Page 2 of Iron Beneath the Snow

Beside him stood Elder Sael, High Keeper of the White Law. Her snow-white fur cloak dragged heavily across the stone. Her face was narrow, her gaze unreadable, as though it had been carved into stillness rather than shaped by thought. In her hands, she carried a polished horn bowl, its contents catching the firelight with an oily, unnatural sheen.

Eira felt her throat tighten—not because the ritual was unfamiliar, but because it was not.

Every movement had been drilled into her with quiet precision. She knew when to kneel, when to lower her gaze, when to speak. She could have recited the words backward if asked, each syllable etched into memory long before she understood their meaning.

And she knew what no one ever said aloud.

This was not a blessing. It was a binding.

The chant thickened as she crossed the Hall, gathering weight with every step until it pressed against her skin like a physical force. Warriors, hunters, Keepers—wolves born of clean lines and those deemed too low to matter—stood in ordered ranks. Faces she had known since childhood watched her with reverence edged in something sharper, something closer to hunger, as though the Moon itself had taken form and stood before them.

She mounted the dais, the stone cold even here, its chill seeping upward through fabric and bone.

Elder Sael raised her hands, and the chant fell away at once.

Silence followed, so complete that Eira could hear the crackle of resin in the braziers, the faint shift of bodies, the measured rhythm of her own breathing.

“Eira Frostvein,” Elder Sael said, her voice carrying effortlessly through the Hall. “Born under the Bleached Moon. Raised under the White Law.”

Ash coated Eira’s tongue.

“Do you come clean?”

The question was ceremonial, its answer predetermined. It was not meant for her, but for the Hall—for the myth Frostvein repeated until repetition hardened into truth.

Eira lowered her gaze to the altar, where silver veined through black stone like a frozen current.

“I come clean.”

Her voice did not tremble.

A ripple moved through the wolves—approval, satisfaction, something that settled rather than surged.

Elder Sael inclined her head.

“Do you come willingly?”

The word had always carried the taste of mockery.

Eira felt her father’s stare press against her spine, heavy and unyielding. She would perform this correctly. She would not shame him. She would not expose the White Law for what it was—submission dressed as virtue.

“I come willing.”

Somewhere beneath the surface, something small and feral bared its teeth.

Elder Sael stepped forward, the bowl tilting slightly in her hands. The scent reached Eira at once—metallic, bitter, and old.

Blood.

It was laced with crushed herbs and something aged beyond freshness, something that had crossed quietly into rot.

“Then kneel.”

Eira obeyed, lowering herself onto the stone as its cold bit through fabric and settled into bone.

Elder Sael dipped two fingers into the bowl and drew a line from Eira’s forehead down to the bridge of her nose. The touch was cold at first, then warming as the liquid sank into her skin.

The Hall held its breath.