No. The Nameless Knight—he needed to stay the Nameless Knight—was a distraction at best. An enemy in truth. He’d taken Hal’s streak, his pride, and would doubtless come for more if given the chance. He was not beautiful. He was not intriguing. He was not worth thinking about at all.
He was worth beating, though, and that was the task towhich Hal would dedicate himself. He’d reclaim his pride with his next bout the following morning. He would win his final on the tournament’s last day, and by the time they met again in two months, Hal’s singular fall from grace would be long forgotten.
Behind him, somewhere in that modest tent, the Nameless Knight was probably still smiling.
5
PERRIN
Perrin did not go back to the tent.
He meant to. He made it a good twelve paces toward the yellow-and-blue canvas, and then his feet betrayed him. His duty was clear—prepare the tent, ready the evening meal, wait for Hal to return so he could polish the dented armour—but then he stopped near a merchant’s stall and turned. His eyes tracked Hal’s path across the churned earth of the tournament grounds.
The violence of being shaken off still hummed in his arm. Hal’s hand had been rough, the dismissal absolute, and Perrin had obeyed the way he always obeyed. Years of service had taught him first to weather Hal’s strange moods, but also to read the moments when any argument was futile. This had been one of them. Hal’s face had been a door slammed shut, the fury behind it near audible.
Something stronger than duty held him in place now: The memory of Hal’s face when the Nameless Knight had unseated him, his shock giving way to humiliation, then that dangerous anger that always made Perrin’s chesttighten. Hal liked him for his obedience, but Perrin couldn’t stop wondering what it was about this stranger that had gotten under Hal’s skin so quickly. Was it just the defeat? Or something. . . else?
The merchant’s stall sold leather goods. Anyone glancing his way would see a squire at loose ends, killing time while his knight handled other business, but Perrin was fairly unremarkable; even on his best days, few people noticed him. Even the merchant herself hadn’t noticed him, busy as she was stamping a design into a purse. So now, Perrin positioned himself against the back support post, angling his body in a way to suggest he was examining the display and not watching helplessly as his knight’s broad shoulders disappeared into the Nameless Knight’s tent.
Everything continued. The tournament grounds hummed with activity around him, and no one else cared that Hal the Upstart had just stormed into the Nameless Knight’s tent, because what did it matter, in the end? What were a few terse words between knights, if a tad uncouth? Why did this feel like the end of Perrin’s world?
Perrin pressed his back against the post and tried to steady his breathing. His hands found the edge of a bridle, and he gripped it without purpose, the leather warm from the morning sun. He needed something to hold. Needed to feel solid in his body while his mind spun through possibilities he couldn’t see or control.
What if Hal hit him? What if the Nameless Knight hit back? Perrin’s free hand curled against his thighs, fingers pressing into the worn fabric of his breeches. He should go. Should intervene, should pull Hal away before he did something that would cost them everything—their place on the circuit, Lady Kerran’s patronage, the carefully constructed life they’d built together.
Only, the more he imagined what was happening in the tent—Hal’s fist connecting with that aristocratic jaw, the sound it would make, the satisfaction it might bring, Hal emerging with bloodied knuckles and a grim smile, the balance restored through simple violence—the less it felt right. It wasn’t realistic.
Hal had been as trampled by nobility as anyone born a commoner. Would it really only take eighteen months in the lists collecting victories as a knight to erase his tolerance for highborn smugness?
Well, Perrin couldn’t be sure about that. Hal wasn’t the most chivalrous of knights, and his pride was an easily wounded thing. Perrin kept trying to tell himself it made sense for Hal to be so put out. Yet, he couldn’t shake the unnameable feeling pressing at the edges of his awareness like a brewing headache.
Because, well, the Nameless Knight was beautiful.
Perrin thought about the knight. Had been thinking about him since that morning, if he was honest with himself, since the man had stepped out of his tent. Perrin had watched the joust this morning with the professional attention of a squire evaluating technique, but beneath that calculation, something else had stirred.
Perrin could name it plainly in himself, because truth was better than lying, he’d always been taught. The Nameless Knight, with his dark hair, and sharp face, and graceful movement, was beautiful. His body was lean, where Hal’s was broad, built for speed rather than impact. There had been something almost elegant in the way he’d taken his victory, and maybe Hal had noticed that, too.
And now Hal was in that tent with him, and the noticing had turned into something sharp and uncomfortable in Perrin’s chest.
It made sense. He told himself this as the seconds dragged on, as the tent flap remained closed and still. It made sense that two men like that would see something in each other. They were matched in a way that went beyond the tournament brackets—both young, both skilled, both possessed of that particular intensity that set them apart from the dozen other competitors who would ride and fall and be forgotten. Hal with his rough edges and hard-won glory. The Nameless Knight with his mystery and his cultivated anonymity.
They would look at each other and see a mirror, distorted but recognisable.
Perrin saw it, too. Which was part of the problem, wasn’t it?
He thought about Hal’s face in the morning light, still soft from sleep before the day hardened him. The reddish gold of his hair when it caught the sun. The crooked nose that should have been ugly, but somehow anchored his features into something compelling. The breadth of his shoulders, the way his body filled space, the way Hal trusted Perrin to knead out the pain in his shoulders. Perrin had spent years mapping that body; every scar, every tension, every place where the armour needed adjustment to accommodate old injuries that still pulled when the weather turned cold.
He knew Hal. Knew him the way a squire knew his knight, which was to say intimately and impersonally at once. He knew the sounds Hal made in his sleep. The way his appetite shifted before a bout. The exact set of his jaw when he was angry versus when he was afraid, and how rarely anyone else could tell the difference.
What he didn’t know—what he’d been avoidingknowing—was what to call the thing that tightened in his chest when Hal’s hand fell on his shoulder. The warmth that spread through him when Hal said his name. The way his eyes tracked Hal’s movements even when there was no tactical reason to watch, when the watching was just... wanting.
You’re possessive, Perrin realised suddenly, and with great shame. Possessive of Hal, the way a dog might be possessive of its master; fierce and loyal and ultimately absurd with the extent of his feeling.
Hal barely knew he existed beyond the function he served. Perrin was the hands that managed the armour, the voice that reported on competitors, the shadow that anticipated needs before they were spoken. He was useful. Valued, perhaps, in the way one valued a good tool.
But he was not seen. Not the way he wanted to be seen, not the way Hal had seen the Nameless Knight—or the Nameless Knight had seen him.
And now Hal was in a tent with a beautiful stranger, and Perrin was standing outside with his hands on a bridle he had no intention of buying, and the jealousy was so sharp he could taste it like blood at the back of his throat.
