Chapter 37 Nerina
Nerina
Ymirskald
I walked fast, then faster, praying speed alone could outrun the words lodged in my skull. My boots skidded on slick stone; my chest burned in the freezing air. The corridor blurred, torches smearing into orange streaks. Too narrow. Too narrow. Too dark. The walls closed in.
I hadn’t made it ten corridors from the Elders’ chamber before my legs buckled. I slammed into the wall, palm scraping raw against frozen rock, before I dropped hard to my knees. The cold bit through fabric, searing bone-deep.
This was the price of wanting to know. Truths I could never unhear, unsee.
A sob ripped out of me before I could stop it—violent, ugly.
It echoed down the passage, a sound I didn’t recognize as mine.
My body shook, my throat tore, my chest heaved as though I were drowning on dry stone.
I clawed at my chest, fingers tangling in leather, fabric, skin—trying to tear free the burn beneath.
My mark seared beneath my skin, light pulsing with every frantic heartbeat.
Snow gusted through the arch ahead, lashing my face, stinging my tears to ice. But still they fell—hot, unstoppable, humiliating. I hated them. Hated the weakness, the betrayal of my own body when I needed strength more than ever.
A shadow fell across me. Heavy boots. A stillness heavy with cold.
Veyrion.
For a heartbeat, he only watched. I could feel it—his gaze like steel, like judgment, like something weighing whether I was worth the effort. Then his hand fell on my shoulder. Not soft. Not comforting. Solid. An anchor.
“Leave me alone,” I whispered. The crack in my voice betrayed me. I wasn’t sure I meant it. Maybe I wanted him to argue. Maybe I wanted someone—anyone—to stay.
“Come with me,” he said at last. “To the place I go when the weight threatens to crush me.”
The words snapped something loose. I twisted out from under his hand and shoved him—hard.
My palms struck his chest, heat flaring through me, wild and furious.
He barely moved. Anger surged inside me.
I wanted to scream it at him. You brought me here.
You led me into that chamber. You were going to force me to marry you.
I swung again—more desperate than strong—fists pounding uselessly against him. He caught my wrists mid-strike, grip closing fast, iron-hard.
“Let go of me!” I fought him then in earnest, thrashing, clawing, grief and rage tangling together until I couldn’t tell them apart. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Yes,” he said calmly, “you are.”
I tore one hand free and slapped his fac. The sound cracked through the mountain.
For the first time, something flickered across his face—not anger. Surprise. “I said no,” I said, chest tight.
He stepped closer. Too close. His presence swallowed the space between us. I became acutely aware of how close he was—of where the warmth of him brushed my ear, of how easily he could touch me if he chose to.
“You don’t have to walk,” he said quietly. “I’ll carry you if I must.”
I stilled—not because I was done fighting, but because I knew he meant it. My mark burned at my brow. I could feel my magic stir, but I couldn’t risk reacting. Not again. “Why?” I demanded, the question breaking loose, low and jagged. “Why are you doing this?”
His grip loosened—not releasing me, but no longer restraining. “Because you look like you’re about to shatter,” he said.
The truth of his words gutted me more than the Elders had. Still, I hesitated. Trust was a currency I no longer dealt in. And Veyrion was the last man I would spend it on.
I blamed him. Unfairly, perhaps. But anger was easier than grief. Than heartbreak. Than whatever this feeling was.
The path narrowed, forcing me close behind him. It wound through crystalline tunnels that shimmered with frost, each jagged step slick beneath my boots. The walls glistened like powdered starlight, catching the faint glow of the torches we carried.
Maybe this was it. Maybe he meant to lead me to my end, to slit my throat in some forgotten cavern and let the snow swallow me whole.
He could. Easily. And perhaps he should.
Because wasn’t I the fool, still trailing after him?
I didn’t trust him. I couldn't trust anyone.
Not anymore. And yet, my feet moved when his did.
Neither of us spoke. The silence stretched, heavy but not unbearable. Only the crunch of boots, the harsh pull of cold air, the soft groan of shifting stone. I tried to steady myself in the cold, to ground the fracture splintering me apart.
