Ilys’s breath caught like a knife in her throat. His Ebon Choir ring was absent, but she would know that cruel, elegant face anywhere.
The press of bodies swallowed him again. She shoved forward, only to collide with Owin.
He caught her arm, laughing. “Ilys, you dropped your satchel.”
Her stomach dropped. The satchel lay between them, its contents spilled in the dust.
Owin bent to gather them, still chuckling, until his hand closed on black fabric. He drew it free, the torchlight catching its folds.
Her veil.
The laughter drained from him, eyes widening and confusion clouding to a darker, heavier emotion. “Ilys,” he questioned, the name breaking in his throat. “Oh, Ilys…”
She froze, heart slamming, panic and fury crashing together. Behind him, the revel raged on, but all she saw was Veylen’s face vanishing into the crowd. Her quarry—her ruin—slipping away.
Owin’s voice grew cold, raw with disbelief. He pulled her dagger from the bag, its blade catching the light. He lifted it to her chin, pressing until the point nicked skin.
“Get on your knees, Veilwalker.”
The crowd roared with music and drink, blind to the truth unraveling in their midst. Ilys stood caught between two revelations—Veylen at the revel before her, and Owin, the man who had been soft and kind and drunk with laughter, now her captor.
Chapter 23
Ilys sat on the cold stone floor with her wrists bound and ankles loosely tied. The rope had rubbed her skin raw, though she barely felt it anymore. A single oil lantern flickered on a crate, throwing long, skeletal shadows across the walls of the abandoned mercantile hall.
It had been a day, maybe longer, since anyone had come for her.
Her mind kept circling back to how she had come to be here. The revel’s roar still clung to her ears: fiddles shrieking, boots stamping, drunken voices laughing loud enough to shake the stars. She had been chasing a glimpse of black through the crowd, Veylen’s cloak cutting like a blade through the blur of bodies. She remembered her satchel spilling, Owin’s laugh as he stooped to gather it, the way his hand stilled when he pulled the black veil free. The way his face changed, disbelief curdling into cold hostility.
Then the dagger at her chin, his voice raw with betrayal.Get on your knees, Veilwalker.
The crowd had gone on oblivious—dancing, shouting, drinking—while he dragged her away. To them, he had looked like any drunk man pulling his companion home.
She remembered the side streets slick with mist, the cobblestones glistening under torchlight. His grip on her arm like iron, the press of his blade when she twisted too sharply. Now, here she sat, bound in the dark, the memory gnawing at her.
It had been a day, maybe more. No food, no water, no sign of him. Her wrists ached, the rope coarse and unrelenting, but she had begun to work at it; tiny twists of her hands made the slightest friction where the fibers had begun to fray. It was heavy-footed work, maddening work, but above all, a distraction. Every scrape sent fire through her skin, but she welcomed the pain; it reminded her she was not wholly powerless.
The lock scraped.
Ilys stirred, blinking against the dim flare of lantern light as the door swung inward. Owin stepped inside, closing it behind him with a quiet click. He carried the lantern low, its glow cutting across the floor, painting his face in tired lines. For a long moment, he only looked at her.
“You’ve been quiet,” he said at last, his voice low, rough. “I thought maybe you’d try screaming. Or praying. Anything.”
Owin wheezed, his shoulders rising and falling with the effort. “I keep seeing it. That night in the square. The fire. The screaming. Six men dragged into the light.” His jaw tightened. “My brother among them. My sister’s husband. And you—” His throat bobbed. “You did not hesitate.”
Against her will, the memory rose.
The city square, lit red as a furnace. Smoke choking the sky. Six men forced to their knees, the crowd pressing at her back like a living wall. She had lifted her blade with Death’s command burning in her ears, every muscle straining against the will that held her. Their eyes still haunted her—pleading, furious, broken. And when the last body had fallen, the mob had surged. She remembered the first fist slamming into her ribs and the stones hurled at her veiled head. Hands clawing, teeth snapping, the roar of hatred threatening to rip her limb from limb. She swallowed hard, blinking the smoke from her eyes even though it was years gone.
“You think I wanted that?” Her voice cracked, harsher than she intended. “You think I long to be the hand of the Bargain I never chose? I nearly killed myself for those deaths. Do you not see? I am bound. A pawn. I carry out the will of a god who delights in cruelty.”
Owin stepped closer, lantern light flaring across his face, twisted with grief. “Pawn or not, you held the blade. You looked at my brother and still slit his throat. Might you not have thought twice? Even for a heartbeat?”
Her chest heaved. “And if I had? What would it have changed? Death’s hand was on mine. His voice in my skull. I am not free to choose.”
His breath hitched, rage twisting with mourning. “You could have spared him a second’s thought. That is all I ask.” His voice dropped, hoarse. “One second.”
Ilys’s hands curled against the rope at her wrists. She forced the words out, raw, “I will kill Death. I swear it. I was always planning to. I want to end this Bargain.”
