First, she had felt his fingers on the back of her shirt. Pinching, pulling. Probably removing a piece of lint. Whatever.

Then, she felt his fingers on her back, and he was… Petting her absentmindedly? Riyo had felt too bewildered to feel irritated. Was he scratching her? Is that it? Why? She hadn't felt itchy.

It had been weird, but she'd put it aside.

However, he'd done it again, a week later. Then, she'd seen him do it to Semiu while she was working, absentmindedly tracing his fingers over her upper back as she ignored him in favor of her smutty magazines.

Now he is doing it to Zanka, who looks mortified, embarrassed, and flustered — all at the same time. His head is so red, he looks like he's about to explode. If she waited long enough, maybe he'd be shooting steam out of his ears?

Riyo is resting her head in her hand as Enjin explains the intricacies of close combat Jinki to Rudo, his hand scratching along Zanka’s back as he stands behind the sofa that the younger boy is sitting on.

She doesn't think he notices. Not really.

“Why are you doing that?” she interrupts.

Enjinv turns to look at her.

So does Zanka.

And finally, even Rudo looks her way.

Rudo and Zanka both turn to look at Enjin, who notices that now, he's the one being looked at.

“What?”

“That.”

Riyo points at where his hand is still on Zanka’s upper back. Looking down, their mentor stares at his hand, frowns, and then pulls it away.

Holding it up in front of his face, he stares at it like it's a conscious offender.

“Sorry. Bad habit.”

That's all Enjin offers. Rudo doesn't think much of it. Zanka tries to bite down the giddiness that comes with finding out something new about Enjin.

And Riyo thinks he's being really fucking weird. However, she can tell, as she regards him with a mock-nonchalant look (an attempt to hide the layer of curiosity beneath it), that there's not much to gain from any further questioning.

“Weird,” she tells him, and Enjin reacts dramatically.

“Huh – Who are you calling weird?!”

Enjin thinks about it a lot. It keeps his thoughts occupied, and whenever he feels his hands drifting, he stops himself.

It is a little weird, admittedly. A tiny bit. Just slightly.

With a sigh, he tilts his head back into the pillow, looking at the ceiling.

"What's wrong?”

The comfortable weight moves off his chest, and immediately, he feels colder now. He has half a mind to tug you back.

You've been doing this a lot recently. Staying in bed together after the deed is done. It's nice. There are no cold sheets for him to roll around in. Instead, he's been feeling toasty and cozy. Sometimes, you even share very pleasant conversations that would not have come to be otherwise.

As much as he feels a little defensive about his enjoyment of the situation at hand – Laying in bed together, touching you – he really cannot find it in himself to complain in a sincere way.

“Nothing. Just thinking,” he tells you, wrapping his arm around your middle as you cuddle up against his side. Your naked chest presses against his, and it feels good. Right, the way custom-tailored clothes feel. In the way that they fit him and only him.

Not that he'd drone on about that in a way that you'd be able to get an idea of his thoughts. He keeps that to himself, as a sort of comforting piece of truth that feels good to think about.

“You can do that?” Your words are immediately followed by a giggle when he rolls his eyes and groans.

Once you settle again, you put your arms on his chest and lay your head on your arm. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Nah. 's nothing important,” Enjin shakes his head. Then, his brows draw together as he looks down at you, his fingertips dancing the way up your spine.

“Actually – Shouldn't you be asleep?”

Your lower lip juts forward, and the need to lean forward and tug it between his teeth bites at him. He swallows it down like an unwelcome taste.

“I should be,” you give in, “but I feel restless.”

His hand moves to rub at your back, nails gently scratching at your skin as you let out a content sigh before closing your eyes and resting your cheek against your arm.

Enjin continues like that, enjoying the small shivers you offer in return, whenever his hand trails off a little too far to either side. It's quiet in your small room, cozy and warm too.

It doesn't take long until you're fast asleep against him, your body moving against him, whenever you take a deep breath. His fingers do not stop their task, drawing shapes into your skin absentmindedly.

Really. It's been strange. He has been getting quite handsy recently. More so than usual, which already is a lot!

Enjin wishes he had any idea as to why that’s been the case.

Simon remembers the first time he saw you.

How could he not? You were a stranger in a strange land.

A flower from the south, grown up in warm soil and rich sun. Looking like you lived on fruit and honey, and Simon bet you smelled like it, too. Blackberry jam, and sweet cream, and nectar, he'd reckon. It was the first thought that passed through his head—that he'd like to smell you. Wanted to shove his ruined nose into that soft part in the hollow of your neck, where you were warm and delicate and he could feel your pulse thrumming just beneath, and inhale. He had to get close to anything to get a scent—his nose was mostly scar tissue, burned and singed from coke smoke over and over throughout the years—but he had wanted it.

You stepped out of your vulgar carriage, a little bird, bright and smiling in the bitter, sodden morning, and he had wanted it.

He doesn't know why. Hours in the forge leave him plenty of time to mull thoughts like warmed, spiced wine, but he hasn't yet figured out his taste for sweet things. Finespun things. Things he could crush in his hands like eggshells. He only knew that the sweet things never liked him much. Sweet things were frightened of the large, scowling thing making iron sing among the flames.

Until you.

You looked him in the eye. Smiled at him that day when he stood in the receiving line in the courtyard. You had a flash of teeth for everyone, it was true, but often even those generous with their smiles could never quite find one for Simon. They got lost somewhere, swallowed by his imposing frame. And maybe you didn't know to be afraid, maybe you'd never learned to be wary of mutts in your fair, tempered home, but Simon thought it was something else:

Curiosity. Interest in the beasts bred in the north—because your lord husband certainly wasn't an example of one.

The first son of a first son with a great old name and a castle. His family had lived within its walls for four hundred years, building and defending it in the name of some faraway king Simon couldn't give two shits about, and your mooncalf lord was going to run it all into the mud. He was a dull axe, meek and mollycoddled. Played at war to take the spines of other, greater men. A bare branch, too, Simon figured.

You'd learn all that when he returned from his latest campaign.

Married in absentia for your father's wealth of fighting men, you'd meet your new husband for the first time a month after your arrival. For now, you're alone, a warmblood getting used to the frost. It's no wonder you wander into Simon's forge.

Three days into your residence at the keep, your maids have you dressed for the winter. All wrapped up in a dull-coloured cloak. Hiding you beneath thick fur and delicate embroidery—as if anything could dull what you hold within you. The waifs are too flighty to follow you into Simon's workshop. The smell, the heat, the man within—all of them offend their delicate sensibilities in one way or another. Not you, though. You run to the bellows with no mind paid to the bull hammering metal beside them.

Simon only stops his work when you clear your pretty throat.

"What is your name, ser?" you ask. You're a daisy blooming in the winter muck. Or a weed, sprouting stubbornly where it doesn't belong. Wilting petals sucking sunlight in a smithy.

The only light here is from the fireglow; all else is choked. Coal smoulders in the hearth, belching sulphur and tar into the dense, stifling air. Breezes are throttled the moment they pass the threshold, so there's nothing to kick up the ash and soot—they lie in a blanket over the vices and punches, chisels and swages. Anything in Simon's forge doesn't stay clean for long. Even you, satin eve. Linger, and you'll melt into the walls with all the rest.

"Not a ser, little bird. Just a blacksmith," he says.

He had been mending a mail hauberk ruined in your lord's last battle. Some bannerman had a terrible day, and it was Simon's job to set the chain back right so another soldier could have one more. He sets the armour aside, and the loops of steel shimmer like stars in the firelight. You demand his full attention, and Simon wants to see what you'll do with it.

"My lady," you say, tone polite and proper. You run him a cunning once-over, top to toe, and Simon wonders what you see.

"Not no lady, neither."

"No, blacksmith, I'm a lady—the lady of your liege lord," you remind him with a smirk. As if he needed it. You look the part enough—clean and soft, highborn, grown up never scraping a knee, no doubt. But there's mischief twinkling in your eyes, like a child looking at a stream they want to ruin their boots in.

Simon doesn't know if he wants to stamp out that mischief or if there's something else he'd like to do with it.

He'll have to get closer to find out.

"And what does the lady of my liege lord want?"

"Your name." You're puckish and enjoying it, a smiling imp playing in the tick of your mouth. Even as your neck cranes to look up at him.

He rounds the heavy anvil to stand in front of you. Simon knows he's a big man. Can't forget when he's looking at the tops of people's heads all the time. And he's reminded, often and loudly, by highborns who think their sigils and names make them large. If I were your size, I'd rule the fucking kingdom, they say, and they're right. Simon probably could be a knight if he wanted. A ser. Fight hard enough for a lord who would give him a holdfast and a wife of his own. But he prefers the forge, prefers bending iron to his will to being bent to a lord's.

And if he were some perfumed knight, you wouldn't be here, looking up at him with intrigue.

Mud-madness, maybe. Maybe you want to know what it's like in the dirt.

"Riley," Simon says. He gives you his last, a secret joke just for him.

He's stepped into your space, something that would get him flogged if there were anyone around to see. But it's dark, and warm, and lonely in his poor hovel, and he likes how a little bit of your bravery is sapped away with him so close. Likes to see the uncertainty bleed into the curve of your brow with every notch your fine spine bends.

"Riley the blacksmith." You run a delicate finger on the flat side of a blade Simon was working on earlier, pressing prints into the cooled iron where it rests on the table beside you both. You're pretending now, pretending you're not afraid. But you can't look at him, and Simon can see your chest rise and fall.

"You'll forge a new sword for my husband," you continue. "I've brought good steel from my home for you to use."