When we emerged, it was onto a ledge carved high into the mountain’s side.
A frozen overlook opened before us beneath an endless sky.
Stars burned bright as shattered glass. Ribbons of emerald and violet bled through the darkness, the starlight twisting like it was alive.
Silver stars dusted the air, caught in those ghostly waves.
The wind bit hard at my cheeks, but the sight below left me reeling.
The tundra stretched white and endless, a sea frozen mid-surge. Ice fields mirrored the sky, scattering moonlight into cold, glittering shards. The air tasted of frost and stone, hushed but for the deep, distant groan of ancient ice shifting beneath the glacier.
And far below—half-swallowed by frost—stood the ruins of a temple. Broken columns. Fractured arches. Preserved, not by reverence, but by cold.
It was silent here, but not the suffocating silence of the Elders’ chamber. A silence that asked for nothing. A silence that did not require answers. I had never seen a sky like this.
“It’s…” My voice caught, torn between awe and grief. I shook my head, forcing the word down. Beautiful. That was what it was. But I would not give him the satisfaction of hearing it.
Because beauty did not erase anything. And even here, even with the sky torn open above me, I couldn’t shake the thought: perhaps this was only a prettier place to die.
“I think they’ve been taking from me for a long time,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “Not just memories. Maybe dreams. Instincts. I don't know.”
The thought hollowed me out. How much of me had ever truly been me?
The Tidekeepers with their sacred chants, their endless rituals that tasted of salt and reverence.
Masks, all of it. Disguises for the theft.
What had they stolen that I would never even know to mourn?
I realized then that they hadn’t been afraid of my power.
They’d been afraid of me realizing it was mine.
A fury stirred in me, violent and molten, but it faltered against the grief that followed close behind.
Because if they had taken everything, what did I have left?
Who was I now—Nerina, or only a collection of fragments stitched together by lies?
Veyrion exhaled slowly, a plume of frost curling into the night. “Then maybe it’s time you started taking back.”
I turned to him, truly turned, to see whether he meant it or if this, too, was another illusion. Another trick. There was something different in him now. Not softness—a kind of reverence, a quiet gravity that pulled at me.
I sank onto the frozen stone beside him.
My mark pulsed—once, twice—an insistent throb beneath my skin.
Above us, the stars shifted. Not in the way they always did across a clear night sky, but with intent. I inhaled, the sound catching in my throat. Veyrion’s attention snapped to me. He saw it in my eyes.
The words burned on my tongue before I could swallow them. “I need to go back.” My voice cracked on the word. “To Thalassia. To her. To them. That’s all that’s left. I can’t… I can’t keep running. I have to face them.”
The tide in me surged, fierce and unrelenting. My mother. The Tidekeepers. Their faces rose unbidden in my mind—their chants, their touch, their masks of reverence and devotion. If I didn’t confront them now, I would drown in the not-knowing.
Veyrion studied me, his expression unreadable in the starlight. “You will face them,” he said at last. “And when you do, the mountain itself will shake with the reckoning. But not like this.”
I whipped toward him, anger spiking hot. “Not like what?”
“Not broken,” he said evenly. “Not half-healed, half-aware, half-ready. They stole pieces of you, Neri. If you charge into their grasp now, they will steal the rest. And then there will be nothing left to reclaim.”
The truth of it cut, because part of me knew he was right. But the thought of waiting twisted me into knots. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand better than you think,” he interrupted, voice sharp. He didn’t look away. “I’ve seen what happens when you fight too soon. Rage makes you reckless. Grief makes you careless. If you walk into their den without a plan, they won’t need to break you. You’ll hand them the blade.”
My breath shuddered, frost clouded in the dark. I hated the calm certainty in his voice. I hated that I believed it. If I went back like this, I wouldn’t be confronting them—I’d be handing myself over to them.
“Stay. Stay here in Ymirskald until you know what you carry inside you. Not forever. Not even for long. Until you can wield it instead of fearing it. Then go to Thalassia—and make sure they never take from you again.”
