A heron’s cry shattered the stillness, jagged as glass against the swamp’s heavy breath. It wheeled above them, wings carving the mist before vanishing into the gray.

Hawke slipped forward in its wake with a hunter’s grace, boots swallowing into the moss with soft, wet sounds. She moved like she’d been born to this mire: every step chosen, weight shifted, shoulders loose but ready, eyes flicking sharp through the gloom as if the swamp itself parted for her. Damp curls clung to her cheek, her grin a thin knife-edge of focus.

Aelorian, trailing miserably behind, was anything but graceful. Gnats whined at his ears, and he batted at them with sharp, indignant hisses. Mud splashed up his calves with every misstep, and he yelped when his boot sank too deep in a puddle that reeked of rot. 

“Utterly wretched,” he muttered, clutching his cloak as if he could will the remains of it out of the filth. “Gods above, the audacity of this place. How anyone could tolerate such squelchy misery is entirely beyond comprehension.”

Behind them, Thorne loomed like a storm front, wordless and immovable. Where Aelorian fumbled, and Hawke prowled, he simply was—a living tide, the swamp bending away from his bulk. His nostrils flared, reading the stink of rot and blood woven into the mist, and his eyes followed the faintest shifts of reeds, the smallest disturbances in the murk. Nothing dared challenge even his shadow.

“You know,” Aelorian said breathlessly, attempting a delicate sidestep around another puddle and failing spectacularly, “I find it nothing short of miraculous how you——” he gestured at Hawke with a grand sweep, “----manage to glide through this hellpit with all the ease of a cat while I’m condemned to drown in filth!”

Hawke only glanced back, one sharp look over her shoulder before turning away again. “I grew up on the run,” she said, voice steady as the swamp’s pulse. “No estates, no noble tutors. Didn’t have anyone teaching me how to look pretty in boots. You survive where you have to. Swamps, forests, alleys—they don’t care who you are. They kill you if you hesitate. So I learned fast. I moved faster. And I’m still here.”

Aelorian sniffed, tossing his hair back, though a gnat immediately dove for his ear. “On the run. So you’re a delinquent. Charming.” He pivoted with a fluttering gesture toward Thorne. “Thorne, darling, take note: if she attempts to murder us in our sleep, I will, yet again, throw myself in front of your body. A noble sacrifice, don’t you think?”

Thorne didn’t even slow his stride. His reply came low instead, “How about you throw yourself right past me, straight into the bog. I’ll watch you sink under, silk and all, until nothing’s left but bubbles and a frog sitting smug where your mouth used to be. Quiet. Peaceful. That’s the only noble sacrifice I’ll take.”

Aelorian pressed a hand to his chest, eyes huge with mock heartbreak. “Monstrous. I offer my life, and you offer me to the swamp. I thought we had a connection, Thorne! A bond!”

“Bond?” Thorne’s massive shoulders shifted, eyes narrowing like storm clouds. “The only thing we share is how much I tolerate your insistent shrieking. Keep it up, and I’ll bond you to a tree.”

“Oh no,” Aelorian drawled, fluttering his fingers toward his temple. “The behemoth has threatened me. Whatever shall I do?”

Hawke, several paces ahead, snorted loud enough to echo through the mist. “Gods above. If the swamp doesn’t kill us, listening to you two will.” She ducked under a low, leaning fence, the swamp thinning to scrub as they climbed a rise where the air tasted faintly of woodsmoke and hearth ash.

The land on the other side of the fence shifted. Less wild, more lived-in. The muck gave way to uneven cobblestones slick with moss, tufts of grass pushing up between them. Lanterns swung from crooked poles, their warm glow bleeding into the mist like amber spilled on glass.

Cottages hunched close together, moss streaking their roofs, shutters painted in fading blues and greens. Chickens scattered at their approach, and a mangy dog barked once before deciding they weren’t worth the trouble.

“Civilization!” Aelorian breathed, pressing one hand to Thorne’s bicep like he’d just glimpsed paradise itself. “Oh, ogre! That means no more mud in my boots, no more things slithering at my ankles in the dead of night. No more swamp water trying to crawl into my underthings—and perhaps—even silk sheets! Imagine! Soft, unsoiled silk! Draping over me!”

He gripped Thorne’s arm tighter, eyes shining like a man on the verge of religious ecstasy. “And soap, Thorne! My hair might actually forgive me for the atrocities the swamp has inflicted. My skin might stop peeling. If they have rose water, I’ll—”

“Stars save me,” Thorne rumbled, trying to shake him off like a glittery burr. “We spent two days in a cave. You make it sound like we were rolling around in a cesspool for a week.”

