CONNIE

Stormscar Keep did not tremble.

That was the first thing Connie measured when trouble brushed the walls—the stone, the servants’ hands, the cadence of boots in the corridors. A Keep that trembled invited wolves. A Keep that looked steady could survive a great deal more than it deserved.

Stormscar looked steady.

It performed.

The receiving hall had been built for that purpose, long before Connie Aldren ever crossed its threshold in a bridal cloak and a stranger’s name on her tongue. Its vaulting ceiling arched like the ribs of a sea-beast. Black iron braziers burned in disciplined pairs along either wall, each flame fed until it held a clean, unwavering line. Their light threw gold across stone veined pale as old bone, and it warmed the hall just enough that guests could pretend they were not cold.

They always pretended. Even in Baerhold.

The wind worried the shutters with its usual hunger, a constant low pressure, like breath against skin. It slid through seams anyway—thin, searching, familiar. Connie had been born in a harsher cold, in Kaldhold’s cliff-shadow where winter came like a hammer. Stormscar’s wind felt different. It did not strike to break. It struck to remind.

You live on an edge, it whispered. You live where stone meets storm.

Connie stood beneath the carved lintel at the head of the hall, gloved hands folded lightly at her waist. The fur at her shoulders was dark sable; the clasp at her throat was hammered gold worked into a knot of interlocked hooks—Stormscar’s old emblem, less pretty than other Keeps dared, more honest.

She had dressed in Stormscar colors—charcoal wool trimmed in frost-silver thread—but the silver did not belong to her. It never had.

Her hair was brown. Warm, not moonlit.

It was one of the first things Baerhold had noticed about her when she married Thrain Kerrick: that she had brought beauty to Stormscar, but not its blood. Kerricks came like winter—silver-haired, pale-eyed, hard to mistake even in a crowd. Connie did not blend the way a Kerrick blended.

Connie did not want to.

Let them look. Let them compare. Let them decide she was softer because she did not shine like ice.

Beauty, Connie had learned young, was a tool like any other—useful if held properly, dangerous if you pretended it was harmless. She had Kaldhold’s bone structure: sharp cheekbones, a straight nose, a mouth made for smiles or knives depending on her need. Her figure remained the subject of gossip even after three births—hips that promised health, a waist that still held its shape, shoulders that wore fur like it was born there. Men watched. Women watched harder. Connie let them.

Attention could be turned.

Before her stood the guests—two figures in green and bone-white, their cloaks cut finer than Stormscar’s practical wool. The older woman wore her Keepline’s colors as if they were armor: deep green velvet edged in pale fur, a bone clasp carved into the shape of a leaf. The young man beside her bowed with careful grace and too-bright confidence, the kind a boy wore when he had been told all his life that his name would open doors.

Connie smiled, and the hall believed it.

“Stormscar welcomes you,” she said. “In your keeping.”

“In your keeping,” the older woman replied smoothly, lips shaping the phrase as if she had practiced in front of a mirror. The young man echoed it a half breath later.

Their Keepline—Sablemere, Connie’s mind supplied, though most in Baerhold would have needed a scribe to remember it—sat on a Spire further down the long road, where the land widened and the wind carried more salt than ice. They were not great in the way the Kerricks were great; they were great in a quieter, more persistent way. Grain stores. River tolls. A well-trained pen for contracts. Their green-and-bone banners had appeared more than once on battlefields of Keepline disputes, always just far enough back that their blood rarely spilled first.

Connie noted the older woman’s hands: no callus on sword-hand, but ink-smudges at the fingertips. She noted the young man’s posture: stiff in the shoulders, proud in the chin. Unused to cold. Unused to being anything less than admired.

And then she noted what mattered most.

They had come with only a small escort. Seven guards by count, all wearing new mail that shone too bright. Not here to fight. Here to be seen.

Here to court.

Connie’s smile did not change.

“We regret that our daughter cannot greet you at this moment,” she said smoothly. “Laika is indisposed with matters of the yard.”

The lie sat easily in her mouth. Not because she loved lying. Because she knew when truth cost too much.

The young man’s expression brightened at the mention of Laika’s name, as if it were a prize to be presented shortly. “We are honored to wait,” he said. “Stormscar’s reputation precedes it.”

As does your hunger, Connie thought, and heard her mother’s voice beneath it, as clear as if the woman still stood behind her: A boy who praises your walls is asking how tall they are.

