The days at camp blurred into one another—hard, grey, and cold.

Clyde had known war all his life: the endless toiling of men and horses, the weight of armour on weary backs, the stink of sweat and steel in close air. He rose before dawn, drilled the younger soldiers until their arms shook, inspected blades, counted rations, checked maps. There was always something to do, something to hold his attention, and yet never enough to quiet the hollow in his chest.

He had thought leaving Valemont would free him. Distance, he told himself, would clear the fog that Aerion cast over his thoughts. He would ride east, do his duty, keep his oath in the way he knew best: by fighting, by killing, by returning when it was done.

But the further he rode from the keep, the worse it gnawed at him.

He caught himself listening for laughter that wasn’t there—sharp and mocking, laced with venom and charm. He found his eyes drifting to campfires, imagining Aerion sprawled with wine in hand, mocking him for sharpening a blade twice in one night. He heard the men complain about the cold, and all he could think was how Aerion would have hated Maeren’s Hollow with its grey skies and skeletal trees.

Aerion would have filled the silence. Aerion would have made a game of it, turned frost into jest, turned hunger into mockery. Clyde wanted to scorn the thought, Aerion’s voice in his head when he needed focus most, but instead, he felt its absence sharper than any blade.

And under it all, the worry.

He had sworn to protect Aerion with his life. Sworn it so deeply it had become marrow. Now, every night, he wondered who was watching the young lord while he was gone. Who stood by his door when whispers curled like smoke through the halls? Who kept him from drinking himself past reason, or baiting the wrong man into striking?

Clyde tightened the strap on his gauntlet, jaw set against the ache. He told himself Aerion was safe, that Valemont Keep had guards enough, that no assassin would dare a second attempt so soon. But doubt gnawed him hollow.

Even in the thick of drills, with his sword in hand, his mind betrayed him.

He remembered Aerion’s eyes narrowing, venom sharpening into fear. He remembered the feel of his wrist beneath his grip, slender and trembling. He remembered the taste of wine on his lips, that one reckless kiss pressed too hard, too fast, and how it still burned on his mouth.

He ground the thought down like dull steel on a whetstone. Focus. The men needed a commander, not a lovesick fool.

The knights he led watched him with a mixture of awe and unease. To them, Clyde was iron—unyielding, unshaken. He corrected a sloppy stance with a clipped word, disarmed a boastful youth with a single precise strike, endured long evenings around the fire without joining their laughter.

“Does the Hound ever smile?” one squire whispered once, too low to be brave, too loud to escape notice.

Clyde ignored it, though his men shifted uneasily, chastising the boy with glares.

Others tried to draw him out. Sir Marreck, broad-shouldered and bold, clapped him on the back after a drill. “You’ve the best steel in camp. Gods, but I wouldn’t mind you at my side when the charge begins.”

Clyde only grunted, adjusting his gauntlet. Praise slid off him like rain off stone.

Around the fire, when wine loosened tongues, the younger knights swapped bawdy tales of women left behind—wives, sweethearts, or tavern girls whose names blurred with drink. Clyde stayed silent. His silence was misread as disdain, or perhaps secrecy. They thought he had none to miss.

They were wrong.

And yet, in the quiet moments, when the camp quieted and the fires burned low, he found himself reaching for parchment, carving out words he didn’t know how to say.

I miss you.

He stared at the line until the ink blurred. Then he crumpled it, fed it to the fire, and sharpened his blade instead.

But the words lingered, unspoken.

Always, unspoken.

News of the warfront spread through Valemont Keep like frost creeping over glass—silent, inevitable. Soldiers were gone, Clyde among them, and the corridors felt wrong without the shadow of his presence.

It was on the fifth day that Aerion found a new shadow waiting for him.

Sir John of Rutherfell.

He was everything Clyde was not. Tall, yes, broad across the shoulders, with the easy power of a man who’d grown into his strength young, but where Clyde carried silence like armor, John wore charm like a cloak. His face was handsome in a way Aerion found almost irritating: sun-browned skin, a smile quick to bloom, eyes the warm brown of mulled wine. He was the sort of knight who turned heads when he passed, not for fear, but for favour.

