Chapter 7 Blood in the Square #2
Instead she crossed the room and sat on the edge of the bed while the last traces of daylight faded from the window.
The room grew steadily darker around her.
She never moved.
At some point the evening meal came and went. No one knocked, and no one disturbed her. Beyond the walls, the fortress continued living as it always had, but the sounds reached her only faintly, as though they belonged to another place entirely.
Hours passed.
She found herself thinking about the fire from the night before, about the song drifting through the camp, about sparks rising into the darkness while Riven described the sea with such certainty that it had seemed impossible to imagine him anywhere else.
The memory hurt in a way the death itself still could not.
Death remained unreal.
The fire did not. The laughter did not.
Those things had existed. She had seen them, heard them, shared them.
Now they were gone.
Darkness eventually claimed the room completely, yet Eira remained where she was.
Sleep never came. Whenever her eyes closed, she saw blood spreading through snow.
Whenever she looked at her hands, she remembered the warmth fading beneath them and the terrible certainty that nothing she had done had been enough.
Sometime during the night the fortress quieted completely. The last voices disappeared. The last footsteps faded. One by one, every sound surrendered to silence until it seemed to settle over the entire mountain.
Eira sat through all of it.
When dawn finally began gathering beyond the narrow window, she was still in the same place, wearing the same clothes and staring at the same dark stains on her hands.
A knock sounded at the door shortly before dawn.
It was soft and measured, not loud enough to startle anyone awake, and Eira already knew who it was before a word was spoken.
For a moment, neither of them said anything, and then his voice came through the wood.
"Eira."
She kept her eyes fixed on the floor.
"Come in."
The door opened, and Soren stepped inside, bringing a sliver of pale morning light with him before it disappeared again behind the closing door.
His gaze swept across the room, taking in the untouched bed, the discarded cloak, and the dried blood still staining her clothes.
Neither of them spoke immediately.
The silence between them felt different from the one in the square. It was quieter and heavier somehow, carrying a weight that seemed far more dangerous than raised voices ever could.
"You didn't sleep."
It wasn't a question.
"No."
His eyes lingered briefly on her sleeves and on the blood still darkening the fabric.
Riven's blood.
After a moment, he looked away.
"The funeral pyre will be built today."
The words settled heavily between them.
"At sunset."
Eira lowered her gaze.
Until that moment, some stubborn part of her had continued refusing to accept what had happened. A funeral pyre left no room for denial and no space for hope or self-deception.
Only finality remained.
"He would have hated it."
Soren's attention returned to her.
"The attention," she said quietly, her voice distant. "Everyone standing around talking about him as though he isn't there."
For the first time, something shifted in his expression, whether it was a memory or grief she couldn't tell.
"He probably would."
Silence settled over the room once more.
Eira rubbed her thumb against a dried stain on her wrist.
"He talked about the sea."
A brief pause stretched between them before she continued.
"The night before. He spent half the evening trying to convince everyone they needed to see it."
A faint shadow crossed Soren's face.
"He told that story often."
The answer hurt more than she expected.
It reminded her that Riven had belonged to this place long before she arrived and that everyone in Ironfang carried memories of him she would never share.
The room grew quiet again while dawn slowly crept across the mountains beyond the walls.
Eventually, Soren broke the silence.
"The attack wasn't random."
Eira closed her eyes.
Of course.
The conversation had finally arrived where it always seemed to go, back to strategy, threats, and consequences—the things that somehow always demanded attention even when grief still sat raw and bleeding between them.
"They knew where the patrol would be."
She remained silent as he continued.
"They wanted a response."
"And they got one."
The words came out flatter than she intended, and she immediately hated how empty they sounded.
A muscle tightened in Soren's jaw, and for several moments neither of them spoke before Eira finally lifted her gaze to meet his.
"They blame me."
It wasn't a question, and the silence that followed lasted just long enough to tell her everything she needed to know.
"Some do."
Something inside her gave way, not dramatically but quietly, like ice cracking beneath deep snow.
She nodded once, as though she had expected the answer all along.
Perhaps she had.
"And you?"
The question lingered between them, unanswered.
Eira held his gaze, refusing to let him look away.
"And you?"
For the first time since entering the room, he looked genuinely tired—not physically exhausted, but worn down by something deeper and far more difficult to bear.
"It doesn't matter what I think."
The words landed harder than any accusation thrown at her in the square because they were wrong.
It mattered more than anything.
A short laugh escaped her, carrying neither amusement nor bitterness, only exhaustion.
"Of course it matters."
"Eira—"
"No."
She rose so abruptly that he stopped mid-sentence.
"It matters to me."
Despite her efforts, her voice trembled.
"Everyone in that square looked at me as though I brought this here, as though Riven died because I stepped through Ironfang's gates."
Soren remained silent, not because he didn't care, but because he did, and she could see it in his face. Somehow, that made everything worse.
"If I hadn't come here..."
The question caught briefly in her chest before forcing its way out.
"If I hadn't come here, would he still be alive?"
The room seemed to fall completely still.
No answer came, and although his gaze never left hers, the lie she feared never arrived either.
The silence stretched between them, long enough for Eira to feel the answer settling inside her before he finally spoke, his voice low when the words came at last.
"I don't know."
The words should have comforted her.
Instead, they hollowed something out completely because he couldn't say no.
She lowered her gaze.
Riven's mother had screamed it in the square, and now the silence between them had confirmed it—not as truth, but as possibility, which somehow felt even worse.
Soren took a step toward her, closing a small part of the distance that had opened between them.
"Eira."
She retreated instinctively, only slightly, but he noticed.
The movement hurt him, and she noticed that too.
For a moment, neither of them knew what to do with that realization.
Finally, Soren exhaled.
"There will be additional guards assigned to your quarters."
The words felt absurd now, almost distant.
They sounded like a leader retreating to a conversation he understood, to a place where decisions still made sense and problems could be answered with orders.
Eira stared at him.
Not because of the guards, but because of what stood behind them.
Protection and containment. Responsibility and duty.
Always duty and always Ironfang.
She understood then that if the day ever came when he had to choose between her and his people, the choice would already have been made.
Not because he lacked feeling or courage, but because he was Soren.
And because Ironfang would always come first.
One of the old stories returned to her unexpectedly.
A tale about two voices bound together, equal to one another in a way that seemed almost impossible now.
As a child, she had barely paid attention to it. The old stories were full of impossible things.
Yet the memory lingered.
Whatever existed between her and Soren, it had never resembled that legend.
Perhaps it never could.
The realization carried no anger.
Only grief—a different kind of grief than the one waiting outside, quieter and far more personal.
Soren seemed to understand that something had changed.
The awareness showed in his face, along with the helplessness and the knowledge that whatever distance had existed between them before was becoming something larger, something neither of them knew how to cross.
Outside, dawn finally touched the mountains.
Inside, neither of them moved.
Eira found herself wondering whether there had ever truly been a future for them at all.
By the time sunset approached, the entire fortress seemed quieter than usual.
Work still continued where it had to, fires still burned, and voices still carried across the courtyards from time to time, yet everything felt muted, as though the mountain itself understood what was about to happen.
The funeral pyre had been built beyond the main gates on a rocky rise overlooking the western valleys.