Page 68 of Iron Beneath the Snow

Frostvein had said it plainly: Ironfang achieved its objective.

And he had not corrected them.

He had reached the midpoint of the stone steps when he registered her movement.

She descended without haste, not closing the distance so much as choosing it, stopping where the movement of the courtyard thinned just enough to make listening inconvenient.

“You answered quickly,” she said.

“I did.”

She held his gaze a moment longer than necessary, as if leaving space for something else to follow, and when it didn’t, her focus sharpened rather than shifted.

“You didn’t deny it.”

“No.”

The answer came without emphasis, but not without weight, and she let it stand before continuing.

“So that is how it will be carried,” she said more quietly. “A completed objective.”

“Yes.”

Her fingers shifted slightly at her side, a small adjustment that stilled almost as soon as it began.

“And I am that objective.”

He drew a breath—not enough to register as hesitation, but enough to mark the transition before he answered.

“You were part of it.”

She caught the phrasing immediately, not missing the change.

“Were.”

He held her gaze, unhurried, as though the correction did not require defense.

“Are.”

This time she did not respond at once. The distinction remained between them, not replacing what had been said, but standing alongside it, altering its shape without resolving it.

“You could have said otherwise,” she said at last.

He tilted his head slightly, considering—not the words themselves, but the expectation beneath them.

“Frostvein would have read it that way regardless.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No,” he said, without resistance. “It isn’t.”

A faint shift crossed her expression and disappeared just as quickly, leaving her composure intact but not untouched.

“For a strategist,” she said, “you don’t seem concerned with how things are spoken.”

“I am,” he replied, and the answer came more fully this time, less contained within a single edge. “Just not in the way you expect.”

“Meaning?”