Chapter 11 Alaric
ALARIC
The silence after Hal’s rough command settled over the tent, even as relief warmed his chest. Alaric exhaled as he turned to see the battered knight staring at him.
Alaric’s hands were still wrapped around Perrin’s wrists, the squire’s pulse hammering against his thumbs, but he couldn’t contain the squire once he realised his knight was awake.
“Ser Hal!”
Perrin pulled away and crossed to the cot in two quick strides. His hands found Hal’s shoulders, and with a sureness that spoke of practice, he helped his knight sit up.
“Easy,” the squire murmured. “Don’t try to sit up too fast. Your ribs—”
“I know about my fucking ribs.” But Hal let Perrin help him anyway, curling forward in a way that spoke of pain, a body instinctively trying to protect its injured core.
His hand pressed against his left side, fingers splayed over where the breaks would be.
Alaric watched the way Hal’s chest expanded and contracted in shallow movements, each inhale cautious. He grimaced.
Hal’s eyes were open. Heavy-lidded and thin as slits, but open. Between his laboured breathing, he fixed them both with a look that settled somewhere between fury and exhaustion. “How long have I been out?”
“Four hours,” Perrin said. “You shouldn’t be talking—”
“Damn it, Perrin, my ribs are broken, not my tongue.” Hal’s gaze moved from Perrin to Alaric, who had unconsciously stepped into a half-retreat. “And you. You’ve got a lot of fucking nerve showing up here.”
Perrin wedged himself behind Hal, bracing the knight’s back against his own chest. One arm wrapped carefully around Hal’s torso—above the injury, so he was supporting without constricting.
His other hand reached for the waterskin on the small table beside the cot.
Instantly, Alaric felt like the outsider.
Was the outsider, he conceded; he was intruding utterly.
Whatever existed between these two men—loyalty, or love, or that middle ground in devotion that refused neat categorisation—it had roots he could not see and could not compete with.
Not that he’d intended to compete with Perrin for Hal’s attention.
It was only that a petty rivalry could never, would never, surpass something like love.
Suddenly, Alaric felt ridiculous. For all of it. For coming here, to the tent, and to the tournament at all.
“Here,” Perrin said, bringing the waterskin to Hal’s lips. The knight drank in small sips, and Alaric watched his throat work with the effort. Even something as simple as swallowing seemed to hurt. When Hal pushed the water away, he managed to lift his head enough to fix Alaric with a glare.
Those green eyes had lost none of their fire, despite the pain etched around them. “Still here?” Hal’s voice came out rough as gravel, each word an effort. “Thought you’d have better places to be. Championship celebrations and all that.”
“I came to see how you were.” The words sounded inadequate even to Alaric’s own ears. What had he expected? That Hal would welcome him? That showing concern now would somehow erase what he’d done the night before, the cruelty of his dismissal, the calculated manipulation?
“Well, you’ve seen.” Hal’s jaw clenched, though whether from pain or anger, Alaric couldn’t tell. Probably both. “I’m alive. Ribs will heal. Now, kindly fuck off.”
But Alaric didn’t move to leave. His feet seemed rooted to the floor, his eyes drawn to tracking the way Perrin’s hand rested on Hal’s shoulder, thumb moving in small circles against the fabric of his shirt.
Damn it. He’d wanted this, hadn’t he? He’d engineered his coupling with the Upstart to test himself, to prove he could win without his name.
And he had. Only, somewhere in the execution, he’d crossed lines he hadn’t meant to cross.
Had let desire override sense when he’d invited Hal to his tent.
Had panicked when Perrin appeared, embarrassment and fear of exposure making him cruel.
The memory stirred in him: Hal sprawled and wanting—wanting Alaric without name or title.
It had been a gift, though one Alaric hadn’t realised he was aching for until it was laid in his hands: proof that he was desirable beyond the fact of his breeding.
Proof that a man could want him without some other game at play.
Then Perrin’s narrow frame had cut the light at the tent’s mouth, and panic had seized him.
Why had Alaric done what he had? He’d spent the remainder of the night scolding himself, unsure where that viscous persona had been dredged from. But he thought, in a way, it came from fear.
Perrin’s devotion to Hal was absolute; any entanglement with the knight would always include the squire, a truth Alaric had at first wilfully ignored.
Worse, Perrin had already come perilously close to guessing who Alaric was.
Even wrong, Perrin’s natural curiosity unnerved Alaric, who needed to remain anonymous lest he face his father’s wrath.
But that hadn’t been why Alaric had chosen to hurt Hal as he had.
When Perrin had looked at his knight—hurt, shocked—guilt had struck Alaric harder than fear.
