Chapter 10 Perrin
PERRIN
The sound of Hal’s breathing filled the tent, shallow and hitching as each inhale caught on broken ribs. Perrin counted the spaces between breaths, his own lungs matching the rhythm without meaning to, as if the sympathetic motion might somehow heal Hal’s body.
The medic had left an hour ago. He’d said the ribs would heal with time, if Hal could keep still enough, as if either time or stillness were commodities Hal possessed in abundance.
Perrin sat on the three-legged stool beside the cot, fiddling with his own hands to keep them from shaking.
They’d trembled so terribly as he’d stripped the armour from Hal’s unconscious body, when he’d felt the unnatural give in the knight’s side, when Hal’s face had gone grey and his lips blue from the effort of breathing.
They’d shaken worse when Lady Kerran had arrived at the tent entrance, her face arranged in what she probably thought was appropriate concern.
Perrin had given her the doctor’s account and turned her away, no matter that she was their patron.
No matter that her favour was the difference between Hal being a knight with prospects and a commoner with delusions.
Turning her away was the kind of decision that ended careers, but he couldn’t bear to have her flittering about, feigning concern.
He’d asked her to return tomorrow, when Hal would hopefully be awake, and though she’d looked at him like he’d grown a second head, she’d left.
He had felt like a different man, telling her to leave, and though he’d felt powerful in the moment, now Perrin prayed to any God watching that he hadn’t burned a bridge Hal would need.
But he couldn’t have let her in to see his knight reduced to this—grey-faced and struggling to breathe, stripped of the confidence that made him Ser Halden the Upstart rather than just another common-born man with delusions of grandeur.
Better to feel slighted than to see her broken knight; Perrin would rather bear her wrath than have her drop Hal as an investment gone bad.
The tent’s interior was dim despite the afternoon sun outside.
Perrin had drawn the canvas walls tight, blocking out the tournament grounds’ noise as best he could.
The celebration would be happening somewhere—the Nameless Knight being crowned champion, probably.
Perrin’s hands curled into fists on his thighs.
For hours now, he’d entertained the thought of finding the knight and driving a blade between those aristocratic ribs; to do something to make the man understand what he’d done.
He wanted to hear him apologise in that cultured voice before Perrin cut out his lying tongue.
The violence of the thought was a new development for gentle Perrin. But watching Hal fall, watching his body go limp in the dirt, had fractured the good-natured part of him.
Hal, his knight, deserved so much better.
He reached out and adjusted the compress on Hal’s forehead.
The cloth had gone warm, absorbing heat from the fever the doctor said might come.
Perrin dipped it in the basin of cool water at his feet and laid it back across Hal’s brow.
His fingers lingered, tracing the line of the knight’s temple, the rough texture of his cropped hair.
Hal’s face in repose looked younger. The permanent tension he carried—the set of his jaw, the furrow between his brows—had smoothed in unconsciousness, leaving someone almost boyish.
Perrin studied him in the tent’s half-light, cataloguing details he’d seen a thousand times and yet could never see enough of: the small scar through his left eyebrow, the slight asymmetry of his nose, the way his lashes were darker at the tips than at the roots.
The knight was too rough for beauty, too blunt in feature and manner, but lying there with pain temporarily erased, he came close to it.
Perrin’s hand moved from Hal’s temple to his jaw, fingers resting against the pulse point there.
The beat was steady if fast, Hal’s body working hard to heal the damage.
Three ribs broken, the doctor had said. They were clean breaks, which was fortunate, and they’d heal straight if Hal didn’t do anything stupid like try to joust before they’d knitted.
Six weeks minimum before he should even consider mounting a horse.
Two months before, he’d be ready for tournament work.
Two months marked the beginning of the next season.
His dear Hal would have no time to train, and if he did decide to joust—which of course he would—-there was a good chance he’d injure his reputation further when it became clear how his injury had affected him.
But if he didn’t, if he waited to enter the circuit at a later tournament, then the Upstart’s carefully curated mystique—eighteen months undefeated, the commoner who’d climbed to championship level through pure determination—would fade.
People had short memories. They’d forget what Hal had accomplished and remember only that he’d been beaten. Twice, now, by the same opponent.
The tent flap rustled.
Perrin’s head snapped up, his hand falling away from Hal’s face.
The Nameless Knight stepped through.
He’d cleaned up since the joust. His dark hair was damp at the temples, suggesting a recent wash. He wore a simple shirt and breeches. His expression was carefully neutral as he glanced past Perrin to where Hal lay unconscious, but something flickered through his eyes.
Perrin stood abruptly. “Get out.” Perrin’s voice came out flat and hard; this bastard’s breeding didn’t matter at the moment. He moved to position himself between his knight and the cot.
“I came to see how he’s doing,” Alaric said. “That was a hard fall. I wanted to ensure—”
“Get. Out.” Perrin took a step forward. His hands flexed at his sides. “You don’t get to do this. You don’t get to hurt him and humiliate him and then show up here pretending concern.”
Alaric’s eyebrow rose. “It wasn’t intentional. It was a joust. Injuries happen—”
“Don’t.” The word came out like a bark, that loyal dog in him rearing its head. Perrin’s hands curled into fists. “Don’t stand there and pretend this was just tournament work. You knew what you were doing. Last night, this morning, all of it. You planned this.”
Something shifted in the knight’s expression. The careful neutrality cracked. “I—”
“You used him,” Perrin cut him off, refusing to hear whatever fresh lie the aristocrat might spin. “It doesn’t even matter if I was wrong about your identity: You got in his head, and then you broke three of his ribs. Now you come to gloat.”
