She cringed at the practiced fall of that paternal word. She knew he wasn’t her father, but she’d taken a liking to using it. It made her just like all the others to say she had a father, and in many ways, Grim might as well have been.
The girl’s lips parted, a response flickering and fading before it found a voice. She lowered her gaze. “I… think I like rabbit stew.”
Ilys hummed, "I wouldn’t know. I am not allowed to eat it."
The girl resumed her tending, sifting dirt through her fingers, and Ilys watched, drawn to the steady rhythm of her hands. So much care in a gesture so small. Nothing in her life ever allowed such softness.
A shadow stretched across the dirt.
"Ilys."
She turned to find Grim at the garden’s edge, arms crossed, his veil cast in morning shadow. His stance said he’d been watching for some time.
"Come,” he directed. "You have more training."
Ilys dithered. Her eyes flicked back to the girl, but she had already returned to her work, head bent over the soil, pretending the conversation had never happened.
Ilys stood and without another word, she followed Grim out of the garden. As they turned the corner toward the training grounds, Grim spoke.
"I am not your father, Ilys. You have none."
Chapter 2
Eleventh year in the life of Ilys of the Veil
The chamber reeked of tallow and parchment, incense smoke coiling like ghosts through the high rafters. Candles guttered along the long stone table where the priestesses sat, wax pooling in quiet surrender. Ilys, now eleven years of age, knelt before them, her knees pressed into cold flagstone, her bored hands resting atop a scroll whose ink shimmered black against the vellum’s pallor.
"TheBook of the Veiltells us of a woman’s duty.” Mother Inrith’s voice flowed smooth and practiced, each syllable worn into shape by decades of ritual recitation. Her white eyes searched the air, yet her voice found what sight could not. “She is the keeper of order, the vessel of faith, the pillar upon which the King’s will is upheld."
Ilys traced her finger along the delicate script, pausing at the curling lines of ink before reading aloud.
"A woman of Annon walks in service.
She does not question the thread, for it is already woven.
She does not crave power, for she cradles it in silence."
The words knelled uniform and adamantine. Ilys liked the structured way they fit together like the unmoving walls of the temple itself.
She sat back, eyes flicking to the next passage.
"A woman is a mother, a wife, a daughter."
Ilys frowned, the words catching strangely in her throat.
“I’m not any of those things.” The realization arrived strangled and hushed.
Mother Inrith’s hands remained folded neatly in her lap. "You are a daughter of faith."
“I have no mother. No father. To whom am I a daughter?”
Mother Inrith’s voice ran ahead, calm and calculated. "That passage does not speak to your path."
Ilys tapped a finger against the parchment. "Then why do I have to learn it?"
"You are learning the ways of all women, not just yourself,” Mother Inrith explained, her voice dry as an old psalm. "You must understand the roles of others, even if you do not share them."
The Mother moved steadily through the scriptorium, white eyes unseeing, but her steps sure. Her gnarled fingers brushed over ritual implements with reverence: an ash-blown reliquary, a vial of yellowing marrow, a faded ribbon once tied to a martyr’s throat.