“Oh? And were we not?” Aelorian shot back, planting a hand on his elegant hips. “I’ve decided, then—I shall wed the first innkeeper whose establishment boasts a proper bathhouse. Hot water, soap, steam—civilization! I don't expect you to know anything about bathing, but do you know what my skin is doing beneath this silk? The rebellion of pores? The uprising of blemishes? The horror of knots in hair meant to be kissed by moonlight, not mildew?”

Thorne’s brow darkened, eyes narrowing. “You know, you don’t exactly smell like a bouquet of daisies either, elf.”

Aelorian froze. Slowly, he lifted his gaze, eyes wide as if the ogre had just spat in the face of every moon priestess from here to eternity. “Excuse me? Did you just suggest that I—I, who was anointed with starlight at birth, who has been bathed in waters sanctified by five priestesses, who carries the fragrance of divine lineage in his very pores—smell?”

Thorne didn’t blink. Didn’t even look at him. “Smells like moon rot to me.”

“MOON ROT! HOW DARE YOU—!”

The ogre’s shadow spilled long across the cobbles as Aelorian yapped at his heels, swallowing the narrow street in its reach. Each of Thorne’s bootsteps landed like a war drum, heavy, echoing, impossible to ignore. A boy chasing a ball froze mid-step, eyes wide, clutching it to his chest before darting into an alley. Women at the well halted mid-pour, their buckets trembling, water sloshing over their skirts. An old man spat into the dirt, muttering under his breath, but his gaze never left the vast, looming shape of the ogre.

Fear pressed down thick and clinging, like the swamp fog they’d thought they’d left behind. And Thorne bore it all in silence. His shoulders tightened, broad frame braced as though for a blow. The set of his jaw hardened, his breath drawn low, measured. He looked, for one terrible moment, as if he were trying to compress himself into something smaller. As if he’d learned this dance before: be less, take up less space, survive their eyes.

Aelorian noticed. Of course, he noticed. The shift rang in him like a struck chord. His own chest tightened, a hot and ugly sting needling behind his eyes. He hated it—hated them. Hated how quickly they made a god of him, a monster of Thorne. 

Sun-priest’s brute. Beast. Monster.

He needed to do something, needed to intervene somehow to protect the ogre–– his ogre. 

But before he could, Hawke moved swiftly.

Her boots hit stone with a sharp, deliberate cadence. Every step landed like punctuation, pulling eyes to her. Blade at her hip, quiver riding easy against her shoulder, she cut through the hush with a predator’s calm. “The ogre is with me,” she said, her voice carrying low and certain, ringing like steel drawn slow from a scabbard. “You treat him as kin, or you hold your tongues. If I catch you speaking ill of him, I'll cut them out myself.”

The villagers flinched beneath her threat. Murmurs faltered. Some ducked into cottages, gathered their chickens. But her words landed. Some crossed themselves; others shuffled back into the warm safety of their cottages.

The square’s oppressive grip slowly loosened, and the dread that had weighed on Thorne thinned like fog under sunlight.

Aelorian let his gaze wander past the tension, past suspicion, and for a brief, almost dizzying moment, he took in the village itself: uneven cobbles glinting in faint morning light, laundry fluttering on a line, a crooked sign swaying in the breeze. “It’s… quaint. Almost pleasant. Maybe even charming,” he breathed, voice low, letting himself savor it. Almost a smile touched his lips. “Not entirely unbearable.”

“We could live here, don’t you think, Thorne? Once the villagers accept us,” he whispered conspiratorially, nudging Thorne with the tip of his elbow. “You could fashion us a cottage. I could have a little window with flowers. A cat. Maybe even—”

Hawke cleared her throat, the faintest smirk twitching her lips. “You might want to put the brakes on plans for your little honeymoon.”

Aelorian followed her gaze down. And froze.

His dainty, perfectly laced boot—soft white leather, polished until it caught the faint morning sun, stitching immaculate, silk ribbons curling at the ankle—was buried, to the delicate heel, in a steaming, vile mound of goat shit.

The universe reeled. This was not happenstance. This was a curse, a calculated strike by the cruel hand of fate. Blessed boots, walked in ceremony, kissed by priestesses—and now desecrated in the filth of peasants’ livestock.

A scream ripped through the Aelorian, high and sharp, cutting through the square like shattered crystal. Chickens scattered. A baby somewhere began to wail in sympathetic horror. Every villager froze, wide-eyed, as the elf clutched his chest and staggered.

Hawke folded her arms, unimpressed. “By the gods. Is he always this dramatic?”

“You’ve got no fucking idea,” Thorne replied.

Aelorian swayed, eyes huge with betrayal. His hands fluttered at his boot, then to his throat, then up toward the heavens in a plea no one could hear but the gods themselves. His knees buckled, and with a gasp worthy of the stage, he collapsed—straight into Thorne’s arms.

