Chapter 23 Under Skin
Eira
The cut was shallow.
They told her that more than once, though she stopped listening after the second repetition. The words began to lose shape, dissolving into something automatic, something meant to reassure her whether it reflected truth or not.
She sat on the edge of the low wooden bench in the infirmary alcove while one of Ironfang’s healers worked in steady silence, rinsing the blood from her arm.
The water was warm, carrying the sharp scent of crushed pine and something bitter underneath it, a note that lingered at the back of her throat when she breathed.
The pain itself was manageable.
It was everything beneath it that refused to quiet.
The mark had not fully settled. It pulsed at slow, uneven intervals, as though something within it was still adjusting, still remembering what had passed through it.
“You should rest,” the healer said at last, tying off the bandage with practiced care.
“I will,” Eira replied, though she had no intention of doing so immediately.
The healer studied her for a moment, as if deciding whether to press further, then stepped away without another word. The alcove emptied gradually, the quiet returning not all at once, but in layers—voices fading into the hall, movement dispersing, the mountain slipping back into its usual rhythm.
Only when she was alone did she allow her shoulders to lower, just slightly, the tension in them no longer held in place for anyone else’s benefit.
She exhaled.
It didn’t help as much as it should have.
Footsteps approached a few moments later—unhurried, distinct enough that she recognized them before they reached the threshold.
She did not turn.
Soren paused at the entrance, as if giving the space time to acknowledge him before he stepped inside.
“You’re cleared?” he asked.
“Yes.”
It was a simple answer, but it felt insufficient, as though it left too much unsaid.
He crossed the distance between them, and with him, something of the earlier heat returned—not as sharp as it had been in the courtyard, but present enough that she felt it before he came fully into reach.
“I shouldn’t have let you near the inner wall,” he said.
She glanced up at that, the irritation immediate.
“You didn’t let me,” she replied. “I moved.”
“That is precisely the issue.”
The correction, calm as it was, landed harder than if he had raised his voice.
She straightened slightly, her gaze sharpening.
“I am not going to stand behind doors while your wolves bleed.”
“And you are not going to stand in the path of a thrown blade,” he returned, his tone still controlled, still measured in a way that only made it more difficult to push against.
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
He stepped closer, not crowding her, but close enough that she could feel the residual warmth of him again, as if whatever had ignited between them had not fully withdrawn.
“Let me see it,” he said.
She hesitated, just briefly, before extending her arm.
His hand hovered first, not touching, assessing the bandage as though contact itself required consideration.
The mark responded anyway.
She felt it tighten before his fingers even reached her skin.
He noticed.
She saw it in the slight shift of his focus, the way his attention narrowed, not on the wound, but on something less visible.
“You moved before the blade left his hand,” she said.
The words came out more directly than she intended, but she didn’t pull them back.
His gaze lifted to hers.
“I saw the angle.”
“No,” she said, more sharply now, the irritation rising before she could temper it. “You didn’t just see it. You were already moving.”
His expression did not change.
“That is not unusual in close quarters.”
“It was not close quarters,” she replied, leaning forward slightly despite herself. “You were across the courtyard.”
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he adjusted the edge of the bandage, loosening it just enough to inspect the wound beneath. The movement was precise, almost deliberately slow.
Avoiding the point.
Her jaw tightened.
“You moved before it was thrown,” she repeated, quieter now, but more insistent. “You didn’t calculate it. You reacted.”
When his fingers finally brushed the skin just below the bandage, the contact was light.
It was enough.
The mark answered at once—not with the violent surge from before, but with something deeper, slower, a heat that spread inward rather than outward, settling beneath her ribs and along her spine.
She inhaled sharply.
His hand stilled.
“I’m not applying pressure,” he said.
“I know.”
That wasn’t what was happening, and they both knew it.
The reaction had nothing to do with force.
It had everything to do with him.
He continued anyway, his fingers adjusting the loosened bandage with careful precision. The gesture should have been clinical.
It wasn’t.
Her pulse shifted, not in her ears, but somewhere beneath the surface, where the thread between them carried more than it should.
She watched him, the steadiness of his movements only making the denial more obvious.
“You’re still doing it,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Pretending this is contained.”
That was when he looked at her fully.
“It is contained.”
The certainty came too quickly, too cleanly, and that, more than the words themselves, unsettled her.
“It isn’t,” she said, and now there was less restraint in her voice. “You reacted before I did. Before the blade was even in the air.”
“That is your interpretation.”
She shook her head, no longer attempting to soften the irritation rising through her.
“No. That is what happened.”
Silence stretched between them, no longer neutral. It pressed, demanded an answer, and the longer he withheld one, the less it looked like uncertainty and the more like refusal.
He withdrew his hand slowly, as though even that movement required care.
“You’re injured,” he said. “Your perception—”
“My perception is clear,” she cut in, and this time she didn’t temper the sharpness in her voice. “What I don’t understand is why you insist on denying it.”
His gaze darkened slightly, though it did not waver.
“I am not denying anything.”
“Then what are you doing?”
The space between them narrowed without movement.
She held his gaze, and now there was no distance left in the question. It wasn’t curiosity anymore. It was pressure.
He paused, too evenly, too deliberately.
“I am choosing not to draw conclusions from a single event.”
She exhaled quietly, the sound edged with frustration.
“That wasn’t a single event,” she said, slower now, but firmer for it. “That was you reacting before you had time to decide. And you know it.”
He didn’t answer immediately, and that silence carried more weight than any rebuttal.
Everything in his response kept returning to structure, as though naming less could somehow contain more.
“It doesn’t change the structure,” he said at last.
That was what caught.
Not denial. Not disagreement.
But the attempt to reduce it, to contain it within something already defined.
“Of course it changes it,” she said, rising from the bench, the movement sharper than she intended. “You moved without thinking. You chose before you could calculate.”
He didn’t step back, but something in his posture tightened, as if he were holding a line that wasn’t entirely external.
“That is not how I operate.”
For a moment, she almost laughed, though no sound came of it.
“That’s exactly how you operate,” she said. “You just don’t want to admit what it implies.”
The words lingered between them.
This time, the pause stretched longer.
He didn’t reach for an immediate response, and that, more than anything else, was new.
When he finally spoke, his voice was even again, but now it carried the sense of something being maintained rather than something natural.
“It implies nothing that changes the outcome.”
She watched him more closely now, the edge in her expression shifting into something steadier, more certain.
“It affects you,” she said quietly.
He didn’t deny it.
But he didn’t confirm it either.
Instead, he stepped back, restoring distance not abruptly, but with deliberate control, as though space itself had to be re-established in order to contain what had already shifted.
“I will assign additional guard to your quarters,” he said, redirecting the conversation into something structured, something safe.
She almost argued, the response forming instinctively, but she stopped before it fully surfaced.
The deflection was too obvious to miss, and pushing it further here would not give her what she wanted.
“For now,” she said instead.
She moved past him without waiting for dismissal.
As the distance between them increased, the tension in her body eased, but not entirely. It settled rather than disappeared, sinking deeper instead of fading.
By the time she reached the turn toward the east wing, her breathing had steadied.
The thought hadn’t.
He had moved before the blade was thrown.
Not because he had calculated it. Because the response had come first.
And whatever he chose to call that—
she was no longer willing to pretend it meant nothing.