“Lord Valemont,” John said with a bow deep enough to be polite, shallow enough to be familiar. “I’ve been given the honour of watching over you until Sir Clyde returns.”

Aerion arched a brow, lounging against the balustrade of the great stair, a jewelled goblet in his hand. “Ah. The king sends me a puppy to replace his hound.”

John only grinned, unbothered. “A puppy bites just as hard, my lord. Sometimes harder.”

The courtiers tittered. Aerion sneered, but inwardly he noted how easily John’s words slipped into the air, how quickly he disarmed those around him.

In the days that followed, Aerion could not step into a corridor without John at his side. Unlike Clyde, he filled the silence—chatting with guards, offering handmaidens a wink, soothing quarrels between servants with a laugh and a clap on the shoulder. He greeted Aerion in the mornings with an easy “My lord, you’re looking particularly radiant today,” and in the evenings, with “Sleep well, the stars themselves envy your brilliance.”

Aerion rolled his eyes. “Gods, spare me.”

But John only smiled, good-natured, as if he’d been brushed off before and would be again.

He was proficient, too. He checked locks, tested steel, made a show of inspecting Aerion’s routes through the gardens and market. He carried his duty in plain sight, unlike Clyde, whose vigilance had always been a quiet, suffocating thing.

Aerion told himself he should be relieved. John was competent. Friendly. Decorative. Everything a lord might want in a knight.

And yet…

When John laughed too loudly at supper, Aerion found himself thinking how Clyde never laughed at all.

When John leaned close to murmur reassurance, Aerion remembered Clyde’s silence, how it could press heavier than words.

When John winked at the serving girls, Aerion thought, not for the first time, that Clyde’s eyes had only ever watched him.

Aerion drained his goblet, throat tight with irritation he couldn’t name.

John was fine. Perfectly fine.

But he was not Clyde.

And every friendly word, every easy smile, only made the absence more unbearable.

Aerion had never been one to sit idle. If the keep had grown quiet, if whispers dulled and courtiers busied themselves elsewhere, then he made his own diversions.

And John, with his warm smile and easy manner, became one of them.

It started in the gardens, late morning, when the roses clung heavy to the trellis and bees dozed in their blooms. Aerion lingered too long by the fountain, tilting his face to the sun so the light caught his lashes, then glanced sidelong at his new knight.

“You’ve hardly taken your eyes off me,” Aerion said, voice silken, careless. “Are you so vigilant, or merely enchanted?”

John’s grin came without hesitation. “Why not both?”

Aerion’s lips curved, but the satisfaction was hollow. Too easy. Clyde would have said nothing—or worse, something blunt enough to sting.

Later, in the hall, Aerion let his hand brush John’s arm as they passed. The knight stiffened just slightly, then looked down with a chuckle. “Careful, my lord, you’ll start rumours.”

“Let them talk,” Aerion drawled, though his chest tightened at the words. He’d tried this once with Clyde, and Clyde’s silence had been deafening, dangerous. John, by contrast, was disarmingly safe.

That night, at supper, Aerion pressed harder. He leaned close over the table, wine on his breath, and murmured, “Tell me, Sir John, would you throw yourself before a blade for me as gallantly as your predecessor did?”

John met his gaze with warmth, not challenge. “Of course. Though I’d prefer to stop the blade before it ever reached you.”

The courtiers cooed at the chivalry. Aerion laughed, sharp and brittle.

By the seventh day, he was bored.

It wasn’t John’s fault. The knight was handsome, capable, generous with his smiles. Any other lord might have been charmed. Aerion told himself he should be charmed. But every jest landed soft where Clyde’s silence had once struck like iron. Every look carried warmth where Clyde’s gaze had burned cold and steady.

John was firelight in a hearth—pleasant, safe, too easily tended.

Clyde had been lightning. Dangerous. Untamed. Impossible to hold without being struck.

And so, when Aerion let his hand linger at John’s sleeve again, he found himself scowling even as John winked.

“You’re trying too hard,” Aerion muttered.

John blinked. “My lord?”

Aerion rose from the table in a sweep of silk, leaving his goblet half-full. “Never mind.”

He left the hall, cloak flaring behind him. But the truth chased him all the way to his chambers:

He didn’t want John’s warmth.

He wanted Clyde’s silence.