Chapter 1
Snow fell outside the cave mouth. Heavy. Slow. Endlessly falling into the grey and indifferent sea below.
Eoin sat cross-legged on the dusty stone floor—damp, chilled, and as indifferent as the sea far beneath him.
He could not jump. The collar around his soul, the leash binding him to the princeling, would not allow it. He was caught. Bound to Torsten until the man grew old and died. Then unbound—but still trapped. Still exiled on this godsforsaken island. Still stranded in a world that would never be his, for the long, long remainder of his life.
Snow, falling.
He sat in silence, hair in his eyes, not even bothering to draw his damp clothes tighter. He thought of warmth—places he had lived, once. He thought of home, sealed behind black stone. Of companions. Of lovers. Of a sea that had once loved him back.
He thought of the ache beneath his breastbone. Of being leashed and lost, both at once. Of the emptiness that came with exile.
His head ached in a flat, grey way. He hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t spoken. Only drank. Drank and wandered. Turning circles through a hollow island, contemplating the deeper hollow within.
Snow. Falling.
At length, he stood. The cave mouth yawned open before him, rimmed with slick basalt and narrow ledges. Below: nothing but the slow churn of surf against black stone, and the long drop between.
He stepped to the edge. One foot braced just behind the lip. The other set wide, anchoring. He pressed his palms flat against the stone on either side, arms locked straight, fingers splayed against wet rock. It wasn’t so much that he meant to fall—only that he could no longer find an excuse not to.
Palms pressed flat to cold, wet stone. Arms locked. Spine bowed. He leaned forward—not far. Just enough. Just to feel the pull of it. The possibility.
The cold bit deep, but he hardly noticed. The wind lifted his hair and salted his lips with melt. His breath came in shallow pulls. Every muscle in his arms burned. Shoulders screamed with the strain. The tremble reached him—not just in his limbs, but in his chest, his belly, the hollow ache behind his ribs.
He wanted. He wanted. He wanted the silence of the fall. The clean, beautiful nothing.
He let his mind slip, not away from the ledge, but into the past. Behind his closed eyes, the sea he remembered was sharp with sun. Bright sails against blue sky. The merry laugh of a friend beside him. The sudden press of a lover’s mouth. The sweetness of a place where he was known. Where he belonged.
The muscles in his arms began to fail. Slowly, and then all at once. His elbows bent. His weight shifted forward. The edge pulled at him like a lover’s hand. He let it.
There was blood in his throat—he could taste it. Copper and salt. He was shaking so hard now it felt like he might simply rattle apart. He remembered wind—real wind, warm and salt-edged, tasting of home. He remembered voices raised in sharp, sweet harmony. He remembered bare feet against polished wood. Coins. Wine. Music.
He remembered belonging. He remembered being loved.
The memory wrapped him—warm, honeyed, and merciless.
His fingers began to slip.
The burn had moved into his chest now, radiating along the collarbone, wrapping behind his heart.
He was falling with the snow. He could taste the inevitable.
And then— then— as the very last of his strength vanished, the leash yanked.
Not gently. And not with mercy.
It seized his body like a hook in the spine and shoved. His right shoulder wrenched back at a brutal angle, the force of it spilling him sideways, away from the cave mouth. His fingers tore free of the jagged stone, nails ripping as he went.
He hit the floor hard, the breath sobbing from him. He lay there, face to the stone, mouth open and numb, watching blood ooze from his fingertips, darkly into the dust.
Snow fell beyond the cave. Silent. Endless. The sea below did not care. And neither, just then, did he.
—
After a time, he got up.
He didn’t particularly want to. His shoulder throbbed with every breath, and his fingers burned with sharp, stinging pain. He cradled the injured hand close to his chest, holding it like something small and broken.
His clothes were soaked through. His hair clung to his face. Snow had melted against his skin and seeped into every seam. The wind had stripped him raw.
Still, he began to walk. Not with purpose. Not even with reluctance. Just motion. One foot, then the other. The same way snow falls. The same way the tide rolls in.
He didn’t particularly want to go back to Vardvik. He didn’t particularly want anything. But what else was he going to do?
—
Someone must have seen him. Word passed quickly in a place this small. Faces blurred past, startled, cautious, uncertain.
Maeri stopped him. She came out from somewhere, apron already tied, sleeves rolled up. Said nothing at first. Just looked him over, her mouth pressed into a line.
She took him by the elbow and led him to the healing room attached to her home. The room was warm, crowded with jars and linen and, oddly—two dolls and a man’s cap on a shelf.
She draped a soft wool blanket around his shoulders before she examined his hand. She took one look at the mangled nails. One torn sideways, the bed already weeping; the other ripped down to the quick—and reached for hot water and her tools.
“Drink this,” she said, handing him something bitter. “Then get ready.”
He didn’t ask what she meant to do. He’d seen the glint of a sharp knife and hook-jawed pincers.
Instead, he turned his eyes to Maeri’s shelf and studied the dolls. They sparked a memory: a younger, plumper Maeri, soft-faced and laughing, with two little girls swirling around her skirts. There had been a fever that winter—he remembered that much. The one that took the princeling’s parents.
Maeri stopped laughing about then. And it seemed to Eoin that her skirts were thereafter unencumbered by small girls.
—
The pain came fast. Sharp. Total. First a cut, then a bloom of deeply rooted pain. A wrenching heat that ended in a nauseating jerk.
He tasted copper. His vision sparked white at the edges.
He didn’t even swear. He just let the heat ebb away at the coldness within.
“There,” Maeri said gently, pressing linen to the raw bed where the nail had been. “You’ll live. Keep it dry. Unless it festers, it’ll grow back. Might even be prettier.”
Eoin turned his eyes toward Maeri’s thin, lined face—and her own distant gaze.
“Does it matter?” he asked.
She sighed. “It has to.” Then, helping him to his feet, she steered him gently toward the door.
“Go to bed, lost little exile. Get some sleep. And consider living, why don’t you.”
