Smoke curled languidly through the low-lit chamber, blurring the amber glow of sconces and catching on the pulse of stringed music that played somewhere out of sight. The scent of clove, sweat, and cheap incense clung to the air. Women moved in tandem with the rhythm—hips swaying, limbs slow and deliberate, nothing on them save the sheer red sashes knotted low across their waists. Their skin shimmered with oil.

One of them approached, her gaze fixed on Thallan where he sat in the corner, a half-empty chalice of watered wine resting between his fingers. She straddled his lap without invitation, her thighs warm even through the worn leather of his armor. His hands found her waist, slipping down to the curve of her ass.

“It’s been some time since a Blue Rose knight found his way in here,” she purred, pressing her breasts to his chest. Her voice was all breath and performance. Her hips rolled slowly against his groin, her dark hair spilling across her shoulders in practiced disarray. She moaned—softly, falsely.

He didn’t care for the theatrics. If anything, he wanted her quiet. The sound of her—her voice, her scent—coiled like bile at the base of his throat. Lavender. Always lavender.

He leaned in, fingers slipping around her throat with just enough pressure to keep her still. His lips brushed her jaw as he spoke, low enough for only her to hear. “If you want me buried in you, bathe first.”

She blinked, startled, but before offense could rise in her features, he added, “No perfumes. Just you.” His lips skimmed lower to her collarbone, the swell of her breast grazing his chin. His fingers tightened.

That did something to her, calming the effect of his words. A little shiver passed through her spine. This time, the sound she made was real—a soft whimper—and that, at least, stirred something in him. His cock twitched in his trousers.

The brothel door opened with a groan. Daylight spilled in like an unwelcome truth, dragging long shadows across the haze. Two knights stepped inside, not in gleaming steel but in the relaxed leather garb of leisure. Even so, the blue sashes slung over their shoulders marked their allegiance.

“Thallan,” one of them called, striding toward him casually as his hand slipped away, “we don’t have time for your cock to be drained again. Lord Wright’s looking for you. We ride for Caerwyn.”

“Caerwyn?” the woman on his lap echoed, perked by the name. “Are you to enter the tourney this season?”

He didn’t respond. Didn’t look at her. Instead, his hand slid beneath her thighs and lifted and set her down on the edge of the table. A soft gasp left her lips, surprised, more than anything.

Thallan stood and adjusted the clasp of his sash. “Let’s move,” he said, voice flat. 

It had been nearly two years—seven seasons, to be exact—since Thallan last set foot in Caerwyn. When he had sworn fealty to Sebastian Wright and left for the duchy of Langley, he hadn’t looked back. Not once. He’d been offered the chance to return the summer prior, to accompany Sebastian to the annual tourney, but declined. He hadn’t been ready then. Or perhaps he’d simply had no desire to walk streets that still echoed with the ghost of who he used to be.

This time, it had been different.

He hadn’t come back for the pageantry or the politics. He came because the men he rode with now—those who bore the Blue Rose on their cloaks and steel—had become something more than fellow knights. A brotherhood forged through fire and blood, laughter and loss. The men he rode with today bore the mark of the vanguard—first into the fray, last to retreat.

It was a place of honor—if one believed in such things still. And it was the most perilous post within the Order, held by the seasoned and the relentless, the skilled and, as some jested, the expendable. Thallan had earned his place there through attrition and grit, through long nights of training beneath Sebastian’s exacting eye, and longer days spent leading charges into the thick of it. Now, they would ride into Caerwyn not as shadows from a distant duchy, but as the pride of Langley. Their presence meant to impress, to display. To be seen.

“There’s a campaign on the horizon,” Sebastian had told them before they departed Langley for Caerwyn. “King Aodren had originally contracted outside forces, but the matter has changed. A new Descent was found. The gold and glory tied to it have tripled. Vassals and their retinues have been called in.”

Descent—that was what they were called. Caverns that split the earth like old wounds, plunging deep into the crust of the continent and emptying into vast hollows beneath the surface. Some argued that was where the monsters had come from. Others claimed it was merely where they’d been driven, cast into darkness by human hands.

Either way, they were a knight’s burden to bear.

“The king wants all vassals and their vanguards present for the tourney,” Sebastian had continued. “It’s as much a celebration as it is a farewell. A midsummer send-off, you could say. No one is required to compete but…” He had leaned in then, a smile curling at the corners of his mouth as he tapped Thallan’s shoulder. “Any winnings will only make us look all the more superior.”

Thallan stepped into the inn, the low murmur of voices and the scent of smoke and spiced wine wrapping around him. The village was a small one, nestled just shy of Caerwyn’s outer reaches—one final stop before they crossed into the capital’s shadow.

At the counter, Sebastian stood speaking with the innkeep, but turned at the sound of boots on wood. A smile broke across the older knight’s face, lighting his expression with ease. “Ah, Sir Thallan. Just the man I’d been hoping to find.”

He offered a polite nod to the innkeeper before crossing the room to meet him, his hands resting at his hips in that way he always did when shifting from command to something more casual.

“Have you given thought to the tournament?” he asked.

Thallan didn’t answer at first. His silence wasn’t cold, just weighted. Melancholic.

Sebastian’s tone softened. “I think it would do some good—for them to see why I chose you.”

A pause, and then, “Alright,” Thallan said simply.

Some quiet, shadowed part of him still wanted to show them—prove to the men who had once looked past him, through him, that he had worth beyond what they presumed. He doubted he would’ve thrived as a knight under the king’s command. Sebastian had offered something different. A place. A path. Without him, he would have been nothing but a sword without a sheath.

“But only a single combat,” Thallan added, a hint of a smile touching his lips. “That’s all.”

There was no bravado in his voice, only certainty. His skill didn’t need to be paraded in full. One fight would be enough. The small part of him that still cared for glory would have its fill.

Sebastian chuckled, slinging a companionable arm around his shoulders. “That’s my boy. I pity the poor soul who has to face you. Just—don’t go easy on them.”

“I never do,” Thallan murmured.

And he didn’t. The rush of combat, the heat of it, the way the world blurred into a single, sharp focus—that was the only time he truly felt alive. Not the empty praises afterward. Not the flicker of lust or the weight of a warm body in his bed. It was the blade that gave him clarity. The fight that made everything else fall away.