“You’re hit—oh gods, you’re hit—” Renn’s voice shook, high and desperate.
Clyde’s hand clamped down over the wound, warm wetness seeping between his fingers. It wasn’t deep. He knew it wasn’t deep. But the closeness of it—the kiss of death brushing his skin—made his stomach lurch.
“Not… mortal,” he rasped, forcing himself upright, bracing on Renn’s slight frame.
The boy’s eyes were huge, frantic. “It was so close, sir. I thought—”
Clyde didn’t let him finish. He shoved him back toward the shield wall with a snarl. “Hold your ground!”
But Renn’s hands lingered a heartbeat longer, blood on his palms, before he obeyed.
Clyde lifted his sword again, vision sharpening into cold fury. The world roared around him—men screaming, steel biting, snow stained red—but the only thing he felt was the sting beneath his jaw and the echo of Renn’s voice in his ears.
He’d been spared by less than a breath.
And the thought of Aerion’s letters waiting in his tent struck harder than any blade.
The battle surged and broke like waves on stone. Clyde held the line until his arms burned, until every breath tore raw through his chest. The wound at his neck wept steadily beneath his collar, sticky warmth soaking the leather, but he fought on—because the moment he faltered, others would fall.
Snow churned red underfoot. Men screamed, steel sang. The world was a blur of smoke and blood until, at last, the enemy faltered, pulling back into the trees. Their horns wailed retreat.
The field quieted into groans and the crunch of boots on frost. Clyde’s sword hung heavy at his side. His vision tunnelled. His knees buckled.
He staggered to a half-shattered cart at the edge of the field and let his weight fall against it, the wood biting into his back.His breath came ragged, blood pulsing hot between his fingers where they pressed his throat.
“Commander!”
Renn was there again, stumbling through the carnage, helm skewed, shield long lost. He skidded to his knees in the snow beside Clyde, gauntlets already reaching. His hands were clumsy at first, fumbling for the wound, until Clyde growled, “Careful.”
Renn froze, then touched him again—but gentler. So gentle it made Clyde blink. The boy’s hands were trembling, but he cupped Clyde’s jaw with the careful reverence of someone holding something breakable.
The heat of those hands, the wide, stricken eyes—it pulled Clyde somewhere else entirely. Somewhere with velvet cushions and wine on the air. Somewhere with Aerion’s long fingers at his throat, tilting his head back with effortless claim.
For an instant, it was not Renn’s hand he felt, but Aerion’s. Not the battlefield he smelled, but the faint perfume of cedar and rosewater that clung to Aerion’s hair, the warmth of his laughter, sharp and mocking, softening only in rare, stolen moments.
The ache of it cracked him open.
He reached up, gripping Renn’s wrist, not to push him away, but to steady himself, to anchor against the flood of memory. His throat worked, though no words came.
Renn’s voice filled the silence, tight and desperate. “You’re alive. Gods, you’re alive. I thought—when I saw it, I thought you were—”
“Not yet,” Clyde rasped, forcing his lips into something that might pass for a grim smile.
The boy pressed a strip of cloth to the wound, his movements still awkward but careful, tender. Clyde shut his eyes. For a moment, he let himself pretend. Pretend it was Aerion leaning close, Aerion’s hand steady at his jaw, Aerion’s voice breaking with fear at the thought of losing him.
The pretense was a cruelty. But it was also the only warmth left in him.
When Renn finished binding the wound, Clyde opened his eyes again. The boy was still watching him, earnest, frightened. Clyde let go of his wrist, exhaling slowly.
“Back to the others,” he said, voice low, steady despite the tremor in his chest. “They’ll need you.”
Renn hesitated, then nodded, rising reluctantly.
Clyde leaned his head back against the cart as the boy moved away. Snowflakes drifted down to sting the cut at his neck. He closed his eyes, and Aerion’s face burned behind them, brighter than the cold, fiercer than the pain.
The camp was quieter by the time Clyde returned to his tent. Quieter in the way battlefields always were after—groans muffled by cloth, sobbing carried on the wind, men trying not to sound like boys. Snow still fell, softening the stink of blood, but it could not cover it.
Inside his tent, the lantern cast a dim gold glow across canvas and shadow. Renn followed him in, unasked, a strip of fresh linen in his hands. His face was pale under grime, eyes too wide, too earnest.
