Chapter 35 Nerina
Nerina
Ymirskald
Early this morning, Veyrion unlocked my door as the ship creaked and groaned, slicing through ice-thickened waters. No explanation—just the bolt sliding free and one glance that said everything: You wouldn’t be stupid enough to jump.
He was right. One look at the black, ice-laced sea killed any notion of escape. Even I wasn’t reckless enough to hurl myself into water that would seize my lungs before I could recover.
Snow dusted the deck in fine patterns, settling into seams like sugar over a grave.
There were no seabirds out here. No brine.
No rot. Only the hush of a world untouched by time.
The cold here didn’t numb—it claimed. Slow and unrelenting, it sank past skin and muscle, settled into bone until it felt permanent.
Ymirskald.
The name felt heavier here, like it didn’t belong to a place so much as to something older—something sentient.
Veyrion stood beside me at the bow, one hand resting on the rail. Layered in leather and thick cloth, his fur-lined cloak thrown back over one shoulder as though the cold were nothing more than a mild breeze. Meanwhile, I shivered beneath my heavy coat, the chill creeping in despite the layers.
It made him look less like a man visiting home… and more like a creature made of it.
For a moment, he only watched the horizon. Then he spoke, his voice lower than the wind but threaded with something I hadn’t expected. “Home.”
The word almost vanished, but I felt it more than I heard it—like the mountains themselves had spoken through him.
The fjord narrowed ahead—its walls climbing into sheer cliffs. The harbor lay cradled between. Waterfalls hung frozen mid-cascade, glittering like molten silver beneath a pale sun. Beyond them, mountains rose impossibly high—snow-heavy peaks glowing blue against the sky.
As we entered, the water smoothed into dark glass, broken by mirrored shapes of dragon-prowed ships tethered along the docks. Smoke curled from squat wooden buildings, their roofs heavy with snow, the air thick with pine resin, wood-smoke, and roasting meat.
The village climbed the mountainside in tiers: sharp-roofed houses braced against snow, linked by narrow stairways cut straight into rock and ice.
High above it all loomed a massive statue—a horned figure with a spear raised toward the sky, its stone skin silvered with frost. Ravens circled the monument, cawing like heralds announcing our arrival to a land that had already decided whether we belonged.
Everything here was built to endure—to outlast winter, to meet it head-on and dare it to come harder.
Ymirskald was beautiful. There was no denying that. But it was a dangerous kind of beauty—the kind that wrapped its claws in velvet and smiled while it watched you bleed.
I understood why he loved it. I understood how easily it could swallow you whole.
Every creak of the ship settling into harbor, was another second slipping away—another step closer to a vow I didn’t want and a future I didn’t trust.
I thought of dinner. Of Veyrion’s voice—knives wrapped in silk. I hated that his words still echoed. I hated more that they fit too neatly into the jagged spaces of doubt I’d tried to ignore.
I wanted to disbelieve him. Stars, I wanted it more than air.
But the image wouldn’t leave me—the look on Alaric’s face when Veyrion boarded the Black Marrow.
Like he’d seen a ghost. Like something buried had clawed up from the depths, dripping and grinning, ready to drag him under.
And now Veyrion had planted something worse: a picture I couldn’t unsee.
Alaric’s hands slick with blood. Jaw set in grim resolve.
Eyes flat and cold. A version of him that could have done what Veyrion described—things that would make my mother’s curse not just justified, but merciful.
The image felt wrong. Alaric was cruel when cornered. Ruthless when necessary. But he revered the sea. He bled for it. He would never desecrate it for sport.
And beneath it all was Veyrion’s offer—sitting between us like a drawn blade, gleaming in cold light.
Men like him didn’t deal in generosity. Every gift was a chain in disguise.
I didn’t trust him—not his words, not his smile, not the strange glint in his eyes when he looked at me like I was something rare and precious.
What terrified me wasn’t that he wanted to cage me.
It was that he truly believed he was setting me free.
And yet… the hunger for truth still whispered.
It told me maybe I could take what I needed from him before the trap snapped shut.
Maybe I could stand beside him and not be pulled under.
A treacherous part of me wanted to walk into the wolves’ den with the wolf, because predators protected their own.
I was walking into a land where gods once bled and giants still whispered, to be judged by Elders who might know more about me than I did.
A trial without knowing the crime.
Snow kept falling, quiet as ash. It caught in my hair and along the folds of my cloak, melting against my warmth before it could settle. Ymirskald rose around me in white and silver, so beautiful it left an ache behind my ribs.
Veyrion offered me his arm as we stepped down the gangplank onto the snow-slick dock. I didn’t take it.
The massive creature that had once lounged by the fire aboard his ship padded silently behind us. Its fur rippled with each step—hulking, lupine—but its eyes were too intelligent, glinting like fractured ice.
Townsfolk gave it a wide berth. Some bowed their heads in silent acknowledgment. Others muttered in a dialect I didn’t understand.
It didn’t growl. Didn’t snarl. It simply followed—like it belonged to him the way a shadow belonged to a body.
“My home isn’t far,” Veyrion said, breath a pale mist that didn’t seem to faze him.
