Page 13 of Iron Beneath the Snow

There were no furs. No ceremonial white. No altar.

Only stone.

The door was barred with iron thick enough to withstand claws, its weight unmistakable even at a distance. Beyond it, voices carried through the corridor, low and controlled, already shaped into something contained.

Frostvein had regained order.

Of course they had.

Disorder was permitted only long enough to be named, contained, and turned into something that reinforced the structure.

She stepped closer to the bars.

A guard stood at the far end of the corridor, his white cloak falling in clean, unbroken lines, the Frostvein sigil stitched precisely at his shoulder. He did not look at her.

“Where is my father?” she asked.

The guard shifted his weight before answering, the movement small but not careless.

“He is in council.”

Her fingers closed around the iron, the cold biting into her skin.

“How long have I been here?”

“Since nightfall.”

Dawn had already begun to thin the light above her.

So she had been unconscious while the Hall decided what she had become.

She swallowed.

“Open this door.”

The guard’s jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

“I cannot.”

She tilted her head, studying him more closely now.

“Cannot,” she repeated softly, “or will not?”

His silence was deliberate, shaped as carefully as any spoken answer.

The word surfaced in her mind without resistance.

Unclean.

They would not return her to white furs after foreign blood had marked her. They would not restore her to what she had been.

They would contain her.

At least until they determined what she was worth now.

Her breath caught as the warmth beneath the mark shifted, a pulse of awareness moving through it with unsettling clarity.

She pressed her hand harder against her throat.