Out loud, Connie only inclined her head. “Stormscar is pleased to offer you warmth while the weather misbehaves.”

A soft ripple of laughter moved through the hall, exactly as Connie intended. Humor was a lever. A Keep that could laugh could also command.

Servants flowed in with trays—spiced cider, bread baked dense enough to survive travel, thin slices of salted meat, and small honey cakes that looked too delicate for Stormscar but cost very little and made guests feel valued. Connie watched the Sablemere woman’s eyes flick to the honey cakes and then to Connie’s face.

You are measuring me, Connie thought. Good. I am measuring you.

Behind her, the hall’s great doors breathed open, letting a gust of colder air coil into the room. The braziers flared slightly and steadied again.

The murmur that followed wasn’t fear. It was recognition.

Captain Edrik Varn entered like a man entering a battlefield—not loud, not humble, simply present. He wore a boiled leather coat over chainmail darkened with oil, a wolf-fur collar matted with snow. His sword hung at his left, plain and well-used, the grip scarred where hands had clenched too hard. A narrow axe rode at his belt, and a long dagger sat behind his back in a sheath designed for speed. There were men who decorated themselves with weapons like jewels. Edrik wore his like tools.

War had shaved him down to something harder and quieter. A younger man once, broad and loud with confidence. Now he carried that confidence the way stone carried weight—without display. A scar pulled the left side of his mouth down, as if he were perpetually dissatisfied with the world. Another, thinner scar cut through his brow and vanished into his hairline.

He did not bow in halls. He inclined his head once, economical and exact.

“Keepress,” he said.

The title was a blade in its own way. Connie could have been called “consort,” or “wife,” or “the Keeper’s woman.” Stormscar did not do that. Stormscar acknowledged power when it existed.

Connie did not turn too quickly. Too quickly looked like panic.

“Captain,” she replied, tone unchanged. “You will join us for wine.”

Edrik stepped forward two paces, stopping just shy of impropriety. “If I may,” he said, voice low, “a word.”

The young man of Sablemere shifted. Connie saw it in the corner of her eye—curiosity, annoyance, the instinct of someone unused to being interrupted.

Connie smiled at him as if nothing were amiss.

“Of course,” she said. “You will excuse us.”

She turned without haste and walked toward the side passage that led from the hall into the inner corridors, where the stone was older and the torches burned lower. Edrik followed at a respectful distance.

Only when the sound of the hall softened behind them did Connie allow her spine to tighten.

“What is it?”

Edrik’s jaw worked once before he answered, as if he would rather bite through the words than speak them.

“She never returned.”

Connie did not stop walking.

“Through which gate?”

“North,” he said. “The outer. The watch saw her pass out. They did not see her pass back.”

The corridor seemed to narrow, though it did not. Connie’s mind moved with sudden brutal clarity, assembling the pieces with the speed of a knife fight.

Laika had run.

Laika had a stubbornness that came from Thrain and a hunger that came from somewhere darker—herself, perhaps, or the land, or the old stories the Kerricks pretended not to believe anymore. Connie had seen the way her daughter’s eyes had fixed on the road when the bear appeared—like a hound on scent.

Connie’s throat tightened.

“What of Michael?” she asked.

“He returned,” Edrik said. “Alone.”

Connie nodded once. She filed the detail away. Alone meant Michael had either failed to follow, or chosen not to, or had been sent back. Michael was clever. Michael could lie with a straight face if he believed the lie was kindness.

“How long?” Connie asked.

“Long enough,” Edrik answered.

He did not embellish. He did not soften.

Connie turned into the small solar overlooking the inner yard, a room that smelled of smoke and cedar and old stone. The shutters were closed here too, but she could hear the wind pushing at them, testing for weakness.

She crossed to the table in the center of the room where a map of Baerhold lay pinned with iron markers. Beacon routes. Patrol paths. A little bundle of notes Connie had written in her own hand: supply tallies, names of Keep households, the date the last beacon oil shipment arrived.

Thrain called her careful.

Other men called her controlling.

Connie called it love with sharp edges.

“She followed it,” Connie said.

Edrik did not pretend ignorance. “Likely.”

Connie’s fingers hovered above the map’s northern edge where the road thinned and the trees thickened. She did not allow her hands to shake.

“How many saw?” she asked.

“Enough to talk,” Edrik replied. “Not enough to agree.”

“Good,” Connie said.

He studied her profile. “Do we raise alarm?”

There it was.

