Page 41 of Oath
John only grinned, unbothered. “A puppy bites just as hard, my lord. Sometimes harder.”
The courtiers tittered. Aerion sneered, but inwardly he noted how easily John’s words slipped into the air, how quickly he disarmed those around him.
In the days that followed, Aerion could not step into a corridor without John at his side. Unlike Clyde, he filled the silence—chatting with guards, offering handmaidens a wink, soothing quarrels between servants with a laugh and a clap on the shoulder. He greeted Aerion in the mornings with an easy “My lord, you’re looking particularly radiant today,” and in the evenings, with “Sleep well, the stars themselves envy your brilliance.”
Aerion rolled his eyes. “Gods, spare me.”
But John only smiled, good-natured, as if he’d been brushed off before and would be again.
He was proficient, too. He checked locks, tested steel, made a show of inspecting Aerion’s routes through the gardens and market. He carried his duty in plain sight, unlike Clyde, whose vigilance had always been a quiet, suffocating thing.
Aerion told himself he should be relieved. John was competent. Friendly. Decorative. Everything a lord might want in a knight.
And yet…
When John laughed too loudly at supper, Aerion found himself thinking how Clyde never laughed at all.
When John leaned close to murmur reassurance, Aerion remembered Clyde’s silence, how it could press heavier than words.
When John winked at the serving girls, Aerion thought, not for the first time, that Clyde’s eyes had only ever watchedhim.
Aerion drained his goblet, throat tight with irritation he couldn’t name.
John was fine. Perfectly fine.
But he was not Clyde.
And every friendly word, every easy smile, only made the absence more unbearable.
Aerion had never been one to sit idle. If the keep had grown quiet, if whispers dulled and courtiers busied themselves elsewhere, then he made his own diversions.
And John, with his warm smile and easy manner, became one of them.
It started in the gardens, late morning, when the roses clung heavy to the trellis and bees dozed in their blooms. Aerion lingered too long by the fountain, tilting his face to the sun so the light caught his lashes, then glanced sidelong at his new knight.
“You’ve hardly taken your eyes off me,” Aerion said, voice silken, careless. “Are you so vigilant, or merely enchanted?”
John’s grin came without hesitation. “Why not both?”
Aerion’s lips curved, but the satisfaction was hollow. Too easy. Clyde would have said nothing—or worse, something blunt enough to sting.
Later, in the hall, Aerion let his hand brush John’s arm as they passed. The knight stiffened just slightly, then looked down with a chuckle. “Careful, my lord, you’ll start rumours.”
“Let them talk,” Aerion drawled, though his chest tightened at the words. He’d tried this once with Clyde, and Clyde’s silence had been deafening, dangerous. John, by contrast, was disarmingly safe.
That night, at supper, Aerion pressed harder. He leaned close over the table, wine on his breath, and murmured, “Tell me, Sir John, would you throw yourself before a blade for me as gallantly as your predecessor did?”
John met his gaze with warmth, not challenge. “Of course. Though I’d prefer to stop the blade before it ever reached you.”
The courtiers cooed at the chivalry. Aerion laughed, sharp and brittle.
By the seventh day, he was bored.
It wasn’t John’s fault. The knight was handsome, capable, generous with his smiles. Any other lord might have been charmed. Aerion told himself he should be charmed. But every jest landed soft where Clyde’s silence had once struck like iron. Every look carried warmth where Clyde’s gaze had burned cold and steady.
John was firelight in a hearth—pleasant, safe, too easily tended.
Clyde had been lightning. Dangerous. Untamed. Impossible to hold without being struck.