"Not some jewelry?" he asks.

You hum. "I have enough jewelry."

"Didn't mean for you."

That gets your eyes back on him. You're affronted at the insult to your perfect lord. You draw yourself to your full height, taking back the measures you shrank. It's still lengths below Simon, and you know it. Simon sees the exact moment you realize just how tall you'd have to grow to match him, so you put another kind of distance between you and him. You glide to the other side of his work table, and when you speak, it's harsh and proud. "No jewelry. A sword, a longsword."

"Why?"

Chin tipped high, shoulders squared; a bead of sweat rolls down your temple. "Because I want for it."

"Used to getting what you want, little bird?" Simon follows your path, but when he steps, you step, and it's a dance. Not the measured steps you were surely taught as a girl, not the proper trips of light to plucked strings. It's a different sort of dance, and it doesn't help you. The only thing it does is get his blood hot.

If it's a chase you're after, you'll get it.

"Yes," you say.

Simon likes how your throat looks when you swallow.

"You don't know what you want," he tells you.

He could show you. In his mind's eye, Simon sees the woods outside the keep. He hears your soft footsteps thumping on the forest floor and the sounds you'd make when he catches you. Can almost smell the frozen leaves tangling in your hair, and the prey-sweat on your skin, and his jaw tingles.

"I do." You circle the table, never letting Simon get within arm's reach. Smart bird, but you sound as petulant as a child.

"And what's that?" he asks.

A table between you and him, and you think it is enough. That's the problem with highborns—they never think the lowbreds are half as bloodthirsty as they are. They think they are the teeth. Think their rank is armour. But what's a title in the mud, and even a worm will turn. That table could be across the room in a second, if Simon had the mind. You stir some creature in him, your furtive steps like the beating of wings. It rises from his chest like bile, that urge to hold you down, stop your movings and twitchings with his weight, feel your muscles flex below him.

Like a hound on a coursing—only what runs is hunted.

"A happy husband," you tell him, and Simon can't remember what the conversation was. He's busy keeping his feet planted, even as you step into the doorway and his every instinct begs him to act. He hadn't even realized you'd circled all the way back to the entrance to his forge, where the cold and daylight await.

"And a sword. By the end of the month, Riley, for his return."

Your scent sits in the air like poppy oil long after you've left.

You come back the next week, a winter rose tucked behind your ear and flakes of snow dusting your crown.

You're a bright thing, too full of life for this unwelcoming keep. Simon keeps thinking you'll wither, that one of these days he'll see you round a corner and you'll be sallow and wet like the rest of the north, but you keep surprising him. He eats his fill of you in glimpses, flutters of your cloak through the keyhole of his doorway, traipsing through the snow with your litter of gamines at your heels. You haunt his nights, his dreams, walking the scorched halls of his mind like a shade of witness, and in them, too, you run.

Simon wakes every dawn before you're caught. Always just around the next bend, soft soles padding on the stone.

Seeing you, then, measures from his wingspan and unaware of the danger dripping drool at your feet, Simon feels of consequence. Feels like a whispered name of a fable, too treacherous to say too loudly, or something may hear. Infamy, that's where Simon's thoughts lead him. Or into the loop of a noose.

Where you got that rose, though, he'd like to know. Crystal ropes of ice line the petal edges. A precious beauty frozen in time, black as liver blood. When he asks, you pluck it from your ear and hide your smirk behind it. "I met a handsome fairy in the wood, and he said he would give me a secret if I gave him a kiss. All I received was this rose," you tell him. Grinning like this is the start of a fun game, like you're the Good Neighbour between the iron oaks.

In your southern home, perhaps, The Folk are just stories. Here, in the unyielding North, people don't have the luxury to laugh at tales. If you're born in the snow, you don't take bargains with a light heart.

"Trading kisses, eh?" Simon grunts. Coke smoke and steam billow around him as he quenches a blade in a pail of water. Metal screams and hisses as it chokes for breath. "What do you want, then? A pair of earrings? I could give you a necklace you'd like."

You come to his side, straining around his torso to watch the steel drown. You're nothing, just nothing beside his great frame. He could bend you as easily as red iron, but your teeth flash with alloyed courage.

"Is that your usual payment, Riley?"

"Give me a kiss, little bird, and you'll get more than a necklace."

Sheltered, highborn lady, whistling in the dark. You don't even know what he's saying. You may have a shade of an idea, words sipped from distant whispers not meant for your ears, but it's like the light that slips through coloured glass. Insubstantial, just a facsimile of the real thing. You're here to catch rays to see what they feel like. To know.

Because you came back—like a moth to a flame, you came back alone to singe your wings—and you don't call for the guards when he drifts into your space. Simon wonders how far he can push you, and how quickly. Cool a blade too fast, and the core bows. Warps. Its edge turns to brittle glass, itching to chip and crack. Heat it too fast, and the steel tempers and softens. Becomes just another useless lump of metal.

He wants you boiling when you come to him, and you will come to him.

You've caught his scent just as much as he's caught yours. Like a doe snuck into his territory, you tease his edges—not wise enough to realize just how threadbare his control is.

For now, he'll let you feel the warmth sitting, perpetually, just underneath his skin. Let you feel your own size as he looms over you. Some birds like their men grizzly, like towering beasts with hard fists and mean jaws—you love it. Simon can see it in the twitch of your chin, the draw of your pupils, the hard spots of heat on your cheeks. Bad luck that you're married to your dim, fallow reed. Frightfully bad luck.

"There you go again," Simon whispers. The tips of his boots touch your fine shoes. Your delicate hands wring together in front of your belly.

"Pardon?"

So mannered, so decent, even as Simon can see your thoughts swimming around your empty head like water wraiths. Just the promise of a kiss below the murk, or a wet grave. He could pluck the pictures from your mind, roll them around his mouth like spit-stones, and he knows what he would taste. Interest, and imaginations, and lilac honey. Sweat and dew. Clotted cream. So virtuous, even as your lips hang slack, and he can see the pink, wet muscle of your twitching tongue.

"You blush when you look up at me," Simon tells you. Lets some scorn, some mockery, flavour the words as they burrow into your ear. "You even know what you're blushin' over?"

Your hand flies to your cheek, cooling away the flush with dancing fingers. An indignant huff puffs from your mouth, and Simon is sure you'd stomp your foot if you had less of a hold on yourself. It almost makes him smile. Do it, he thinks. Give him a reason to take you over his knee. Welts on your ass and three fingers in your cunt would wipe that whiny look off your face, he's sure.

He doubts anyone's ever taught you that lesson—doubts you even know just how hard lessons can be learned—but he wouldn't mind being the first.

"I do know," you puff.

"Know what, little bird?" There's a sparrow, just there, embroidered on your heavy wool cloak. The hours it must have taken to thread it carefully between the weave, the years of practise to accomplish a stitch with such beauty, precision. And Simon could ruin it. Ruin it in a moment. The urge bites at him as he reaches forward to pet the fine fabric between his fingers.

A risk if he's ever taken one. Simon likes his hands. They're rather important to him.

"Why ladies blush." Your voice is just a promise.

"Do you, now?" You're looking at your hem balled in Simon's heavy fist, at the scrapes on his knuckles so close to your belly where you're warm and heaving with breath. "Good little ladies like yourself blush at pretty highborns with flowers in their hair. Why're you blushin' at me?"

You're looking at him like a traveller near a bluff, aware of the drop, feeling the call. One tug, and you would fall into him.

He doesn't get the chance, though. At least, not yet.

The spell breaks, your lady's maid calling your name from the snow, and you take flight—spinning when he, for just a moment, doesn't let your cloak slip from his grasp. Simon knows it's no matter. Your winter rose rests on the cobblestone at his feet, already withering in the heat and choking air. You'll visit him in his dreams again, and maybe he'll see what will happen when you're snared.

Some rabbits chew their foot off. What will you do?

Your milklivered lord comes home clean as spring, and brings disappointment with him.

You try to hide it, but Simon knows. Plucked and preened, you greet him in the courtyard as you were greeted a month before, and present to him the sword Simon forged. The sword with the bloodgutter shaped to the exact curve of your lips, Simon's sickness hammered into the folded iron. The sword your lord can hardly hold upright as his thin arm trembles. Chagrin dusts your tepid smile when his frail hand cups your chin. When he wraps you in his hold, and so much of you is left exposed to the chill.

He's weak, another thing Simon can crush in his palm, but that one, he hates.

And the disappointments only grow, only follow you—dragging behind you like a limp mule slowing down the retinue. Better to cull the lame thing, put everyone out of their misery, but you, the dutiful wife, do try. The servants say you read to him by the hearth in the evenings, and tug him on gentle walks through the wood, and they whisper about the noises he makes as he sweats over you every night. And you glow and simper in the mornings, but he can't keep you happy.

Simplest thing in the world to breed a bird, and your lord is failing.

He's letting you wilt. When more months go by without an heir in your belly, the folk start to whisper. They think there must be something wrong with you. The women make you eat comfrey and daisy, and carve words into the butter you lathe on your bread. They stir hare's egg powder into the tea you choke down. You plant parsley alone in the dawn light, nails cracking in the hard, cold soil, and if you aren't growing soon, you'll be sent away. Back to your father, who may not receive you, or to a lone and quiet convent to dwindle into old age.

Or worse. Much worse can befall a woman who doesn't give her husband a child. You're in a different sort of trap, now.

