Chapter 40 Nerina
Nerina
Skeldrhall, Ymirskald
A sound pulled me from sleep—a muffled thud, the scrape of something heavy against stone. It echoed through the stillness.
The fire in the hearth had burned down to a low orange glow, shadows flickering across the chamber walls like restless ghosts. I shoved off the heavy furs. Cold air licked immediately at my bare skin. I wrapped my cloak tight and slipped out, padding into the corridor.
The sound came again. Closer this time. A ragged breath. A stifled swear.
My pulse kicked. I turned and pushed open the nearest door.
Veyrion stood in the half-light of the council room, shirtless and pale, skin slick with sweat and streaked with blood.
He hunched over a low stone table, hands trembling as he tried to wind a bandage around his ribs.
The cloth was already soaked through, crimson seeping and dripping in uneven trails onto the floor.
A torn cloak lay discarded nearby, nearly black with dried blood. Scratches clawed down his back—deep, raw, fresh. His arm bore a jagged tear: claw or blade, I couldn’t tell.
His jaw was clenched, eyes half-lidded with pain, his chest rising unevenly like something inside him had splintered.
I froze in the doorway, the corridor’s cold at my back, the iron-heavy air in my lungs.
I couldn’t look away.
Eira’s words rose unbidden, irritatingly alive. Maybe what you’ve been told isn’t the truth.
I tried to shove them aside. To cling to what I knew—what I’d decided was safer to believe.
Veyrion was dangerous. Manipulative. A man who had already tried to bind me with chains disguised as vows and comfort.
He was the one I was supposed to hate. And yet here he was—bleeding, alone, binding his own wounds with clumsy, shaking hands.
Not the untouchable figure who strode through Skeldrhall like he owned the mountain itself, but…
breakable. Human in his pain. Flesh and blood.
Monsters weren’t supposed to bleed like this.
Monsters weren’t supposed to look like they could snap in half.
I gripped the doorframe, caught between leaving and stepping closer.
Eira had said he carried burdens he never spoke of, that beneath all the frost there was fire—but all I saw was blood, and all I felt was confusion.
Could both be true? Could monster and man share the same skin?
I didn’t know. Stars, I hated not knowing.
I should have turned away. Let him fight his pain alone. The smell of iron sharpened as I crossed the room, mingling with the faint scent of smoke. His shoulders jolted as he drew the bandage too tight, a hiss escaping through his teeth.
Questions surged inside me, fierce and unrelenting. Where had he been? What had clawed him open like this? Why had he come back alone?
I knew better than to ask. Not yet. Then his head turned. Slowly.
Glacier eyes found me in the half-dark. “Neri?” he drawled, rough and casual.
The name grated—too familiar, too presumptuous. And yet the way it rolled off his tongue, low and effortless, made something traitorous flicker warm in my chest. I hated that. I’d never had a nickname. Never been anything but Nerina.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, voice rough as gravel, hoarse with exhaustion.
I stepped closer before I realized I was moving. “You’re hurt.”
He grimaced, as if the words made the pain worse. “It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks pretty bad,” I said flatly, crossing the threshold.
Blood had pooled beneath him, dark and still, the tang thick in the air. His skin—normally sun-kissed bronze—had gone pallid, washed out by cold and pain. Up close, the wound along his side made my stomach tighten: flesh torn open, edges ragged, raw meat gleaming where skin had been flayed away.
I reached for the bandage with hands steadier than my heart. “Let me help.”
For the barest breath, he hesitated—glacier eyes searching mine—then he nodded once. “There are more supplies in the kitchens,” he said. “Eira keeps a healer’s cache near the hearths—warmth keeps the salves from freezing.”
He lowered himself onto the edge of the bench, broad shoulders sagging. It seemed like the fight had gone out of him the moment I offered. “She’s not just a swordswoman,” he murmured, the words slurring slightly with fatigue. “She’s a powerful healer too. Gifted, in a quiet way. Always has been.”
Something about the softness in his voice when he spoke of Eira unsettled me more than the blood. It wasn’t the voice of a warlord or a predator. It was the voice of a brother. And that made him harder to hate.
I slipped from the chamber, my footsteps soundless against the cold floor.
In the kitchen, I rummaged through carved shelves until I found the stash—bundles of dried roots bound in twine, jars filled with dark, resinous salves, a pouch of clean bandages.
My fingers lingered on the containers, tracing the faint runes etched into the lids.
