Page 81 of Iron Beneath the Snow

If she had been wrong—

The thought did not resolve.

She pulled her hand away.

The room felt too still, too contained, as though the walls held more than they allowed out.

Eira crossed to the window and pushed it open, letting the cold air in. It struck her face sharply enough to force a fuller breath, the kind that reached deeper, past the surface tension she had been holding.

Below, Ironfang moved, not with disorder, but with a restraint that carried its own kind of tension—voices lower, movement more deliberate, attention drawn inward rather than outward.

She watched it for a moment, her fingers tightening slightly against the stone before she forced them to release.

“I stand between,” she had said.

The words returned now without the same steadiness they had carried in the hall, not because they were untrue, but because they required more to hold than she had allowed for when she spoke them.

Between meant exposure.

Between meant being read from both sides.

Her hand remained on the stone a moment longer before she let it fall.

When she stepped back from the window, the room no longer felt smaller.

It felt exactly the size it was.

That, at least, could be worked with.

The alarm did not begin with shouting. At first, it was the change in light that woke her.

When she opened her eyes, one torch along the inner wall had gone dark. Then another followed, thinning the light in a way that felt too deliberate to belong to wind or chance. Even before she fully opened her eyes, she knew something was wrong—not from sound, but from the way the space itself seemed to tighten, as though the mountain had drawn a quieter, more careful breath.

She listened.

For a moment, there was nothing.

Then came the sound of steel—short, muted, close enough to collapse whatever distance sleep had left between her and the waking world.

By the time the second clash echoed faintly through the stone, she was already moving.

The corridor outside the east wing lay in partial darkness, the surviving torches too far apart to hold the space together. Shadows stretched longer than they should have, and somewhere below, footsteps carried upward—not many, not scattered, but controlled in a way that was far more unsettling than noise would have been.

Not chaos, but purpose.

Eira didn’t slow as she descended. By the time she reached the lower courtyard, the intrusion had already resolved into movement rather than confusion.

A figure slipped through the archway leading toward the supply hall.

Frostvein grey. Stripped of white. Stripped of anything that could be claimed as ceremony.

This was not meant to be seen openly—and yet it had been placed where discovery was inevitable.

A blade flashed.

One of Ironfang’s younger guards staggered back, his hand flying to his shoulder as blood spread too quickly beneath his grip.

Eira didn’t call out. There was no time for that, and no use.