Tears slipped from Ilys’s eyes, dancing for no one to see. The room felt small. Her clothes too tight. Why had she leapt towards adulthood, only to find loneliness waiting, patient, on the other side.
Rowenna drew a shaky breath.
Ilys leaned close, pressing their foreheads together, veils brushing like wings in the air between them.
“No matter how strange it feels,” Ilys whispered, “you are not alone in it.”
They stayed like that a moment longer, two girls who had grown too fast, still searching for softness in a world that had carved them into shapes they never asked for.
Then Ilys stepped back. “I’ll be in the second row,” she said, voice light. “I have all my daggers with me.”
“Naturally.”
“If you pull your veil three times I will know you find him ugly and I will dispose of him,” Ilys promised, half in jest.
Rowenna let out a watery laugh. “Of course you will.”
And when Ilys slipped from the room, back into the shadows of the hall, the scent of sage and silvery light already followed her like a memory.
The Sanctum shimmered, fractured beams streaming through high-arched windows and pooling across the stone floor. Incense hung saccharine in the air, sweet and cloying to theroom. The congregation gathered, their dark robes blending into the shadows of the towering chamber walls. All eyes faced the altar, where Rowenna knelt beside her groom, bathed in the watchful gaze of the Ebon Choir.
The officiant stood behind them cloaked in black robes stitched with violet thread. At his throat, the Choir’s insignia gleamed, catching the light like a sliver of moon. He stood motionless, hands resting lightly on the ceremonial blade before him, its hilt wrapped in ebony and its metal inlaid with ancient sigils that shimmered faintly in the glow.
“Sealed in the first days,” Lord Hastell began, his voice deep and resonant. “Spoken in the last. Unbroken until the end of all things.”
The congregation echoed him in low unison. The sound rolled through the chamber like thunder on distant hills.
Rowenna and her betrothed knelt before the altar as the Ebon Choir member lifted the blade high above them.
“The Veil did stir, and from its depths came the shadow. And the shadow did speak.”
Even hidden, Rowenna stood tall, tension flickering in the line of her shoulders. Her plain groom knelt beside her, rigid and unreadable. Perfect. Lifeless.
“Bound upon flesh and soul, sealed in shadow and breath” intoned the officiant, his voice serene. “Through this union, you will stand together, not as one soul, but as two, tethered by the threads of the Fates.”
Rowenna’s voice lightened the room. “Before the Veil, I name you. Before the Fates, I claim you.”
Her groom repeated the words, “Before the Veil, I name you. Before the Fates, I claim you.”
Rowenna’s words harbored an intensity that her groom’s delivery lacked. “Through shadow and breath, I bind you,” Rowenna promised.
“Through shadow and breath, I bind you,” echoed her groom, the words falling flat.
“Through death and beyond, I keep you,” they spoke in unison, their voices merging as the blade dipped to rest between their clasped hands.
The Choir member pressed the blade down gently, his tone low and reverent as he concluded, “And the Veil bears witness.” A ripple of murmured approval moved through the congregation.
Ilys watched as Rowenna rose, the silver veil shimmering as it caught the lamplight. To the world: a union. To Ilys: a performance scripted in someone else’s hand.
Ilys’s gaze drifted across the room, seeking him. Jorrin stood near one of the arched windows, his face partially illuminated by the pale light streaming in from outside. Ilys’s chest tightened at the concealed profile.
The vows, the finality of the blade’s touch, the veiled promises of a future Rowenna would now claim, it all pressed against her like an immovable force. She could not tear her eyes away from Jorrin, even as the murmurs of congratulations rose around them.
He would never kneel before an altar with her. He would never speak vows in her name. And she, in turn, would never step into the light of such a union. Her path had been set long ago, her place carved out of duty and shadow. If they were ever to meet at the altar, it would not be for vows but for judgment, with a blade in Ilys’s hand.
A clarity struck, cold and merciless. What was she doing? There was no happy end, no future to build. She was a Veilwalker. Her brief, fragile mortality had fooled her into weakness and into grasping at human thoughts that had no place in her. She mourned Rowenna’s presence already; now, in this moment, she began to mourn Jorrin as well.
At that moment, his attention found her. But Ilys turned away.
