Chapter 7 Blood in the Square
Eira
The gates opened before the patrol reached them.
Word traveled quickly in Ironfang—faster than riders, faster even than weather. By the time the first horses entered the lower yard, wolves had already begun gathering along the edges of the square, abandoning work and conversation alike to see what had brought the patrol home ahead of schedule.
At first there was only curiosity, but it gradually gave way to silence as one person noticed what another had already seen, and understanding spread through the crowd without a single word being spoken.
Eira barely registered any of it.
The journey back existed only in fragments now: snow, hoofbeats, the weight of dried blood stiffening her sleeves, and the memory of Riven's head resting in her lap.
Everything else seemed distant and unreal.
Someone had spoken to her at some point during the ride, but she couldn't remember who it had been or what they had said.
As the square came into view, people stepped aside to let the patrol pass.
Faces turned toward the returning riders, searching, counting, looking for familiar figures.
A few smiles appeared before fading almost immediately when their owners noticed the riderless horse carrying a body wrapped carefully against the cold.
No explanation was necessary, and the mood shifted almost at once.
Eira slid from her horse, catching herself against the saddle when her legs nearly gave way beneath her. Around her, the square seemed to sway slightly, though whether from exhaustion or grief she couldn't tell.
The silence deepened as a child somewhere nearby asked a question and was immediately pulled closer by his mother, who offered no answer.
Then Soren appeared.
The crowd parted for him almost automatically.
He crossed the square without haste, yet something in his expression made the wolves nearest him step aside before he reached them.
His gaze moved over the returning patrol, passed briefly across the riders, and finally settled on the horse carrying the body.
For a brief moment he stood completely still, and although the pause lasted no more than a second, it was long enough for Eira to see the exact instant understanding reached him.
No report was needed, and whatever Kael told him a moment later merely confirmed what he already knew. The slight tightening of his jaw was the only visible sign that the news had landed somewhere beneath the control he guarded so carefully.
More wolves continued to gather around the square. Hunters emerged from workshops, craftsmen abandoned their tasks, and children were drawn closer to their parents as questions passed quietly through the crowd. No one spoke loudly, and no one wanted to be the first to say his name.
Eventually, someone did.
"Where's Riven?"
The voice belonged to a woman standing near the front of the crowd. She hadn't spoken loudly, not yet, but the question cut through the silence with startling clarity.
No one answered.
Her gaze shifted past the gathered wolves toward the riderless horse and the shape lying across its back. For a heartbeat she remained motionless, as though her mind refused to understand what her eyes already had. Then she began moving.
The crowd opened before her without being asked. Grief arrived so visibly that no one could stand in its path.
Riven's mother reached the horse first.
"No."
The word came quietly, almost gently, as though she were correcting a misunderstanding rather than confronting a nightmare.
"No."
She reached for the blankets while several wolves stepped forward instinctively, but they were already too late.
The covering slipped away.
For several long seconds she simply looked at him. Her hands moved to his face, then his hair, then his shoulders in small, careful gestures reserved for someone sleeping rather than dead. It was as though enough tenderness might somehow call him back.
"Riven."
Her voice trembled as she spoke his name again.
"Riven."
Nothing happened. The square remained utterly still while Eira stood frozen, wanting desperately to look away and finding herself unable to do so.
Riven's mother touched his cheek again and again, clinging to denial for a few moments longer before it finally shattered.
The sound that tore from her seemed to rip through the entire square, and Eira knew she would remember it for the rest of her life.
Several women rushed forward at once. One caught Helvi before she collapsed, another began crying herself, but none of it helped. Nothing could.
A younger boy pushed through the crowd a moment later.
It was Riven's brother, no older than fourteen.
His gaze moved from the gathered wolves to the body and back again, as though his mind refused to assemble the pieces into something meaningful. When understanding finally reached him, all color drained from his face.
"Riven?"
No one answered, and he didn't ask again because the answer already lay before him.
