Her focus snapped back to me, weighing the conviction in my voice. For a long moment, she said nothing.
Finally, Eira sighed, the corner of her mouth curling despite herself. “Gods help me, you’re just like him.” She smirked, tilting her head. “No wonder Veyrion’s so fond of you.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I scowled to cover it. “Eira.”
I was done letting other people decide what truths I was allowed.
The path Eira chose wound downward, deeper into the belly of the mountain. The air grew colder the farther we went, until the chill burned in my lungs. The halls narrowed, torchlight casting long shadows against walls of rough-hewn stone. Runnels of ice crept across the ground like veins, and the silence pressed close, broken only by the echo of our footsteps.
At last, we stopped before a sheer wall of stone. It looked unremarkable—just another dead end in the maze of the mountain. But Eira stepped forward without hesitation, pale frost curling from her lips in the cold.
She pressed her palm to the rock and whispered, “Verja.”
Runes blazed to life across the wall, spreading outward in curling spirals of pale blue light. The glow pulsed once, then steadied, filling the narrow passage with a cold, holy radiance. The stone itself seemed to hum beneath my feet.
Eira turned to me, her face bathed in the glow. “It means to protect. One of the oldest, most sacred vows in Ymirskald. We do not use it lightly.”
The runes brightened. A seam formed in the stone, as though the mountain itself had opened its eye. My breath caught as the wall split, revealing the path beyond.
She was steady, solemn. “What you are about to see is a sacred place. Meant to heal. To protect. It is not very pretty… but it is real.”
I followed Eira, and the world changed.
The chamber beyond was enormous, carved deep into the mountain’s heart. I expected emptiness—pools of strange water, maybe bones scattered across the stone. Instead—
Beds.
Dozens of them, lined along the walls, tucked into alcoves carved straight into the rock. And every one was full.
An elf lay nearest, his inky hair plastered to his temples with sweat, bandages darkened at his side. Farther down, a pair of winged fae—one conscious, one not—were tended by a human doctor with steady, blood-stained hands. I caught sight of a horned creature I couldn’t name, his chest rising unevenly as glowing salves were pressed into the wounds lacing his skin.
And there were more—faces I didn’t recognize, species I couldn’t name. Some beautiful, some terrible. All broken.
And tending them—healers. Not only people of Ymirskald, but a patchwork of races and callings: witches, ward-carvers, human doctors with keen eyes and steady hands, sea-priests whispering chants, even children running water and clean bandages to the bedsides. They moved in a quiet, organized rhythm, each lending what skill they had to keep the broken alive.
The air felt different here—not warmer, not brighter, but steadier. The ache beneath my skin eased, just slightly. Magic moved through the space—slow and deliberate, careful not to overwhelm the fragile lives it touched.
Eira’s voice came soft at my side, it seemed like she could feel the turn of my thoughts. “This is his cause, Nerina. His legacy. Not war, not glory.This. Whatever else he is, whatever else he’s done—it is for this.”
The thought came unbidden, unwelcome. Veyrion. Not as a conqueror. Not as a tyrant. As a guardian. A protector.
It made sense now—why Veyrion was the way he was. Why he wore his sharpness like armor, why his words cut like knives, why he let the world believe he was only cruelty and shadow. If anyone knew this place existed—if they knew he had built it, protected it—he wouldn’t be feared. He wouldn’t be revered. He would be called soft. Weak. And in a world like ours, mercy was a liability.
So he hid it. Buried it beneath riddles and harshness and that mask of cold authority. He made himself monstrous so no one would ever think to look for the good he was doing in the dark.
And then there was the word.Verja.
I’d heard it from the Elders, whispered like prayer. I’d heard him speak it to the wolf that drew the sleigh, a vow even to a creature of muscle and bone. And now Eira had told me what it meant—to protect. A vow not given lightly. Sacred. And he had spoken it over me.
I didn’t know what that meant—for him, or for me.
My throat tightened, anger and confusion coiling together like thorns. This was the man who had threatened me, who had cornered me. The horrors he’d thrown in my face, the truths he’d wielded like a blade—Alaric had confessed them himself. He had hunted. He had destroyed. People like me. People like the ones lying here now, shivering and broken, waiting for a second chance that Alaric had once denied them. I had every reason to hate him. To keep him locked in the shape of the monster I believed him to be.
But this place—these cots, these healers, these broken lives being stitched back together—didn’t lie.
A wave of guilt and fury rose hot in my chest, and I hated the sting of it. Hated that he was right. Hated that he had spoken a vow over me. Hated that some part of me wanted to believe in him when I knew better.
And yet, standing here in this place he had built and guarded, with the wordVerjastill humming in my bones, I felt the most dangerous thing of all—uncertain.
