Page 43 of Oath
Aerion played his part when required. He arrived in the hall with a flourish, rings catching firelight, a smirk cutting through conversation like a blade. He sneered at Lord Branvel’s pompous speeches, teased a baroness until she flushed scarlet, left two young men quarrelling over which of them he’d favoured with a wink. But once the spectacle bored him—and it always did—he slipped away, vanishing into the quieter corners of the keep where only the servants followed.
“More wine, my lord?” asked Heston, his butler, an older man with shoulders bent by years of service. He entered quietly, as if afraid to disrupt whatever sharp thought lived behind Aerion’s eyes.
Aerion waved him over with a languid hand. “Fill it until I drown, Heston. And if you bring me another bird drowned in grease, I’ll have the cooks roasted instead.”
“Yes, my lord,” Heston said evenly, though his mouth twitched in what might have been a smile. He poured the wine with practised care.
Not long after, the chamberlain appeared—Lord Mertens, stiff-backed and severe, parchment clutched like a weapon. “The council petitions your presence tomorrow. Matters of levies and border tariffs.”
Aerion didn’t even glance at him. He tapped his quill against the parchment in front of him, eyes narrowed at a half-formed sentence. “Tell them to levy their own grandmothers. I’m busy.”
“With what, my lord?” the chamberlain asked, his tone edged.
Aerion finally looked up, sapphire eyes glittering. “With the impossible task of keeping myself entertained in a mausoleum. Surely that counts as governance.”
Mertens pressed his lips thin, but bowed stiffly. “As you say.” He left with the sound of his disapproval echoing long after his boots had gone.
Aerion sighed, swirling his goblet. The chamberlain was right, of course, there were duties waiting, decisions to be made. But the hall felt too wide without Clyde’s shadow trailing at his shoulder, too hollow without that infuriating, steady silence.
So he turned back to the page.
He tried not to think of it as baring himself, but each letter felt like blood on the parchment. Each word, too sharp, too dangerous. He hated that he couldn’t stop.
The fire had burned low by the time Aerion finally dismissed Heston with a sharp flick of his hand and a muttered, “Go polish something that isn’t my nerves.” The butler bowed without offense, retreating on soft steps.
Left alone, Aerion dipped his quill. Ink bled black against the parchment, the silence around him broken only by the occasional pop of wood in the hearth.
He began, as always, with mockery.
Clyde,
Your last letter was smudged. You’ll forgive me for assuming you let a snowstorm sit on it for an hour before remembering you had a lord waiting for your words. Truly, your sense of timing is worse than your manners.
Valemont is intolerable. Without your silence looming at my back, the courtiers whisper like rats in a granary. My chamberlain insists I must hear three petitions before breakfast tomorrow—three!—as if I have the stomach for bread and bureaucracy together. My butler looks at me like I am a wayward child. (He may be right.)
I nearly told them all to go to hell and followed, but then I remembered hell is where you are, and I’d rather not intrude on your little holiday.
You commanded me once to live. I command you now to write again. Often. If I must suffer the dullards of court, you must suffer my letters. That’s fairness, isn’t it?
—A
He leaned back, reread it once, and smirked. Too sharp, too glib, but then, that was safer. He would not hand Clyde his soft underbelly, not on paper.
A knock at the door.
“My lord?” The chamberlain again, muffled through the wood.
“Go away,” Aerion snapped. “I’m busy making history.”
Silence. Then retreating steps.
Aerion dipped the quill once more, added a single line beneath his name.
PS. I walked the gardens today. The last roses are blooming of autumn are blooming late. They miss you. As do I, though I’ll deny it if you breathe a word.
He sanded the ink, sealed it with wax, and pressed the letter into Heston’s hand when the butler returned.
“If this courier loses it, he’ll lose his head,” Aerion said.