The stars blazed cold above us. My heart screamed to return, to end it now, to tear the truth from their lips no matter the cost. But beneath that fury, a quieter voice coiled low in my chest. A voice that asked if rushing into the jaws of betrayal would give me freedom—or only feed the beast. I closed my eyes, the wind biting at my face, and whispered the hardest word of all. “…Stay?”
He didn’t smile. He didn’t gloat. But the air shifted around him, thickened.
Something in him burned like fire when our eyes met.
“You are welcome to stay here,” he said, voice low, carrying more weight than a promise had any right to.
“Not as a prisoner. Not as a bride. As a storm, brewing until you are ready to tear the sea and sky apart.”
I turned to him, meeting his eyes head-on. “And where would I stay?” I asked. My mouth curved, fierce and humorless. “Because we’re not getting married—no matter what fantasy you were entertaining when you abducted me.”
Veyrion laughed—low and incredulous. “Abducted you?” he echoed.
“Is that what we’re calling it now?” He stepped closer, not crowding—claiming space.
“You followed me through Shadeau,” he went on.
“You followed me from the Black Marrow to my ship. You followed me into the Elders’ hall.
And you followed me here.” His attention fixed on mine. “Every step was yours.”
A beat.
“No hands on you. No chains. No blade at your back. Only a few words of motivation. But I didn’t force you,” he said quietly. “You came because you chose to.”
He was rewriting coercion into consent—turning pressure into preference, threat into choice.
His jaw flexed, but he didn’t look away. “Besides that was before the Elders spoke,” he said. “Before I understood how wrong I was.” A brief pause—measured. “But that doesn’t change this.”
He gestured back toward the direction of his home. “My house is still yours—if you want. Not because I expect anything in return.” His voice hardened just enough to matter. “But because I won’t see you left out in the cold.”
Another beat.
“I brought you here,” he finished. “You are my guest.”
I searched his face for deceit, for some flicker of hidden motive—but found only quiet steadiness. It unnerved me more than any charm or threat.
We stood there in silence for a little while, the wind threading between us, the stars like pinpricks in a too-wide sky.
Then, Veyrion spoke.
“There’s a tale of the North that warriors whisper in the dark,” he said. “A story not written in books, but carved into the bones of this mountain.”
I turned toward him, curious, but he didn’t meet my eyes.
“About a boy born beneath a sky that wouldn’t stay still. Storms followed him. Ice cracked when he cried. Animals fled. People whispered.”
“They said he was too loud. Too much.” A pause. “So his family did what frightened people always do.”
The look in his eyes was distant now. “They took him far from home,” he continued. “Across the water. To a different land. A place where no one knew what he was meant to be.”
My chest tightened.
“They left him there and told themselves it was mercy.”
I swallowed. “What happened to the boy?”
Veyrion continued watching the horizon.
“They say he grew,” he replied. “Not into the thing they feared—but into the man that child had needed.”
His voice roughened on the last word—not loud, not broken, just edged enough to cut.
“A man who would have stood between that boy and the cold. Who would have said enough when the world demanded less.” His voice was steady now, sure.
“A man who learned that strength could be a shield as much as a blade.”
I leaned forward without meaning to.
“Some say,” he went on, “that he crossed the waters again. That he returned to Ymirskald—not as a plea, but as a reckoning.”
The fire cracked.
“And when the people braced for vengeance,” he continued, “he gave them mercy instead.”
A pause.
“He showed them what too much could build when it chose not to destroy.” His eyes lifted then, bright as ice. “He made Ymirskald stronger. Safer. Better—because he refused to become small for anyone.”
The silence that followed felt heavy with listening—like the land itself remembered.
His voice was so close to mine. And suddenly, I didn’t feel so alone in the cold.
Not because he understood me—but because maybe, he carried the same kind of brokenness.
For the first time, I saw not just the warrior beside me.
I saw the fracture beneath his armor—worn but unbroken.
A quiet wound, still bleeding beneath the frost. And I wondered if, like me, he had been betrayed by those who once claimed to protect him. To love him.
The thought lingered, unsettling and tender all at once. Because the story felt uncomfortably close.