Every day, he told himself he had done the right thing. That Aerion was safer without him. That the duchy needed an Archduke, not a ruined knight clinging to him like a shadow.
And every day, those letters broke him anyway.
When the final one came—You swore an oath to me. Respond to your master!—Clyde read it in the dim light of his tent and pressed it to his lips. His heart thundered. His throat burned. He nearly saddled his horse then and there, nearly rode west through snow and blood to throw himself at Aerion’s feet.
Instead, he did what he had always done.
He stayed.
He fought.
And he carried the weight.
The thaw came late that year.
Spring was not gentle. It had to be bled from the earth, hacked free from ice and rot. The ground softened in patches, muddy and black, smelling of turned soil and moss. Snow still lingered in the hollows, but green shoots pressed stubbornly through, daring the frost to bite them down again.
The war did not stop for it. Battles still clashed. Men still died. But the soldiers noticed. They lingered longer at the fires, letting the warmth soak in. Their laughter came haltingly at first, with edges of fear—but it was laughter, nonetheless. They wanted to believe they might live to see green again.
Even Clyde.
He did not laugh. Not the way he once had, brief and dry, the sound so rare the men had called it a gift. But he listened. He let the sound of others’ voices roll over him like distant waves.
He still spoke little. Still carried Aerion’s ribbon tucked against the inside of his chestplate. Once, it had been bright—a strip of crimson silk tied at the end with careless hands, smelling faintly of cedar and Aerion’s cologne. Now it was worn soft as wool, its edges fraying, the colour long since dulled to brown. The iron of the plate rubbed against it every day. Sweat soaked it, dried, soaked again. Still, it held.
When the ribbon shifted with his movements, he could feel it press against his ribs, a ghost of warmth where none should be. At night, when he stripped his armour, he would touch it, just once, with calloused fingers—careful not to tug it loose, as though the silk itself were the last thread binding him to life.
Some nights, in dreams, he thought he felt it tighten—like Aerion had pulled it snug against his chest with his own hands. He woke with his heart hammering, the taste of longing sharp in his mouth.
He still carved words into scraps of bone and leather when the moon leaned low—names of the dead, fragments of thoughts, lines of poetry that he would never send. He still checked the small wooden box beneath his cot, where Aerion’s letters lay bundled in twine. He never opened it anymore. He just touched the lid. As if to confirm they were still real, that they had not vanished into smoke like everything else.
But one night, he dreamed.
And in that dream, there was no battlefield. No mud. No ash. Just a wild garden, roses clawing at the sky, a ribbon bright and red again, tied around his chest not to shield him but to tether him. To keep him from drifting too far.
When he woke, dawn light weak through the tent canvas, his fingers went to the ribbon in his armour. He pressed it flat against his chest, feeling its frayed edge catch under his nail.
And for the first time in years, with dirt beneath his nails and ash smudged across his cheek, he broke his silence.
My lord,
I dreamt of a garden last night.
Not one of yours—not the manicured kind with trimmed hedges and lilies brought in by ship. This one was wild. Untamed. Roses taller than you. Thorns the size of my knuckles. Vines crawling through cracks in the stone like they belonged there more than we did.
We lived in a small house off its edge. Crooked roof, chimney that smoked even in summer. The chair by the fire creaked when you sat in it. You kept bees. Said it gave you something to shout at that wasn’t me.
I sat under a fig tree and watched you argue with a sunflower.
You had dirt on your ankles. Honey smeared across your jaw. No crown. No cloak. Just you.
And I thought: This is what peace feels like.
Not a war ending. Not banners lowered. Not silence across a battlefield.
You.
You, and your goddamned garden.
