Chapter 39 Nerina #2
“Veyrion always knows what’s best, doesn’t he?,” I muttered, bitterness slipping through before I could stop it. "Always deciding what I need, what I should eat, where I should stay. As if I can’t make a choice for myself.”
Eira’s grin dimmed as she studied me. Not offended—just watchful.
Then her expression narrowed, not at me, but at the thought of him. She leaned back, caught somewhere between affection and exasperation. “You’re not wrong,” she said finally, voice low enough that only I could hear it. “My brother has a way of… taking the reins. Even when no one asked him to.”
Her attention softened as it returned to me. “He thinks it is the same as protection.” She tore another piece of bread, shaking her head. “It isn’t.”
Her words sat warm and heavy in my chest—an echo of the thing I’d been trying not to name: that Veyrion’s protection felt too much like a cage.
I set my spoon down, fingers curling tight around the edge of the table. “Protection?"
I drew a breath. “He told me if I didn’t agree to marry him, he’d kill the man I love—and turn me over to the Tidekeepers.” My jaw tightened. “He leveraged. The people I love. My fear. My desperation.”
The words came faster now, harder to hold back. I looked down at my clenched hands.
“And now,” I said quietly, venom threaded through the calm, “he acts like it never happened.”
Eira didn’t look away. She didn’t rush to excuse him, or defend him. She only sat there, quiet, jaw tightening as if she were grinding the words I’d given her into dust.
“That sounds like Veyrion,” she admitted at last. Her voice wasn’t sharp, just heavy—resigned. “He’s always believed the end justifies the means. That if he pushes hard enough, people will see the sense in his way.”
She reached across the table—not to touch me, but to set her hand palm-down between us, a gesture of grounding. “I don’t blame you for hating him. If it were me, I’d hate him too.”
Her words settled between us like an anchor—heavy, but steadying. I let the silence soften.
Between bites and laughter, she started asking me questions. Not about what I could do, or what my magic might mean, but about me.
“How many siblings do you have?” she asked, tipping her mug toward me. “One,” I said, surprised at how easily the answer came. “A sister.”
“And where’s home, really?.”
I hesitated, then shrugged. “The sea, I guess. By upbringing, but… I don’t know if I could ever call it home.”
She nodded like she understood. She didn’t rush me, didn’t fill the quiet with noise. She just sipped her drink, unhurried and steady, as if we had all the time in the world. As if the gods themselves weren’t watching from the carved beams overhead.
At one point, her head tilted. “What was it like?” I hesitated.
Once, I would’ve called it beautiful. Golden. A place of wonder I never quite fit into—a gilded cage, lovely but confining.
But that was before the truth. Before I saw the chains beneath the pearl-polished halls.
“It used to feel like a dream,” I said slowly. “Endless coral spires, sea-glass windows that caught every glint of the sun. Music in the currents. Beauty everywhere.”
“But now?” she asked gently.
“Now it feels like a lie plated in gold.” The words scraped something raw, and I couldn’t stop myself.
“I am unlike any other mermaid in Thalassia. I always thought they were guarding me. Protecting me. But they were draining me. My power. My life. Even my mother…” My voice trailed off, bitter curling beneath my ribs.
To my surprise, Eira didn’t press. She only nodded once, letting the silence be enough—settling between us without demand, without expectation. Eira didn’t want to know what I was. She wanted to know who I was.
Eira blinked. “Wait—you’re a mermaid?”
I froze, caught off guard. Then gave the smallest nod. I waited for the recoil. For fear.
“Gods,” she laughed, shaking her head in wonder. “Veyrion must have forgotten to mention that.”
She looked at me like I’d just told her I once wrestled the kraken. But there was no fear in her expression—only curiosity. Fascination, even.
“You’re full of surprises,” she said, grinning as she leaned back against the booth cushions. “I knew there was something otherworldly about you.”
Relief flashed across my face.
She took another sip of her drink, then leaned forward slightly, voice soft but certain. “You know you’re safe here, right? Poaching has been illegal in Ymirskald for centuries. It violates the Promise of the North. Break it, and the punishment is death.”
I blinked, caught off guard by the steel in her tone. “That’s… unexpected. Considering I’ve seen what Veyrion and the Covenant do.”
Her brows knit, confusion flickering across her face. “The Covenant was built to hunt those who prey on the supernatural. Balance—that’s their purpose.”
“Balance?” The word burned in my throat. I could still see blood in the surf, smell salt thick with iron. “That’s not the word I’d use.”
She met my eyes. “Then maybe you’ve been told only part of the truth.”
The tavern’s fervor seemed to press in, stifling. My lips parted, but no words came. I wasn’t sure I believed her. I wanted to. But belief was brittle as glass, and every time I tried to hold it, it cut.
I set my mug down, curling my fingers around the warmth it left behind. “Then tell me the right story.”
She leaned back, mouth tugging into a wry smile.
“Veyrion is… complicated. Loyal to a fault. He carries more than anyone should, but he won’t speak of it.
