The next note came folded thin, the seal broken easily as though even the wax had grown weary of holding secrets. Clyde sat by the dwindling fire, the men sprawled in sleep around him, when he read the words by the sputtering light.
C,
Isolde speaks now. She asked where her father’s smile went. I nearly told her it went with you. Gods damn you. You could end this. One letter. One word. Anything. But you don’t.
—A
The sentence cut deeper than any blade. He could see it—Aerion, sharp-tongued, merciless Aerion—brought low by a child’s innocent question, a question too small and too vast all at once. He imagined her little voice, too bright for a house full of shadows, and Aerion swallowing the truth down like bitter wine so she would not carry it.
Clyde’s fingers went numb. The parchment trembled between them. He read it again, and again, each time with a heavier weight pressing against his ribs, until the words blurred and smeared. The thought of Aerion, who would scorch a courtier with a single phrase and mock the gods themselves, choosing silence—choosing to protect his daughter from a grief he could not even name—made Clyde ache with a peculiar, burning guilt.
He pressed the page hard against his chest, as though he could anchor Aerion’s words to the beat of his own heart, steady and reluctant though it was. He wished—stupidly, uselessly—that the world could be made simple again. That all the rot and sorrow and endless loss could be cut down with a single clean swing of his blade. That he could stand before Aerion, before that small child, and be enough.
But the truth was mud and ghosts and the endless sound of rain. He promised nothing. Could promise nothing.
Instead, he held the letter until the ink smeared warm beneath his thumb, until his chest ached from the pressure, until the firesank into ash and the night around him filled with the slow, shallow breathing of men who dreamt of home.
The letter came with the hawk’s talons caked in dried mud, as though even the bird had been dragged through grief. Clyde took it alone, under the ragged canopy of a tent patched more times than it was whole, and slit the seal with a hand calloused from steel.
C,
I wore black today, though no one died. They whisper about me more than ever. They say I’ve gone mad. Perhaps they’re right. You should be here to see it. You should be here to stop it.
—A
The words were jagged, thinly veiled rage pressed into ink, but beneath the sharpness Clyde could feel it—the ache like a bruise under every line, a plea so raw it seemed to strike directly under his ribs. Aerion’s anger was never just anger; it was loneliness turned outward, and here it was, stark and undeniable.
Around him, the men laughed too loud at a half-drunken story, their voices cracking on the edges of terror they refused to name. They stank of smoke and sweat and fear, but Clyde’s world had narrowed to the slip of parchment in his hand. The letter burned. White-hot, alive with Aerion’s venom and ache, until Clyde felt he might blister just holding it.
He read it once, then again, slower, tasting each phrase like blood in his mouth.You should be here.The words clung to him. Aerion wasn’t asking for courtiers or servants or even family. He was asking for Clyde—the one man too stubborn, too silent, too constant to be driven away.
And then Clyde understood: Aerion was not only asking whether he would come back. He was asking whether the world would let him exist as he was—sharp and cruel, soft and yearning, a man who could wear black for grief no one else understood and dare anyone to mock him for it. Aerion was asking, without saying it, whether his truth had a place in a world already set against him.
Clyde shut his eyes, the paper trembling between his fingers. He tasted iron—his own name, his own oath—and felt the weight of it settle like armour across his chest. He could not answer the world’s questions for Aerion. He could not soften the claws of rumour or the sting of loss. But he could be constant. He could be the shield Aerion asked for in silence and in rage alike.
The realization did not soften him. It steeled him. His grip tightened, and he folded the letter once, deliberate and sharp, before tucking it beneath his breastplate against the faded ribbon that had never left him. The paper crackled faintly against his heart, and in that sound he heard a vow renewed.
C,
She’s dead. Fever took her in two days. Isolde is motherless now. And I— I don’t even know what I am anymore. Where is my loyal dog? You swore an oath to me. Respond to your master!
—A
Chapter eighteen
A Garden Dreamt
Five years passed in the blink of an eye, and in the longest crawl of days Clyde had ever endured.
He had kept them all.
Every one of Aerion’s letters.
The first was creased a dozen times over, the ink smudged where his thumb had lingered on the cruel words:I’m married. Is this what you wanted? Are you happy?Clyde had read it until the words blurred, until he hated himself more than he thought possible.
The second, stained with tears he’d sworn not to shed, told of Isolde’s birth. Clyde had traced the child’s name again and again, until the parchment softened and frayed at the edges.
The rest—the bitter ones, the furious ones, the hollow ones—he kept too. Hidden in a wooden box tucked beneath his cot, wrapped in oilcloth against the damp. When the wind tore through the tents and the snow threatened to choke them all, Clyde would open the box and run his fingers across Aerion’s handwriting. He never let himself reply. Never let himself imagine what it would mean to ride back west, abandon the war.
