The breakfast chamber smelled faintly of smoke and damp stone despite the platters of steaming bread, honeyed figs, and roasted quail laid across the long table. Tapestries muffled the draft, but nothing softened the cough that rattled Archduke Valemont’s chest as he sat propped among cushions at the table’s head. His skin hung loose on his bones, his eyes sunken but still sharp, still judging.

Aerion sauntered in late, as always, his doublet catching the morning light. He dropped into the chair opposite his father with a feline ease, lifting a fig between jewelled fingers.

“You look ghastly, Father,” Aerion said cheerfully. “I’d almost mistake you for a ghost. Shall I call for a priest, or would you prefer a painter to immortalize your decline?”

The Archduke’s gaze was ice. “Your tongue will rot you before age does, boy.”

Aerion only smiled, sinking his teeth into the fig, letting its juice run down his fingers.

From his post near the wall, Clyde stood motionless, helm tucked under one arm. He watched, but gave no sign of thought, his face unreadable.

The Archduke coughed again, the sound tearing through his frame. When he spoke, his voice was low but unyielding. “You waste your days with wine and preening. It is past time you married.”

Aerion arched a brow. “Married? To whom? One of the chambermaids? Or perhaps a baron’s daughter who thinks embroidery a great accomplishment?”

His father’s jaw clenched. “To anyone who can give you heirs. Your line is fragile enough without your vanity crippling it.”

Aerion laughed, a sharp sound that rang too loudly in the chamber. “Fragile? I’m the most durable thing this family has left. You cough and wheeze, and my brothers rot in the ground, but here I am, radiant as ever. What need have I for an heir when I’ve not yet lived my own life?”

The Archduke leaned forward, his eyes burning through their hollow sockets. “You think life is yours alone to live? You are a Valemont. You are duty, not indulgence.”

For the first time, Aerion’s smile slipped, faintly, though he masked it with a swallow of wine. “I’ve never considered settling down,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “And I don’t plan to start now.”

The silence after was brittle. The Archduke’s hand trembled where it gripped his goblet, but he said nothing more.

Clyde shifted only enough to adjust the weight of his sword against his hip. His gaze flicked from father to son and back again, his expression a shield of iron. He offered no word, no counsel.

But he saw everything.

Several weeks passed, and with them Aerion’s sharpest barbs dulled. His distrust of the knight, his dislike of the silent sentinel who shadowed his every step, had settled into something quieter: indifference.

If Clyde was a hound, then Aerion had grown used to the leash trailing somewhere behind him. He did not bother tugging it anymore.

Clyde followed wherever duty carried him, though he was seldom acknowledged. When Aerion poured over grain ledgers with the steward, half-dozing through talk of harvests and tariffs, Clyde stood in the corner, silent, eyes not on the parchment but on Aerion himself. He watched the subtle flickers of the young lord’s face; how boredom might sharpen in an instant into a blade of calculation, how he tossed aside ledgers like toys until suddenly, he spoke with frightening precision, cutting through the steward’s droning with a solution no one else had seen.

When Aerion entered the market quarter, he became another man entirely. His shoulders loosened, his step grew light, and his voice carried easily above the noise of hawkers and cart wheels. Laughter painted him like sunlight on water, gestures wide and expansive, drawing eyes whether he wanted them or not.

He made a show of himself at every turn: plucking rosemary from the butcher’s counter and pressing it to his chest with mock solemnity. “For me? You shouldn’t have,” he told the butcher’s eldest daughter, who giggled so hard she nearly dropped her knife. He brushed silver into her palm, warm from his touch. “Tell your father I overpaid, won’t you?”

At the vintner’s stall, he leaned close to the man’s niece, sleeves rolled to her elbows, cheeks flushed from crushing grapes. His breath ghosted her ear. “If I drink your uncle’s wine, will it taste of you?” She nearly dropped the ladle, laughter bubbling out of her, and Aerion only smiled, brushing his fingers against her wrist before tossing a coin into the barrel, leaving silver dripping with purple.

But all of that was foreplay compared to the tavern.

He ducked beneath the low beam of the Laughing Pike, the air thick with hops, woodsmoke, and sweat. The barmaid spotted him first; young, freckled, dark hair tied in a kerchief. Her eyes widened, then narrowed, as if she couldn’t decide whether he was trouble or a blessing. Aerion made the decision for her.

“My salvation,” he declared, sweeping into a bow so deep his cape brushed the sticky floorboards. “Bring me your strongest ale, your sweetest smile, and if you have them, your softest secrets.”

She snorted, planting a hand on her hip. “All three cost double.”

Aerion leaned across the counter until they were nearly nose to nose. “Then I’ll pay triple.” He dropped a gold coin with a flourish, loud enough that the nearby sailors turned to gape.

The barmaid laughed despite herself, sliding the coin into her bodice. “You’re dangerous.”

“Darling, I’m worse than that,” Aerion said, letting his hand linger against hers as she pulled the mug from his grasp. “I’m bored.”

The men at the next table hooted. One of them muttered something too crude for politeness, and Aerion turned just long enough to wink at him before shifting back to the maid. “Tell me,” he said, voice dipping low, “if I drank too much of your ale, would you give me a bed for the night?”

Her breath caught, caught between laughter and scandal. Aerion’s smile sharpened, pleased at the effect… until he felt it.

The shadow at his back.

Clyde stood near the door, arms folded, eyes steady as stone. He hadn’t touched his mug. He hadn’t moved since they entered. But he was watching. Always watching.

Aerion ignored it at first. He leaned even closer to the barmaid, close enough that her lashes fluttered. Then he reached, slow and deliberate, to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear.

The girl froze. Not because of Aerion, but because Clyde had moved.

The knight’s hand closed around Aerion’s wrist—not roughly, but firm, final, immovable. The tavern seemed to hush around them.