Simon knows it's not your fault, but he seems to be the only one who does. So he waits—lingers in your periphery for you to work it out for yourself—and it's the dead of night when you come back to him at last. Your lord has just left on another campaign for his king, and you're shivering and washed with the snowfall, standing in Simon's forge. Winter-dimmed, strained in the face and hard around the mouth, but the blustering bellows dance warm, orange light over your skin.

It's what you've needed. Some heat. Should've come to Simon weeks ago. He can press some warmth back into you.

You open your mouth to speak, but Simon hasn't forgotten your last conversation, and it's time you listened to him. "It's because you like blushin' at me, isn't it?" he asks, coming to you where you stand by his work table. "Like lookin' at me. Wonderin' how it would be to have me in your bed and not that tallow-faced lord of yours."

"He's not—"

"He is. Can't even put a baby in your belly." The keep is dark and quiet in the distance. Only the mice are awake. Even though you don't scream when Simon bullies one paw beneath your cloak, planting his palm on your soft stomach, he doubts anyone would hear if you did. "I can do it, little bird. I can give you a pup, and it won't take me no season either."

You grip his forearm like you're going to push him off, but when your nails sink into the scars and mottled flesh there, you hesitate. Something mercenary sits in your gaze, something hard-won and hewn in ice. No more mischief, just purpose.

Simon's a venal man. What's another ware to be sold?

"I need a son," you say at last. Jaw set, shoulders tight.

Simon was never one who needed to be told twice, and he's held long enough. You squeak when he lifts you, hefting you with hands around your ribcage to be set on his worktable, but don't protest when he undoes the clasp of your cloak. Shoves it off your shoulders to find the thin shift beneath. Diaphanous, flimsy—your nipples pebble through the linen. You were probably tossing in bed thinking about this, of coming to him in your night things, wondering what he'll do with you.

Brave thing. You're a conscript yet. Simon can't blame you for your means to an end, and this is as sweet a bargain as he's ever struck.

You run trembling hands over his shoulders, as if picturing a child with his build. "A son, blacksmith," you repeat, as if you can speak it into being.

But that's Simon's job—you only need to lie there and let him.

"I'll give you one. I'll give you three."

Propped in front of him like a dinner plate, eyes round as the moon, gone is your stiff upper lip. Maybe you thought you'd take it like a soldier—get the job done like farm animals and be back to your soft bed within minutes. You don't know, though, what you owe him. What you've done to him in his thoughts. Simon has a score to settle in your flesh, and a hunger in his belly he intends to sate in your sweat. Made him wait, you did. He's going to savour it.

He slips between your legs, bending down and down to bump your chin with his own. You know your pact. He wants his payment.

The kiss you give him is hesitant, cold lips on a warm, scarred mouth. His melted flesh pulls his lips into a permanent sneer, but you don't seem to mind. It's your tongue, first, which presses into his teeth. Your jaw, first, to pop open, expecting. You taste like the first spring day—snow-melt and sunshine, new grass and dripping, shining, icicles—and you hold him like you're going to blow away in the wind. Tugging at him, his clothes, like you're skinning a deer. Folding stripped flesh over itself to get to the warm, wet muscles beneath, still filled with the blood that made them run.

Your shift is insubstantial, so delicate that Simon could shred it like wet paper—so he does. Rips it down the front in one, great sheer to lay bare the body below that he had been thinking of for months. Months. Wondering what you hid beneath your many layers of wool, how your breath would catch when Simon grabbed heavy handfuls of your curves, picturing sooty handprints marring your pretty dress.

You break the kiss to complain, some indignant protest that falls on deaf ears because Simon isn't listening.

He's looking, swallowing the sight of you so he can never forget the way it felt slipping down his throat. The swell of your breasts, the soft roll of your stomach, the plush give of your thighs, knees knocked wide around his hips. Simon's longed for this painting. His muscles cramped with it.

How dare that lord of yours let you walk the halls of the keep. If you were Simon's, really his, you wouldn't be allowed. He would take you to the woods, the vast, unending forests of the North, where no one could ever find you, and he'd tie you to the bed. Make sure the only thing on your mind is the next time his cock will be seated inside you. Drip honey in your mouth and fill your womb with his seed again, and again, and again.

He has half a mind to do it. Take you. Bring you to a place where you could run for lengths and never come close to another heart beating between the trees.

You're halfway to letting him, he thinks. Dropped back into some primal part of your mind as he lays you back, tools clattering to the floor, and latches his mouth to the soft velvet of your breasts. Everything he does, you react as if it is the first time, and Simon wonders. Wonders if he could mark the warm curves of you, sink his teeth in, take a bite and swallow, and if your lord would ever notice.

Limp, pidgeonhearted lord. Wasting you.

He wouldn't waste you. Thoughts catch like fingers on cliff edges, cock swelling, achingly hard, at you so sweet and fictal looking up at him. He'd crack his ribs open, tuck you there, if he could. Make you sip the air from his lungs, breathe when he breathed. Your years of careful comportment, of being hidden in high towers, crumbling in his palm like white ash.

Simon's never wanted anything like this. His stomach aches. He feels washed away, uprooted, by the want—vicious and cruel, rearing now after months of suffocation.

The want to raze and build anew.

Simon has a bed, somewhere—a threadbare nest tucked in some corner—but he likes you where you are, laid out on his table like another thing to be forged, moulded into whatever he sees fit. You move how he wants, pliable as liquid metal, as sweat blossoms in the dips and wells of your body. He could make you, but you let him. You only falter when he parts your legs and dips his head between them, looking like a filly. New to the world on weak knees. Eyes wide, confused, as he kisses your thighs. You rest your hands protectively in a knot below your navel.

It's a near thing, holding back the sleeping creature within himself. The one that howls to devour, claim, own. But things can be owned in other ways—forever changed, tied to him. Something, finally, for himself. Made to keep.

The first brush of lips against your cunt has you squirming, and he has to hold you down. "Is this … necessary?" you ask.

Simon hooks your legs over his shoulders, opening you up more to him, and his mouth waters. He can feel his cheeks tingling as saliva collects, and he can smell you. Finally close enough to really know. Loam, and lye soap, and the tang of dandelion milk. Gooseflesh blooms in the wake of his searching nose.

"Yes," he tells you.

"No wonder I'm not withchild yet, my husband has never—oh." A needless sentence, aborted with a bleat as his mouth descends.

Simon was right.

Blackberry jam—the sweetest thing he's ever tasted.

Even though you run from him. You're prim and proper about it, hiding sighs behind a furrowed brow and the flit of your fingers. Simon doesn't want the Lady; he wants what he knows is beneath, but he knows he's going to enjoy teasing it out of you. You're jumpy, writhing and twitching, swallowing soft hums and hiccups as Simon parts you with his tongue. Sipping nectar from the source, kitten-licks around your pulsing entrance until he finds the sensitive bud at the apex of you and wraps his lips around it.

Soon, other wetness joins his spit, and your hands leave their knot to scratch against Simon's scalp. Gripping his hair at the root, pushing his face into your bucking hips, and it tastes like victory. Your lord is off conquering a strip of land no one cares about, and Simon is here conquering his wife. Simon can feel the rumble in his own chest as he groans into you.

He pulls back, chin wet, to watch his finger disappear inside you, practically sucking him in as you whine. He'd give up breath to keep tasting you, to keep your velvet heat under his tongue and feel you pulsing as you're wrung out, but he has to see. Has to witness the crescent of dirt under his nail, the dark lines in his knuckle sinking in. Watch your stomach as it jumps, and your pretty face twisting up. Your walls flutter around him, giving in to his prodding, his petting, until he can slide another inside. And because he's greedy, Simon's tongue follows too. Muscle against muscle, he could drown in you.

Live forever on only this. On your trembling thighs and plaintive cries, nuzzling his ruined nose against your clit until you shout.

Supine, you thrash, limp limbs tensing and releasing like the crash of waves. Like you're scrabbing for purchase in the dark, and only Simon is there to lead you. "Wait—stop," you mewl, voice high and reedy, and Simon halts—barely. He doesn't ask why, doesn't trust his voice to be anything but a growl, and he doesn't want to frighten you. Not yet. Not when you're teetering on the edge of where he's taking you.

Tears rim your glossed eyes when you catch his gaze down the line of your body. "I don't know what's—I feel—"

Rage and male pride swirl in his chest, a potion he could get drunk on. Ire-honeyed mead his fists could siphon out. Sweet, sweet bird. Poor, mistreated highborn. Simon'll give you a dozen, a score, until you're spent and dazed. Until your eyes can't focus, and the only thing you can say is his name.

"Told you this was necessary, didn't I?" he asks.

You nod, a pout Simon wants to chew off tugging at your lips.

"Then stop whinin'."

You hold his hand through your release, lacing your fingers in his and holding them, locked, to your chest. Your eyes are closed as if in concentration, and Simon can feel your heartbeat against his wrist, thumping in time with your pitiful laments. They pour from your throat as if hooked out, spiralling upward in rungs like a silver-keen melody. It's winsome, how you curl against him, shoulders bowing inward, fingers scrabbling at the singed hair of his forearm. How you clench down on his fingers, still petting inside you, gummy walls pulsing as your muscles tense. Tight as a bowstring, horse tendons dried and twisted, until you're loosed, limp and panting.

Simon's decision is made. It drives into place like a rosehead in his nape, clouted in with your lips on his knuckles. Wrought-iron against bone, muscles making room for rusted metal. Can't pull nails without a fight, not once they've been clenched.