For a while, only Helvi's grief could be heard. It moved through the crowd like a living thing, raw enough to make even strangers lower their eyes. Gradually, however, something else began to emerge beneath it as pain slowly transformed into anger, and anger demanded somewhere to go.
Her gaze lifted and found Soren.
"You sent him."
The words cracked across the square.
"He wasn't supposed to lead."
Soren took a step forward.
"Helvi—"
"Don't."
The interruption struck like a blow.
She rose abruptly, her hands still stained with her son's blood.
"Don't you dare tell me what to do when my son is lying here dead."
The square fell silent once more. Every wolf present heard the accusation, and every wolf present knew she would never have spoken to him that way under any other circumstances. Today, however, no one expected her to stop.
"He trusted you," she said, her voice breaking. "He looked up to you."
Soren remained silent, perhaps because there was nothing he could say, or perhaps because any answer would have sounded hollow beside the body lying between them.
Helvi pointed toward Riven with a trembling hand.
"You should have been there."
The accusation landed even harder than the first.
"You should have been leading that patrol."
No one objected, and no one looked away, because every wolf standing in that square knew the same thing: under ordinary circumstances, Soren would have gone himself.
Helvi's breathing grew uneven as her gaze shifted once more, this time toward Eira.
The change moved through the crowd almost visibly. Eira felt it before she fully understood it—the attention, the hesitation, the thoughts no one wanted to speak aloud.
Helvi looked at the blood covering her sleeves, the dried crimson staining her hands, and finally at the mark visible at Eira's throat.
Something twisted in her expression.
"Ever since she came here..."
The words emerged quietly at first before growing stronger.
"Ever since she came here, everything has been falling apart."
A murmur moved through the crowd, small enough to be almost imperceptible and therefore all the more dangerous.
Helvi pointed directly at her.
"My son would still be alive."
The words seemed to narrow the entire square around them.
"He would still be alive if none of this had happened."
No one moved or spoke. The entire square seemed to hold its breath, suspended in the fragile silence that followed her accusation.
Eira could feel hundreds of eyes on her without looking at them. Some were sympathetic, some uncertain, and some avoided her entirely.
That hurt most of all.
Not certainty, but doubt.
The possibility that some of them believed it.
"First Frostvein," Helvi said, tears running freely down her face. "Then the attacks. And now my son."
Eira stood frozen while part of her understood that grief was speaking and another part couldn't stop listening, because grief often reached for truths people concealed when they were calm.
For one terrible moment she found herself wondering whether others thought the same. Whether they looked at her and saw exactly what Helvi did—a curse, a burden, a mistake that had followed Ironfang home.
The thought settled like ice beneath her ribs.
Instinctively, her gaze found Soren.
She wanted him to say something, anything at all. She wanted him to stop it, to tell them they were wrong.
Instead, he remained silent—not because he agreed, and not because he believed Helvi, but because a mother stood over the body of her dead son, and there was no answer large enough to stand against that grief.
Eira understood that.
She hated that she understood it, because understanding changed nothing about how alone she suddenly felt.
Eira didn't remember leaving the square.
At some point the crowd disappeared behind her. The voices faded along with the questions, the grief, and the crushing weight of hundreds of eyes following her every step until only the cold remained.
She crossed the fortress almost without seeing it.
Someone spoke to her along the way. Another wolf stepped aside to let her pass. Both moments vanished almost as soon as they happened, leaving no impression behind.
By the time she reached her room, daylight had already begun to fail.
The door closed behind her.
Silence followed.
For a long moment she simply stood there before her gaze finally dropped to her hands.
Blood covered her sleeves, her fingers, and the front of her tunic.
The stains had darkened during the journey home, turning nearly black in places where the fabric had absorbed them completely.
Other streaks marked her wrists, left behind by repeated attempts to stop bleeding that had never truly slowed.
She stared at them.
The ridge returned immediately.
The arrow.
The snow.
Riven looking down at his chest, trying to understand what had happened.
Eira closed her eyes, but the memory remained exactly where it was.
Slowly, she removed her cloak and let it fall where it landed.
She should have changed her clothes.
Washed.
Done something useful.