Chapter 93 Veil-seekers
Brightwater’s eastern wall had never been the city’s pride. It had been patched and repatched a dozen times in Daisy’s lifetime alone, the stones scavenged from fallen manors and the mortar mixed with whatever powdery grit could be begged from the riverbeds. By now, the ramparts looked more like stacked teeth than any fortification meant to withstand a real siege. And yet, as Daisy and her makeshift cohort barreled through the chaos toward the breach, it felt like the last real thing holding the world together.
The air beyond the wall pulsed with violence. Masked shapes pressed forward through the dust and smoke, ducking low behind the blackened corpses of fallen wagons. Their faces were hidden by cloth, but their arms were bare and covered in interlocking bands of silver tattoo, each mark shining with a quicksilver iridescence that caught and reflected every flicker of light. The symbols weren’t decorative; Daisy recognized the bite of active warding, the glimmer of spellwork so dense it practically oozed off their skin. They worked in silence, moving with inhuman coordination, not a word or shout between them, even as the city’s defenders screamed and fell around them.
Daisy skidded to a stop behind the collapsed shell of a supply cart, ducking next to Xeris. He scanned the battlefield with predatory calm, nose wrinkling at the stench of burned oil and old blood. Oliver dropped in beside them, winded but already scanning for an angle of attack. The three of them made an odd tableau: Xeris, smoldering with contained fury; Daisy, magic curling and twitching at her fingertips; Oliver, a human livewire, restless and alive in a way that made her feel the rush in her own veins.
Xeris’s voice was low, a rumble felt more than heard. “They’re not Ironclaw regulars. Mercenaries, or worse.”
Daisy risked a look over the wreckage. The attackers weren’t using hexrods or conventional weaponry; instead, they lobbed fat glass vials, each one bursting on impact and eating away stone in great ragged bites. The magic that powered them was different, cold, clinical, leaving behind a frost of blackened residue and a stink that Daisy instinctively wanted to recoil from. She recognized it as a cousin to the blood magics Samuel had warned her about: “Void-magic, the coward’s art.”
Oliver drew a short blade, the hilt wrapped in someone else’s hair, and tested its balance. “Can you disrupt their shields?” he asked Daisy.
She considered it, flexing her hands. “Maybe. If I get close enough.”
“Then do it.” Xeris’s tone brooked no argument. “I’ll draw fire.”
He stood and strode out onto the open ground, body fluid and shifting. A hail of vials arced toward him, but Xeris twisted and flowed around them, impossibly fast. He drew breath, and for a split second Daisy saw the mask slip: his eyes flared gold, and the air shimmered around his shoulders as if something scaled and immense pressed against the boundary of his flesh.
She didn’t hesitate. Daisy vaulted the cart and sprinted, blood sigils already forming at her fingertips. She moved in Xeris’s wake, trusting his presence to shield her, and felt the electric fizz of an enemy spell snap inches from her cheek. She reached the first of the tattooed men just as he was drawing another vial.
Daisy slashed her palm, conjuring a razor-thin whip of her own blood, and wrapped it around his forearm. The contact was like grabbing a live wire; the man jerked, muscles spasming as the wards in his skin reacted. She locked eyes with him for half a second, then forced the spell to invert, shunting all the backlash into her own nerves.
Pain flashed white-hot, her head reeled, her knees buckled, but she held on. The man’s tattoos convulsed, the silver lines writhing as if alive. He fell, shaking, but didn’t make a sound.
Daisy staggered to the next, where Oliver was already holding one at knifepoint. The man’s mouth was sewn shut with silver thread, but his eyes burned with fanatic clarity.
“Don’t kill him,” Daisy said, breathless.
Oliver pressed the knife tighter. “He’ll kill you given half a chance.”
“Let me.” Daisy reached out and pressed her bloodied fingers to the man’s temple. She felt the lattice of magic under his skin, the mesh of compulsion and loyalty, the desperate clutch of a mind trying to obey even as it slipped away. She sent her magic in, looking for seams, for anything that might open up a path.
The man trembled, then spoke, not with his mouth, but with the low, guttural noise of forced air through ruined vocal cords. “The Veilseekers will claim the Chainbearer,” he hissed.
Daisy’s blood ran cold. “What’s a Chainbearer?” she asked, but the man only shuddered, his gaze locked on her like she was both salvation and doom.
Xeris rejoined them, cloak smoldering at the hem, face set and unreadable. He surveyed the fallen men, then glanced at Daisy’s wounded hand. “You’re bleeding,” he said, a pointless observation.
She ignored him, focusing on the man at her feet. The tattoos pulsed, growing brighter. “He’s going to?”