You scrunch your face up when he kisses you afterward, pressing your own taste back into you. He expects you to shy away again. To fawn, coltish and faltering. But you're on him the moment he pulls away, chasing him, sitting up from the table to follow the heat of his torso like you're an early-spring lamb. His tunic, you shove halfway up his chest without a care for the ties, and your nails follow. Clean, shaped things that leave lines in their wake, coaxing Simon's blood to the surface—a red bloom on pale flesh and stark, pink scars. Old burns still holding flame inside him.

Perfect, kept teeth sink into the plush of his chest as you tug at his trousers, paw at him, hard and leaking, straining against the fabric, like you can't wait another moment

—and you're his. Another man's wife, traded to him for swords and arms to wield them, but you belong to Simon. From the moment you smiled at him in the courtyard, you did. And not you nor any man could stop him. You mark bites into his skin like you could chew him living, and Simon thinks about making off with you like a monster in the night. Not Beowulf, but Grendel. But no one is nailing his arm to any wall, not when it can slip around the curve of your back and bring you close to him.

You come readily into his hold, trembling legs locking around his hips, fingers letting blood at the back of his neck, as you're carried. Anywhere. Any flat surface Simon can find so he can sit, can hold you fast in his lap and feel you tense atop his thighs. Let you work yourself full of him as the fire spits.

He doesn't know where he lands. Somewhere hay-filled and dusty. He can't stop relishing the feel of you, better than he could've ever conjured in his rotten mutt mind. So fragile, so soft—your ribs give when he presses his palms into them. A thing to protect, or shatter like overheated glass. Because blood-heavy, aching in anticipation, Simon wants to be cruel. Wants to let free the leash, the vice clamped somewhere in his stomach, and see what crawls out the back of his throat. Pour it into you, let your wrangle or succumb. Plant an ugly seed and watch it sprout.

Simon likes the thought of your lord finding out. Of him stitching it together like piecemeal and coming in the night. Likes the thought of grinding his jaw into the anvil. Making his skull into a fine cup.

You buck clumsily in his lap, hunting for friction. Grinding a wet spot into his trousers because he hasn't even freed himself yet. You cease at a growled command and wait so nicely for Simon to pull himself free and line up, even if your brows furrow at the sight of him.

"It will fit?" you ask. It's vulgar, the sight of him—mean and thick and dripping white globs of seed as his fist tightens around the base of himself—next to you. Shaking thighs and supple flesh, spit and slick dripping down your legs as you hover above. "Riley?"

"Yes, little bird."

"It's only … You're much larger than—"

"M'not him, am I?" He wraps his other paw around your nape, bending your neck to make you stare down between your bodies. The two of you watch together as you slowly sink down on him, the angry, red flesh and veins like bruises pushing inside, just past the lip of his crown. You're too tense to allow anything more, strangling him already; he can hardly breathe. "Look."

Your hands grasp at his shoulders, fingers clawing at the flesh and meat there. Can't do that to your lord, Simon thinks. Your husband is made of bones and twine. He can't take the bruises you want to mould into muscle, can't fill you so full you can't even swallow. Simon can just picture him wheezing over you in your marriage bed, you silent and smiling. Nowhere near the creature Simon's made—the lap dog panting in his hold.

You need him.

Need him to protect you, someone to cover your whole body with his own until you're not even there. Until nothing can find you. Your lord can't make you safe like that. Simon can.

You suck in gulping breaths like a gaping fish as you lower yourself, squeezing him in steadily. It's velvet heat and mouthwatering pressure all around him that make his thoughts dart like wide-eyed hares. Your forehead slides against his, slick with sweat and the mixed putty of settling ash, and he can taste your lungs on his lips. You grind back and forth as you work him in—too fast. Too fervid and impatient, you constrict around him, forcing him in with hurt twisting your pout into a grimace.

"Careful," Simon warns. He moves his grip to your hips to guide you, sliding you up and down his length in slow, shallow dips as you hiccup. "Like this. That's it."

Teaching you how to take him, making you ease him inside because you're too eager to check yourself, choking down pain just to get him in, in—it cracks open something wretched in Simon. It spills like spoiled egg yolk through his chest, dripping through the rungs of his ribcage to dry and split. He wants to pop out every one of your teeth like willow buds and hold them in his cheek. Wants to bite your knuckles into his mouth and feel the bones grind together. He wants. He wants.

You, eyes fastened to the joining of your bodies and none the wiser, spill a warm whine over his mouth. Protesting the pace, you scratch your grievances into his skin.

"Slow at first," he tells you, nipping at the curve of your jaw to quell the ache in his own. "Just this time, little bird."

"No," you complain, pettish and sullen. Sour in your urgency, piqued in your restlessness. "I want—"

"Patience," he murmurs, but he can hear the strain in his own voice. Simon's been patient for months. You can weather a palmful of minutes. It's only a blink of time to get you used to his size. Simon's ox-built in all countenance, so it's steady, patient work, but your muscles give to him eventually. Suddenly, he's seated inside you, fully sheathed and struggling for control.

You're a vice around him, battened down like a garrote. He feels smothered, having to clamp down his insides so he doesn't do something awful.

"Can I move?" you plead, ignorant of the maelstrom happening inside his head, his stomach. You plant sweet kisses on his cheeks, the corner of his mouth, supplicating for movement. Supplicating to be eaten.

Simon rolls your flesh under his palms, hobbling his desire with thin-spun thread. "You think of this when he's inside you? Think about if it were me?" he demands, unable to keep the cruelty behind the ladder of his teeth. "I'll show you."

He starts off blunted, keeping his clip deliriously slow, letting you languish in the feel of him dragging inside you—but that can only go on so long. You cry for him to speed up, to fill you harder, and deeper, more savage, more bruising, and Simon obliges.

And Simon tells himself that this—snapping his hips into you, the head of him grinding against the plug of your womb, bullying himself inside again and again as your eyes roll, hands spasm—is for you. That he's freeing the snare, not tying a new one round your twitching ankle. But it's for him. Because maybe Simon likes sweet things because of the opportunity they promise, the chance of ruin. Nothing sweet lives in the world for long, not without interference, and you have so many lights Simon could snuff out

—or fuel. He could make you burn only for him.

A selfish sort of preservation, like a lover's hands kept in milky jars of vinegar.

His back aches with the strain, that old injury born of being bent over anvils for all his life flaring now as he pistons upward, but he's chasing. His own release and yours, hunting oaths and promises and the feel of you coming apart around him. He tucks you against himself, forearms squeezing your torso into his to lock you in place, but also because he cannot fight the instinct that's telling him to hide you away somewhere warm and dark and that might as well be somewhere beside his liver.

Your skin slides against his, your arms, so much smaller than his own, crushed between your chests so all you can do is huff and squeak as he drives out and in and out again. Rude, crudish squelching sounds dance in tandem with your high cries. Simon shoves your head into the crook of his neck, wanting you close to his pulse hammering there, and tilts the angle of his hips so that your sensitive bud grazes his abdomen with every thrust.

His name is a stunted cry whimpered out between heaving breaths as you clench, but it's not the pulse of your walls constricting around him, or the tender way your muscles run taut as you come, that sets his own release spinning. It's the thought of spilling inside you, filling you full and some part of himself taking root there. Of you, raised on silver and grace and careful comportment, letting yourself be bred by a lowborn smith with only the dirt to call his own. Because only he can—and you want only him to.

A lifetime of prudent rearing, unravelled in seconds. You've left the door open

—and a wolf wandered in.

Simon's body draws tight as his hips stutter, settling finally for just badgering the head of himself against your womb as he floods it with his seed. You thrash in his hold, bucking like an ill-tempered mare, at once running and grinding back on him in your own throes. You shake in his hold like a needle clinging to a pine, simpering out your afterglow into the humid heat of his neck. You're both left panting and sticky, the air in the forge suddenly suffocating.

You try to pry yourself from his arms, to sip cool air instead of the steam between you, but Simon grips you fast. "Can't spill a drop, little bird. You're going to sit here until it takes."

You whine, but settle, nuzzling at the strong cut of his jaw in a sated, satisfied way that makes his chest puff up.

You're very good, listening at last. Sitting there with Simon licking the soot and sweat off your skin until, eventually, he grows hard again, still inside you. So Simon flips you over so you're tucked beneath him and he can finally know what your muscles feel like straining below his, and know how you sound begging him to go slow, please. And he does—take his time, this go. Drives into you slow and hard until drool and tears slip down the side of your face, and you're begging him instead to fill you again.

You pay with a froth-spit kiss, and take your own price with eight red scratches up the curve of his back.

Simon wraps your cloak around your shoulders for you, fastening the cotton tight together up to your chin, and tells you to move quickly and silently when you return to your rooms. He tells you he will burn your shift, but you leave without ensuring it. Instead, Simon folds the tatters carefully and holds the linen to his nose as he closes his eyes—inhaling steady mouthfuls, looking forward to a dreamless sleep. Ragweed pollen, and sunwarmed skin, and the chimney tar he knows he crushed into you like powdered marigold.

He'll keep the shift.

Rage brews in his stomach at the thought of your lord returning, of him putting his spider hands on you, rubbing smooth palms over your growing belly and demanding the world proclaim what a splendid job he did. Simon tamps down the violence clawing at his throat—saves it for later, storing it in the cold cellar of his fists.

Yes, he'll keep the shift.

Leon doesn’t react much, has learned to school his face well over the years despite anything he hears. But it does surprise him a little, showing in his hesitation, the careful way he notices his body. You do this sometimes to him — surprise him with how much you really love him. He knows you do in the way you worry for him, your trembling hands over his newly-made scars. He knows your love in your kisses and assurances and the way you would go to bat for him, even though it’s him that protects everyone else.

