“I understand better than you think,” he interrupted, voice sharp. He didn’t look away. “I’ve seen what happens when you fight too soon. Rage makes you reckless. Grief makes you careless. If you walk into their den without a plan, they won’t need to break you. You’ll hand them the blade.”
My breath shuddered, frost clouded in the dark. I hated the calm certainty in his voice. I hated that I believed it. If I went back like this, I wouldn’t be confronting them—I’d be handing myself over to them.
“Stay. Stay here in Ymirskald until you know what you carry inside you. Not forever. Not even for long. Until you can wield it instead of fearing it. Then go to Thalassia—and make sure they never take from you again.”
The stars blazed cold above us. My heart screamed to return, to end it now, to tear the truth from their lips no matter the cost. But beneath that fury, a quieter voice coiled low in my chest. A voice that asked if rushing into the jaws of betrayal would give me freedom—or only feed the beast. I closed my eyes, the wind biting at my face, and whispered the hardest word of all.“…Stay?”
He didn’t smile. He didn’t gloat. But the air shifted around him, thickened. Something in him burned like fire when our eyes met. “You are welcome to stay here,” he said, voice low, carrying more weight than a promise had any right to. “Not as a prisoner. Not as a bride. As a storm, brewing until you are ready to tear the sea and sky apart.”
I turned to him, meeting his eyes head-on. “And where would I stay?” I asked. My mouth curved, fierce and humorless. “Because we’re not getting married—no matter what fantasy you were entertaining when you abducted me.”
Veyrion laughed—low and incredulous. “Abducted you?” he echoed. “Is that what we’re calling it now?” He steppedcloser, not crowding—claiming space. “You followed me through Shadeau,” he went on. “You followed me from the Black Marrow to my ship. You followed me into the Elders’ hall. And you followed me here.” His attention fixed on mine. “Every step was yours.”
A beat.
“No hands on you. No chains. No blade at your back. Only a few words of motivation. But I didn’t force you,” he said quietly. “You came because you chose to.”
He was rewriting coercion into consent—turning pressure into preference, threat into choice.
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t look away. “Besides that was before the Elders spoke,” he said. “Before I understood how wrong I was.” A brief pause—measured. “But that doesn’t change this.”
He gestured back toward the direction of his home. “My house is still yours—if you want. Not because I expect anything in return.” His voice hardened just enough to matter. “But because I won’t see you left out in the cold.”
Another beat.
“I brought you here,” he finished. “You are my guest.”
I searched his face for deceit, for some flicker of hidden motive—but found only quiet steadiness. It unnerved me more than any charm or threat.
We stood there in silence for a little while, the wind threading between us, the stars like pinpricks in a too-wide sky.
Then, Veyrion spoke.
“There’s a tale of the North that warriors whisper in the dark,” he said. “A story not written in books, but carved into the bones of this mountain.”
I turned toward him, curious, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
“About a boy born beneath a sky that wouldn’t stay still. Storms followed him. Ice cracked when he cried. Animals fled. People whispered.”
“They said he was too loud. Toomuch.” A pause. “So his family did what frightened people always do.”
The look in his eyes was distant now. “They took him far from home,” he continued. “Across the water. To a different land. A place where no one knew what he was meant to be.”
My chest tightened.
“They left him there and told themselves it was mercy.”
I swallowed. “What happened to the boy?”
Veyrion continued watching the horizon.
“They say he grew,” he replied. “Not into the thing they feared—but into the man that child had needed.”
His voice roughened on the last word—not loud, not broken, just edged enough to cut. “A man who would have stood between that boy and the cold. Who would have saidenoughwhen the world demanded less.” His voice was steady now, sure. “A man who learned that strength could be a shield as much as a blade.”
I leaned forward without meaning to.
“Some say,” he went on, “that he crossed the waters again. That he returned to Ymirskald—not as a plea, but as a reckoning.”