The blade-edge between mother and ruler.

“No,” Connie answered.

Edrik’s brow tightened. “Keepress.”

“We do not raise alarm,” Connie repeated. “We correct it.”

Silence hung between them for a moment, thick as wool.

Edrik had fought wars between Keeplines when the Holds were younger and the Spires were sharper, when men killed over river crossings and grazing rights and insults written into ledgers. He had watched panic collapse gates that no battering ram could crack. He knew what shouting did.

“How many?” he asked, accepting correction as a soldier accepted orders.

“Five,” Connie said immediately. “Quiet men. No bright cloaks. No horns.”

“I’ll go,” Edrik said.

Connie met his eyes properly then.

“You are the Captain of Stormscar,” she said. “You will not leave your post chasing a girl’s impulse.”

His jaw clenched. “This may not be impulse.”

“No,” Connie agreed. “It may not.”

That was the difference between her and Thrain.

Thrain dismissed what he could not hold and weigh. Connie measured consequences instead.

“You will send Toren,” Connie continued, naming a lean man who had lived in the woods more than in halls. “Hal. The twins. And Rurik.”

Edrik’s gaze sharpened at Rurik. “Rurik sees sign where others don’t.”

“Exactly,” Connie said. “And he keeps his mouth shut.”

Edrik nodded once.

“And you?” he asked.

Connie’s lips curved faintly. “I will finish hosting.”

The corner of his scar twitched, almost a smile.

There was one more thing. Connie felt it like a knot behind her ribs.

“Send a rider to Frostmarch,” she said.

That gave him pause.

“The Darkguard?” Edrik asked.

No mockery. Only assessment.

“Yes.”

Edrik exhaled through his nose. “Keepress… with respect. They walk the line and count oil. They mutter old charms and scare children.”

Connie’s gaze did not leave the map. “You fought men,” she said quietly. “They walk where we will not.”

He did not answer at once.

“I was raised in Kaldhold,” Connie went on, voice level. “We lost three beacon posts in a single winter. Not to enemies. Not to raiders. To neglect and arrogance.” Her finger tapped a point on the map where a beacon marker sat. “A flame dies. Then another. Then your road becomes a mouth.”

Edrik’s eyes flicked to her hand. He had never asked about Kaldhold’s dead. He would not now.

“Fast,” he said, shifting to acceptance. “Unmarked.”

“Yes,” Connie replied.

“And the Keeper?” Edrik asked. “Do we inform him?”

Thrain.

Connie closed her eyes briefly—not in prayer, but in calculation.

Thrain would hear “Darkguard” and taste insult. He would hear “Nightline” and taste superstition. He would hear “Laika missing” and taste failure.

Thrain’s love was real. Thrain’s pride was also real. Pride made men deaf.

“No,” Connie said. “Not yet.”

Edrik’s stare sharpened. “That skirts—”

“It skirts nothing,” Connie cut in, still calm. “If Laika returns within the hour, there is no need to turn this Keep upside down in front of guests who came to measure us. If she does not…” Connie let the sentence hang just long enough to become a weight.

Edrik understood weight.

He bowed once.

“I will have them saddled,” he said.

“Edrik,” Connie called, and he paused at the door.

“If you find tracks,” she said, “do not follow them into the treeline alone.”

Something passed across his face—pride, perhaps, or the instinct of a man who hated being told caution.

“I’m too old to chase legend,” he said.

“You’re too valuable to bury,” Connie replied.

He left.

The solar felt larger once he was gone. Colder.

Connie drew a slow breath and reached into the drawer beneath the map table. Not for a weapon. For a ribbon of cloth—black and gold, Raspear’s colors, folded small as a letter. She held it for a moment without unfolding it.

It was nothing. A scrap she’d been given years ago at a southern feast, a token of courtesy. She kept it because it reminded her how far Haldrim stretched and how thin any Keep truly was on its own.

The south kills in silk, her father had said once. The north kills in wool. The dead do not care.

Connie folded the cloth again and returned it to the drawer.

Then she pushed one shutter open a finger’s width. Wind slipped in at once, biting and sharp. She welcomed it. Pain sharpened thought.

Below, the inner yard churned with quiet preparation. The stable doors were being thrown wide, and warm air laced with the sweet stink of hay rolled out into the cold. Horses stamped and tossed their heads, sensing urgency the way animals always did.

