Chapter 41 Nerina #2
Low timbered shops lined the road, thick furs hung over doorways. Children in woolen cloaks darted between them, shrieking with laughter, boots kicking up snow as they passed bundled elders and smiths bent over morning work.
As we glided in, townsfolk paused. Heads turned. Eyes lingered. Not on Veyrion. On me.
Murmurs followed. The shopkeepers tilted their heads, and I caught the soft greeting more than once.
“Lady.”
The word settled into the frost-laced air with a weight I wasn’t sure I’d earned—but accepted all the same. I was suddenly grateful for the deep-blue dress. For the mantle. For the silver wolf clasps. If they didn’t know what—or who—I was, they could at least believe I belonged.
The sled eased to a stop outside a squat, wide building with a chimney belching smoke. Heat shimmered through open slats, the steady clang of hammer hitting metal ringing into the street like a heartbeat.
Veyrion stepped down first and offered his hand. I declined.
When we crossed the street, people came. Children ran up without hesitation, clutching his cloak until he scooped one up and swung the boy onto his shoulder. The child squealed, clinging to Veyrion’s like a tree instead of a man.
Old women pressed wrapped bundles into his hands—bread, dried herbs, smoked meat—murmuring blessings cracked with age but heavy with meaning. Smiths and hunters clasped his arm, slapped his back, traded rough jokes that drew the ghost of a smile from his lips.
Whatever else Veyrion was—whatever threats he’d made, whatever blood clung to his hands—these people didn’t see a monster. They saw their protector.
I wondered if both could be true.
The contradiction scraped at me like salt in a wound. Either they were blind.
Or I was.
Sparks danced in the air, carried on the steady clang of hammer to anvil. The smith—a large man with arms like tree trunks and soot smeared across his jaw—looked up from his work and nodded in greeting.
“Lord,” he said. Then, to me, with a respectful bow of his head: “Lady.”
The word still caught me off guard every time.
“This is Nerina,” Veyrion said, his voice carrying a quiet authority that seemed to settle the forge itself. “She is my guest.”
The smith didn’t notice my amusement—or if he did, he ignored it. He bowed his head again, respectful. “Any guest of Skeldrhall is a guest of the forge.”
Veyrion exchanged a few quiet words with the smith, gesturing toward a rack of weapons—axes, swords, and something that looked like a harpoon.
I wandered around the shop, careful not to touch anything. I kept my hands clasped behind my back, as though that alone might prevent disaster.
The place smelled of oil and hot iron, of leather worn smooth by hands stronger than mine. Blades gleamed along the walls, their edges catching the firelight in bright, dangerous flashes.
I turned too quickly—and my hip clipped a narrow stand I hadn’t seen. There was a split second of dreadful balance.
Which, of course, is when disaster found me.
A chaotic clatter-clank-clink echoed as a cascade of daggers spilled across the stone floor in a metallic riot, skidding in every direction like startled fish.
The shop went silent.
“Oh—stars, I am so sorry,” I rushed out, dropping immediately to my knees. “I didn’t mean to—I wasn’t touching—I mean, I was trying not to touch—”
I scrambled to gather the fallen daggers, nearly knocking one farther away in my haste. The stone bit cold through my dress as I reached for another. “I can fix it. I will clean it up. I just—”
Veyrion crouched beside me.
Close enough that the warmth of him pressed through the chill air. Close enough that I could feel the weight of his presence before I dared look up.
His hand closed over mine. Not hard. Just enough to still me.
“Slowly, these are weapons after all,” he murmured.
His fingers slid from mine, gathering the blades with deliberate ease. Efficient. Controlled. As if the world only ever moved at his chosen pace.
“You would think,” he chuckled, “that someone raised by the sea would be more graceful.”
Heat flooded my face. “The sea does not hang blades at elbow height.”
A quiet laugh escaped him—low, warm, entirely too pleased. Not mocking. But undeniably amused. “We will consider this a lesson in spatial awareness.”
I pressed my lips together, mortified, and handed him the last dagger.
When the blades were rehung and the chain secured, I rose carefully, brushing invisible dust from my palms as if that might erase the moment.
Noticing my embarrassment, my glance lingering on the forge—on the way the flames devoured and reshaped the iron—Veyrion turned back to me.
“Do you know what a blacksmith is, Neri?”
I arched a brow, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of admitting the truth.
I’d heard the word before, yes—but not like this.
Not with reverence. Not with weight. Beneath the sea, the Tidekeepers had made sure I knew only what served them.
Sometimes that ignorance felt like shackles of it's own.
So I nodded instead, pretending, while shame burned hot beneath my skin.
Veyrion didn’t press. He only nodded toward the smith, who was stoking the fire with a heavy iron rod.
“A blacksmith is more than a metalworker here,” he said—not with mockery, but with quiet respect, as though he wanted me to understand, not impress me.
Not belittle me. “They shape not only steel, but legacy. Every blade, every bit of armor, every link of chain forged in that fire carries weight—honor, blood, duty. In Ymirskald, the forge is sacred. A place where war is born, and sometimes peace too.”
The forge roared as the smith thrust iron back into the heart of the flames. Fire curled and licked at the metal, devouring it without mercy.
I stared at it longer than I meant to. The way it swallowed. The way it reshaped. The way it demanded surrender.
Veyrion stepped closer beside me. “You’re watching the wrong thing,” he said quietly.
My gaze flicked to him.
“The flames aren’t the power,” he continued, nodding toward the smith. “The hands are.”
The hammer struck. Steel screamed.
He leaned slightly, voice lowering — not for secrecy, but for me. “Fire is only destruction when it’s left wild.”
My pulse stuttered.
“In the hands of a smith,” he went on, eyes still on the forge, though I could feel his attention anchored to me, “it becomes something else.”
Another strike. Sparks scattered.
“Something honed.”
His focus shifted. Found mine.
“Something strong.”
I glanced again at the glowing embers, the way the flames curled and licked the iron. The fire felt alive. And somehow… it made sense.
I drifted a few steps away, feigning interest in a rack of ornamental blades, though my ears remained trained on every word.
They spoke of reforging old steel. Of weight. Of balance. Of what was to come.
The blacksmith disappeared into the back room and returned with a long bundle wrapped in thick cloth. With practiced hands, he untied it and folded the fabric back.
A beautifully crafted axe lay within—its head etched with interlocking runes, the steel polished to a mirrored shine. The edge caught the forge light like captured lightning.
Veyrion took it without ceremony.
But not without reverence.
He tested the weight, rolling his wrist once, twice. The movement was fluid—intimate. The weapon fit him as though it had been waiting.
A rare smile touched his mouth. Unshielded. Almost boyish.
The blacksmith returned with a second bundle. Smaller. Handled with more care. Cloth fell away.
A smaller axe lay revealed—elegant and lethal. The blade slimmer but no less deadly, its steel etched with delicate runes that echoed those on Veyrion’s weapon. A crescent had been carved into the handle, subtle but unmistakable. The dark leather grip was molded for a finer hand.
The town unfolded before us, carved from timber and stone, snow clinging to steep roofs. Each building bore the stamp of an old lineage—dragon-headed beams, rune-carved thresholds, doors banded with hammered bronze.
Veyrion extended his arm slightly. “Come. There’s more I want to show you.”
He walked beside me without speaking, letting me take it in. We passed weavers knotting wool into thick cloaks, smiths drawing blades along whetstones, children carving shapes into the snow with sticks.
At one stall, a woman with wind-burned cheeks and dye-stained hands lifted a bolt of fabric—deep green stitched with threads of gold. “Lady,” she said with a small incline of her head. “Would suit you well.”
Lady. They said it so easily, as though it fit. I murmured a polite thank you, uncertain, and turned away before she could press it further.
Veyrion led me to the center of town, where a wide square opened around a great firepit ringed in stone. The flames burned steady despite the snow, throwing orange light against the surrounding benches carved with knotwork scenes—beasts, battles, ships.
“This,” Veyrion said, gesturing to the firepit, “is where the town gathers. For feasts. For war councils. For weddings. For all celebrations. It is the heart.”
His voice carried differently now—not with command, but with something closer to reverence.