The ogre caught him without effort, his massive hand spanning nearly the whole of Aelorian’s back. He did not laugh. He did not even blink. Only sighed—a deep, tectonic thunder, the kind of weary exhale that made roofs tremble.

“My… purity…” The elf rasped into Thorne’s chest, voice breaking like porcelain, “Do you understand what this means?” His voice quavered with outrage.

Thorne’s rumble was low, deliberate. “That you got shit on your damn boot?”

“Lummox! Do you know how long it's going to take to clean this filth off the leather?!” The elf shrieked, nostrils flaring in perfect aristocratic horror as he reached for a fallen twig. “Observe me! Marvel at my suffering! Witness the indignity! Scream in solidarity with me, for I am ruined!”

Desperation flared in Aelorian’s hands as he attempted to peel the goat shit off his exquisite elven foot with the twig, one hand gripping Thorne’s bicep for support, only to have the boot resist, sticky with the universe’s cruel sense of humor. Each tug elicited a shriek that shattered windowpanes and likely the villagers’ eardrums.

Heads turned, whispers swelled. Thorne felt the burn of their stares finally ease off him, dragged instead toward the elf’s glittering disaster. And for a heartbeat, he caught the flicker of something sly behind Aelorian’s theatrics. A deliberate glance, quick and cutting: watch me, not him. Thorne’s jaw tightened. He knew. He knew exactly what the elf was doing.

Whispers spread through the square like wildfire. “Cursed bride…” “The elf prince bride of prophecy…” “Shit-booted doom!” Children scattered, convinced the sky itself was falling in miniature goat-shaped plops.

As Aelorian worked himself into a high-strung fit, Hawke leaned lazily against a hitching post, one hand deep in a bag of jerky. “Better than the theatre,” she muttered. “Just wait until he learns what we do with chamber pots.”

“Don’t,” Thorne grunted, low enough that only she heard. “I’m this close to losing hearing in one ear as it is.”

Finally, Aelorian gave up his scraping, collapsing back against Thorne with the dramatic sigh of a martyr. Without ceremony, the ogre scooped him up and draped him over his shoulder. The elf’s offended huffs and halfhearted protests drifted through the air, muffled but persistent—like royalty being deeply inconvenienced rather than genuinely distressed.

“Ohhh, this is perfect,” Hawke said, smirking as she brushed hair from her face. “Village spectacle, sulking elf, ogre transport. I deserve a beer.”

“You and I both,” Thorne muttered, shifting his burden with a growl. “Where’s the tavern?”

“That’d be Herondael’s Heron Inn,” Hawke said, nodding to the bend ahead. “Safe rooms, warm fire, ale strong enough to survive elf dramatics.”

“I’ll have you know,” Aelorian sniffed from his upside-down perch, arms crossed as much as the position allowed, “this is a violation of every sacred custom of moon-blessed nobility.”

“Give me a damn break,” Thorne muttered. “Everything short of kissing your elven ass is a violation, isn’t it?”

“You two are adorable,” Hawke drawled, smirking as she adjusted her pack. “Send me an invite to the wedding. Preferably with champagne and a good front-row seat.”

The trio moved as a single, absurd procession. Flailing elf, stoic ogre, amused companion—through the cobbled streets, past wide-eyed villagers, around the clucking, bleating chaos that followed them like an entourage of minor disasters. 

By the time they reached the tavern, the chaos of the square still clung to them like smoke, but the warm glow spilling from the Heron Inn promised a brief reprieve. Thorne set Aelorian down with careful precision, gold eyes sharp, jaw tight—silent vigilance coiled in his broad shoulders.

Aelorian flopped onto a bench with theatrical flair,  already plotting his next audience. Hawke, grinning, sidled up to the bar, eyes sparkling at the promise of ale and a soft bed, tossing a coin onto the counter with casual authority.

Thorne eased into a corner where he stood, silent and watchful. The storm in his shoulders hinted at his simmering irritation, a quiet counterpoint to the elf’s glittering chaos. Aelorian’s performance had done its job—drawing every gaze away from Thorne—but now the ogre could finally brace for the tavern itself: warm light, murmuring patrons, and the subtle tension of being far too large for nearly every piece of furniture.

The elf’s eyes caught Thorne’s from across the room, a glint of triumph in their depths. But Thorne’s jaw tightened ever so slightly, a single, wordless acknowledgment. He didn’t scowl. He didn’t speak. And yet the message was unmistakable: I saw what you did, and I’m not letting it go unnoticed.

Aelorian’s smile faltered just a fraction, a shadow of concern brushing across his features. "Did I push too far?" He shook his head, settling back on the bench with a dramatic sigh, yet the thought lingered, prickling behind the edge of his mind. "Why is he looking at me like that?"