“You’re quiet,” he remarked, his voice a casual murmur that belied the sharpness of his gaze. “Even for someone whose profession is observation.”
I didn’t answer. Silence usually did the work for me.
He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. “You served in the border campaigns, didn’t you? The skirmishes with the Eastline raiders.”
I nodded once.
“And yet here you are, babysitting a girl whothinks poisonbramble is decorative.”
That earned the slightest twitch of my brow.
“I need to understand something,” Alaric continued, quieter now. “Can you keep her safe? I don’t mean in the ‘stand-in-front-of-a-sword’ way. I mean, out here. In this kind of place.”
I looked over at Wyn, who sat laughing beside Jasira, her cloak tangled around her ankles and her journal open again in her lap.
“She’s not ready for this,” I said flatly.
“I understand,” Alaric replied. “That’s why I’m asking if you are.”
We didn’t speak after that, but when he stood to join the others, I watched the way he looked at her as if she were still that small girl climbing garden walls barefoot.
A chill prickled under my skin, a cold dread of an understanding I desperately wished to ignore. Shadows danced long between the roots. I sat a few paces back, blade in hand, dragging a whetstone slowly along its edge. A quiet rhythm. Familiar. Clean.
Gideon reigned from his perch by the fire, legs comfortably crossed, the flames dancing in his eyes as he began, “So, there I was,” he said, “with a bottle of cherry wine, one sock, and a duck under my arm.” Wynessa snorted. “Why a duck?”
“Because the goose bit me first.”
Laughter erupted, Jasira bubbled the loudest, Alaric wheezing, clutching his stomach behind his arm. Even the hardened guards cracked genuine smiles. It was a foolish, carefree moment, the kind people only truly appreciated once it had vanished.Gideon had a rhythm of his own. Bright-eyed, always grinning, always easing the worst moments with something absurd. I’d seen him put his body between a bandit’s blade and a stranger without blinking. He was the real deal.
Jasira laughed. “No, seriously. Why did youbecome a knight in the first place, Gideon?”
He blinked, then grinned slowly. “Because it paid better than starving. Plus, I look good on a horse.”
When the others chuckled, he added more quietly,
“My father,” he said, poking the fire, “used to call me a waste of good shoes. Died in a bar fight he didn’t start. And instead of crying, I picked up his sword, left home, and tried to laugh more than he ever did.”
Wyn’s voice was quiet as she leaned forward. “I think you’ve done that beautifully.”
Gideon shrugged, but there was something fragile in the smile he gave her. “Not bad for a fool with a fondness for pastries and bad luck.”
She touched his sleeve with a brief, tentative gesture, as if testing whether comfort could be offered without words to him. Her fingers lingered just long enough to transmit warmth through the worn fabric, bridging the quiet gap between them. After the others had drifted toward sleep, I kept to my post near the fire, still cleaning the edge of my dagger. My shoulder ached from the day’s ride, though I didn’t let it show. I’d taken a jolt earlier that afternoon when my mare stumbled on a root along the ridge, wrenching something that hadn’t quite healed from a sparring match days before.
Wynessa came to me carrying a small tin cup. “Balmleaf,” she said. “For the shoulder you keep pretending doesn’t hurt.”
I looked at the cup, then at her. Her fingers were dirt-stained, and her hair had waved slightly toward the tips, brushing past her shoulders as she leaned down.
“Is it poisoned?” I asked.
“Only if you insult my brewing,” she retorted, a playful glint in her eye.
Her face was pink from the firelight, her cloak dusted with leaf bits, and there was soil beneath her fingernails.She smelled of lavender, thyme, and something wilder. Whatever root she’d crushed last. Her beauty wasn’t the sculpted perfection favored in courtly halls.
She was…fierce. Like an unexpected grace of a wildflower forcing its way through solid stone. Ethereal yet undeniably wild. Her eyes, the color of deep forest moss, held a light that was both ancient and untamed.
I accepted the cup, our fingers brushing briefly. “Thank you,” I said, surprising us both.
She tilted her head. “Oh, I get a thank you instead of a grunt? Are you warming up to me, or are you grateful I haven’t fallen off my horse yet?”
