“It gets a bit repetitive if you’re not in it. I’m Daeryn. Third Company. We train in the afternoons.”
“Daeryn. Hi. Do you also do the one-two-three-four thing?”
“Every day of my life.” He shifted the bucket to his other hand. “The lord high commander says if your feet can’t find the pattern in your sleep, they won’t find it when the blood is in your eyes.”
“That’s poetic and also gross.”
He grinned again, and I liked him immediately, the way I liked most people who laughed at my jokes and didn’t look at me like a specimen.
The chain tightened.
It was a subtle squeeze, like a hand closing on my hip. Forty feet away, staff in hand, Aeldryc’s eyes were on me, not his sparring partner. As I watched him, the chain cinched tighter. The end of it, which had been tucked into my waistband, slid down inside my shorts, the cool metal snaking around my cock and balls to form a possessive ring. It pulsed with his magic, and I started to harden.
Rynvael’s staff caught him clean across the face.
I heard it before I processed it—a crack that cut through the training yard like a whip. The wood connected with Aeldryc’s cheekbone and his head snapped to the side and there was a moment of absolute silence.
Then the training yard erupted.
With the exception of Vaelith, who found nearly everything funny, I had never heard fae soldiers laugh before, and it turned out they laughed the same way humans did when something was both shocking and hilarious: loudly, immediately, and without any regard for rank. Thyren made a sound that was halfway between a bark and a wheeze. Caelyndris had both hands over her mouth. Vaelith was laughing so hard she was practically crying.
Rynvael, who had landed the hit, was standing motionless with his staff extended, and I could see him realize that he’d done something that was both technically correct and possibly fatal.
“Commander,” he said carefully. “I—”
Aeldryc straightened. There was a red mark blooming across his left cheekbone, and his jaw was set in a way that should have been terrifying but that I found extremely attractive.
“Again,” he said. His voice was quiet, and the training yard went quiet with him.
Daeryn had not moved. Watching the field with the wide eyes of someone who had just seen a decade’s worth of barrack gossip, he hefted the water bucket. “I should go.”
“Was that my fault?” I asked.
“Absolutely.” He left, just as Vaelith dropped onto the fence beside me.
She was six foot two of competitive, loud, grinning fae warrior, her black hair spilling over one shoulder and her green eyes bright with the kind of delight that only came from watching your commanding officer get publicly humiliated.
“Well,” she said. “That was new.”
“New?”
“Aeldryc the Ironstorm distracted?” She stretched her legs out, crossing them at the ankle. “That does not happen. The man does not lose focus. Not even during the Ashenmoor skirmish, when a berserker broke through our line and Aeldryc had to fight on two fronts simultaneously while holding a collapsing shield formation.”
She looked at me. The grin was enormous.
“He did not lose focus,” she said, “when an ambush team set fire to the bridge he was standing on, and he held his ground until every one of his soldiers had crossed. So when I tell you that theCommander of the Queen’s Grey Guard took a staff to the face because he was looking at you, well, it’s worth noting.”
“He never loses focus?” I asked.
“Nope. I have served under Aeldryc for three hundred and twelve years, and I have never seen him fail to block a training strike.”
“Three hundred and twelve years? How long has he served?”
“All his life,” she said. “He was born during the first of the Long Wars, and I doubt he’s ever done anything else.”
I looked towards Aeldryc, tilting my head. “It’s hard to imagine him as a baby. With parents! Are they still alive?”
Her grin tightened for a second. “He doesn’t talk about them. Nobody who’s seen that many wars and that much death does. You collect too many ghosts, you learn to keep the door shut.” She shrugged, the motion sharp. “Easier that way.”
