“No.” Clyde’s tone cut through the storm, steady and unyielding. His eyes stayed locked on Aerion’s. “It is a game to you. A smile. A word. A hand placed just so. Giving a dog a treat.”
Aerion flinched, though he covered it with a scoff.
Clyde’s voice softened—not gentle, but firm, anchored. “But I am no dog. I swore an oath. To guard you. To put your life before mine. That is what I am bound to. Nothing else.”
Aerion sat very still. His smile, brittle and bitter, wavered like glass under pressure. “So, what I am to you is a commandment?” he asked, voice rougher than he intended.
Clyde didn’t answer. Not aloud. But his silence was heavy.
The fire popped, smoke curling up toward the broken rafters. Rain hammered against the roof, relentless.
At length, Aerion pushed himself from the chair, unsteady on his bare feet. He glanced once at Clyde, then at the wool cloak stretched across the floor near the fire, its fabric now dry and faintly warm.
Without a word, he lowered himself onto it, curling onto his side. His hair fell across his face as he dragged the edge of the cloak around his shoulders. The warmth seeped into him, despite the ache in his chest.
His lips moved once more, a whisper meant for no one—or perhaps only for the knight seated a few feet away. “I hate storms.”
Then his eyes slipped closed. His breathing slowed.
Clyde didn’t move. He sat with his back to the hearth, one hand resting on the hilt of his sheathed blade, gaze fixed on the dark cabin door. But every so often, his eyes drifted to the bundle of violet silk and golden hair stretched across his cloak.
Watching. Guarding. Silent.
Until the storm began to pass.
The storm had burned itself out by dawn. The world outside the cabin was washed clean, grass glittering with dew, the air sharp with the smell of wet earth and pine. A pale sun crept between the trees, hesitant, as if afraid of what it might find.
Aerion stirred first.
He blinked against the pale light, groggy, his mouth dry from too much wine. The fire had burned down to embers, faint warmth clinging to the hearth. For a moment he didn’t recognize where he was; the sagging beams, the stone walls damp with rain, the threadbare cloak pulled across his shoulders like a second skin.
Clyde’s cloak.
Memory trickled back, the whetstone’s rasp, the storm’s fury, Clyde’s voice steady as stone, cutting sharper than any blade.Giving a dog a treat… I swore an oath.
Aerion lay very still, the fabric warming him where it brushed his collarbones, carrying a faint scent of leather and iron. It made something uncomfortable stir in his chest.
Slowly, carefully, he pushed himself upright. The cloak slipped down his arms, pooling at his waist. He stared at it, as if the wool itself had betrayed him.
Across the cabin, Clyde sat against the wall, exactly as he had the night before. His head was tilted back, eyes closed, but his hand still rested on the hilt of his sword. Sleeping, but ready. Even in exhaustion, he looked immovable.
Aerion swallowed, the dryness in his throat suddenly worse. He wanted to say something sharp, something mocking—that hewasn’t in the habit of sleeping on a dog’s bed, that he must’ve been drunk enough to forget himself.
But the words caught in his throat.
Instead, he only gathered the cloak and folded it once, sloppily, but folded all the same. He laid it back where he had found it, then sat in silence, watching Clyde’s chest rise and fall in slow, even rhythm.
The stillness pressed at him.
Too close.
Too quiet.
Too loud.
When Clyde stirred at last, opening his eyes, he found Aerion already sitting upright, legs crossed, chin tilted high, as if he had been awake and composed for hours.
“About time,” Aerion drawled, though his voice was softer than usual. “I was beginning to think you’d finally rusted through.”
