Skeldrhall, Ymirskald
A sound pulled me from sleep—a muffled thud, the scrape of something heavy against stone. It echoed through the stillness.
The fire in the hearth had burned down to a low orange glow, shadows flickering across the chamber walls like restless ghosts. I shoved off the heavy furs. Cold air licked immediately at my bare skin. I wrapped my cloak tight and slipped out, padding into the corridor.
The sound came again. Closer this time. A ragged breath. A stifled swear.
My pulse kicked. I turned and pushed open the nearest door.
Veyrion stood in the half-light of the council room, shirtless and pale, skin slick with sweat and streaked with blood. He hunched over a low stone table, hands trembling as he tried to wind abandage around his ribs. The cloth was already soaked through, crimson seeping and dripping in uneven trails onto the floor.
A torn cloak lay discarded nearby, nearly black with dried blood. Scratches clawed down his back—deep, raw, fresh. His arm bore a jagged tear: claw or blade, I couldn’t tell.
His jaw was clenched, eyes half-lidded with pain, his chest rising unevenly like something inside him had splintered.
I froze in the doorway, the corridor’s cold at my back, the iron-heavy air in my lungs.
I couldn’t look away.
Eira’s words rose unbidden, irritatingly alive.Maybe what you’ve been told isn’t the truth.
I tried to shove them aside. To cling to what I knew—what I’d decided was safer to believe. Veyrion was dangerous. Manipulative. A man who had already tried to bind me with chains disguised as vows and comfort. He was the one I was supposed to hate. And yet here he was—bleeding, alone, binding his own wounds with clumsy, shaking hands. Not the untouchable figure who strode through Skeldrhall like he owned the mountain itself, but… breakable. Human in his pain. Flesh and blood. Monsters weren’t supposed to bleed like this. Monsters weren’t supposed to look like they could snap in half.
I gripped the doorframe, caught between leaving and stepping closer. Eira had said he carried burdens he never spoke of, that beneath all the frost there was fire—but all I saw was blood,and all I felt was confusion. Could both be true? Could monster and man share the same skin? I didn’t know. Stars, I hated not knowing.
I should have turned away. Let him fight his pain alone. The smell of iron sharpened as I crossed the room, mingling with the faint scent of smoke. His shoulders jolted as he drew the bandage too tight, a hiss escaping through his teeth.
Questions surged inside me, fierce and unrelenting. Where had he been? What had clawed him open like this? Why had he come back alone?
I knew better than to ask. Not yet. Then his head turned. Slowly.
Glacier eyes found me in the half-dark. “Neri?” he drawled, rough and casual.
The name grated—too familiar, too presumptuous. And yet the way it rolled off his tongue, low and effortless, made something traitorous flicker warm in my chest. I hated that. I’d never had a nickname. Never been anything butNerina.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, voice rough as gravel, hoarse with exhaustion.
I stepped closer before I realized I was moving. “You’re hurt.”
He grimaced, as if the words made the pain worse. “It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks pretty bad,” I said flatly, crossing the threshold.
Blood had pooled beneath him, dark and still, the tang thick in the air. His skin—normally sun-kissed bronze—had gone pallid, washed out by cold and pain. Up close, the wound along his side made my stomach tighten: flesh torn open, edges ragged, raw meat gleaming where skin had been flayed away.
I reached for the bandage with hands steadier than my heart. “Let me help.”
For the barest breath, he hesitated—glacier eyes searching mine—then he nodded once. “There are more supplies in the kitchens,” he said. “Eira keeps a healer’s cache near the hearths—warmth keeps the salves from freezing.”
He lowered himself onto the edge of the bench, broad shoulders sagging. It seemed like the fight had gone out of him the moment I offered. “She’s not just a swordswoman,” he murmured, the words slurring slightly with fatigue. “She’s a powerful healer too. Gifted, in a quiet way. Always has been.”
Something about the softness in his voice when he spoke of Eira unsettled me more than the blood. It wasn’t the voice of a warlord or a predator. It was the voice of a brother. And that made him harder to hate.
I slipped from the chamber, my footsteps soundless against the cold floor.
In the kitchen, I rummaged through carved shelves until I found the stash—bundles of dried roots bound in twine, jars filled with dark, resinous salves, a pouch of clean bandages. My fingers lingered on the containers, tracing the faint runes etched into the lids. Eira’s hand, no doubt. For a moment I just stood there, supplies clutched to my chest, heart pounding harder than it should have.
What the hell am I doing?Helping him. The man who had threatened Alaric’s life. The man who had tried to bind me to him. The man I was supposed to hate. But I couldn’t banish the image of him hunched over stone, blood dripping, hands shaking like he was just another body trying not to break.