Hearing you admit how much you do is different, though. Sometimes he thinks you love in a way that means you don’t burden anyone else with it, like it’s best served in little bites, like you think it comes with the edge of a knife. Maybe with more time and coaxing, you’ll realize he’s more than ready to receive the entirety of it. That he doesn’t care about the package it comes in as long as it’s yours.

“Sure,” he respond simply, another bite of food entering his mouth, like it’s the weather.

“Yeah?” You, like him, try not to reveal too much in your voice. But you sit up, heels on the ground, and your eyes are as bright as your heart.

(When did you both start reading each other so easily, a knowing learned and yet so inherent. Like how he knows his way around a gun, like he was born for this life — being here for the world, and loving you.)

“Yeah.” He takes your hand in his, runs his thumb over the top, makes the word have meaning. “Let’s get married.”

He says it like a promise, and with it a real weight, a knowing of what you’re both really saying — a world where you are both alive, have a future, make a life for yourselves. A jewel of hope despite everything, the kind of sweetness you can tuck in a pocket near your heart when the world inevitably goes to shit once more.

Wore your best silver pendant for the occasion. The one that never left your neck. Engraved with the symbol of the stranger. Yellow jasmine oil in your hair. A shawl of thin whispery chiffon in saffron orange lay about your shoulders. Gold thread and stars on the hem. To match the fierce copper red of your dress. Looking like a burnt sun rising over red sands.

Your dagger - newly sharpened - kept its usual place strapped to your thigh. It added a buoyancy to your step. Whenever you passed clusters of guards whose gazes lingered too long - as they often did. It gave you the steel backbone to glare back. Invite them to dare try something- you know who’d come off more bloody in that fight.

You’d been relieved of your duties for the afternoon. Almost everyone had. There was no one left in the keep to serve. Servant and noble alike flocked to the field to watch the courageous clash of armour and sword.

You stood off the road as carriages and caravans flocked down carrying plump lords and ladies much too grand to walk in the dirt. Trampling over dry grass to get to the same destination as the rest.

If they weren’t at war, this contemptuous court had to find some way to watch blood spill into the dirt. Even if it was their own kind. They’d cheer and roar whoever it was split heads or limbs off another.

Not very noble, to your mind.

You walk in step with Alssa. Who just locked her elbow with yours. Lake blue dress with a sage green shawl stitched with white flowers looped about her back. Camomile flower of her perfume catching your nose every now and again. Gentle lyrical stirring of petals on a warm breeze.

She had everything going for her you feared you lacked. Where you were seen as sharp, blunt and with eyes too piercing clever for their own good, she was deemed perfection.

Sweet, blonde and chirpy. She reminded you of a blue bird. Always trilling away, in her soft voice, her eyes as blue as any pure cornflower.

She was barely one and twenty. Came from the tumbled low buildings of River Row. This station in life meant a lot to her. It had raised her in her families eyes. A mere fisherman and washer woman’s daughter. But you could tell she still clung to the apron strings of home where she could. Innumerable siblings she was always crowing about. Blonder than the heart of the sun, all of them.

You had rolled your eyes when you passed a Lorathi Bard, strumming a lyre. He had fallen to his knees and produced a long stemmed purple flower from behind his back to grace her with. Dribbling on and on about her smile. She giggled at the drippy nonsense. You’d tugged her along out the path of such idiocy.

“He was handsome. Such a beautiful voice.” She said weakly. Turning over her shoulder hoping to still catch sight of him.

The notes of his instrument still plucked and sparkled in the sunny air behind them. Voice like butter as he sang. Tempting but wholly false.

“I bet he’s given a bloom to every maiden with a pretty smile who so much as breathes in his direction, Alssa.”

“It’s kind affection.” She defended. Jutting out her chin like a wilful child.

“It’s cheap flattery. Nothing more.” You promised her. “Men are fickle cunts who promise the moon. Give you stars and jewels. Quick to vanish once your legs are closed and the deed is done.”

“Must you be so sour tongued.” She ribbed. Shocked. “What kind of affection must you have enjoyed? To judge of it so coarsely?” She demanded. Her bony wrist slinging against your side.

You don’t know why. But a flash of a memory comes to you as if a Blackwater wave.

You think of needles and thread. Scent of clean masculine soap and red iron. And the hardened meaty shoulder that bunched under your touch. Carpeted with dark hair. You think of eyes so brown they could be made of oak. Quiet tender healing. The bark of a grizzled old dog. Cut you to the core.

Of course, your answer could have been far more brutal. Nastier impulses of men come bounding to your mind; a chapter of your life long since closed.

White bridal skirts worn to tatters, soaked heavy with black northern dirt and blood, tangling around your calves. Feet near bare in worn shoes. Numb from bitter snow. A bruise laying thick-heavy around your neck like a choking purple serpent. The feel of tan leather belt cinching tighter around your windpipe. Strangling. Choking.

You shake the thought away. In private moments, it all came back to you. Memories of that night that still seared like a fresh candle burn. But you tried with all your might to push it away. It never went. But it got easier to pretend. Time and distance grew around the exposed nerve memory like a root.

Recent events of your own had wrapped around the nastiness. Brought about something kinder.

Whenever you passed him in the halls. The familiar soap tangling with the scent of armour polish and metal. Or spilled red Dornish wine. You happened to catch the corner of his ruined face for only a second in naked candlelight as you were serving dinner to the Queen the other night. Eye dissecting you from under that inky curtain of wavy hair. Eyes churned to copper. Wondering why he couldn’t make you out.

You’d smiled at him. For fucks sake.

He recognised you as much as he’d dared. A glance that lingered a fraction too long. A curt nod of his chin. Dropping his eyes down and up again. You could almost hear that gravelly grunt of his; Little maid.

You’d catch the hem of his cloak sweeping away in the corner of your eyes when you enter hallways or rooms. As he was duty bound to follow about after the snivelling little prince. Hounds orders came from a shrill brat mouth and usually involving the cleaving or killing of innocent things. Joffrey’s favour to him toyed between gratitude and abuse. As he shook the wings of his Princedom, and tested his terrible violent delights.

You don’t tell Alssa how your sourness is a guard. It’s kept you alive. Being the way you are. Acid stares and a turning a marble cold shoulder sometimes was your best weapon.

“I just know. Be wary.” You finish for her. The inflection on your tone clear. Don’t be a fool.

That was the worst thing she could be here: a tender hearted little fool.

You’d cloaked your heart in steel long ago. Welded the cracks shut. Not even knives could penetrate. But a dog could.

Somehow, lord knows, even with your hard and grouchy northern mettle, Alssa had clutched onto your elbow with warmth, and spoken firmly of kinship to you, from the day you began service. Sweet melds well with sour.

“If you say so.” She mocks. Not unlinking arms with you even for a minute.

Your stomach feels empty after the long walk. You would be lucky later if you could find a passing vendor selling skewers of spicy marinated meat, candied nuts or hot cups of mead wine to purchase. They had to feed everyone here, keep them entertained. The moneyed and the paupers.

Your purse hung delicately from the braided leather belt at your waist. A few coins clinked within that you’d be happy to part with for some wine that wasn’t watered down. Maybe when it began to cool into evening. There was bound to be a feast after the tourney.

You come to where the road opens out in a wide maw to the grassy grounds. Studded with many huge cloth tents. Surrounded by sentinels of tall trees that crash in the wind.

The reek of verdant horse dung and smoke from smithy’s fires cloaked heavily. It made the spoiled plump lords and ladies noses scrunch as they stepped out their fine carriages. That in turn made you smirk.

You find yourself jostling in the crowds. Way down from the kings stand. Nobles crowd like flies to get the best view. You get what sparse space is leftover. Eyes seeking for any view of the tourney field.

You managed to struggle to the front of the crowds down the far end. Winding between merchants and less rich folk to find your spot. You pulled Alssa to your side who was being far too polite to some ill-tempered man in front of you. You silenced his tutting with a glare that could make skin crawl.

She stood on tiptoes, trying to glimpse the knight over the pounding of horse shoes on the dirt. The splintering of broken lances and shouts rose high above you both.

“Will you give anyone your favour?” She cheekily hip checked you.

You stared back. Unimpressed. Wry smile painted on your lips. You fight the urge to roll your eyes.

“Wenches like us don’t give favours. That right is reserved for highborn ladies.” You nodded in the direction of the stall seats near the king. A far cry from gutter rats like yourself.

Where finely groomed lords and ladies sit stifling, sweating in their heavy silks and brocades. Batting away pesky bugs and calling for cold Arbor gold wine. Broaches and jewellery glittering in the sun like golden mayfly bugs.

Look at it finery too long child, it’ll blind you.

You traced your eyes over the sweet auburn haired child sat next to Lord Stark. Clutching a red rose. Bright as blood and catching in the sun. Ser Loras had given it to her. Her resulting smile was as blinding as the noon day sun. Your heart sunk to think of that innocent child trapped here in this pit of vipers.

That thought seemed more potent when you saw Lord Baelish lean forward and slither a whisper into Sansa’s ear. Some men just cloaked themselves in the guile of venom. And you knew too well what men like that would do in a court like this. They’d sneer, and plot, and rejoice on the bones of those less fortunate and clever than themselves.

You’d heard whispers around the palace about the appointment of the kings new hand. You did recognise his dour countenance at once. A stranger to southern heat and strangling mannerisms. He was a stout northerner. A type you knew well.

Your mother had served in the kitchens of Winterfell under his stewardship as a maid. You’d worked them yourself as a small child. Scrubbing turnips and potatoes, or plucking chickens, shelling peas. Running to fetch spices from the market for the cook. But that was long ago. Back then his lordship was in its infancy. His marriage new and loveless. You’d heard only good things about the Starks since then.

