The streets of Valemont had been reborn.

Garlands of marigold and ivy hung from every eave, lanterns bobbed from ropes strung between windows, and ribbons whipped like banners in the spring wind. The air was thick with roasting meat, sugared nuts, spiced cider, and the smoke of fire-breathers who exhaled plumes of gold. Jugglers tossed knives, children darted with painted masks, and every corner thrummed with the beat of drums and pipes.

Aerion slipped into the throng with the air of a man descending into another world. His hood was drawn, his tunic plain, yet nothing could hide him entirely. The golden fall of his hair caught stray sunlight like a beacon, and his eyes—sharp, bright blue—drew glances even as he smirked and swept past. He moved like a flame through oil, feeding the glances, drinking them in despite himself.

Clyde followed, one pace behind, silent as always. No cloak could disguise the breadth of his shoulders, the soldier’s bearing in the set of his stride. Where Aerion moved like a spark, Clyde was a shadow.

The crowd noticed. Women nudged one another, whispering behind their hands. Young men stared too long, caught between admiration and unease. Even hawkers, bold with ale and profit, faltered in their shouts as Aerion passed, as if sensing something untouchable beneath the plain clothes.

Aerion felt it, of course. He always did. He tilted his chin, lips curling into the faintest smirk, as though mocking the very idea that he could blend in. Yet his eyes were alive, darting everywhere; at the coloured glass pendants glinting on a vendor’s table, the sugared plums stacked in paper cones, the children dancing in circles while a fiddler played faster and faster.

He drank it all in like a man dying of thirst.

For a fleeting moment, he forgot himself. Forgot the keep, the council, the weight of his father’s hand pressing him into marble and velvet. Here, the air was sharp with spice and laughter, the cobbles uneven beneath his boots, the noise a thousand voices layered until it became something raw and human.

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 boldness born 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. He laughed 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.”

The girls giggled. “For your sweetheart, my lord?”

Aerion’s lips curved into a smile that was too sharp to be tender. He turned, looked past the crowd, past the fluttering garlands and glowing lanterns, straight to Clyde.

Clyde stood as always, one pace back, face carved from stone. His hood shadowed his eyes, but Aerion could feel the weight of his stare, heavy as a hand.

Slowly, deliberately, Aerion held the ribbon out. “Not for a sweetheart. For a dog.”

“You must love your dog to buy it such a ribbon,” the woman laughed, the meaning of his words missing her entirely.

Aerion ignored it. He stepped back to Clyde’s side, his gaze raking over him as though assessing livestock at market. A smirk tugged at his mouth as he brushed aside the edge of Clyde’s cloak, looped the ribbon once around his wrist, and tied it in a neat bow, tugging it snug.

“There,” Aerion drawled, voice dripping disdain. “A leash for my dog.”

The silk cut a streak of scarlet across Clyde’s skin.

Clyde’s jaw tightened. He did not move. Did not flinch. Only inclined his head, as though to say: if you call me dog, then I will be dog.

Aerion’s smile softened just a fraction, though his words did not. “Good,” he said, releasing the knot with a flick so the silk trailed loose again. “At least you make a handsome beast.”

He tossed a coin to the merchant’s daughters, tucked the ribbon into Clyde’s palm, and swept off into the crowd with his cloak flaring behind him.

Clyde’s gaze dropped, just once, to the ribbon still warm in his palm. Deep red silk, thin as breath, ridiculous against the rough calluses of his hand. His expression didn’t shift, no betrayal of the insult. Only silence, heavy as iron.

Lanterns flared overhead, strung in bright garlands across the square. Firelight spilled down in flickers, catching on Aerion’s hair until it glowed like gilt. For a moment, Clyde’s gaze lingered there, fixed and heavy with something he’d never speak aloud.

But Aerion never turned to see it.

The fiddlers struck up a new tune, quick and brash. Laughter burst like sparks around them as dancers flooded the square again. Aerion laughed with them—sharp, bright, cruel. His voice carried above the music, mocking and alive.

Clyde followed, as ever, one pace behind.