I remember the first time I saw her channel the dead—in the Mourning Crypts, with Ira Genn weeping beside her, with the corpse-bundle of Kellan Venn twitching in ways it shouldn’t. She looked fragile then. Breakable. A woman who had given so much of herself to the dead that there was barely anything left for the living.
She doesn’t look fragile now.
The road has tanned her skin to a shade warmer than the crypt-pale complexion I first encountered. Her arms have muscle from carrying her own pack, from the physical work of traveling rough terrain, from the unexpected demands of a life that doesn’t involve hiding in shadows and waiting for someone to need her. She stands taller. Speaks louder. Laughs more often.
The dead gave her purpose. I gave her permission to want things for herself.
“This one’s peaceful.” She brushes soil from the hem of her traveling cloak—practical fabric in mourning colors, dark enough to hide the dust and the occasional blood. “No restless spirits. No unfinished business.” A small smile curves her lips.“The dead here died knowing they were loved. That makes all the difference.”
I pull the map from my satchel. Mark the grave with a small symbol—a circle with a dot at its center, meaning confirmed at rest. The notation system is my invention. The first record ever kept in the Veillands of which dead are peaceful and which might need tending.
“The next settlement is two days east.” I fold the map, tuck it away. “They’ve requested a visit.”
“Requested.” She picks up her travel pack, adjusting the straps over her shoulders with the ease of practice. “Not demanded?”
“Word is spreading.” I offer her my hand. Her fingers interlace with mine like they’ve been doing it for years instead of months. “A death warden who listens, a mourning witch who gives voice—people are starting to understand that those aren’t contradictions.”
“We’re not what they expected.”
“We’re not what I expected.” I pull her closer, tucking her against my side as we begin walking. The road stretches before us, rutted and overgrown, the kind of path that sees more corpse-carts than merchant wagons. “A year ago, I would have burned a woman like you.”
She laughs. The sound still catches me off guard—bright and full and utterly unlike the soft whispers that defined her when we first met. “A year ago, I would have run screaming from a man like you.”
“And now?”
She tilts her head up to meet my eyes. In the strange green light filtering through the clouds, her face looks almost ethereal—the pale complexion of someone who spent too long in crypts, softened by the sun she’s been seeing more of lately. The markon her collarbone is visible above the neckline of her traveling clothes, a scar that matches the one on my sternum.
Claimed. Chosen. Mates in the oldest sense of the word.
“Now I can’t imagine doing this without you.” Her fingers tighten on mine. “The whispers used to be so loud. Every grave we passed, every battlefield, every corner of every city—the dead screaming for attention, and me unable to ignore them.” She pauses. “It’s quieter now. Not silent, but... manageable. Like they know someone is listening, so they don’t have to shout anymore.”
We walk in comfortable silence for a while. The road winds through a valley where the grass grows in patches between stone outcroppings, and ancient bones peek through the soil in places where erosion has done the work grave robbers couldn’t be bothered with. Battlefields, I realize. We’re walking through the remnants of a conflict old enough that no one remembers what the armies were fighting about.
Aradya’s hand fits perfectly in mine. Her calluses have shifted over the past months—less from the ritual knife she used for blood-prices, more from the walking staff she carries now, from the work of setting up camp each night, from the practical tasks of a traveling life. The changes suit her.
“What are you thinking about?” Her voice breaks the silence, curious without being intrusive. She’s learned to read my moods over these weeks, the way I’ve learned to read hers. The slight furrow between her brows when she’s listening to distant whispers. The tension in her shoulders when the dead are demanding. The smile that creeps across her lips when her thoughts turn to matters unrelated to grief.
“The war that happened here.” I gesture toward the bone-studded hillside. “Must have been brutal. The death magic is thick enough that I can taste it.”
“Can you?” She tilts her head, genuinely curious. “I thought death wardens were resistant to it.”
“Resistant isn’t the same as immune.” I pause, considering how to explain what I’ve never put into words. “It’s like... standing in a room full of smoke. Eventually you stop noticing the smell, but it’s still affecting your lungs. The death magic here is old. Concentrated. Whatever happened in this valley, it left scars on the Veil itself.”
She nods slowly. “The dead here are quiet, though. I can feel them, but they’re not reaching. Not demanding.” Her brow furrows. “That’s strange. With this much accumulated death, they should be...”
The mark on my sternum flares.
FIFTY
DROKHAR
Istop. Turn toward a cluster of stones at the valley’s edge—a natural formation that might have been used as a command post, centuries ago. The pull is subtle but unmistakable. Not danger. Not exactly. But attention. Recognition.
A presence here recognizes me.
“Drokhar?” Aradya has stopped beside me, her head tilted in that particular way that means she’s listening to frequencies I can’t hear. “There’s...” She trails off. Closes her eyes. Opens them again with that faint violet bleed at the edges that marks her magic rising. “Someone wants to talk to you.”
“To me specifically?”