As I pressed my palm over the finished bandage, something old stirred behind my ribs. I’d done this before—kneeling beside someone torn open by violence, offering care to someone too stubborn to ask for it.
With Alaric, it had been desperation. This was something else. Veyrion wasn’t dying. Not quite. But the vulnerability—the silence he allowed me to fill—was familiar in a way that made my chest ache.
Veyrion slid off the table, testing his weight. He swayed once, caught himself, pride still stubborn even when his body wanted to fold.
“I didn’t mean for you to see me like this.” His head tipped slightly, eyes unreadable.
I wiped the blood from my fingers, setting the needle aside. The silence between us stayed taut, charged, humming with the weight of what he’d said.
But another thought gnawed at me, sharp as the needle I’d just laid down.
“Tell me something,” I said. “Why did you want the Eye of Nareth so badly that you risked my life to get it?”
His gaze snapped to mine, icy eyes darkening. For once, there was no smirk. No amusement. “I would not have risked your life for it,” he said, voice low, edged with steel.
A dozen retorts crowded my throat—accusations, reminders of every threat he’d dangled over me. And yet something in his tone now didn’t feel like a game.
The air shifted, thickening between us. I opened my mouth—but nothing came.
“As for why I sought it…” His jaw worked, weighing words. Then he shook his head, slow and certain. “It isn’t safe for you to know. Not yet. But when it is—when I can place that truth in your hands without it destroying you—you’ll have it.”
I should have pressed him. I should have clawed for answers until he cracked. But something in his voice—the quiet conviction, the steel beneath it—snared me. Veyrion was many things: arrogant, infuriating, dangerous. Above all, I learned, he was a man of his word.Against my better judgment, I let the question die on my tongue.
He exhaled slowly, then glanced at me with a faint, pained smirk. “So… how was your day with Eira?”
I watched him carefully. “It was a good day,” I said, softer now. “Strange. New. Good."
A smile tugged at my mouth before I could stop it. “She threaten a merchant. Said she’d bring your wrath down on him.”
He grunted—half laughter, half pain. “You should fear Eira’s wrath more than mine,” he said, voice roughened by humor. “She once broke a man’s collarbone because he called her soft.”
“She also made sure I wasn’t wearing anything that screamed ‘drenched and desperate.’ I think she took personal offense to the pirate rags.”
“Eira is not fond of pirates.”
I filed that away, curious despite myself.
The silence stretched, heavy but unbroken, until the thought that had lingered since the market slipped out of me, small and strange.
“Eira asked if I’d stay long enough to see the Northern Lights. What are they?”
Something softened in his expression—so faint I might have imagined it. “The sky burns green and violet,” he said quietly. “Sometimes so bright the snow glows with it.” He paused. “Old stories say it’s the souls of warriors crossing the night. Otherssay it’s the gods setting fire to the sky to remind us they’re still watching.”
My voice came out quieter than I meant, uncertain and aching. “When do they come?”
“Soon,” he said, certain.
I backed toward the door, hand finding the latch. “I’d like to see them,” I whispered.
As I walked through the hallway, only then did it sink in—when I’d first walked in, he’d been ready to pierce his own skin and sew himself shut without a sound.
I knew that kind of resolve.
I’d stitched my own wounds before—quietly, quickly, because no one else would. Seeing him do the same unsettled me in a way my own scars never had. Why endure alone when another pair of hands was right there? Why choose pain out of instinct? What life carved a person into someone who didn’t even consider comfort an option?
He wasn’t just braced for suffering. He expected it.
41