“That’s not—” the Nameless Knight started, but Perrin wasn’t finished.
“He could have died.” The words came out choked, all the fear and fury of the past hours condensing into his tightly wound voice.
Perrin took another step, and now they were close enough to touch.
Close enough that Perrin could see the fine grain of the noble’s skin, the exact shape of his mouth, all the details that had looked good in candlelight but made Perrin sick in the afternoon sun.
“So get out of our tent. Go back to whatever celebration they’re throwing you.
Accept your championship and your coin and get the fuck away from us. ”
“Perrin—”
Hearing his name in that cultured voice was too much. Damn it all! Perrin shoved the knight’s chest with both hands, putting his weight behind it. The knight stepped back, but he had a well-trained balance. Perrin shoved again, harder, and this time the knight’s hands came up to catch his wrists.
The grip was firm, inexorable. “Stop,” the knight said, and there was command in his voice now, the unconscious authority of someone used to being obeyed.
“Let go of me.” Perrin twisted, trying to break free, but the knight’s fingers tightened.
They were pressed close together now, Perrin’s hands trapped against his, their faces inches apart.
Perrin could feel the knight’s heartbeat through his palms, steady and slow, completely unaffected by the struggle.
“Listen to me,” the knight said. His voice had dropped lower, intimate in a way that made Perrin’s stomach twist. “I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. But I’m not your enemy.”
“You’re wrong.” Perrin tried to wrench free again and failed. “You destroyed him.”
“I jousted him. That’s what we’re here for.
That’s the entire point of tournaments—men testing themselves against each other.
” The Nameless Knight’s grip shifted, becoming less restraining and more.
.. something else. His thumbs pressed against the inside of Perrin’s wrists.
“What happened last night was separate. I. . . shouldn’t have. . .”
He paused, and Perrin met his gaze.
“I’m not who you think I am,” he said finally.
Perrin jolted. “The specifics don’t matter.
You are some lord, and we are beneath you.
You humiliated him all the same.” Perrin’s voice had gone hoarse.
He was still pressed against the Nameless Knight, still trapped by those long fingers, and his body was responding in ways that made him furious.
“You’re a bastard. A cruel, manipulative bastard who gets off on hurting people. ”
“Maybe.” The knight’s expression shifted, something like injured amusement flickering in his eyes. “But not you. You’re loyal. Ferociously so. It’s. . .attractive.”
Perrin’s nostrils flared. “I don’t care what you find attractive.”
“Don’t you?” Alaric’s head tilted slightly, studying him, before his eyes shifted to Hal.
“You were there last night. You saw what I was doing to him, and you saw what he wanted, what he was willing to take from me. And I saw how that affected you. I bet,” he murmured, moving Perrin’s collar aside, where Hal’s mouth had left a mark, “you came back and gave him something similar.”
Heat flooded Perrin’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut. He was a squire; backtalking this knight was a death wish. And yet he felt like some feral dog, determined to defend Hal against every threat, real or otherwise.
“My name,” the Nameless Knight said, “is Alaric.”
The sudden admission made Perrin blink, even if the name meant nothing to him, not in terms of heraldry or local lords. But, after a moment of deep breathing, he supposed it was an olive branch of sorts, a way to refer to the man himself beyond the epithet he’d chosen.
Perrin opened his eyes.
Alaric stared at him, and a lick of concern crept into his otherwise schooled features. “I don’t want him permanently harmed. That was never the intention.”
“Then what was the intention?” Perrin demanded, softer now. “If not to hurt him, what was all of this for?”
Alaric’s grip on his wrists loosened fractionally.
“I only wanted to test myself. To prove I could win without my name, without the advantages I was born with. Ser Halden is the best knight here, the standard I measured against—the best fighter on the circuit, truly.” His eyes moved past Perrin to where Hal lay unconscious. “I didn’t expect to...”
“To what?” Perrin pressed. “To actually care? To feel guilty?”
“To find him so interesting,” Alaric finished. His gaze returned to Perrin’s face. “Both of you. The dynamic between you—it’s compelling.”
Perrin scoffed, brazen with his attitude toward this obvious noble. What was so compelling about a squire tending to his knight? What would a nobleman see in them that he lacked in his own life, surrounded as he was by servants? That’s all this was, wasn’t it?
Except. . .
Perrin turned to look at Hal, whom he loved, and he understood then that was what Alaric saw. Love. A real devotion. Did Alaric lack that from the people he commanded? Did he have anything real?
A kind of petty relief flooded Perrin, then.
He may not have been anything more than a squire who would never know a nobleman’s riches, but he had Hal.
And even if Hal didn’t and couldn’t love him back, they had something real, a relationship that went beyond what was expected of them.
Alaric did not, and no tournament win would provide him with something only true companionship could.
Perrin was playing with fire, perhaps with his own life, and yet he couldn’t stop himself.
“You’ll never have this,” Perrin whispered. “Not so long as you think of people as things you can manipulate.”
But even as Perrin said it, he felt something shift in his chest. Alaric’s hands were still wrapped around his wrists, thumb still pressed against his pulse, and the touch had gentled into something almost tender.
This was the moment where he braced himself, expecting the ire and fury that always brewed in noblemen.
Alaric’s pride had been pricked, and Perrin expected a storm.
But Alaric only smiled. A real smile, perhaps the first he’d shown Perrin; a sad upturn of his lips, silver eyes full of grief.
“I know.” Alaric’s voice had gone quiet. “And I’m not here to make things worse. I just—”
“Both of you,” a voice rasped from the cot, rough with pain and sleep, “need to shut the fuck up.”
Perrin’s heart jumped. Ser Halden was awake.