I set the cup on the hearth, watching the steam curl away, and said, “You never finished telling me what it was like. Your brotherhood.”
He leaned back, hands tucked behind his head. For a moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer. But then he did, the words as blunt as the man.
“It was about the code,” he said. “About having a line you didn’t cross. Even if you broke the rest of the rules, you kept to that one.” He stretched, the leather of his jacket creaking. “It’s what kept us alive. Or thought it did.”
I nodded, remembering the stories of my father’s youth, the battles fought for lord and manor, the pride in belonging to something larger. “In my time, we have a word for that. Fealty. You swear to a lord, or a cause, and it owns you. Even when you hated it.”
He grinned, the white of his teeth a shock in the gloom. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
I pulled the fur tighter around my shoulders. “So what happens when the code breaks?” I asked, voice small. “What do you do then?”
He was quiet, the question curling in the space between us like a live thing.
“You improvise,” he said at last. “Or you die.”
We let that hang. The fire sank lower, the hut cooling to stone. I watched the breath leave my lips in white puffs, watched the way his fingers drummed against the floor, restless.
“You regret it?” I asked. I wasn’t sure why I needed to know.
He looked at me, long and carefully. “Some of it,” he said. “Not all.”
I wanted to ask which parts he kept, but didn’t. Instead, I said, “You know, your brotherhood isn’t so different from knights sworn to a lord. They talk about honor, but really, it’s just about whose orders you follow. And who you bleed for.”
He snorted again, but this time it was almost a laugh. “Guess all men are the same, no matter when.”
I shook my head. “Not all.”
He glanced at my hands, still cupping the empty mug. “You ever wish you belonged somewhere?” he said.
The question stung more than I cared to admit. “Maybe once,” I said. “But then I saw what belonging cost.”
He made a sound in his throat, something halfway between a growl and a sigh. “It’s cheaper to be alone. But not better.”
We didn’t say anything after that. The fire guttered, the cold pressing in from all sides. I shivered, and he saw it.
“Come here,” he said, his voice flat but not unkind.
I hesitated, then scooted across the rug, the scratch of it loud in the hush. He opened the fur, let me tuck against his side, his arm heavy across my shoulders.
We sat like that, listening to the wind pick at the edges of the world. The cold was still there, but less sharp with his body next to mine.
After a while, he spoke, voice pitched low, almost for himself. “You got secrets?”
I pressed my face to the crook of his neck, inhaling the strange, wild scent of him. “Only the ones I can’t outrun.”
He chuckled, the vibration running through me. “Good,” he said. “Keeps things interesting.”
We warmed our hands over the last of the coals; the red glow reflected in his eyes. I could feel the tension in him, the way his body never quite relaxed.
“You always smell like that?” he murmured, voice thick.
“Like what?”
He grinned into my skin. “Wild. Good.”
I snorted, then bit his shoulder, just enough to mark. “You’re not much better.”
He rolled onto his back, tugged me after. The furs pooled around our knees, and for the first time, I could see all of him—scarred, inked, bruised from the fights he never talked about, cock hard and already twitching against his thigh. There was a kind of power in seeing a man like that, stripped of armor and pretense, nothing but muscle and want and hunger.
