𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘍𝘪𝘧𝘵𝘩 𝘛𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥
ᚠ A slow-burn historical fantasy of grief, duty, and quiet destiny ᚠ
"We left behind the Gods of heat and honey. My mother said we would find peace in the frost. Instead, she found death. And I? I found silence."
In the snow-wrapped North of Orenvik, twenty-year-old Nadine Darras lives a life not quite hers. A foreign healer among tribal kin, she is tolerated but not seen. Her father no longer speaks of the South they fled a decade ago. Her mother, lost to sickness, remains buried beneath the frost-and in Nadine's throat, where grief never fully thawed.
She heals wounds, burns herbs, and keeps her hair covered on quiet days. Survival is her only rhythm. Until a wedding.
And a chief.
Styrimir Vikarsson, the young chieftain of Orenvik, has united villages and bled for peace-but avoids Haulund, the quiet village where a past he cannot face resides. Bound by tradition to bless the marriage of two strangers, he returns for the first time in years. He does not expect to stay.
He does not expect Nadine. He does not expect grievance and silence either. And neither does she.
As Nadine navigates the shifting currents of grief, politics, and the sharp contrast between North and South, she finds herself tangled in far more than herbs and quiet healing.
✦Some unions bind more than lovers.
And some threads, once pulled, unravel everything ✦
Sunny was never meant to survive in Alessandro's world - in their world - but she was his. He was hers. Heart and soul and every blood-soaked piece in between. It was thinly masked devotion, and it was ultimately their downfall.
The day he lost her changed everything. His life has always been defined by power, bound by duty, and paid for in sacrifice. He had no room for weakness, not anymore. Grief turned him into a man he no longer recognized.
Duty demanded he marry another, while love made sure he never stopped mourning the woman he lost.
Years later, fate has given them a second chance. But the past is a blade they can't stop falling on. As he confronts the betrayal that tore them apart, Alessandro is forced to question everything he thought he knew about loyalty, forgiveness, and love.
STARTED: October 2, 2023
PUBLISHED: August 13, 2025
COMPLETED: