I listened, struck by the quiet fervor in his voice. He wasn’t speaking like a warrior or a lord, but like a man rooted deep in the bones of this land.
“Whatexactlyis Yule?” I asked softly.
He turned to me surprised. “It is the turning of the year. The night the sun dies and is reborn. When the old is burned away and the new is welcomed in.”
He studied me as he spoke the last words, the flames throwing shadows across the planes of his face. “We will host Yule at Skeldrhall. There will be hunts, games, and contests of strength,” he said. “The young test themselves in skill and courage. Music, dancing—fire that burns all three nights. Children run wild through the hall, stuffing their faces with honey bread while the elders tell stories of gods and monsters. For three nights, the halls never go quiet—drums, laughter, a hundred voices raised together against the dark.”
I tried to picture it—everyone gathered at Skeldrhall not out of duty, but out of desire. Celebration, not ceremony.
And for a moment, I envied them. I remembered gatherings in Thalassia. The Celestial Choir. Crowds pressed into the coral amphitheater, voices lifted in hollow reverence to rituals I had never understood. The cold weight of expectation. Their eyes, when they fixed on me, held no warmth. There had been no laughter. No joy. No freedom.
It struck me then—what Yule truly was. The Winter Solstice.
“The solstice,” I whispered, the words tasting strange. “It’s in just a few days?”
Longer than I’d realized—long enough for the world to turn its face toward winter without me noticing. Time had stretched and folded in on itself since the Fall Equinox—days at sea, nights without stars, moments that felt endless, weeks that vanished whole.
The realization pressed down with heavier weight. While days bled into nights here, while I busied myself with self-loathing and wondering, I’d done little—nothing—to decide how I would face my mother. How I would confront the Tidekeepers for what they’d taken from me.
“My lord!”, a voice shattered the stillness.
A horn sounded somewhere above us—low, warning.
A scout, bundled in furs and flushed from haste, rushed into the square. Snow clung to his boots, his beard rimed with frost.
Veyrion stepped back, his presence shifting in an instant from man to commander. “Report.”
“A ship’s been spotted off the coast near Skeldrhall,” the scout said quickly. “Flying no colors. It’s not one of ours.”
Veyrion’s face went still—dangerously so. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
Without another word, he guided me swiftly back to the sled. His hand steady but brisk as he helped me in, then swung up beside me.
The ride back to Skeldrhall was silent—faster, colder somehow. The sled glided as smoothly as before, but the laughter was gone.
When we reached the doors, Veyrion leapt down in one fluid motion, then turned back, offering his hand. His gaze fixed on mine, his voice dropping low enough for only me to hear.
“Stay inside,” he said. His tone was firm, iron-edged—but after a beat, it shifted, softened. “I don’t know what waits out there, and I won’t risk you being caught in it.” His jaw flexed. “There have been breaches along Ymirskald’s borders these past weeks. Small raids, scouts slipping past where they shouldn’t. No banners, no allegiances claimed. I don’t know who is behind it—or why. And until I do, I won’t gamble with your safety.”
I froze—not at the words themselves, but at the fact that he gave them at all.
A reason.
Alaric had given orders too. Barked them—final as a whip crack.Stay on the ship. Don’t stray too far. Put some shoes on. Do as I say.Commands, always commands. No explanation. No trust. Maybe that was why I’d always pushed back. Why I’d bristled against his rules. Why defiance came so easily. Because he never told me why. And here was Veyrion—the man I least expected it from—looking at me as though I deserved to know.
I lifted my chin. “And what if the danger is already inside Skeldrhall?”
Veyrion’s eyes narrowed, then—unexpectedly—his mouth curved. Not a full smile, but the faint, dangerous tilt of one. Satisfaction flickered there. “You think like a wolf already,” he said, voice low. There was respect in it, begrudging but real—as though he hadn’t expected the question, but approved of it all the same.
42
Alaric
Ymirskald
The potion still burned like hellfire as I swallowed it, the taste of crushed bone and bitter kelp tearing down my throat. It hit faster than last time—a brutal rush that left my hands flexing at my sides like they belonged to someone else.
Years. I’d waited years to break this curse. Years of cursed coves and half-rotted ports, of salt-choked air that tasted of death. I used to dream of the moment my boots touched true earth again. Cities bursting with life and color, music spilling down crowded streets. I made lists in my head—names, places, promises scrawled in the silence of my damnation.
