“The Veil shall hold.”
Finally, Ilys breathed the last word, soft as the wind, “Vasha.” The child shuddered as Ilys gently pried the knife from her grip. “Come.”
The girl stood, smaller than ever beside her. After a heartbeat, her hand slipped into Ilys’s free one. Morrigan fell into step on Hanna’s other side, walking so close his flank brushed her tunic, guarding her from both directions.
As they neared the gates of the Sanctum, the low rattle of wheels reached Ilys first, followed by the whicker of a single horse. A small carriage waited at the threshold, modest but well-kept, its canvas cover dusted with the red of the road. A servant held the reins loosely, standing aside as Rowenna descended the step.
Flushed from travel, curls escaping their braid, Rowenna gathered her skirts in one hand to keep them from the mud. With the other, she steadied a boy not much younger than Hanna; a boy who seemed determined to fling himself back toward the road, all kicking heels and wild energy. Rowennacaught him against her hip with practiced ease, her breath leaving her in a huff that turned into a laugh.
“No.” Ilys uttered the word under her breath, eyes narrowing as she took in Rowenna.
“What?” Rowenna asked, blowing a stray strand of hair from her face as she wrangled young Beck, who squirmed in her grasp with all the strength of a child determined to escape.
“You’re pregnant.” Ilys nodded, resolutely. “He plopped another in you!”
Rowenna stilled, then cast a wry glance up at Ilys, her expression caught between amusement and exasperation.A child stands betwixt us, her eyes seemed to say, as though Ilys had forgotten the very real, very restless boy in her arms and the young Veilwalker beside her.
Ilys leaned closer, voice low. “Your bosom isunnaturallylarge. The whole Sanctum knows by now.”
Rowenna snorted softly, shaking her head, but she didn’t deny it. She settled Beck against her hip with a sigh, patting his back as though to calm both him and herself. He had grown. Two covenant years had passed since Rowenna had first placed him in Ilys’s arms. He no longer lived as the fragile bundle he had been; sturdy now, full of mischief, his tawny curls wild and his cheeks still round with the remnants of infancy.
Ilys felt Hanna shift against her, peering from beneath the edge of her veil. She kept one small hand curled in the fabric of Ilys’s sleeve.
“This is Beck,” Ilys said at last, nodding toward the boy.
Hanna only gawked, mute behind the soft ebony of her veil. Beck squirmed harder at the sight of her, curious, reaching with grubby fingers as though determined to snatch the veil itself.
“Beck,” Rowenna chided gently, catching his wrist before he could grab it. “Manners.” The boy grinned, utterly unrepentant.
Ilys crouched beside Hanna, her voice even. “You may sit, if you like. He is loud, but harmless.”
After a long hesitation, Hanna’s grip loosened on Ilys’s sleeve. She let Ilys guide her down to the grass, where she sat stiffly, hands folded in her lap. Beck plopped down beside her with a thud, immediately offering her a stick as though it were the finest treasure in the kingdom. Hanna blinked at it. Then, because she was polite to madmen, she took it.
Rowenna crouched nearby, her tone warm and coaxing. “He shares his best sticks only with the most important guests.”
“Just like his father,” Ilys quipped, voice full with innuendo while patting Rowenna’s belly. Rowenna swatted at her hand, laughing. The pair watched the children play, carving lines into the dirt.
“There now,” Rowenna said maternally, amusement glinting in her eye. “Two fine map-makers. Where will this road take them, do you think?”
“Somewhere far from us,” Ilys pouted, melancholy nipping at her mind.
Rowenna’s sharp eyes lingered on Ilys, reading her too well. “What is it?”
Ilys swallowed, her throat tight. “I am terrified,” she admitted, “of what will happen when push comes to shove. When they see how I look at her—how the love pours out of me. We are not to have attachments.”
Rowenna’s expression softened. “She is your successor. It is natural to spend time with her. To tend to her.”
“I hope they see it that way,” Ilys said. Her voice felt like it might splinter. “There is a war I wage with myself every day, to love her or to push her away. I know not which will bring her closer to happiness and safety.”
Rowenna hummed, gazing at Hanna where she sat beside Beck. The girl had begun to tap the stick lightly against the ground, the rhythm of it coaxing Beck into fits of giggles.
“You are already giving her what she needs,” Rowenna said at last. Then, after a pause, “I see Grim in you, clear as day.” The words landed like an arrow loosed straight through Ilys’s center.
They lingered long after, the conversation winding as the light thinned to gold, then to violet. Beck eventually grew drowsy, nodding against Rowenna’s shoulder, and even Hanna’s stick tapping slowed to a soft, absent rhythm. “How did you know I needed you so dearly?” Ilys asked at last, her voice somber in the growing dusk.
Rowenna smiled and pressed a kiss to each of Ilys’s cheeks. “Your last letter was painfully dull. I thought I’d save you from yourself.”
Ilys let out a breath of a laugh. “Then I promise to send nothing but dry, dowdy content from here on out.”