Couldn’t fathom why they were here. In this rotten capital.

You rolled your eyes over the King. Sprawled fat and scowling in his chair with his goblet to hand. Sweet Myrcella and Tommen afore him. Joffrey lounging to his right. The Queen had taken one look at the lists and departed. Her face like she’s chewed sour lemons. You were assured that was normal for her.

Naturally, your curious eyes roamed a little further. Behind the boy Prince, to the towering man in armour behind him. Scowling with equal viciousness and boredom at the thronging crowds around him. Staring straight ahead at the knights who passed. Jaw tense at the sight of his kin on his terrible black stallion.

He truly did cut a fine figure. You couldn’t deny that fact. Strong. Broad. Proud.

Even with half his face melted, you still considered him the most gruffly handsome man you’d laid eyes on. If he had sprung from northern soil, you wouldn’t be surprised. He had that bearing about him. Broader than a grizzly.

Girls up north would beat each other to the death, for a chance to snare that warrior of a man as a husband. A big braw man to help father their young. Build a cottage. Farm the land. Giving him a warm hearth and bed to come home too. You flush with the mere thought of it;

So lost in your gazing, you don’t register when those eyes flick to yours. Feeling the weight of your stare upon him. You meet it. And you aim a gentle smile his way. He swallows and averts his gaze.

You smirk, winsome, at the idea that you’ve distracted the dog from his duties.

A sudden massive crack of wood took your notice. The swelling roar of the crowd accompanied it. You snapped your gaze down the field to see Ser Gregor falling off his horse and taking most of the jousting fence with him. Falling like a stone chucked in a pond. That terribly dark armour hitting the dirt. The dreadful whinnying of his horse as they fell.

You caught the way Sandors face dropped. Mouth a grim line.

Gregor chucked his helmet to the dirt and bellowed for his squire to bring a sword. All the heat sucked out of the sun. Your belly plummeted to your feet. You spied the muscle in the Hounds jaw tense. As if he was chewing gristle.

You recall the horror that hurst forth from the crowds when The Mountain unleashed his sword and struck it almost cleanly through his stallions neck. The dreadful wail of its dying cry. The way he charged like a bull and knocked Ser Loras to the ground.

Alssa clutched your hand so tight the skin stung. You’d be surprised if she hadn’t drawn blood.

Loras flopped around like a scaled fish in his silver armour. Ser Gregor advanced on him. Swinging his sword like he wanted to cleave him in two. Brutal swings. All rage coming from that boars blood stained face. Teeth grit. Eyes spewing black poison.

You heard a dreadful bark rise from the din.

“Leave him be!” Over the clamour of the shock, you watched Sandor charge forwards. Putting himself between his brother and the grounded Ser Loras.

He raced forwards and raised his sword to block the swing. Shoving him back a few paces. A snarl pulling through his lips. Fangs bared. The mountain gave him a cold look back.

You lurched forwards like an unleashed stray when they began to clash swords in combat. The prince rose to his feet and looked towards his father.

King Robert watched with a haughty glare as the Clegane brothers locked themselves in fierce combat. The shriek and clash of steel parrying between them. Brutal swings that made your stomach clench each time the steel swung for Sandor.

He stood and bellowed for them to stop the madness. No sooner than the command left his lips, did Sandor break away and instantly take to a knee. Stabbing his sword in the dirt. Hands atop it.

Your heart crushed to the back of your mouth when you saw how close Gregor’s sword came. Whistling an arc just an inch shy of his head.

The hound bowed his head. Subservient. Called to heel. Obeyed his king.

Gregor threw his red sword down. Storming off the field. Lest no one dare get in his way. Leaving death and destruction in his wake.

At a harsh look from Robert, the Hound clambered, sheepish, back to his full height. Sword down by his side.

Loras had risen out of the dirt like a pretty sleek white dove. Picked his way over to his grizzled protector.

“I owe you my life, Ser.” He stammered. Awed. Thankful the Hound had been the only thing keeping Ser Gregor’s sword sticking through his neck.

“I’m no ser.” He spat with derision.

Loras, undettered by his grumblings. Reached for his left arm and raised it high in the air. The crowd erupted in cheer. Clapping to his name.

As far as they were concerned, in their eyes, he was a Knight in that moment. Cloaked in nobility and no longer the hardened heel of all the dog jokes they thrust his way.

It put colour in your cheeks to see how much he squirmed under the amount of attention on him. Cheeks crimson. Hair covering half his scars. Eyes cast to the floor. Where a dead stallions blood inched and grew towards his feet. Flies crept closer to stick to the gore. Still people cheered.

You stick your fingers in your mouth and let out an ear splitting whistle to go along with the cheers. Alssa laughed giddily alongside you. Clapping eagerly for the young lord.

He twisted back with a concerned look on his face. Looking for the source of the noise. And he found you at the other end of it; smiling that damn smile again. Being so obvious with your flattery.

He turned his back to the applause and retook his post. Behind Joffrey. Keeping him safe as always.

He gingerly cast a look your way once more. You were still clapping. Smile brighter than the sun. Hair shining like a damn coppery halo around your face. Like a damn fucking angel, he thought.

He averted his gaze once more to the wooden boards below his feet. Lest he hope for things he shouldn’t. Lest he let himself become attached. And he knows what happens to things he values, they are snatched away and burned.

You knew everyone was cheering for that flowery Tyrell knight. You cheered for the Hound, and for the Hound alone.

You were a step up from a kitchen wench in a soiled russet dress near worn to rags, that was true enough. But you’re not sure the leers from hungry filthy guards, the occasional cup of watered down wine, and long hot hours of work are worth the meagre station.

But you’ve never really known anything else.

A harsh bellow of your name roused you to attention. It bowled its way to you from the doorway to the kitchen’s. Shattering off the stone in its displeasure.

Standing and stretching out your legs was a welcome relief. Taking your hands from the cloudy water and drying them on a rag. You leave your fellow maid, Alssa, with your workload.

You trudge inside. The heat sticking your thin dress to your back. Hair coated in long strings to your neck. You huff, holding your skirts, and trudging down the uneven steps, sloping drunk with age and gravity, to the bustling, noisy kitchens.

The wall of heat is suffocating when you walk in. It’s a dank cellar with no windows and no natural light. The corners crawl with dirt and rodents. The air fugged with heat and spice. Continuous chopping fills the air.

Candles shake light on numerous surfaces. Some glimmer with blood and entrails from animals being plucked or carved. Some where bread is being rolled. A huge stove where iron pots are stirred over tongues of flame.

Cook is waiting on you. Darria. A permanently cross, elder woman, with meaty arms, numerous chins and jowls, and a grey scowl that could curdle milk. Salt and pepper hair scooped back to sag like old ribbons off her craggy face. Concealed in a linen cap.

“Raela is sick. I’m short a girl. You’re the most presentable. You’ll do.” She snips at you.

“Do for what?” You ask. A simple enough request. But none of the ladies here are quite used to the boldness of your tongue. Time in royal service hasn’t blunted the razor edge of your courage just yet.

“Hells teeth girl.” She curses. Slapping a cloth down on a surface. Fingers caked in dried blood and cooking burns scarred in old rosy flesh up her arms. “To take a tray to a lords room.”

Wafting her cloth in the direction of said tray. Upon sat a flagon of Dornish wine. A goblet. A plate piled high with roast chicken, bread and cheeses.

“Which Lord?” You ask with careful derision.

“The Hound.” She declared. Unfeeling.

She reroutes her attention to wiping down the surface near to her. Ridding it of slimy black blood and chicken guts. Slopping it into a basket on the floor. The red seeping into the cracks of her skin and knuckles.

You sigh. Swallow your dry throat. Because you can’t exactly refuse.

No matter how much stories of his ferocity turn your fellow maiden girls stomachs. You’ve heard tale how he’s cleaved men in half with that sword of his. With no more effort than cutting through a cooked ham. A fierce swing of his huge arms.

He was impossible to miss at court. A towering plinth of armour by the spoilt boy princes side. All growl and bark. A nasty bite too. Lurching along in big strides like a leashed stray in clanking armour.

Always he was armed to the canines. Swords. Daggers. Eyes stormy cynical and hunting for blood. A scowl that could chill hell - made more severe by the twisted flesh of his half burned face. Covered only slightly by an unruly mane of dark waves.

And you were apparently late to deliver his supper.

Starving dogs only made them crueler.

You’ve no choice in it. You keep promising yourself you won’t walk into danger; so careful to creep silent in the shadows to avoid it. Yet here you are; apparently welcome to drop food into its lap.

“Of course.” You come for the tray and hoist it into your hands. The edge digging into your middle.

“Step lively.” She barks at you. “Wouldn’t do to keep the big brute waiting. Lest he knock the pretty teeth out your head.” She threatens. A smirk showing her twisted teeth. Ill delight.

“Excellent.” You remark archly. Under your breath.

If she heard your sniping comment, she doesn’t show it. Too busy you suppose. Feeding near 200 people was a trial on its own right. As she reminded you all so often.

You make for the steps and begin the climb from out the warm twisted bowels of the keep. Air becomes clearer. More civilised. Threaded with roses rather than dirt and sweat. You see gardens and gilded rooms. Climbing flowers reaching round yellow stone columns. Footsteps echoing off tile and courtyard. There’s pattering fountains and pleasant oasis gardens to stroll in.