Stormscar’s stables were not beautiful. They were practical—stone walls, thick beams dark with age and smoke, tack hung in disciplined rows. A long rack of spears stood by the door, heads oiled and covered in leather caps. Connie could name most of those spears by who carried them. Tools carried history.

Edrik’s chosen five appeared like shadows—men who did not need to be told twice. Toren in a dark cloak that blended with pine shadow. Hal with a longbow already in hand, string protected under his coat. The twins—no one ever remembered which was which until one of them smiled. Rurik last, thin as a fencepost, eyes always scanning the ground as if the world wrote messages there.

They wore Stormscar’s common armor: leather and mail, layered, oiled. Not parade gear. Not the bright plate the Spires loved. They carried what worked—swords, axes, bows, and short blades for when the world pressed close.

Connie watched them saddle without shouting. Each motion was practiced, efficient. This was what Edrik brought to Stormscar: the ability to move without noise.

A sixth horse was led from the east stable—smaller, faster, with a coat so dark it looked black until light touched it. The rider wore no banner. His cloak was plain. His face was half-hidden. Connie did not need to see him clearly to know him.

Jacek. A messenger who had never failed her.

He had been a boy when Connie arrived, all elbows and awe. Now he moved like a man who had learned that roads were not kind.

Connie left the solar before anyone could see her watching too long. A Keepress did not press her face to shutters like a worried mother.

She returned to the receiving hall.

The warmth struck her like a false comfort. The braziers burned as they had before. The guests were still there, sipping cider. The older Sablemere woman was speaking now, her voice smooth as spun thread. The young man laughed at something she said, too loudly, trying to seem at ease.

Thrain Kerrick stood at the far end of the hall near the hearth, speaking with one of his household officers. His silver hair caught the firelight and threw it back pale and cold. He looked, Connie thought, like a man carved from winter and taught to speak.

He did not see the riders being prepared. Not yet. Connie had ensured it.

Thrain turned his head and caught Connie’s approach. His gaze flicked across her face, searching. He read her the way she read rooms. That was the danger of marrying a Kerrick—Thrain could be wrong about the world, but he was rarely wrong about people.

Connie smoothed her expression before he could find a crack.

“In your keeping,” Thrain said, as if they were strangers and not the two halves of Stormscar’s spine.

“In your keeping,” Connie answered.

His eyes narrowed slightly. “Where is Laika?”

Connie’s heart did not stutter. She had trained it.

“She is changing,” Connie lied. “The yard took more from her than she expected.”

Thrain’s mouth tightened. He did not like lies between them. He accepted them anyway when the alternative was disorder.

“She’s reckless,” he said quietly.

“She’s alive,” Connie replied.

Thrain’s gaze held hers for a beat too long. “And the bear?”

Connie let a breath pass before she answered, as if the word were unimportant. “A stirring in the woods.”

“A story,” Thrain said, and contempt threaded through the word. “A Darkguard runner half-frozen and overfed on superstition.”

He said it louder than he meant to. A few heads turned.

Connie smiled faintly, turning it into nothing. “Even stories can start fires.”

Thrain snorted. “The Darkguard walk the line to keep peasants from feeling afraid. That’s all.” He leaned closer, voice dropping. “They are a waste of good boots.”

Connie’s smile did not change. “You might be right.”

Thrain relaxed a fraction at the agreement.

Connie let him have that small comfort. She had no interest in winning arguments. She wanted her daughter back.

She turned slightly, angling her body as if to address the guests again. “Keeper Sablemere,” she said, using the older woman’s title with careful courtesy, “you traveled in hard weather. The roads in Baerhold are unkind this season.”

The older woman’s eyes gleamed at the title. Respect was currency, and Connie had just paid in good coin. “Raspear’s roads are worse,” Keeper Sablemere replied. “Black stone, gold banners, and cold law.”

Ah. Raspear mentioned on purpose. Connie noted it.

“And yet you came,” Connie said.

“For Stormscar,” the woman replied, and her gaze slid toward Thrain, then back to Connie. “For Baerhold. For the promise of strong blood and strong seats.”

Connie felt the words like a hand testing a bruise.

Strong blood. Kerrick blood. Silver hair and old stories.

The bear.

Even now, she could feel the way the rumor would spread if it escaped Stormscar. Kerricks and bears. Kerricks and old bonds. Kerricks and darkness.

And Laika—silver-haired Laika—running toward it.

Connie’s nails bit her gloves.

She smiled anyway.

