Chapter 26
It had been two years since her first Veilmarch, the one she could not see through to its end. Since she had slain Lord Veylen. Since Death had crossed the line, choosing to protect her instead of merely collect, and then vanished into smoke.
Ilys could not describe the sensation, but she knew that though two years had passed, she would not be granted a third. Death would come for her this Veilmarch. She knew it in her blood.
One evening, while dining with the King, veal and carrots were set before them. Hanna had not yet been invited to join their table. The King remarked, almost wistfully, that he already mourned the solitude he and Ilys still shared, soon to be lost to the presence of the child.
Ilys smiled placatingly, but inside her head she scorned him.Then why did you ask me to name a successor?she thought. But she chided herself, knowing the King’s place as a servant to Death just as she knew her own.
The King scraped his knife against the stoneware plate, pushing the veal from side to side before speaking. “I asked you to this dinner because we’ve had word. Death will arrive in a day’s time.”
Ilys offered a silent thanks to her veil, masking the dread that coiled in her gut behind a diplomat’s composure. She did not want him back.
The King, always more attuned to the intangible than even Death himself, seemed to catch the shift in her spirit. “I wish it were not so,” he said softly, setting his palm flat against the table, the gesture almost a reach, almost a comfort.
“I think it is important that while you are away, Hanna sees to her first execution.”
Ilys choked on the mead she’d just drawn into her mouth. “What?”
“It’s time she became more intimate with what is asked of her.”
“She is seven,” Ilys said flatly.
The King cocked his head, consuming Ilys’s presence with a barbed curiosity. “You were only nine,” he pointedly offered.
“It is—” Ilys coughed. “Too young. Entirely too young.”
He quirked an eyebrow, a discontented tug teasing the corners of his lips. “Where is the reverent girl I raised? Have you so quickly forgotten your role, your divine nature?”
The words rattled around in her head. Her vision blinked between the dining table and visions of Hanna. Sweet, tiny Hanna, looking to Ilys with blood on her hands.
“I uphold my duty, my Shepherd. I only ask that we wait longer for the girl to mature.”
“She is no girl,” he snapped, sudden and surprising. “She is a Veilwalker.” He closed his eyes, visibly cooling and fighting for resolve. “You are not yourself, Ilys. I worry that you wereforced to the helm too early. Too soon.” Grim’s departure flashed through her mind.
The King settled deeper into his chair, lounging comfortably in himself. “I believe some direction may help. Some additional oversight to aid you. Such a burden to shoulder alone, at your age.”
“My Shepherd, I apologize. I did not mean—”
“Veilwalker,” he cut her off. “A member of my Ebon Choir will attend you and the girl from here on out. No need to harangue further. Clearly youth has blurred your purpose.”
He stood, leaving the table. More and more, she found their conversations ending as such: a king’s demand followed by a tantrum. She had forgotten herself in the meeting, and now both Hanna and Ilys would pay for it.
Ilys’ gaze bored into the top of Hanna’s head as the girl flipped through the sketchbook that evening. They were seated on the low couch in Ilys’s chambers, the fire burning low in the hearth, shadows playing across the stone walls. The faint scratch of the pages susurrated throughout the quarters—Hanna’s favorite sound, it now seemed.
It had become a habit of hers, this plucking of the leather book from Ilys’s desk and opening it without question or permission. With Grim, Baron, and Rowenna gone, no one treated Ilys with such casual familiarity. Her heart leapt every time the child did, even if the medium Hanna clung to was painful.
Hanna stopped at one sketch and pointed to it. “You said he is in the guard, but I never see him.”
Oh, Hanna.The girl materialized with an affinity for questions that tortured. How strange, silly, and utterly horrid to Ilys that Hanna had never met the hulking man. How precious Baron would have found her. How entertaining he would have been, performing for not one, but two girls utterly enthralled with him. Ilys’s eyes burned at the thought.
“He’s gone now,” Ilys admitted nimbly, her voice throttled and watery. “He lives in the Veil.”
Hanna, attuned to the shift in Ilys’s diction, turned to her veiled predecessor. She slid her veil off and crawled into Ilys’s lap, ducking under the larger veil as though it were a tent. Her small palms pressed against Ilys’s cheeks, wiping the tears there.
“I’m sorry that happened,” Hanna offered, lilting and tender.
Ilys broke further, sobs wracking her body.She was sorry? This darling child was sorry?A ridiculous notion. And yet the words lifted Ilys. No one had ever offered her such a sentiment before.
