The four days that followed bled into each other like ink on wet parchment. The keep became a barracks, halls echoing with the sound of mustering knights, stable boys running, banners unfurling in cold winds. The air smelled of oiled leather and sharpened steel.

And Aerion raged.

He raged at stewards for miscounting barrels. At handmaidens for lacing his doublet too tight. At the steward of the eastern fief for daring to suggest more men be sent. His barbs turned cruel, his temper shorter than ever. Words that once carried wit now carried venom. He snapped, he mocked, he laughed too loud at things not funny at all.

Clyde stood by through all of it. Silent, patient, steady. He knew the truth: that this was no lord’s authority, no heir’s arrogance. It was fear, gnawing him hollow. It was grief for something not yet lost.

By the fourth night, the eve of departure, Aerion was drunk. He staggered in his chambers, robe half-unbuttoned, hair mussed, a goblet of red sloshing as he waved it wildly.

“You’re leaving me,” he slurred, eyes glassy with fury. “Leaving me like everyone else. My father, my courtiers, even the gods in their bloody frescoes—they’ve all abandoned me. And now you—”

Clyde stood by the hearth, arms folded, watching. Quiet.

Aerion stumbled closer, thrusting the goblet aside so wine splattered crimson across the floor. “Say something,” he demanded. “Anything. Prove you’re not made of stone. Gods, Clyde, do you even feel?”

When Clyde didn’t answer, Aerion’s hand snapped out before he could stop himself. The slap cracked through the chamber, ringing louder than thunder.

Silence followed, thick and absolute.

Aerion froze, hand still raised, lips parted as though even he couldn’t believe it. His heart hammered against his ribs, breath sharp.

Clyde’s hand moved fast, catching Aerion’s wrist in an iron grip. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t snarl. He only held him there, steady, unyielding, until the tremor in Aerion’s fingers betrayed him.

Their eyes locked—deep blue and storm-grey.

Then Clyde pulled him forward and kissed him.

It was not soft. It was not gentle. It was a clash, a collision, all the tension of weeks breaking like a dam. His mouth was firm, unforgiving, his grip unrelenting on Aerion’s wrist as though he feared letting go would undo it all.

Aerion gasped into it, shocked, wine-sweet breath spilling against Clyde’s lips. His body arched closer before his mind could think better of it, every nerve alight.

And just as abruptly, Clyde released him.

The kiss ended, but the echo of it throbbed between them, louder than the storm that had once caged them in the cabin.

Clyde’s voice was low, ragged. “That’s all I can give you.”

Aerion stood trembling, breath shuddering, lips still burning.

Clyde’s words—That’s all I can give you—hung in the chamber like smoke after a fire.

“That’s not enough,” Aerion whispered.

The words sounded fragile, almost boyish, nothing like the sharp-tongued heir who had terrorized the keep all week.

Before Clyde could answer, Aerion moved.

He surged forward and caught Clyde by the front of his tunic, dragging him down into another kiss. It was desperate this time, unsteady and fierce, tasting faintly of wine and anger. Aerion clung to him as though the world were already slipping away beneath his feet.

For a heartbeat Clyde resisted. His hand braced against Aerion’s shoulder, holding him at bay.

Then Aerion made a sound—raw and unguarded—and whatever resolve Clyde had been clinging to shattered.

Clyde shoved him backward.

Aerion stumbled against the bedpost with a startled breath, and suddenly Clyde was there, crowding him close, one hand braced beside his head, the other gripping his jaw as he kissed him again. The force of it stole the air from Aerion’s lungs.

“Clyde—” Aerion breathed when their mouths parted.

But Clyde only kissed him again, harder, as if words had become useless things between them.

Piece by piece the careful distance they had built over years unraveled. Armor straps fell loose, buckles clattered against the floor, fabric tugged free by impatient hands. Aerion’s fingers traced the familiar lines of Clyde’s scarred chest as though committing them to memory.

He had touched those scars before in quieter moments—while cleaning wounds, while pressing bandages into place—but never like this.

Never with his heart pounding like a war drum.

“Gods,” Aerion murmured, voice shaking.

Clyde caught his wrist.

“Aerion.”

It was a warning. It was also a plea.

Aerion met his gaze, eyes bright and reckless. “If you stop now,” he said softly, “I’ll burn this keep to the ground.”

Something dark and aching flickered through Clyde’s expression.

Then he pulled Aerion into him.

They tumbled onto the bed together, a tangle of limbs and breath and restless hands. The silk of Aerion’s robe slipped from his shoulders as Clyde’s mouth found the curve of his throat, leaving heat in its wake.

Aerion arched into him with a gasp, fingers tightening in Clyde’s hair.

For a moment the world shrank to the space between them—the warmth of skin against skin, the frantic rhythm of two hearts refusing to slow.

“Stay,” Aerion whispered against his ear.

Clyde didn’t answer.

He only held him tighter.

The night stretched long and breathless. Kisses turned slow and searching, the urgency of anger dissolving into something deeper—something almost unbearably tender. Aerion clung to Clyde as though the coming dawn might steal him away.

Perhaps it would.

When they finally lay still, tangled in rumpled sheets, Clyde’s arm was draped heavily across Aerion’s waist.

Aerion traced the familiar scar along his collarbone with quiet fingers.

“Dangerous man,” he murmured, softer now.

Clyde said nothing.

But his arm tightened around him.

And for the first time in days, Aerion let himself be still.

***

Morning came with the cruelty of sunlight.

Aerion woke alone.

The sheets were still warm where Clyde had lain, the pillow faintly indented, carrying the scent of smoke and steel that clung to him no matter how the world tried to wash it away. Aerion reached out, hand splaying across the emptiness, dragging through the linen as if he could summon him back.

But the chamber was hollow.

Clyde was already dressing.

Aerion sat up, bare-chested, hair tangled, the robe he had shrugged off at midnight draped useless across the bedpost. He watched in silence as Clyde fastened the last strap of his armour with careful, measured precision. Each movement carried a finality Aerion could taste like ash.

“You should stay,” Aerion said, voice rough from the night before.

Clyde’s back remained to him. “I can’t.”

Aerion swung his legs to the floor, the cool stone shocking against bare feet. “You can. You just won’t.”

That earned a pause, but not a turn. Clyde slid his gauntlet into place, flexed his hand, tested the grip. His silence was a wall, his body a fortress.

Aerion rose, robes falling open, pale skin marked with bruises Clyde had left there. He crossed the floor, touched Clyde’s shoulder, fingers pressing into steel. “After last night—after this—you’d still walk away?”

Clyde finally turned. Grey eyes locked onto Aerion’s, heavy and unreadable. His jaw tightened as if he were swallowing every word that wanted to escape.

“This,” he said, voice low, “is why I leave. Because I’d stay.”

Aerion’s breath caught. The words cut sharper than any blade.

For a long moment neither of them moved.

Then Clyde’s gaze softened.

He reached out, brushing his hand briefly against Aerion’s cheek—a touch so fleeting it almost felt imagined.

“I will return, my lord,” he whispered, placing his lips against Aerion’s.

The horns sounded in the courtyard, long, mournful notes summoning him to war.

He adjusted his sword. Turned once at the door, grey eyes unreadable.

Then he left.

Aerion stood barefoot in the silence, robe fallen open, tasting his own release on Clyde’s lips still burning against him.

And he knew, with a certainty sharper than steel, that the war had already stolen him.