Page 77 of Iron Beneath the Snow

“And her?”

Soren’s gaze returned to him.

“She named the southern shift,” the wolf said. “And now the first strike lands there.”

The implication remained unspoken, but not absent.

Soren allowed the silence to extend just long enough to remove any sense of reaction from his response.

“She anticipated movement away from the eastern pass,” he said. “Not this.”

“But it will be read as more than that.”

“It will be read as it needs to be,” Soren replied, his tone unchanged. “We’ll make sure of that.”

His second studied him for a moment, then nodded.

“I’ll speak to them.”

“No,” Soren said.

The refusal was quiet, but it did not invite reconsideration.

“I will.”

The body was brought back before midday.

No signal called the wolves together, and no voice announced what had happened, yet the hall filled all the same, movement drawing inward until the space arranged itself around what had been carried inside.

Eira stood among them, neither at the front nor concealed behind others, her presence visible without drawing attention to itself.

She did not look at the body immediately.

Her gaze found Soren instead.

He met it briefly before turning to the hall, allowing the moment to pass without extending it.

“Frostvein is testing the boundary,” he said, his voice carrying through the space without needing to rise.

“They cut one throat to see how many answer.”

The phrasing did not provoke a reaction so much as give shape to the one already present.

“We’re not going to answer on their timing.”

The shift in the room was contained, but perceptible, like a current redirected rather than released.

“We’ll answer when it serves us.”

He did not add anything to it, and he did not need to.

Eira moved then, not stepping forward so much as allowing herself to be seen within the line of attention that had formed.

“They chose the southern ridge,” she said.

Several heads turned, not sharply, but with enough focus to mark the change.

“My father doesn’t defend where he warns,” she continued, her tone even. “He uses it to redirect attention elsewhere.”