“My lord,” Clyde said, voice low, cutting through the din. “We should go.”

Aerion blinked, startled by the interruption. Then, quick as a spark, his mask returned, mockery curled over his lips like smoke. “Well. Look who speaks.”

The barmaid stepped back, startled, hands clutching her apron. Clyde didn’t so much as glance at her. His grey eyes were fixed only on Aerion.

“Now,” he said.

It wasn’t a plea. It was a command.

For one wild heartbeat, Aerion thought of resisting, of leaning in closer just to prove he could, of daring Clyde to drag him out like some common misbehaving child. But there was something in the knight’s stare. Not scorn. Not jealousy.

Warning.

Aerion’s smile faltered. Just slightly. He pulled free of Clyde’s grip, tossing another coin onto the bar with a careless flick. “Another time, darling,” he said, his voice lighter than he felt. “Do keep your mother’s fainting couch ready.”

Laughter bubbled uneasily through the room. The barmaid’s cheeks flushed crimson, and Aerion swept his cape as he turned, his head held too high, his smirk brittle as glass.

Clyde followed him out, silent as ever. But Aerion’s pulse thrummed faster. Not from the barmaid.

From the knight who had dared to lay a hand on him.

The night air outside the Laughing Pike was sharp with brine and smoke, a wind off the harbour cutting through the heat of the tavern. Lanterns swung on their chains, spilling gold light across cobblestones slick with ale.

Aerion stormed out first, cape snapping behind him like a banner of war. He didn’t stop until he reached the mouth of the alley, then spun on his heel, fire catching in his sapphire eyes.

“How dare you,” he spat, voice sharp enough to draw the attention of two dockhands loitering nearby. They wisely slipped into the shadows. “You lay your hands on me like I’m some common drunkard? In front of half the city?”

Clyde emerged from the doorway behind him, slower, measured. His boots struck the stones with steady weight. “You were drawing trouble.”

Aerion laughed, a high, cutting sound that rang brittle in the night. “I was drawing a smile from a barmaid, not steel from a brigand. Do you truly think me so fragile? That I’ll break if a woman so much as sighs too hard?”

Clyde’s jaw flexed, but his voice was even. “I think you make enemies faster than friends. And I think you’ve no sense of when a jest curdles into danger.”

Aerion stepped forward until their faces were close, heat against stone. “You presume much for a hired dog.” His perfume clung in the air, thick with sandalwood, fig, the faint smoke of tavern fire. “Your duty is to guard me, not to leash me. Not to touch me.”

Grey eyes met sapphire, unflinching. “Then stop placing yourself where I have to.”

The words hit harder than a slap. Aerion froze, his lips parting in stunned silence.

Then he laughed again, but softer this time, edged with something raw. “Gods, you are intolerable. Do you know what I see when I look at you, Sir Clyde? A shadow with delusions of flesh.”

Clyde said nothing. His silence only sharpened the insult, left Aerion swinging his words into a void that would not answer back.

Aerion’s fists clenched at his sides, rings biting into his palms. He wanted to scream, to shove, to force some crack into that stone face. Instead, his voice dropped to a whisper, brittle as glass. “Do not ever touch me again.”

Clyde inclined his head once. Not a bow. A concession.

Aerion whirled away, cape flaring, striding back toward the keep with fury in his spine and a strange, treacherous pulse in his chest.

Clyde followed at a distance, silent, steady, the echo of his boots carrying down the cobbles.

And though Aerion never turned to look, he felt those eyes on him—unyielding, inevitable, unrelenting.

The walk back to Valemont Keep was long, the streets hushed now that midnight had settled over the city. Lanterns guttered low on their hooks, shadows pooling thick in the alleys.

Aerion walked fast, heels striking hard against cobblestone, the midnight-blue hem of his cape snapping at his ankles. Every step was fury. His hands clenched at his sides, jewelled rings biting crescents into his palms. He replayed the moment again and again; the iron grip on his wrist, the way Clyde had spoken to him before the barmaid, before the crowd.

Unforgivable.

Unbearable.

And yet…

The ghost of that grip lingered, warm against his skin.

“Shadow with delusions of flesh,” Aerion muttered again under his breath, savouring the venom of his own insult. He flung the words like daggers into the dark, but they rang hollow, unsatisfying.

Clyde followed several paces behind, boots steady, posture unshaken. He didn’t speak. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even clear his throat to remind Aerion he was there. He was simply a presence—unyielding, immovable, impossible to ignore.

The silence pressed on Aerion until it broke him. He turned, mid-stride, his cape flaring. “Say something,” he hissed. “Anything. Defend yourself. Apologize. Admit you overstepped.”

Clyde’s expression didn’t shift. His grey eyes caught the lantern light, glinting like wet steel. “I did my duty.”

Aerion’s laugh cut through the night like glass shattering. “Your duty? To humiliate me in front of half the market?”

“No,” Clyde said simply. “To keep you breathing.”

The words landed hard. Aerion’s smirk faltered, and for the briefest instant, the fury in him wavered—because he could not mistake the truth in that voice.

He snapped his gaze forward again, chin high, forcing the mask back into place. “If I wanted a nursemaid, I’d hire one. At least she would know when to keep her hands off me.”

No answer. Just the echo of boots on stone.

The keep’s towers loomed ahead, windows glowing faint in the dark. Aerion’s pace quickened, his throat tight, his chest buzzing with a strange, traitorous heat he refused to name.

By the time they reached the gates, he’d almost convinced himself of indifference again. Almost.

But when he stripped off his cape in the entry hall, his eyes fell, just for a moment, on the wrist Clyde had touched. And his breath caught, sharp and unwanted.

He cursed himself for it.

And Clyde, silent as ever, said nothing.