Page 72 of Iron Beneath the Snow

“My father doesn’t defend where he warns.”

Then she left.

Chapter 20: Fracture Line

Eira

She woke before the light reached the ridge.

The room still held the night’s cold, and for a moment she remained where she was, listening—not for sound, but for its absence, for the stillness that existed when no one expected anything of it.

In Frostvein, someone would already be awake before her.

Here, no one came.

Eira sat up slowly, drawing her hair over one shoulder. The braid from the day before had loosened in her sleep, strands slipping free along her temples and at the nape of her neck. She worked through it with her fingers first, separating what had tangled, then began again.

It didn’t come out clean.

Her hands paused, then adjusted—tightening the first section, easing the second, reworking the pattern until it held, even if not perfectly. Good enough to stay in place.

She tied it off without looking for a mirror.

By the time she stepped outside, the air had shifted from night into something thinner, the cold no longer pressing but still present.

She found Mara near the lower slope, where the trees opened just enough to let the ground take the frost.

Several women were already there, working through bundles of branches in a loose formation—cutting, stripping, binding—without direction, without pause, the movement carrying itself.

Mara glanced at her once, then handed her a blade.

Eira took it without asking what for.

Her hands adapted to the work quickly. The first cut resisted, the bark splitting unevenly under pressure, and she adjusted her grip, drawing the blade more slowly along the grain until the fibers separated cleanly.

The rhythm formed on its own—cut, strip, bind—steady enough that thought did not interrupt it, only moved alongside it.

A shift in the air reached her before the sound did.

Not disruption, but attention.

She didn’t look up right away.

When she did, Soren was already at the edge of the clearing, his movement unhurried, his gaze moving across the work rather than lingering on any one person.

There was dirt along the hem of his cloak, a faint stiffness in the way he held his shoulders, as if he had come straight from the ridge without stopping.

He watched for a moment before speaking.

“You changed your grip.”

His voice didn’t carry far, but it didn’t need to.

Eira kept her eyes on the branch in her hands as she drew the blade down once more.

“It split the first time.”

“And now?”