They didn’t.
They were cool. Smooth. Deceptively soft.
It’s just cloth,I told myself.It means nothing.
But it felt heavier than that—as though the moment I wore it, I would no longer be only Nerina. I’d be something else. Something the Elders could name. Something Veyrion could claim.
I slipped off my coat and the layers beneath, the air biting at my skin. My hands shook—not from the cold, but from the choice I was making with each motion.
The gown slid over my head like water, falling against me in perfect, merciless silence. Fur lining trapped my heat. Wool settled over my curves. The weight of it pressed into my shoulders—grounding and binding all at once. Beads at the hem caught the firelight and scattered it across the walls like stars trying to escape.
I fastened the silver clasps at my wrists, feeling each one click into place like the slow closing of a lock.
I barely recognized the woman in the mirror. She stood straighter. Eyes hard enough to cut. Regal—yes.
But there was still a flicker there. Enough defiance to remind me that whatever name I wore, whatever vow they demanded, I was still mine.
A shadow shifted beyond the door. Veyrion’s voice came, calm as a verdict. “Ready?”
I didn’t answer.
I slipped the artifact shards into the inner pocket of my coat, their cold weight settling against my ribs—solid. Real.
Then I lifted my gaze to my reflection. A stranger stared back, draped in frost and silver, and I wondered which part of her would walk out of this mountain
…and which part would stay buried there forever.
36
Nerina
Ymirskald
Veyrion walked beside me, his fur-lined cloak sweeping the frost-dusted stone. Since the knock at my door, he’d spoken little. Short commands. An occasional sideways glance. The quiet wasn’t comforting. It was deliberate. Controlled.
Every word he didn’t speak was its own calculation and I was being measured with each step I took.
The longer the silence stretched, the more it felt like I’d stepped onto a chessboard mid-game with no idea which side I was on—or what piece I was meant to be. Pawn, sacrificed to open the way for something greater. A knight moved in unexpected arcs to strike where others couldn’t. Rook, built to hold the line. Or queen—powerful, dangerous only if the king allowed her to move.
Almost like he read my mind, he broke the silence. “The Elders,” Veyrion said as we descended deeper into the mountain, “They guide Ymirskald not by crowns or blades, but by—"
The path narrowed, forcing us shoulder to shoulder. He slowed as the steps steepened. “Memory. Presence. Possibility.”
His attention cut to me. “They will not care who you think you are. Only what the world will become because of you.”
The weight of his words settled in my stomach like sinking anchors.
Veyrion exhaled slowly. “I believe you don’t belong to one world—because the gods carved you from pieces of many."
“You don’t know what I am,” I said, voice low.
“Maybe not.” His focus shifted forward. “But I see it in you. The power. The loneliness. The weight of knowing there’s something in your blood others will fear, twist, or try to claim as their own.”
“And binding me to you makes that go away?”
“It protects you,” he said—too quickly.
“I don’t need you to protect me,” The words came out sharp enough to draw blood.
