Alaric completed his pass and circled back to the fallen knight. Sweat plastered his hair to his forehead, and the chill air felt like a blessing against his overheated skin. He watched as Halden pushed himself to his feet, cursing as his squire tried to help him up.
The Upstart ripped open his visor, dust coating his reddened face. His eyes burned with something more complex than simple anger—humiliation, yes, but beneath it pulsed that deeper wound. Red faced and angry, he reminded Alaric of an angry cat. Ser Halden was all fluffed up.
“Lucky shot,” Halden spat, voice raw with emotion.
Alaric should have let it pass. Instead, he reached up and lifted his visor, just enough to expose his eyes. Adrenaline surged through him. Halden looked so furious, so adorable with his red-faced bravado, that Alaric couldn’t help but smile. “Or maybe,” he said, “your luck’s finally run out.”
The words hung between them as the wind picked up, snapping banners overhead like the crack of distant whips, muffling the crowd’s cheers. Halden’s expression cycled from surprise to anger, and in that moment, something passed between them.
Halden’s squire tried again, offering support his knight didn’t accept. “Ser?—”
“I’m fine,” Halden snapped, but his eyes never left Alaric’s. “Who are you?”
“No one,” Alaric lied.
“Eighteen months,” Halden said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Eighteen months since anyone put me down.”
A thrum of pride pulsed in Alaric’s chest. “Yes. You were overdue.”
Halden spat over his shoulder at that, fists balling at his sides. “Beginner’s luck doesn’t survive the season.”
“Then I suppose, Ser Halden,” Alaric said, lowering his helm back into place, “we’ll see each other again.”
4
HAL
Perrin’s hand hovered near his elbow, and Hal shook it off with a violence that made the squire flinch.
“Go back,” he said. “Tend to the gear.” His voice came out thin and weak, lacking the command he’d meant to project. Perrin opened his mouth to argue, saw something in Hal’s face, and closed it again.
Good. At least one person today still knew when to back down.
The young man retreated across the churned field, glancing back twice before the crowd swallowed him. Hal watched until he was certain Perrin wouldn’t return, then turned toward the far end of the grounds, where the Nameless Knight’s modest tent stood apart from the rest.
His body catalogued its injuries with each step. Shoulder screaming where the lance had caught him. Hip throbbing from the impact with the ground. A dozen smaller hurts that would purple by nightfall. None of the physical aches touched the thing writhing in his chest; thishot, sick fury that had nowhere to go. Eighteen months. Eighteen fucking months of building something from nothing, of proving every sneering nobleman wrong, and it was gone. Shattered, and not just by anyone, but by some lordling playing at poverty.
Because that’s what he was. Perrin was right, but in a way, Hal had known it the moment their eyes met across the field, had felt the truth of it in his bones the way he felt the balance of a lance or the tension in a horse’s neck. The Nameless Knight carried himself with the unconscious arrogance of the nobility. He was snide, his accent educated, and not a lick of sportsmanship had been on his face when he’d peered down at Hal in the dirt.
He’d put Hal, a once-commoner, back in his place.
Maybe your luck’s finally run out.
The loss itself he could survive. But the way the bastard had saidthat, as if every win under Hal’s belt had been chance. . .! As if skill and discipline and endless, grinding work meant nothing next to the poise and grace of a noble’s lifelong training.
Fuck. That.
When he reached the tent, the flap was closed, and no one tended to anything outside. The quality mare dozed at her picket, coat gleaming despite the morning’s exertion. Hal stared at her, wondering how much she cost. More than all his wins combined? More than himself? She was better bred than him for sure.
Hal breathed heavily and then did something rather stupid: he shoved through the tent flap without announcing himself and stepped inside.
The Nameless Knight stood at the tent’s centre, half-stripped of his armour. His chest was bare beneath thegambeson he was peeling away, the linen shirt beneath it soaked with sweat. His dark hair hung loose around his face, freed from whatever tie had held it during the joust. In the dim light filtering through canvas, his skin gleamed with exertion, and Hal’s eyes traced the lean muscle of his shoulders before he could stop himself.
He turned to look at Hal and didn’t startle. The same calm he’d had on the field embraced him now, and he fixed Hal with a slightly raised brow. Hal, still in his hulking armour, felt suddenly very stupid. The Nameless Knight was acting like furious men burst into his tent every day.
Perhaps they did. Perhaps this was just another game to him.
“Ser Halden,” the knight said. His voice was measured, cultured, precisely designed to piss Hal right off. “Can I help you?”