“And when Yule begins in just a few days,” he continued, his tone warming as though he could already see it, “this place will transform. The townsfolk will gather around the fire, to remind the gods—and themselves—that the dark cannot last forever.”
I listened, struck by the quiet fervor in his voice. He wasn’t speaking like a warrior or a lord, but like a man rooted deep in the bones of this land.
“What exactly is Yule?” I asked softly.
He turned to me surprised. “It is the turning of the year. The night the sun dies and is reborn. When the old is burned away and the new is welcomed in.”
He studied me as he spoke the last words, the flames throwing shadows across the planes of his face.
“We will host Yule at Skeldrhall. There will be hunts, games, and contests of strength,” he said.
“The young test themselves in skill and courage. Music, dancing—fire that burns all three nights. Children run wild through the hall, stuffing their faces with honey bread while the elders tell stories of gods and monsters. For three nights, the halls never go quiet—drums, laughter, a hundred voices raised together against the dark.”
I tried to picture it—everyone gathered at Skeldrhall not out of duty, but out of desire. Celebration, not ceremony.
And for a moment, I envied them. I remembered gatherings in Thalassia.
The Celestial Choir. Crowds pressed into the coral amphitheater, voices lifted in hollow reverence to rituals I had never understood.
The cold weight of expectation. Their eyes, when they fixed on me, held no warmth.
There had been no laughter. No joy. No freedom.
It struck me then—what Yule truly was. The Winter Solstice.
“The solstice,” I whispered, the words tasting strange. “It’s in just a few days?”
Longer than I’d realized—long enough for the world to turn its face toward winter without me noticing. Time had stretched and folded in on itself since the Fall Equinox—days at sea, nights without stars, moments that felt endless, weeks that vanished whole.
The realization pressed down with heavier weight. While days bled into nights here, while I busied myself with self-loathing and wondering, I’d done little—nothing—to decide how I would face my mother. How I would confront the Tidekeepers for what they’d taken from me.
“My lord!”, a voice shattered the stillness.
A horn sounded somewhere above us—low, warning.
A scout, bundled in furs and flushed from haste, rushed into the square. Snow clung to his boots, his beard rimed with frost.
Veyrion stepped back, his presence shifting in an instant from man to commander. “Report.”
“A ship’s been spotted off the coast near Skeldrhall,” the scout said quickly. “Flying no colors. It’s not one of ours.”
Veyrion’s face went still—dangerously so. “I wasn’t expecting visitors.”
Without another word, he guided me swiftly back to the sled. His hand steady but brisk as he helped me in, then swung up beside me.
The ride back to Skeldrhall was silent—faster, colder somehow. The sled glided as smoothly as before, but the laughter was gone.
When we reached the doors, Veyrion leapt down in one fluid motion, then turned back, offering his hand. His gaze fixed on mine, his voice dropping low enough for only me to hear.
“Stay inside,” he said. His tone was firm, iron-edged—but after a beat, it shifted, softened.
“I don’t know what waits out there, and I won’t risk you being caught in it.
” His jaw flexed. “There have been breaches along Ymirskald’s borders these past weeks.
Small raids, scouts slipping past where they shouldn’t.
No banners, no allegiances claimed. I don’t know who is behind it—or why.
And until I do, I won’t gamble with your safety. ”
I froze—not at the words themselves, but at the fact that he gave them at all.
A reason.
Alaric had given orders too. Barked them—final as a whip crack.
Stay on the ship. Don’t stray too far. Put some shoes on.
Do as I say. Commands, always commands. No explanation.
No trust. Maybe that was why I’d always pushed back.
Why I’d bristled against his rules. Why defiance came so easily.
Because he never told me why. And here was Veyrion—the man I least expected it from—looking at me as though I deserved to know.
I lifted my chin. “And what if the danger is already inside Skeldrhall?”
Veyrion’s eyes narrowed, then—unexpectedly—his mouth curved.
Not a full smile, but the faint, dangerous tilt of one.
Satisfaction flickered there. “You think like a wolf already,” he said, voice low.
There was respect in it, begrudging but real—as though he hadn’t expected the question, but approved of it all the same.