She kept stabbing. Her hands slick. Her arms trembling. The knife caught on ribs, slipped, and found new purchase.
She drove the dagger into his chest.
For Grim. For Baron. For Hanna.
For every life stolen in the name of his greed. His desires.
He gargled now. Convulsing. Dying.
She didn’t stop until his body fell still.
Didn’t stop until her hand could no longer close around the hilt.
Didn’t stop until the mark he had made of her was answered.
And then, only then, she collapsed atop his corpse, breath coming in short, rasping gasps. Her body shook. Blood soaked her, pooled beneath her, coated her mouth where she had bitten through her own lip.
But her eyes stayed open.
The priests were still frozen. The guards uncertain. No one moved.
Ilys, the broken Veilwalker, had made her offering.
Not to the Veil.
Not to the King.
To herself.
And in that moment, she became holy in a way he had never been.
She smiled. A quiet satisfaction settled in her chest as she crouched, his form crumpled on the floor beneath her, flimsy and undone. She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, pressing a prayer to the Fates as her lips formed the final word.
“Vasha.”
Then came the sound of air splitting.
A sharp, distant whoosh, followed by the sickening bite of metal into flesh. Pain bloomed across her body before she could comprehend it, piercing, splitting, everywhere at once.
Her breath caught as she staggered, confusion flashing through her mind even as she already understood.
She looked down.
Arrows.
A dozen, maybe more, protruding from her chest, her side, her stomach. The world blurred, tilting strangely at the edges, her limbs suddenly heavy, distant.
“Oh,” she murmured faintly.
Her dagger slipped from her fingers, clattering against the stone floor, its weight no longer hers to carry.
Chapter 46
Time unraveled.
Her body slumped beside his, riddled with arrows, broken open.
But pain?