“You will have warmth here,” Connie promised. “And salt and bread. Stormscar keeps its guests.”

She kept her voice gentle because gentleness made people careless. People grew careless around kindness.

Connie did not.

The hall continued. Laughter rose and fell. Words moved like pieces on a board. The Sablemere boy—Aren, Connie recalled now—spoke eagerly of hunting and roads and his admiration for Stormscar’s defenses. He asked after Laika once, then twice, then tried to make it sound casual.

Connie fed him what he wanted: anticipation.

“She is spirited,” Connie said with a soft laugh. “You will find her difficult to bore.”

Aren smiled as if he had won something.

Connie thought: You have no idea what you’re trying to hold.

Time passed in measured slices.

Then the hall doors opened again.

Not with Edrik’s quiet weight this time, but with a servant’s careful step and lowered eyes.

The servant approached Connie and bent close enough that only Connie could hear.

“Keepress,” the servant murmured. “Captain Varn has departed the gate.”

Connie’s stomach tightened—not in surprise. In confirmation.

“Good,” she said softly.

She turned back to the guests at once, letting no crack show. “Keeper Sablemere,” Connie said, “you must tell me: are Raspear’s Notts as stern as the stories claim?”

The question was a hook baited with curiosity. It worked. The older woman’s attention snapped to it at once, and the conversation flowed around Connie like water around stone.

Inside, Connie counted.

Five riders. Six, with the messenger.

Into the wind.

Into the trees.

Into the place where beacons meant something even in daylight.

She felt a memory rise unbidden—Kaldhold’s cliff road in winter, a beacon flame guttering under sleet, her father’s hand on her shoulder.

Light is not faith, he had said. It’s work. And work fails when men decide they’re too proud to do it.

She watched Thrain laugh at something Aren said. She watched the way the firelight played on his silver hair. She watched the way a man could be good and still be wrong.

Connie loved him. She did.

But she loved her children more.

It was not shameful. It was truth.

When the hall finally eased into a lull—when the guests were distracted by servants laying out a spread and Thrain was pulled into conversation with his officer—Connie slipped from the hall as quietly as a shadow.

She did not run.

A Keepress did not run.

She walked to the east stable herself.

Jacek was already mounted. His horse stamped once, eager. Jacek’s cloak was dark, his gloves worn, his belt simple. No banner. No sign he belonged to Stormscar at all.

Perfect.

Connie stopped just inside the stable doors. Warm air hit her face, thick with hay and horse sweat and leather oil. The horses watched her with calm dark eyes. Animals, at least, did not pretend.

Jacek dipped his head. “Keepress.”

“You know the road,” Connie said.

“To Frostmarch,” he replied.

“You will ride hard,” Connie said. “You will not stop for shelter unless you must. If anyone asks, you carry a private matter of trade.”

Jacek’s mouth tightened slightly. “And if they don’t believe it?”

Connie stepped closer so only he could hear her next words.

“Tell them,” she said, “that Stormscar’s beacons will burn whether they mock them or not. And tell Frostmarch this: a bear has been seen in Baerhold.”

Jacek’s eyes flickered, just once, with the smallest spark of something—fear, perhaps, or the thrill of a story that could become history.

He said nothing.

Connie held his gaze until it steadied.

“And one more thing,” she added, voice lowering further. “If a message comes back… it comes to me. Not to the Keeper.”

Jacek hesitated only a heartbeat. Then he nodded. “As you command.”

Connie reached up and touched the horse’s cheek briefly—an absent habit, more to ground herself than to soothe the animal. Its skin was warm beneath her glove.

Then she stepped back.

Jacek turned the horse and slipped out into the yard.

No horn sounded.

No shout followed.

Stormscar did not tremble.

Connie watched until rider and horse vanished into the whitening wind, swallowed by the world beyond the walls.

Only then did she allow herself to breathe out.

“If you are only an animal,” she murmured, not to the horse, not to the wind, but to whatever watched roads and children, “bring her home before dusk.”

The wind did not answer.

It never did.

Connie straightened her cloak, set her shoulders, and turned back toward the Keep, toward guests and smiles and the careful lies that held stone together.

Because there were still braziers to feed. Still politics to perform.

And somewhere beyond the gate, her silver-haired daughter was chasing something that had been gone from Baerhold for years.

Chasing, perhaps, the oldest kind of trouble.

And Connie Aldren Kerrick—Keepress of Stormscar, mother before all things—would not let the world take her child.