You pass a group of guards posed outside a door. A royal bedchamber. You feel their glistening eyes wander and climb over you. Like you were juicy quivering prey waiting to be devoured. Some of them call after you. Their words harsh and lewd. You don’t pay them any mind. Let the words roll off your back like beaded water.

Another thing about this cursed keep. You too had to guard your steps. Tread soft as velvet. Keep a shining dagger from a smith in Volantis concealed in your skirts. You never dare invite attention in this poisonous snake den.

You travel along corridors and wind up more stairs. Eventually coming to the hounds lair. Or kennel, as Joffrey often calls it.

Fetch my dog from his kennel.

You get a whiff of the strong deep red wine as you shift the tray and knock upon the door with your elbow. A growl from within tells you to come.

He’s at table when you enter. Blocking out half the light from the window.

Sat curled on a chair at the round table in his room. The chair he occupied pulled back far from the hearth. Almost turned with his back to it. Like he didn’t want to acknowledge it.

Really for one of his station, his room is sparse. Monklike even. Really he’s lucky they didn’t just put straw down for him. Throw him a hambone and keep him chained til they have use of him.

His rooms boasted hardly any decoration. No saffron curtains, and ornaments. No frills or statues like the rest of the knights or golden lannisters rooms you’ve seen. Those lions certainly lived for their fucking gold.

He has one very wide chunky wooden bed. All solid sturdy oak. Thickly carved with a white linen canopy curtain messily tied at all four post corners. Cushions sagging, and covers messed and mushed in the middle.

One trunk at the end of it. Worn. A faint insignia painted on its top. Gold background with three running black dogs.

A chair nudged between the shaded windows. Light spotted in patterns through the wooden shutters. Casting a shaft, one that danced with dust mites onto the floor like spilled cream.

“Took your fucking time. Where’d you go for those shagging chickens girl? Essos?” He growls.

“My apologies ser. We were short a maid.” You apologise. You won’t turn meek. You’ve learnt to keep your back to the door. Be snappy. Be polite and then turn your heel and flee.

He grunts. Inconsequential.

You cross the room and set the tray on the table. Out of habit you take the flagon and pour the wine into the goblet.

Then you discover the reason why every word he says, comes dragged through a vile growl. Why there’s sweat beading on his forehead. How he seems to curl into himself like a wounded animal. Teeth ready to bare and snap.

He’s injured.

His shirt is half pulled off his shoulder, fingertips left blood smears in the linen, he’s trying with fumbling too-big fingers to mend a jagged wound to his shoulder. Lacerated at the edges. Not a clean sword wound. It looked more like a bite. You could see indents of teeth where they’ve made their home deep in his trapezius.

You put the flagon down. He snatches hungrily for the goblet. Blood coming in slow thick rivulets down his shoulder. He wipes at it with woven cloth.

He grunts in pain again. A low simmer of a growl coming under his breath.

That’s when you let your eyes and mouth stray; just enough. Just when you were busy being careful.

“That will fester if you stitch it up without washing it.” You warn.

“Don’t bother, maid.” He snarls. Hiding his pain behind a shield of anger, and then a wall of aggression. He was more shielded than a fortress. Wine sunk its heavy spices onto his breath

You take a step towards him. “I’ve tended wounds before, Ser-“ you begin to explain.

The chair scrapes the floor like a dying wail when he stands abruptly. Strange for a man of his size to move so quiet as he did.

His whole body engulfs your attention. Designed to intimidate. Wide shoulders. Huge chest. He couldn’t half move quick - sharp. Ruthless as a hot knife through butter - when he needed too. In his case you’re sure it was life or death; the matter of being quick on his feet.

“I don’t care if you’ve fucked the shagging maester before. I don’t need help.” He spells out plainly. Grunting every word harsh. They fall like rocks from his mouth. With crushing intent.

His shadow fell over you. Big as a damn grizzly bear. Made you think of the tales spun to you as a child, of when they used to pit bears against lions in the arena for sport. Big. Lumbering. Ferocious temper and teeth to match. Carpeted in dark fur. Get on the wrong side of them they’d maul you to shreds.

That seems to apply to him too.

You couldn’t fail to notice he was as hairy as one. His shirt had fallen even wider from his shoulders. Over his sternum now. The wide neck draping down over his shoulder. Nearly down to his pectoral.

His chest was carpeted in dark hair. Every muscle was crude and rounded. He was so widely built, you couldn’t take your eyes away.

“I need wine.” He snatched the flagon and poured more into his cup. Nearly sloshed it over the edge.

“Having a belly full of wine won’t help you stitch it.” You point at his shoulder. Voice laced with derision.

He gave you a look that was all thunder and cut glass. His hair shading his ruined eye. “Works fine for me.”

“I’ve seen bigger bastards than you, succumb to wounds smaller than that.” You warn.

He twisted his face into a sneer. Lip curled. Showed his blunt teeth. The ruined side of his face twitched and pulled with it. He sinks back into the chair. It’s hard to know what groans more. The wood or him.

“Aye?” He challenges.

“I’m big fucker. Tougher to kill.” He assures you. Grunting as he tries to mop away more blood.

“I can’t imagine the prince would be pleased to lose his loyal hound to infection.” You intone darkly. He glares.

“Shall I send for maester Pycelle?” You offer.

“Fucking doddery cunt.” He growls. You take it as a ‘no.’ He continues trying to stab at his shoulder with a curved needle and slowly reddening thread.

You turn. Taking his onerous mood and the lull in the speech as your queue to leave. He didn’t exactly strike you as one who waved or dismissed servants at his leisure. He was high-born but he didn’t act it.

His voice stops you when you hand touched the door.

“Not seen you here before, little maid.” He snarls the name at you like it’s filth. He grits his jaw around the words.

You step back. Face him across the room.

“I joined not sennight ago. Ser. Whilst the King was away in Winterfell.”

He grunted again. You come to realise that’s how he answers most questions.

“What kind of maid knows how to sew bloody wounds and pretty dresses?” He seeks. Dark look blazing your way. Searching into places you’d rather he didn’t dig.

A true hound with a bone to pick.

“One who hasn’t spent all her life in a wretched slum in flea bottom, living on scraps.” You answer snappily.

“And where has the little maid spent her life?” He asks.

You frown. Tilting your head. He barks at you. Tried to intimidate you. Bites your head off at every word. And now he’s asking after your life before this keep. The duality set your head spinning.

“The North. Living on scraps.” You tell.

“Where?”

“The cold bit.” You jest. Eyes narrowed.

“Your accent isn’t northern.” He points out.

“No. I’ve worked for many houses since I left the north.”

The slightest curl of his lip tells you he almost found that comical. He almost had a reaction. Almost let a huff of amusement crash through his chest and out his nose.

“You stitched up lots of men then. Big northern fuckers too.” He stated.

“Aye. And even spitting fury at their worst, they were still more polite than you.”

He laughed. It sounded like stones and grit grinding against each other. An underused noise, you feel.

“We can have this very illuminating conversation or I can leave now and let you bleed and fester to death. Pass me the fucking needle.” You open your hand.

He has the brass balls to look mildly impressed that you, a handmaiden, is daring to raise your voice at him. It makes a healthy change from stares, grimaces, and wailing children who cry at his very monstrous appearance. From people scurrying away from his glares.

“Stubborn wench. Aren’t you. You gonna call me to heel girl?” He challenges.

“Someone has too. Dealing with mullish bastards like you. Hound. As I said, I’m not from the south. I wasn’t raised with pretty manners and a silver spoon like every lady you bow before.” You tell him acidly.

“Yet you got yourself here without those pretty manners.” He snipes.

“I’m a good liar.”

“You’ll need that to survive here.” He warns darkly. Makes your stomach drop to hear it.

“Needle. Dog.” You command.

He sneers. “Least you didn’t call me, Ser.”

The needle glints in the candlelight as he hands it over. It looked a ridiculous implement in his huge fingers. Like something doll sized. You take it gently. Hand brushing against his. Back of his knuckles wearing the same coarse hair as his body.

“You’re not a ser? You’re of the kings guard.” You explain. Coming to his side. Approaching carefully. Some lingering advice of being wary when coming near wounded animals. Keep your hand flat and you won’t loose fingers.

“Not a ser. Didn’t want to take the oath. I’ve seen what knighted ser’s do to small folk like you.” He snaps bitterly. You don’t dive into that one. You knew that well enough yourself.

You shift more stringy hair off his neck. Soaked thick with blood. It still followed a wave.

“You’ve soap? A basin?” You ask.

He jutts his chin across the room where it sat next to a bowl and a smeared cracked mirrror. A small cake of misshapen soap in a wood bowl sat to the side.

You cross to it and lather a fresh cloth in some water with the soap. It’s the simplest. Barely any scent. No decoration or gild to anything. It was clear he preferred living without it. Or wasn’t afforded it. You don’t know which is more likely.

He does a double take when he glances at your back. Eyes gliding over your shoulder blades.

Because a twisted scar knots and tugs across the smooth skin of your back. One he recognised but nowhere near as ugly as his.

Your pain wasn’t born by fire. The flesh looked like it had been torn into. By dagger or tooth. It wasn’t clean or delivered by the sword. Great pulls across the flesh, now knitted back together, skin catching almost silver pink and new in the half light.

You had really survived tougher things.

No missish maiden, indeed. They were ten a penny in this place. Clearly you were forged of greater mettle.

Takes a lot for a person to survive wounds like those. He would know.

You bring the jug back. Set it on the table near him. Pour some into the small soap bowl. Begin to wash and mop at the injury. Water trickling down that large chest. Darkening his breeches and his blood smeared shirt.

