Page 97 of Iron Beneath the Snow

Eira looked away first.

Not from embarrassment, but from a quiet, deliberate refusal.

Not tonight.

Tonight, she would not stand apart and measure him. She would not reduce herself to watching, to calculating distance that refused to remain fixed.

She moved toward the tables instead.

Food was passed without ceremony. A plate found its way into her hands, followed by bread offered without question. A child nearly collided with her, muttered a hurried apology, and disappeared just as quickly.

Eira ate slowly, tasting smoke and salt and something wilder beneath it, and only then realized how deeply the hunger had settled in her.

A woman took a seat beside her—one of the huntresses from earlier, lean and sharp-eyed. For a moment, she said nothing, her attention flicking toward Eira in brief, assessing glances that stopped just short of rudeness.

Then, without introduction, she spoke.

“You handled the injured boy well.”

Eira swallowed before answering.

“He would have worsened it if he’d tried to walk.”

The woman’s mouth shifted slightly, something close to approval.

“I expected to like you less.”

It wasn’t said kindly, but it wasn’t meant to wound either.

Eira inclined her head.

“I’m not here to be liked.”

“No,” the woman agreed. “You’re here to be useful.”

Eira traced the rim of her cup with her thumb before glancing at her.

“And you?” she asked. “What are you here to be?”

The woman considered the question only briefly.

“Alive,” she said, as if there were nothing more to add.

Then she stood and returned to the fire.

Later, when the plates had been cleared and the fire had settled into a deep red glow, the elders began to speak, not in the form of speeches, but through stories that moved quietly through the hall.

One man named his brother, lost to an early storm. Another spoke of a woman who had carried her children home with a broken arm. An older wolf, his hair nearly white, recalled a winter when hunger had stripped hunters down to something desperate, and the mountain had answered them without mercy.

Each name was spoken once and then left to rest in the firelight, as though that alone was enough to keep it from fading.

The hall listened, and even the children, who had filled the space with restless energy only moments before, grew still.

In Frostvein, the dead were kept behind closed doors, preserved and distant. Here, their names remained among the living.

At some point, without her noticing exactly when, the tension in her shoulders began to loosen. The warmth of the fire, the steady rhythm of voices, the quiet acceptance of memory—it eased something in her, if only for the span of the evening.

When the music returned, it did so more fully, the drum and strings joined by voices that didn’t quite align but didn’t need to. Movement followed naturally, a few people at first, then more as laughter spread and the space near the fire shifted into something communal rather than arranged.