“Let go of me.” Perrin twisted, trying to break free, but the knight’s fingers tightened. They were pressed close together now, Perrin’s hands trapped against his, their faces inches apart. Perrin could feel the knight’s heartbeatthrough his palms, steady and slow, completely unaffected by the struggle.
“Listen to me,” the knight said. His voice had dropped lower, intimate in a way that made Perrin’s stomach twist. “I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. But I’m not your enemy.”
“You’re wrong.” Perrin tried to wrench free again and failed. “You destroyed him.”
“I jousted him. That’s what we’re here for. That’s the entire point of tournaments—men testing themselves against each other.” The Nameless Knight’s grip shifted, becoming less restraining and more... something else. His thumbs pressed against the inside of Perrin’s wrists. “What happened last night was separate. I. . . shouldn’t have. . .”
He paused, and Perrin met his gaze.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he said finally.
Perrin jolted. “The specifics don’t matter. You are some lord, and we are beneath you. You humiliated him all the same.” Perrin’s voice had gone hoarse. He was still pressed against the Nameless Knight, still trapped by those long fingers, and his body was responding in ways that made him furious. “You’re a bastard. A cruel, manipulative bastard who gets off on hurting people.”
“Maybe.” The knight’s expression shifted, something like injured amusement flickering in his eyes. “But not you. You’re loyal. Ferociously so. It’s. . .attractive.”
Perrin’s nostrils flared. “I don’t care what you find attractive.”
“Don’t you?” Alaric’s head tilted slightly, studying him, before his eyes shifted to Hal. “You were there last night. You saw what I was doing to him, and you saw what he wanted, what he was willing to take from me. AndIsaw how that affectedyou. I bet,” he murmured, moving Perrin’scollar aside, where Hal’s mouth had left a mark, “you came back and gave him something similar.”
Heat flooded Perrin’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was a squire; backtalking this knight was a death wish. And yet he felt like some feral dog, determined to defend Hal against every threat, real or otherwise.
“My name,” the Nameless Knight said, “is Alaric.”
The sudden admission made Perrin blink, even if the name meant nothing to him, not in terms of heraldry or local lords. But, after a moment of deep breathing, he supposed it was an olive branch of sorts, a way to refer to the man himself beyond the epithet he’d chosen.
Perrin opened his eyes.
Alaric stared at him, and a lick of concern crept into his otherwise schooled features. “I don’t want him permanently harmed. That was never the intention.”
“Then what was the intention?” Perrin demanded, softer now. “If not to hurt him, what was all of this for?”
Alaric’s grip on his wrists loosened fractionally. “I only wanted to test myself. To prove I could win without my name, without the advantages I was born with. Ser Halden is the best knight here, the standard I measured against—the best fighter on the circuit, truly.” His eyes moved past Perrin to where Hal lay unconscious. “I didn’t expect to...”
“To what?” Perrin pressed. “To actually care? To feel guilty?”
“To find him so interesting,” Alaric finished. His gaze returned to Perrin’s face. “Both of you. The dynamic between you—it’s compelling.”
Perrin scoffed, brazen with his attitude toward this obvious noble. What was so compelling about a squire tending to his knight? What would a nobleman see in themthat he lacked in his own life, surrounded as he was by servants? That’s all this was, wasn’t it?
Except. . .
Perrin turned to look at Hal, whom he loved, and he understood then that was what Alaric saw. Love. A real devotion. Did Alaric lack that from the people he commanded? Did he have anything real?
A kind of petty relief flooded Perrin, then. He may not have been anything more than a squire who would never know a nobleman’s riches, but he had Hal. And even if Hal didn’t and couldn’t love him back, they had something real, a relationship that went beyond what was expected of them. Alaric did not, and no tournament win would provide him with something only true companionship could.
Perrin was playing with fire, perhaps with his own life, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.
“You’ll never have this,” Perrin whispered. “Not so long as you think of people as things you can manipulate.”
But even as Perrin said it, he felt something shift in his chest. Alaric’s hands were still wrapped around his wrists, thumb still pressed against his pulse, and the touch had gentled into something almost tender. This was the moment where he braced himself, expecting the ire and fury that always brewed in noblemen. Alaric’s pride had been pricked, and Perrin expected a storm.
But Alaric only smiled. A real smile, perhaps the first he’d shown Perrin; a sad upturn of his lips, silver eyes full of grief.
“I know.” Alaric’s voice had gone quiet. “And I’m not here to make things worse. I just?—”
“Both of you,” a voice rasped from the cot, rough with pain and sleep, “need to shut the fuck up.”
Perrin’s heart jumped. Ser Halden was awake.