You feel him tense. The muscles in his shoulders ruck up. He turns his head away.

“I won’t hurt you.” You reassure. Voice softer than dove feathers.

“Are you soft in the head girl? Look at my face. Think I haven’t been hurt before.” He barks. Teeth gnashing.

“I’ve no desire to add to your collection.” You tell.

You continue mopping blood. He winces, grunts at the sting of the soap.

Mending in silence. You continue mopping blood out the way to see what you’d be stitching. Cleaning as best you could as you went.

He drinks his wine. Rolls the taste in his mouth as he considers you.

You’d stepped awfully close to him. Brave.

Soft hands working at his neck to cleanse. Taking away the rotten ruined flesh. One thing he couldn’t get over; the scent of you that now seemed like it filled the damn room. Filled his damn head.

The salt of clean sweat. Soap. Sunny yellow jasmine. The softness of your body draping under that ridiculous pink dress. Braids tied around your neck. Gathering over your very nice tits. It clung to your hips and legs. Certainly a pretty sight.

Your hair is what fascinated him the most. Fell in soft waves over your back. Redder than cinnamon.

Fell past your shoulders. Twined with the scent of those yellow petals like the damn rest of you.

He wondered if he were to take those locks in his hands, how smooth they’d be. How full of scent they’d be if he put his nose to the crown of your head. Silk and perfume. All things good.

How could he dare touch something soft and kind for once in his life.

His big scarred hands had only ever touched, with the intention of bringing back blood. Only knew how to touch with knives and swords. He knew violence. Dealt it. Lived it. Breathed it.

Grizzled old dogs like him shouldn’t sniff after pretty maids like you.

“You got a name, little maid.” He turns his head. Gaze seeking for hours.

You meet it. Again, brave.

“Aye.”

You give him your name.

That tugs a laugh out him. Like pulling something hewn to a rock.

“That’s a northern cunt name if ever I heard one.”

You scoff. “Do you talk to all the handmaidens like this? Call them cunts…”

“Usually. On a good day.”

“Bet they love that. You must be popular.” you remark dryly.

Everything you’d come to know about southern bred ladies. Like the rest of your fellow handmaids here.

They were all very docile and easily flustered. Weak as doe deer in the presence of any sort of rough behaviour. Life in service scared some of them. Exposure to men and nobility and their true violence.

Some girls came to this keep green as grass to the ways of the world.

You came to it knowing full well. You held no faith in stories of knights and fair maidens anymore. You pitied those who did.

“Run a mile usually. Cower out of here crying. Clutching their pretty little skirts for dear life.”

You contemplate him a long while. Squeezing water out the rag before repeating your bathing.

Watching that big body slumped in his chair. Curling over like an autumn leaf. Hair curling like a curtain over his damaged eye.

Lords was he big.

He took up all the air in the room the way lightning steals ozone. You swear you can smell petrichor and fresh dirt. Though that could be the grit on his boots from the training field.

It’s his face that interests you more. The rough whiskery beard across his jaw and bearing only his pink lips. The sturdiness of a thick black brow whose twin had been burned away. The slight drooping of eyelid where his eye gazes out with nothing but contempt. Stitched himself together with wine and spite. This is a broken man who never disrobes himself for anyone.

Yet here you stand with your hands knotting his very flesh back together.

If you told your fellow maids you’d tended the hound, they really would call you soft in the head.

“You’re not half as frightening as you think you are.” You admit quietly. Starting to thread the needle.

He huffs. Disbelieving.

“Cross swords with me you’ll soon find out.”

That makes you smile.

He doesn’t know why but he cherishes that a little. Making a pretty maid smile. He tucks that somewhere in his big chest. Some secret pocket somewhere only he knew of. So he could take it out again later in a quiet moment and laugh bitterly at how an ugly old dog could make a maid laugh with him - not at him.

“I just wash the linens. Pour wine. And empty the chamber pots. Remember?” You sass.

“That why you got a dagger in your dress, girl.”

Your spine prickles. A hot sweet fluttering coarses through you.

Especially when one big paw of his lurches out and a finger taps to the side of your thigh. Straight onto the hilt of the dagger. He taps it. Sends a shock rippling right through you.

You shift on the spot. Annoyed. Caught out. 

Clever dog.

He winces when you pierce his flesh with the needle.

“I’ve seen worse than you bearing down on me Clegane. Dealt with worse.”

He flashes you the full scarred side of his face. He leered like he should terrify you. A sick smile on his mouth that usually worked in deterring others. “Doubt it.”

“Takes more than the sight of a burn to send me running. If you’re looking to scare me, you’ll be waiting a long wait. I know scaring people gives you joy.”

You concentrate on the stitches you’re making. Pulling the skin taut. Making sure it comes together.

Surprised he didn’t have a squire to help him. Then again, if he didn’t want a title, you doubt they’d offer him a squire for this kind of work.

“Killing gives me more joy.” He insists.

“You must enjoy your orders then. The ones that come screeching out that princelings spoiled brat mouth...”

“Some of them.” He admits.

“But never say that where the walls could have ears.” He warns.

You nod. You know full well what a royal court is. It’s backstabbing snakes and spies and disloyalty disguised as cooperation at every turn. There are those in this castle who would turn on you for very little coin at all. Rife with venom.

People who liked to deal in snide whispers and ill intent. You kept well away. Head down. Did your duties. Cursed the lot of them. 

Fuck the lot of them.

You finish looping the thread into his wound.

His hand finally unclenched from a huge fist on the table. Relaxing if only a little. The way a rock relaxed from the onslaught of rain. Barely.

“There…” You say. Finishing with a knot to hold the stitches well and true.

“Try and wash it with soap and keep it dry if you can. Seven help you it should heal clean.”

He peers around and once more makes a guttural grunt.

Your work was neat. Small stitches that spoke of a practised hand.

You wash your hands in the bowl and take the bloodied rags away. Dispose of the ichor stained water. You leave his needle and thread the soap bowl. Knowing he’d need it again.

“Anything else, my lord?” You ask.

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

“Certainly.” You fire back.

Gathering yourself to move the used utensils and cloths into your arms.

You made to leave across the room. Light treads creaking across the wheezing floorboards.

He chews his teeth around the words lodged in his throat. They finally birth past his tongue.

“How’d you get that scar. On your back?” He asks. Voice grisly.

Hand on the door. You give him your clever answer before you step through.

Your smile is devastating when you explain.

“Mauled. By a hound.”

You shut the door to his sneering expression. You think you almost hear laughter before the door shuts into place.

-

Some moons later, you trudged back to your room. Fully intending to climb into bed for a handful of hours of sleep if no one caught your attentions.

The kitchen thankfully was dark and empty. The silence laying thick in the keep from outside and within told you that even the rats in the kitchen had gone to sleep too.

You rubbed your eyes. Sluiced in sweat that you’d have to rise early and wash off. Bathe yourself in perfumes and present yourself prettily for your service tomorrow. Run soap and oils through your hair. Make sure your dress was spotless.

You were to be helping see to the Imp on the morrow.

You’d need your wits about you. You’d been warned he was dastardly when he had a mind to be. But he liked cynical girls and sparkling wit. Cook grunted. Said you’d be perfect for him.

You weaved through the labyrinthian corridors where the maids slept. Straw down on the cobblestone floor. Rats clinging to the edge of the halls. You come to your door and the wood whines like a howling gale when you open it.

You were lucky to have the tiny fucking rat trap they called a room to yourself. The maid whose meagre straw bedded pallet stood a hairs width from yours, had wanted to room with another.

You didn’t give two shits. Meant you got some peace and space to breathe when you retired to bed in the small hours. Just when the pink of dawn knocked slanted into your room in rosy lilac hues.

You sunk into the sagging itchy mattress. Only made bearable by thin linen sheets and a semi decent bolster pillow.

The candle on the tiny washstand flickered, melting into a puddle of wonky wax, dripping against the wood. The light cast in flickering tongues up the mouldy mustard walls.

All your earthly belongings heaped in a trunk under your bed. Your very few dresses pegged for dear life on hook in the corner. You hung dried flowers - lavender and jasmine - up to bleach in the sun, in the small spit of a window. Barely enough to shift light into the room that felt more like a cell than decent living quarters.

You hide your earnings in a leather pouch in the wall behind your bed. You know full well maids or little birds come snooping when you’re not there. You sleep with your dagger under your pillow. The lock on your door broken and old. Unserviceable if someone decided to bust their way in.

You lay back in your bed and untie your leather slippers. Your feet raw and throbbing. You sigh with ease. Shoulders straining against the bed.

You’re toeing the line of sleep and consciousness when comes a scuffle at your door. Instantly your hand sinks under your pillow. Snatches for your dagger. Warm in your hand. Deadly.

“Whose there?” You call out. Voice a terrible strain in the silence. It hums. It burns for more.

No answer comes. Just the clank of heavy steps back down the halls. Then you’re left with the silence punctuated by the squeaks of rats outside. Their little nimble tickling footsteps. And the roar of torches that barely light the way.

You open your door. Peering down. Catching the corner of a dirty dark cloak and the back of a dark wavy head as it disappears round the corner with a shifting click of armour.

You look to your feet. There sits a small whetstone. With a sprig of yellow jasmine flowers tied in a clumsy ribbon. Merry yellow and green.

You smile as you turn the stone in your hand. The flowers you lift up to savour their sickly scent.

His way of thanking you. Making sure you always had tools to sharpen your dagger. This was his way of giving you the best safety he could. Perhaps the only way he knew.

He really wasn’t the fearsome grizzled old dog they made him out to be.