Eira’s hand, no doubt. For a moment I just stood there, supplies clutched to my chest, heart pounding harder than it should have.
What the hell am I doing? Helping him. The man who had threatened Alaric’s life. The man who had tried to bind me to him. The man I was supposed to hate. But I couldn’t banish the image of him hunched over stone, blood dripping, hands shaking like he was just another body trying not to break.
Maybe he isn’t the monster you believe him to be.
I clenched my fists around the bandages and gathered up the supplies, then forced myself back toward the council room.
When I stepped inside, the air felt heavier, the silence taut. Veyrion hadn’t moved. His eyes opened when I entered, glacier-bright and unflinching, as if he’d known I would come back.
I set the supplies down and peeled the soaked cloth away. As I cleaned the first gash, he hissed through his teeth, shifting slightly.
“Don’t move,” I said—more command than request.
His mouth curved faintly, as if the idea of me ordering him amused him, but he didn’t protest. He only leaned back against the stone, eyes shuttering, jaw clenched against the pain.
“Where were you?” I asked quietly.
His gaze flicked toward the firelight. “Out beyond the Frostmere Pass. There was a breach in one of the old sanctums.”
“A leviathan’s spine,” he said quietly.
The image hit sudden and terrible—the creature thrashing, the strike of its massive body that could have cleaved him in two.
“I was trying to impress a commander who didn’t even remember my name,” he added, voice dry, almost amused at the cruelty of it.
I tied the bandage tighter than necessary.
“I stabbed one in the eye once,” I said.
His brow lifted.
“Slightly hungover,” I added, because honesty seemed important. “Which I do not recommend when facing ancient embodiments of oceanic wrath.”
That got his attention. “You—” His mouth twitched.
“Yes."
A beat.
“And then I vomited over the side of the ship.”
The silence lasted half a heartbeat before Veyrion laughed—low, warm, unrestrained. The sound rolled through his chest beneath my palm. “You felled a leviathan and christened the deck in the same moment?” he asked.
“I prefer to think of it as balance,” I muttered.
“Next time,” he said, still smiling faintly, “I’d very much like to witness that.”
I tied the bandage off with finality. My hand lingered against his skin—fever-warm, startling. Alaric had always been cool to the touch. Veyrion burned. His warmth curled up my arm and settled low in my stomach.
His chest rose beneath my hand. Slow. Controlled. Alive in a way that made something inside me lean closer before I yanked it back.
His shoulders—braced with pain and pride—eased a fraction beneath my touch. A subtle surrender. He closed his eyes for a beat, and for the first time, he looked like someone who’d been carrying too much for far too long.
Just like Eira said.
His breath caught when I pulled the thread through, jaw tightening, but he didn’t move. His eyes tracked every motion, unflinching.
“Where did you learn this?” he asked, voice low, rough with pain but edged with curiosity.
The question twisted in me. I almost snapped that it wasn’t his concern—that he didn’t deserve the story. But he hadn’t asked like an interrogator. Not demanding. Not mocking. Just… wanting to know.
So I told him.
“I was never the kind of child who stayed where I was told,” I said quietly. “When the others sang or practiced weaving, I was already halfway to the wrecks beyond the reef. I wanted to see what lurked in dark places. I touched things I shouldn’t. I swam into trenches claimed to be cursed.”
I kept my hands moving, steady as my voice. “More than once I came back torn open—scales stripped, skin flayed raw by coral, teeth marks in my tail.”
A crooked smile tugged at my lips. “The healers grew tired of mending me. One finally shoved a needle into my hand and told me if I was determined to bleed, I’d best learn how to stitch myself shut again.”
I shook my head at the memory. “The first time, I fumbled so badly I only bled more. But I didn’t cry or beg. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.”
I cinched the thread. “When I finally tied the knot, my only thought was that now I could go back out and do it all again.”
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then a low sound broke it—Veyrion’s chuckle, rough and unexpected.
It startled me more than his wounds. His mouth curved, blood at the corner of his lips, but there was no mockery in it. Just something darkly amused.
“Of course you would,” he said, and there was something almost like admiration in the words. “Bleed, bind yourself together, then defy them all over again. Gods, you were born for fire.”
Heat prickled under my skin. I forced my eyes back to the thread.
As if reading the thought, he rasped, “Strange. I thought mermaids could heal with water.”
My needle paused mid-stitch. Slowly, I shook my head. “Most do. The ocean takes care of them.”
My mouth tightened. “But with me… it’s always been different.”