Chapter 11
She had avoided Jorrin for as long as she could. She slipped past him in corridors and pretended her gaze fixed anywhere but on his. But elusion would not hold forever. Any lie would do, so long as it cut deep enough to stop him from fighting for them.
That evening, she forced the words out. They were cold, merciless animals meant to wound.
She no longer loved him. They could never be together.
If she did not close the door now, and close it hard, her resolve might fracture.
His reply was no reply at all; only a long look with those soulful eyes, too gentle, too knowing, as though he saw through every piece of distance she had tried to put between them. But he relented, pressing his lips to her veiled forehead in goodbye.
Later, the fire in the common room had burned low. The hour grew late enough that the Sanctum lay quiet, save for the wind sighing through the arches. Ilys slipped inside expecting solitude. Instead, Baron sat sprawled on one of the long bencheswith her sketchbook balanced carelessly in his hands. His boots rested on the table, his posture infuriatingly at ease. Breathing through her nose, she moved to nudge at his legs until he relented with a grin, dropping them to the floor. Still, he did not look at her, only flipped through the pages, his brow creased, weighing every line.
The faces stared back at them. Baron and Grim, Rowenna, and Jorrin. And beyond them, the others—the condemned and the lost, the faces of the Veil’s quiet harvest. Baron dragged a finger along one face, tracing the ink, memorizing its shape.
“You both hold it too closely,” he remarked. At last he glanced up, his expression cutting. “The guilt. The self-hatred. It’s suffocating.”
Ilys lowered herself beside him, her eyes on the sketch. She remembered that boy’s eyes, pleading yet resigned. She had thought Death cruel for ordering it. Thought herself worse for obeying.
“I’ve broken it off with Jorrin,” she confessed quietly.
Baron absorbed this without surprise, studying her instead of the book. Then he reached out, caught her chin between his fingers, and guided her away from the sketches. His touch firm but not unkind. It grounded her.
“Duty is not identity, Ilys,” Baron said, his tone neither cruel nor indulgent.. His gaze cut through her resistance, adamant, willing her to believe him. “Everyone bears duty, and everyone must decide how much of themselves they will let it consume. You—” he faltered, the next words paining him—“you have let it take everything. You have bled for it. Killed for it. Let it dictate every step of your life as if you were born for nothing else.”
She turned her face away, but he did not let her escape so easily. His fingers tilted her chin back toward him, forcing her to meet his gaze.
"You are lovely and kind,” he continued, low and insistent. "The Fates have no say in how you spend the time that is yours."
Her chest tightened. She wanted to believe him, yet her gaze slipped to the book again and to the faces she had tried to preserve, to understand. It would never be enough.
“You make it sound simple,” she bit back after a moment. “Separating the two.”
“It is not simple,” Baron replied, brushing a knuckle along her cheek. “I will not lie and say I am not relieved by your choice. The story I told you of the Veilwalker was no silly fable. My father lived when it happened. If the King were ever to suspect you and Jorrin… or Grim and I… ” His jaw tightened, words hard to force out. “Someone would pay for the distraction. The throne does not forgive divided loyalties. It is a messy, terrifying truth.”
Ilys thought of Jorrin—his warmth, his gentleness, the life still waiting for him—and felt the gravity of her choice settle more firmly.
“Let us speak of it no longer,” she begged.
Sensing her resolve, Baron turned the page with exaggerated care. He studied the drawing, then snorted. “You were not kind to my midsection here, you little bitch.”
Ilys barked out a laugh, sudden and sharp, and pressed closer beside him. Grateful for his ever present affinity for levity.
“You look strong,” she shot back, patting his stomach. “Formidable, even. That’s all muscle, obviously.”
Baron’s body shook with laughter as he dropped a paternal kiss to the top of her head. “Mm. Right.”
The hills lay bare in winter, stretched beneath a pale sky the color of bone. Frost clung to the grasses in white lace, and the breath from Ilys’s mouth curled into the air like incense smoke. She walked alone, wrapped in her black woolen cloak, her boots pressing silent paths into the frozen earth. She passed through the familiar stretch of pine and barren alder, following the narrow deer trail that led beyond the outer walls of the Sanctum.
And there, down the gentle slope, where the rocks bowed inwards and the earth cupped itself into a shallow hollow, lay the winter pool. A spring still fed it, so it did not freeze entirely. The surface rippled faintly, steam lifting where warmth clashed with cold.
She stepped close, boots crunching softly, her gloved hand drifting to the clasp at her collar. Breath slow, she slipped the cloak from her shoulders. Then her gloves. Her tunic. Her underthings. Each layer peeled away like bark from a tree, until she stood naked in the winter air, body pale against the dark trees, scars like pale river-etchings across her skin. The cold bit into her all at once, sharp and merciless. She did not resist the shudder that took her.
She needed to feel it, this proof of flesh. Proof of life. Proof of reality.
A quiet laugh escaped her, breathless and sharp, and she stepped into the pool. The shock of it stole her voice. She ducked under quickly, knowing hesitating would make it worse, and surfaced with a gasp, arms curling around her chest. It hurt and the ache burned through her, bright and cleansing. She drifted through the water in dawdling strokes, her hair streaming behind her like ink. Steam curled up around her, blurring the edges of the world. She floated on her back, lips tinged blue, but eyes open to the sky. Above her the clouds drifted, swollen with the snow that had yet to fall.
“I am here,” she whispered, to no one.