Before she could finish, the man seized, silver lines burning white on his arms. There was a sudden, foul smell as the flesh around the tattoos necrotized, turning black in an instant. The Veilseeker convulsed, then went limp, a froth of blue-black blood leaking from nose and eyes.
Daisy recoiled, bile in her throat.
“He killed himself,” Oliver said, voice flat.
“Wasn’t suicide,” Xeris corrected. “The tattoos were a failsafe. Magic did it.”
Daisy flexed her hands, the ache settling in. “That’s new. Ironclaw never used kill switches before.”
“Means they’re afraid,” Xeris said. He knelt, inspecting the dead man’s arm. “Or desperate.”
The skirmish had ended as quickly as it started. Other squads mopped up along the wall, but most of the attackers had either fled or been reduced to ash by Xeris’s fire. Daisy felt the adrenaline ebb, leaving her shaky and cold. She pressed a rag to her hand, watching the blood soak through in uneven blots.
Xeris eyed her, his expression bordering on predatory. “You’re draining yourself too fast,” he said.
“I can handle it,” Daisy replied, sharper than she intended.
He held her gaze for a long moment, then shrugged. “Suit yourself.” He turned and stalked off, leaving her alone with Oliver and the heap of dead Veilseekers.
Oliver crouched and wiped the knife on his trousers, then offered her a crooked smile. “You did well.”
She wanted to snap at him, tell him not to patronize her, but the words died on her tongue. Instead, she looked at the dead man’s arm, the silver tattoos already losing their shine as the skin cooled.
“Chainbearer,” she said, testing the word. “What do you think it means?”
Oliver rose, brushed dirt from his knees, and gave her a sidelong look. “If I had to guess, I’d say you.”
Daisy snorted. “Of course.”
He touched her shoulder, a brief squeeze, then jerked his head toward the city. “Come on. You need to get patched up before you drop.”
They walked back through the aftermath: injured soldiers groaning, civilians huddled in alleyways, the scent of blood and cinders hanging over everything. Daisy’s vision swam, and she realized she’d lost more blood than she thought.
They reached the city’s makeshift infirmary, an old wine merchant’s villa retrofitted with beds, tables, and half the world’s supply of sour bandages. Delia Moss worked near the entrance, her hands red to the wrist, but her face calm and focused. She barely looked up as Daisy entered, but gestured to a cot with her elbow.
“Sit,” Delia ordered, voice clipped.
Daisy obeyed. Delia inspected her hand, muttering under her breath, then produced a needle and stitched the wound with the confidence of someone who had done it a thousand times.
“Too many,” Delia said, not specifying whether she meant the wounds or the battles. “You need to slow down.”
Daisy stared at the ceiling, watching the candlelight flicker against the cracks. “City’s not going to defend itself.”
Delia shot her a look. “Neither will your body, if you keep burning it out.”
She finished the stitch and wrapped her hand tight. “Done. Now go do whatever city leaders do after saving the world.”
Oliver, who had lingered in the doorway, approached as Delia moved on to another patient. He knelt by the cot, balancing on the balls of his feet like a thief casing a lock.
“Thought I lost you today,” he said, not meeting her eyes.
Daisy tried for a joke, but the words tangled up. “I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
Oliver reached for her hand, as if expecting her to pull away. When she didn’t, he held it in both of his hands, his thumb tracing the edge of the new bandage.
“Still,” he said, “I thought it. And it was a bad feeling.”
They sat in the noise and the haze, the space around them suddenly quieter than it had any right to be. Daisy felt the old urge to distance herself, to cut the moment short, but something in Oliver’s grip made her want to hang on instead.
She squeezed his hand. “You’re an idiot.”
He smiled, bright and stupid and exactly what she needed.
Across the room, Xeris watched, his eyes unreadable and ancient. There was something like jealousy there, or maybe just the recognition of an old, unsolvable problem. He turned away, fading into the shadows at the far end of the hall.
Daisy leaned back, the exhaustion finally catching up.
“They called themselves Veilseekers,” she said, as much to herself as to Oliver.
He nodded. “Makes sense. They wanted something hidden.”
Daisy closed her eyes, Oliver’s warmth anchoring her in the swirl of pain and magic. “Whatever it is, I’m done running from it.”
She heard him chuckle, soft and proud. “Knew you’d say that.”
And for the first time in a long time, Daisy allowed herself the luxury of rest, even if just for a moment. The world would come knocking again, and soon. But for now, she clung to the rough comfort of Oliver’s hand, the echo of her own stubborn promise, and the memory of silver tattoos burning in the dark.