Page 17 of Iron Beneath the Snow

The Keepers came twice. They examined the mark in silence, spoke little to her, and left without offering a conclusion. Meals arrived at fixed intervals. Guards changed. The narrow strip of light above her shifted from grey to white and back again.

No one told her when the Council would meet.

By the third day, she stopped asking.

By the fifth, the cell had developed its own rhythm, one measured not by clocks or bells but by footsteps, bowls pushed through the opening beneath the door, and the changing angle of light against stone.

Frostvein had not forgotten her.

It was deciding what to do with her.

On the sixth morning, footsteps stopped outside the cell.

The lock turned.

For the first time since she had woken against stone, the door opened.

“The Council has been called,” the guard said.

Eira rose.

Whatever Frostvein had decided, it had taken nearly a week to decide it.

She stepped toward the open door.

Chapter 5: Claim

Soren

Dark stone defined the space long before anything else did.

The hall had been cut directly from the mountain and reinforced with iron bands driven deep into its spine, leaving no room for ornament or illusion. Torches burned low and practical along the walls, their light steady rather than ceremonial, and the pillars rose bare, unadorned by antlers or runes.

Nothing here asked to be revered.

It asked to endure.

Soren stood at the long ironwood table as his wolves gathered around it, their movement quiet but purposeful, the aftermath of the strike already settling into the next phase without pause.

Information moved quickly through the mountain.

By dawn, Frostvein had sealed their gates. By midmorning, word had already slipped beyond them—fragmented at first, then sharpening into something more precise.

The daughter had been marked.

The Council was assembling.

The White Law would be forced to respond.

Soren listened without interruption.

“They’ve confined her,” his second said. “No announcement yet.”

“Of course not,” another wolf muttered. “They’ll try to contain it. Call the mark a failure.”

Soren’s gaze remained on the map carved into the table beneath his hands—Frostvein territory traced in pale lines, trade routes and border markers cut deep into the wood, each path familiar enough to navigate without sight.

“If Vargan can contain it,” one of the older wolves added, “the damage won’t spread.”