Page 107 of Iron Beneath the Snow

He glanced out across the valley.

“Frostvein didn’t consider this line important.”

“It wasn’t,” she said. Then, after a brief pause, she added, “At least not until recently.”

“And now?”

Eira watched the wind move through the valley in faint, shifting patterns.

“Now it feels like everything matters,” she said. “Or at least everything we ignored before.”

Riven nodded, accepting that without probing further.

He did not ask about her father. He did not press for insight. He simply stood there with her, sharing the vantage point without trying to claim it.

A raven cut across the sky, its wings stark against the pale cloud.

“You notice what others miss,” he said after a while.

“I was trained to.”

“And now?”

Eira kept her gaze on the valley.

“Now it feels like waiting,” she said. “And waiting doesn’t hold anything in place.”

Riven did not respond right away, but she could feel his attention shift—not closer, not heavier, just more present.

The thread at her throat remained quiet.

At this distance from Soren, it seemed softer, the sensation stretched thin enough that it no longer pressed against her ribs, though it had not disappeared. It lingered faintly, like something extended too far to fully settle but unwilling to break.

She became aware of it as she spoke again.

“It reacts less up here,” she said, the thought forming before she had decided whether to share it.

Riven’s focus sharpened slightly, though his posture didn’t change.

“The mark?”

She nodded.

“It’s strongest near him,” she added, more carefully now, as if saying it aloud made it more real.

For a moment, he simply considered that, not with suspicion or curiosity, but with the same grounded attention he had shown the path, the horses, the wind.

“Could be,” he said eventually. “He holds the center. Things tend to pull toward that, whether they intend to or not.”

The explanation was simple enough to feel almost incomplete, and yet it settled more easily than something more elaborate might have.

Power created direction. It did not require choice.

Eira let that thought rest for a moment, but it did not sit as cleanly as she wanted it to.

“That’s how I understood it,” she said.

Riven glanced at her then, not sharply, but with a clarity that suggested he was listening for what she hadn’t said.