Freedom tasted like smoke and honey.
Aerion let himself laugh, delighted, as a fire-eater sent sparks too close to a drunken man’s beard. Clyde caught the flash of his grin, though he said nothing.
The square was a storm of colour and sound, and at its heart a fiddler drew his bow fast and fierce, notes cutting bright through the clamour. Villagers clapped in rhythm, stamping their feet until the cobbles rattled.
Aerion was caught before he could protest. Two girls, cheeks flushed from cider and laughter, seized his hands with boldnessborn of festival joy and tugged him into the circle. His hood slipped back, golden hair spilling loose.
He laughed as the fiddler quickened the pace. His body moved with a practised grace, every gesture measured yet effortless. He spun the first girl beneath his arm, twirled the second until her ribbons fluttered, then clasped both their hands as the circle whirled faster. His cloak flared like wings, and his smile cut through the evening air like fire through paper.
The villagers cheered. The girls giggled, eyes alight with the thrill of dancing with someone who was not quite ordinary, though they could not name why.
At the edge of the circle, Clyde stood still as a carved figure. His gaze never wavered, his hand resting near the hilt of his sword even here, even now. But his eyes lingered longer than he meant them to; on the curve of Aerion’s smile, the way his laughter carried unguarded, the way he shone when he forgot to sneer.
When the tune ended in a riot of clapping and stomps, Aerion bowed with a flourish that earned more cheers, then slipped free of the circle. Breathless, flushed, he pulled his hood up again, smirk firmly back in place.
He moved through the crowd, past jugglers and fire-breathers, until the scent of roasted sugar curled toward him. A small booth stood tucked between stalls, its counter piled high with candied nuts glistening in the firelight. The boy behind it couldn’t have been much younger than Aerion, brown-haired, freckles dusted across his nose, hands sticky with syrup.
Aerion leaned his elbow against the counter, coins glittering between his fingers. “Two cones,” he drawled, eyes glinting as they lingered on the boy’s face a beat too long. “Unless you’ll give me three for a smile.”
The boy’s flush spread quickly, his grin betraying nerves and delight. He fumbled with the paper cones, nearly spilling sugar, his eyes flicking up to Aerion’s and away again.
Aerion’s smirk deepened, sharp as ever but softened by something playful, almost kind. He accepted the sugared nuts, brushing the boy’s hand with deliberate slowness as he dropped the coins. “Sweet,” he murmured, and though the word referred to the treat, the boy’s ears burned red at the tone.
Behind him, Clyde watched. His jaw set, a muscle ticking in his cheek. His grey eyes missed nothing; the tilt of Aerion’s smile, the tremor in the boy’s fingers, the way Aerion’s gaze lingered a fraction too long.
Aerion prowled the rows of booths like a king slumming among his subjects, chin high, cloak swinging, his smile a weapon and an invitation both. He sneered at a tray of tin brooches shaped like flowers and birds—“Fit for a cow, perhaps”—then flicked two coins anyway and fastened one to his cloak. He sniffed at candied apples—“Sticky peasant fare”—before biting into one, juice running down his lip as he laughed at his own hypocrisy. He bought a carved wooden horse from a toothless old man, spun a painted top until it rattled on the counter, snatched a string of paper lanterns only to thrust them into the arms of a gawking child and vanish in the crowd before thanks could follow.
Everywhere he went, eyes followed. Not just because he was beautiful—even in common clothes, he glimmered like something born from marble and firelight—but because he commanded space with the sheer force of his presence. Jugglers nearly dropped their pins when he tossed coins into the air, a flash of gold brighter than their torches.
He sampled every sweet thrust under his nose—honey biscuits, sugared almonds, fried dough dusted with cinnamon—mocking them all as unworthy while finishing each bite with greedy delight.
Clyde followed, his hood low, looming frame enough to cut a swath through the crowd. His eyes missed nothing: the shifting glances of pickpockets, the sharp gleam of knives too close to the light, the drunken sway of men flushed with ale.
One of those drunks staggered forward, tankard sloshing, his laugh too loud, his hand swinging wide. He lurched straight toward Aerion, nearly spilling cheap beer across the velvet trim of his cloak.
Before Aerion could move, Clyde’s arm was there, iron around his waist, pulling him back with such force the cloak snapped in the air.
Aerion’s heels hit stone. He looked down at the arm braced across him, then up at Clyde’s unreadable face.
For a heartbeat, his smirk faltered. Then it returned, sharp and dangerous. “Gods, Hound,” he drawled, voice curling like smoke, “you ruin all the fun. Were you afraid the beast would stain my collar, or that I’d let him?”
Clyde said nothing. He only stepped forward, placing himself between Aerion and the drunk, whose grin quickly soured as he stumbled away under the knight’s grey stare.
Aerion’s lips twisted into a snarl, but he didn’t pull away. His body remained within the circle of Clyde’s arm, close enough to feel the heat of him through linen and leather.
For once, his only rebellion was a muttered, “I didn’t ask for your leash.”
But he did not move from it either.
The music swelled again in the square, a fiddler joined by pipes, the tune wild enough to turn even the stiffest feet restless. Aerion let himself be drawn along, weaving through the crowd with sweets in one hand, trinkets dangling from the other. Helaughed too loudly, his cloak slipping from one shoulder, his hair catching the lantern light like molten gold.
Then his stride faltered.
A booth ahead overflowed with spools of ribbon. Every colour stretched across the stall like a rainbow unravelled. The merchant’s daughters called out, their voices high and sweet: “Ribbons for your lady! Colours to match her eyes! A length for luck in love!”
Aerion paused, fingers trailing over the display. He plucked one, a strip of deep red silk that shimmered like blood in the lamplight. It clung soft to his palm, slipping between his fingers like water.
“Mm,” he said, loud enough for the daughters to titter, “a fine leash.”
