PERRIN
The sound of Hal’s breathing filled the tent, shallow and hitching as each inhale caught on broken ribs. Perrin counted the spaces between breaths, his own lungs matching the rhythm without meaning to, as if the sympathetic motion might somehow heal Hal’s body.
The medic had left an hour ago. He’d said the ribs would heal with time, if Hal could keep still enough, as if either time or stillness were commodities Hal possessed in abundance.
Perrin sat on the three-legged stool beside the cot, fiddling with his own hands to keep them from shaking. They’d trembled so terribly as he’d stripped the armour from Hal’s unconscious body, when he’d felt the unnatural give in the knight’s side, when Hal’s face had gone grey and his lips blue from the effort of breathing. They’d shaken worse when Lady Kerran had arrived at the tent entrance, her face arranged in what she probably thought was appropriate concern.
Perrin had given her the doctor’s account and turnedher away, no matter that she was their patron. No matter that her favour was the difference between Hal being a knight with prospects and a commoner with delusions. Turning her away was the kind of decision that ended careers, but he couldn’t bear to have her flittering about, feigning concern. He’d asked her to return tomorrow, when Hal would hopefully be awake, and though she’d looked at him like he’d grown a second head, she’d left.
He had felt like a different man, telling her to leave, and though he’d felt powerful in the moment, now Perrin prayed to any God watching that he hadn’t burned a bridge Hal would need.
But he couldn’t have let her in to see his knight reduced to this—grey-faced and struggling to breathe, stripped of the confidence that made him Ser Halden the Upstart rather than just another common-born man with delusions of grandeur. Better to feel slighted than to see her broken knight; Perrin would rather bear her wrath than have her drop Hal as an investment gone bad.
The tent’s interior was dim despite the afternoon sun outside. Perrin had drawn the canvas walls tight, blocking out the tournament grounds’ noise as best he could. The celebration would be happening somewhere—the Nameless Knight being crowned champion, probably. Perrin’s hands curled into fists on his thighs. For hours now, he’d entertained the thought of finding the knight and driving a blade between those aristocratic ribs; to do something to make the man understand what he’d done. He wanted to hear him apologise in that cultured voice before Perrin cut out his lying tongue.
The violence of the thought was a new development for gentle Perrin. But watching Hal fall, watching his body golimp in the dirt, had fractured the good-natured part of him.
Hal, his knight, deserved so much better.
He reached out and adjusted the compress on Hal’s forehead. The cloth had gone warm, absorbing heat from the fever the doctor said might come. Perrin dipped it in the basin of cool water at his feet and laid it back across Hal’s brow. His fingers lingered, tracing the line of the knight’s temple, the rough texture of his cropped hair.
Hal’s face in repose looked younger. The permanent tension he carried—the set of his jaw, the furrow between his brows—had smoothed in unconsciousness, leaving someone almost boyish. Perrin studied him in the tent’s half-light, cataloguing details he’d seen a thousand times and yet could never see enough of: the small scar through his left eyebrow, the slight asymmetry of his nose, the way his lashes were darker at the tips than at the roots.
The knight was too rough for beauty, too blunt in feature and manner, but lying there with pain temporarily erased, he came close to it. Perrin’s hand moved from Hal’s temple to his jaw, fingers resting against the pulse point there. The beat was steady if fast, Hal’s body working hard to heal the damage. Three ribs broken, the doctor had said. They were clean breaks, which was fortunate, and they’d heal straight if Hal didn’t do anything stupid like try to joust before they’d knitted. Six weeks minimum before he should even consider mounting a horse. Two months before, he’d be ready for tournament work.
Two months marked the beginning of the next season. His dear Hal would have no time to train, and if he did decide to joust—which of course he would—-there was a good chance he’d injure his reputation further when it became clear how hisinjury had affected him. But if he didn’t, if he waited to enter the circuit at a later tournament, then the Upstart’s carefully curated mystique—eighteen months undefeated, the commoner who’d climbed to championship level through pure determination—would fade. People had short memories. They’d forget what Hal had accomplished and remember only that he’d been beaten. Twice, now, by the same opponent.
The tent flap rustled.
Perrin’s head snapped up, his hand falling away from Hal’s face.
The Nameless Knight stepped through.
He’d cleaned up since the joust. His dark hair was damp at the temples, suggesting a recent wash. He wore a simple shirt and breeches. His expression was carefully neutral as he glanced past Perrin to where Hal lay unconscious, but something flickered through his eyes.
Perrin stood abruptly. “Get out.” Perrin’s voice came out flat and hard; this bastard’s breeding didn’t matter at the moment. He moved to position himself between his knight and the cot.
“I came to see how he’s doing,” Alaric said. “That was a hard fall. I wanted to ensure?—”
“Get. Out.” Perrin took a step forward. His hands flexed at his sides. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to hurt him and humiliate him and then show up here pretending concern.”
Alaric’s eyebrow rose. “It wasn’t intentional. It was a joust. Injuries happen?—”
“Don’t.” The word came out like a bark, that loyal dog in him rearing its head. Perrin’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t stand there and pretend this was just tournament work. You knew what you were doing. Last night, this morning, all of it. You planned this.”
Something shifted in the knight’s expression. The careful neutrality cracked. “I?—”
“You used him,” Perrin cut him off, refusing to hear whatever fresh lie the aristocrat might spin. “It doesn’t even matter if I was wrong about your identity: You got in his head, and then you broke three of his ribs. Now you come to gloat.”
“That’s not—” the Nameless Knight started, but Perrin wasn’t finished.
“He could have died.” The words came out choked, all the fear and fury of the past hours condensing into his tightly wound voice. Perrin took another step, and now they were close enough to touch. Close enough that Perrin could see the fine grain of the noble’s skin, the exact shape of his mouth, all the details that had looked good in candlelight but made Perrin sick in the afternoon sun. “So get out of our tent. Go back to whatever celebration they’re throwing you. Accept your championship and your coin and get the fuck away from us.”
“Perrin—”
Hearing his name in that cultured voice was too much. Damn it all! Perrin shoved the knight’s chest with both hands, putting his weight behind it. The knight stepped back, but he had a well-trained balance. Perrin shoved again, harder, and this time the knight’s hands came up to catch his wrists.
The grip was firm, inexorable. “Stop,” the knight said, and there was command in his voice now, the unconscious authority of someone used to being obeyed.
