Page 98 of Iron Beneath the Snow

Eira remained where she was, watching, telling herself that observation was enough, even as she felt the pull of something less restrained beneath it.

Riven stepped beside her before she had quite acknowledged that shift.

“You don’t dance,” he said, without pressure in the observation.

“I don’t perform,” she replied.

A faint trace of humor crossed his expression.

“This isn’t performance,” he said. “It’s a way to forget for a few minutes.”

She glanced at him more fully.

“Forget what?”

“That we’re watched, that winter returns whether we’re ready for it or not.”

He held out his hand without insistence, without expectation, offering the gesture as something that could be accepted or refused without consequence.

Eira looked at it longer than she needed to. In Frostvein, a gesture like that would have carried weight—implication, obligation, a shift in standing. Here, it seemed to carry none of that, and that absence unsettled her more than expectation would have.

In the end, she took his hand.

His grip was warm and steady, guiding her toward the fire where the circle had formed without structure or hierarchy. When his hand rested lightly at her waist, it adjusted to her movement rather than directing it, allowing her to find the rhythm instead of forcing her into it.

Her first steps were restrained, but the next came more easily as she let the drum carry part of the focus she usually held too tightly. Firelight moved across faces and hands, across the loose fall of her hair, and for a brief moment she stopped measuring herself against the space she occupied.

“You’re still thinking,” Riven said.

“I always am.”

“Then let your footing be enough.”

The suggestion drew a quiet breath from her that came closer to laughter than she expected, and he caught it, his expression shifting slightly in response.

The circle tightened and loosened again with the rhythm, and when he turned her, it was controlled and unshowy, just enough to carry her through the motion. Her hair lifted and settled again against her shoulders, and the warmth that followed came from movement, from the press of life around her, rather than anything sharper or more dangerous.

When she faced him again, he was watching her with a kind of open approval that held no demand behind it.

For the first time since leaving Frostvein, she allowed her smile to remain instead of correcting it, and although it felt unfamiliar, it did not feel misplaced.

Riven’s expression softened in response, though he did not linger on it.

Something beneath her ribs tightened—not sharply, not painfully, but with a distinct awareness that pulled her attention inward.

The thread.

She knew what it was before she looked, and yet she did anyway.

Across the hall, just beyond the strongest reach of the firelight, Soren stood still, his gaze fixed on her.

Nothing in his expression shifted, and yet the thread between them tightened in a way that was not entirely her own.

Her breath caught, not from fear, but from the unfamiliar sensation of feeling something in him without choosing to reach for it.

It did not feel like anger. It was steadier than that, something she could register but not yet name.

Her smile faded slightly, not from regret, but because the moment no longer felt contained.