He never has. Even as a boy, he thought the world was his to keep from falling apart.
” Her eyes softened. “But he’s also brave.
Fiercely protective. And under all that frost? There’s fire.”
I didn’t know what to do with that. But I trusted her. And maybe that was the most dangerous part.
“I saw the wreckage of one of their raids,” I said.
The sight burned into my mind. “A siren split open, her scales stripped from her body like she was nothing but spoils. Cages littered the sea—sea serpents, tidehawks, creatures who belonged to the deep trapped and bleeding in rusted iron. That is not balance.” My voice cracked, but I didn’t stop.
“Don’t try to tell me what your brother is or isn’t. ”
Eira didn’t flinch. “Then maybe,” she said quietly, “you were shown what someone wanted you to see. Maybe the story you were given isn’t the truth at all.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but she went on, voice softening with something like regret.
“Sometimes the Covenant is late. Sometimes the creatures they find… can’t be saved.
Not every wound heals, not every chain comes off clean.
Some have to be left behind, and gods, those are the hardest. But the ones they can save, are saved—Heill húsg?re. ”
“Heill húsg?re?” I asked, the words cutting through the tavern’s din.
Eira leaned closer, expression careful—like she understood the weight of what she was about to place in my hands.
“Heill húsg?re,” she said. Hile HOOS-gorth.
“It means House of Healing. It’s hidden deep in the mountain, carved into the rock.
Only a few people know it exists. But it’s where we take the wounded—creatures pulled from Shadeau’s pits, or freed from the cages of poachers’ ships. A place to rest. To mend.”
The image clashed violently with what I’d seen: blood. Wreckage. Cages rattling with dying cries. I wanted to scoff. To call it another lie. But some fragile part of me—traitorous and aching—wanted it to be real.
“Then why did I see what I saw?” I demanded. “That wasn’t a story someone fed me, Eira. I was there.”
Her lavender-grey eyes held mine, steady as bedrock. She didn’t argue. Didn’t match my heat.
She paused, then tilted her head slightly, something thoughtful settling into her expression in the candlelight.
“Has it ever crossed your mind,” she said, “that Alaric might have needed you to see the Covenant as monsters? That he needed you to believe there was something worse than him? It’s easier to keep someone close when they think the world beyond you is more dangerous than your arms.”
Her words slid under my anger. Relentless. I hated how much I wanted to dismiss them. I hated how much they made sense. The crescent mark on my forehead pulsed faintly, heat coiling beneath my skin in rhythm with the storm of my thoughts.
“No,” I snapped. “He saved me. When I crossed the Veil, when I should’ve died, he was the one who pulled me back. He didn’t have to. He could have left me. But he didn’t.”
Eira’s lips curved—not into a smile, but into something faint and unreadable. “Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe saving you served him, too. Sometimes protection is just another kind of possession.”
Once—not long ago, though it felt like another life—I’d asked myself the same question. Why had Alaric saved me? A cursed vampire pirate, bound to the sea, with nothing to gain from dragging a half-drowned mermaid back from the depths.
I questioned it every time his rough edges softened, every time his gaze lingered too long, every time his hand steadied me when I faltered. And then, somewhere along the way, I stopped asking.
“Whatever else he is,” I said tightly, “he saved my life.”
It didn’t matter anymore, I told myself. I care for him. That is all that matters.
But what if that was the point? To be seduced, won over, drawn close—so close I stopped seeing the bars of the cage and only felt the warmth of the hand that held the key.
My stomach twisted.
Maybe Eira was wrong. Maybe Alaric was everything I believed him to be. But maybe he wasn’t.
And stars, I was so tired of the maybes.
Eira studied me quietly, her drink forgotten, eyes searching the cracks I hadn’t meant to show.
When she finally spoke, her voice was soft—almost kind.
“Be careful, Nerina,” she said. “It isn’t always the ones who cut you that are most dangerous.
Sometimes it’s the ones who make you stop looking for the blade. ”
And then, as if sensing the weight pressing too hard against my ribs, she asked softer questions. What my favorite meal was. If I preferred sunrise or moonlight. What lullaby my mother used to hum. Silly things. Tender things.
The tavern wrapped around me, a borrowed comfort—roaring hearth, spiced mead thick in the air, snow melting off boots and pooling on the floorboards. Laughter crashed like waves against the walls, but I felt oddly adrift, a lone current beneath the noise.
Eira nudged my drink closer. “Yule will be here soon,” she said. “Only a few weeks away.”
I blinked. “Yule?”
Her brows drew together before she huffed a small laugh. “Right. You’re still getting used to… all of this.” She gestured at the clamor around us—Ymirskald’s rugged joy, the storm-weathered smiles, the feeling of belonging I hadn’t yet earned.
“It’s our winter celebration. Fires and food everywhere. Dancing under the aurora. It’s the best time of the year.”
Her gaze softened.
“I hope you’ll decide to stay to celebrate with us. I think you will love the Northern Lights.”
I didn’t know where I’d be in a few days—let alone weeks.
“I… maybe,” I said.