the soul shall break as the body burns, and the silence shall scream louder than the mouth ever dared.”
Still she said nothing.