We passed townsfolk who watched without speaking. Some nodded to him—recognition, respect. A few smiled faintly, the kind reserved for a returning warrior. He wasn’t just known here. He was claimed.
The path wound upward past stone dwellings with thick thatched roofs and iron sconces burning with pale blue flame.
Eventually we reached a carved archway flanked by stone sentinels, their eyes glinting with frost. Beyond it, the mountain opened into a cavern-like hall—warmth rolling out in waves from braziers fed with slow-burning coals and something that felt like enchantment.
“Welcome to Skeldrhall,” Veyrion said, drawing back a heavy hide curtain. “It’s not much. But it keeps the storms out.”
What he called 'not much' was magnificent.
The hall was grand and wild—old power made physical.
Towering beams carved with serpentine patterns supported the vaulted ceiling, thick pelts layered across stone floors.
A hearth roared at the center, casting gold over walls etched with deep runes that shimmered faintly in the heat.
Shields clustered along the walls, each bearing a sigil I didn’t recognize.
Above the entry hung a preserved beast skull large enough to belong to something mythic.
The doors closed behind us with a sound like a seal being set. The place felt awake.
Listening.
He led me through stone halls veined with frost-silver runes, the air sharp with pine resin and frost. Iron sconces burned blue-white flames. He stopped before a door carved with interlocking knots and constellations—patterns I didn’t recognize but felt in my bones anyway.
“This will be where you stay,” he said, pushing it open.
Warmth hit my face. A hearth crackled softly, casting gold over furs layered thick across the floor.
A bed carved from pale wood stood against the far wall, its posts etched with star-knotted symbols.
A basin of steaming water waited near the fire, herbs floating on the surface—juniper, frostmint, something sweet beneath it all.
Shelves held polished stone bowls, glass vials of scented oil, neatly folded linens stacked with quiet intention. In the corner stood a tall mirror framed in carved bone, its surface catching my reflection in pale fragments.
On a small table, someone had left dried fruits, cheese, and a steaming kettle of something unfamiliar—set there not as comfort, but as preparation.
And on the bed—A gown.
Silver-threaded. Midnight blue. It glimmered when the firelight flickered.
Veyrion’s voice carried from the doorway, calm as if he were discussing weather. “We’ll be leaving soon to see the Elders.”
A pause—then the faintest thread of amusement. “Wear the dress. They’ll expect a queen. Not a pirate.
A queen. The word sat wrong in my mouth. Heavy. Distant. Not meant for a girl who once called coral caves sanctuary, who swam in defiance of tides.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe queens weren’t born. Maybe they were forged—in seafoam, in frost, in fire. And in vows they never wanted to make.
I thought about what it would mean to marry Veyrion. The thought lodged in my chest like a stone.
What would Alaric think? This would be for him.
To keep him alive. To buy him time. Maybe even a future.
The last thing I’d said to him had been his own words turned against him.
Cold. Cruel. Would he ever know why I did it?
Or would he only see betrayal?The thought of his face—shuttered, unreadable—burned worse than the cold outside.
But that didn’t erase the unease gnawing at my ribs. I didn’t trust Veyrion—not even close. For all I knew, he’d already sent men to kill Alaric. Maybe this was a game—calculated cruelty to see how far he could bend me before I broke.
I could run. I could refuse and let pride get me killed. I could pray the man I loved survived the storm without me. But prayers had never saved anyone like us.
So I chose the option where I stayed alive long enough to matter.
He could’ve killed me. Sold me. Turned me into the Tidekeepers. Thrown me back to the ice and let it finish the job. Instead, he wanted to bind me to him.
The gown lay across the bed, silver-threaded runes glinting faintly in the lamplight. I couldn’t tell if putting it on would make me a savior, a traitor… or something else entirely. My fingers hovered over the fabric, tracing the frost-threaded symbols as though they might burn.
They didn’t.
They were cool. Smooth. Deceptively soft.
It’s just cloth, I told myself. It means nothing.
But it felt heavier than that—as though the moment I wore it, I would no longer be only Nerina. I’d be something else. Something the Elders could name. Something Veyrion could claim.
I slipped off my coat and the layers beneath, the air biting at my skin. My hands shook—not from the cold, but from the choice I was making with each motion.
The gown slid over my head like water, falling against me in perfect, merciless silence.
Fur lining trapped my heat. Wool settled over my curves.
The weight of it pressed into my shoulders—grounding and binding all at once.
Beads at the hem caught the firelight and scattered it across the walls like stars trying to escape.
I fastened the silver clasps at my wrists, feeling each one click into place like the slow closing of a lock.
I barely recognized the woman in the mirror. She stood straighter. Eyes hard enough to cut. Regal—yes.
But there was still a flicker there. Enough defiance to remind me that whatever name I wore, whatever vow they demanded, I was still mine.
A shadow shifted beyond the door. Veyrion’s voice came, calm as a verdict. “Ready?”
I didn’t answer.
I slipped the artifact shards into the inner pocket of my coat, their cold weight settling against my ribs—solid. Real.
Then I lifted my gaze to my reflection. A stranger stared back, draped in frost and silver, and I wondered which part of her would walk out of this mountain
…and which part would stay buried there forever.