“I swing like someone who believes her duty isn’t savagery.”
Grim’s mouth twitched.
“I don’t perform for bloodlust,” she added. “The Veil is sacred. I end unnatural lives cleanly and quickly, as the First Shepherd would have me.”
“The king knows nothing of what is required of you. He does not care for you, Ilys, despite your believing so.”
She laughed. “You are jealous that he prides himself in me.”
“You think his pride will cradle you when facing unnatural magic?”
She bristled, grip tightening on the hilt.
“Your duty seems reverent and quiet now,” Grim said. “Even with blood pooling at your feet. But come your Consecration Rites, you’ll get dirty, Ilys. Filthy in ways you can't wash off.”
Ilys cringed at the sentiment, her gut pulling taut. Grim often led with vague, ominous threats and warnings. Yet he always failed to speak plainly.
Then tell me. Tell me what awaits then,she urged in her mind.
“You’ll look in the mirror,” he went on, lost in his own weaving, “and you’ll see me.” He stepped closer, voice low and cold. “And you will hate yourself for it.”
“And when I don’t see you in that mirror, Grim?”
“Then you’ll see no one. Be no one. Because a little girl with only psalms is no use in the Bargain with Death. Trust this.”
“Tell me,” she barked. “Tell me what more awaits that is so horrible that the sun turns to night watching me flail at your hand day in and day out?”
“I am showing you, Ilys. In every exercise, I am telling you.”
“Put it into words, you ass. What is so horrible?”
Grim stepped back, shaking his head. He gestured towards the sword. “Again.”
She didn’t move.
“Tell me!” she cried. “I am tired of your distance. I am scared. I am lonely. I am lost. Tell me what I am made for, if I do not know.”
“Death, Ilys,” Grim said. “That is what you were made for. The executions you’ve carried out, those are only a taste. Horrible, yes. But beyond them you will see so many shades of death that you will forget what living feels like. Out there, the ones we cut down are not monsters, they are men and women who want what we all want: more days, more love, more time. And we are the ones who take it from them, again and again. That is the Veilmarch. That is the burden.”
He reached across the space between them, shaking her. “So steel yourself. Take up your sword. Because if you falter, it will be me they send to carry your body home.”
The words landed like a slap. Ilys looked away, throat hoarse. She took the blade again, grip firmer this time.
“Better,” he said simply.
Their swords met in the cold morning light, and for the first time that day, she did not falter.
Training stretched on as the sun climbed. Sweat soaked Ilys’s collar as Grim drilled her through each motion with merciless precision. Baron leaned against the wall nearby, watching with an easy patience that contrasted Grim’s rough commands. Every so often he stepped in to correct a stance or a swing, his voice gentler, more coaxing.
“That’s my girl,” he said when her blade finally struck clean.
Across the yard, Jorrin, the stablemaster’s son, passed by. He offered a small smile, wincing a bit as his gait rattled hisbroken ribs. Even veiled, Ilys felt heat rise to her cheeks as she murmured, “Hello, Jorrin.”
Baron caught the exchange. His tone shifted, heavier in the space of a breath. He clapped Grim on the shoulder. “Take a break before you grind her into dust.” Then he turned toward Ilys. “Walk with me.”
They reached the ivy-shaded wall. Baron stayed beside her, silent in a way that felt borrowed from Grim. Finally, his voice low, Baron spoke, “There’s a story. Once, a Veilwalker stripped off his veil—not for ritual, not for prayer, but for love. He gave himself to another for one night of joy.”
The pause that followed suspended, broken only by the crackle of cicadas in nearby trees.