Who was Alaric to step between such devotion, to muddy love with his appetite?
Who was he to take, as he always had, and expect desire without consequence?
Perrin’s interruption had laid the ugly core of him bare. He had cast Hal from the tent to save face, yes—but also, he told himself, to spare what was real between the knight and his squire.
And perhaps to flee the terror of how much it had mattered to be wanted simply as himself.
But he hadn’t needed to twist the knife quite so thoroughly.
That had been fear talking, and panic, and a bit of his father leaking through.
His own panic at being caught wanting—not wanting the physical pleasure, which was a thing he could access at any time, but the connection beneath.
The way Hal had looked at him with his own desire, like Alaric was worth fighting and fucking and hating with equal intensity, had kindled his heart.
No one at court ever looked at him that way.
They saw his name before his face, his title before his worth.
Every lover he’d bedded had been paid, or if they were a member of court, had measured what use his favour might be over what ruin his anger could bring.
But Hal had seen only a man: a worthy opponent, yes, but underneath it all, a human, present, and real.
And Alaric had flung that gift back at him.
“I shouldn’t have said what I said.”
The words came soft and brittle. What could one expect from a nobleman, without much cause to ever apologise?
He floundered, feeling their gazes on him, and eventually cleared his throat.
“Last night. What I said about strategy, and—” He stopped as Hal’s expression shuttered further.
Better to speak plainly, he decided. “I was lying. I’m sorry. ”
Perrin’s eyes snapped to him, sharp and appraising. His hand stilled on Hal’s shoulder, but he said nothing. His stare, though, felt predatory; he was Hal’s watchdog in that moment.
Hal gave a brittle laugh that broke off in pain. He went rigid, breath shuddering. “You’re. . .sorry,” he repeated. “About which part? Using me? Or throwing me out like a fucking whore afterward?”
“All of it.” Alaric closed the scant distance between them, despite every cautionary whisper in his blood.
“I— wanted you there,” he began, voice pitched low against the roar of distant trumpets.
He hesitated as Perrin’s steady gaze pressed into his chest, a living cautery that seared Alaric’s fear.
The prince reaffirmed to himself the simplest truth: his bond to Hal was inexorably entwined with Perrin’s own unyielding loyalty.
If he wanted Hal, he had to court Perrin, too.
The admission came with relief and gave him no discomfort, instead sharpening something in his heart.
“I wanted it to mean something. And when your squire—when Perrin—stepped inside, I—panicked.”
Silence cracked between them like a lance against a shield. Hal studied Alaric as one might examine a rival’s lance before tilting—his expression turned coldly appraising, searching for the faintest fault.
At length, Hal said, “You. . .panicked because he made a guess. Because it threatened whatever game you were playing.”
Alaric met that accusation unabashedly. “Yes. I came here to prove that I could triumph without…certain advantages.” He fell silent, leaving unspoken the true edge of his shame and pride alike. “I have my proof now.”
“Congratulations,” Hal said, his tone an even blade. “Hope it was worth it.”
That—wasn’t what Alaric wanted. Wasn’t what he meant. Alaric felt the weight of Hal’s deeper wound: the sting of both humiliations. He swallowed past the lump in his throat. “The joust was never meant to break you.”
“And yet my ribs are shattered,” Hal replied, voice rough with irony.
Alaric’s chest tightened. “I know. I’m sorry.” The apology was small, sincere, and insufficient—but finally, he’d offered it. No more dancing around the discomfort. He was sorry for the pain he’d caused.
Hal inclined his head once. The gesture acknowledged the apology, if not its complete acceptance.
Alaric drew nearer still, compelled by some secret gravity.
“Hear me. I wanted you last night, and I threw you out of fear. You are right: I am noble born, and I am desperate to keep my title secret.” He paused, not wholly willing to spell the whole of it out: that their rutting had felt truer than any other he’d experienced, nor that he felt Perrin’s love like an all-seeing presence.
Alaric straightened and cleared his throat.
“When you are whole again, I hope to face you once more.”
Perrin drew in a sharp breath, but the squire said nothing.
A faint lift came to Hal’s brow. “Why? To finish what we started?”
Alaric’s lips curved with a quiet fervour. A flirtation? “Something like that,” he said carefully. “To strip away all this messiness and start again. I would meet you purely, on even ground.”
“Only the joust,” Perrin intervened. Adorable.
“Only the joust,” Alaric agreed, though that wasn’t the whole truth, either.
He craved the clash because Hal was the keenest foil he’d ever known, because in that moment on horseback, rank and privilege dissolved until only mastery remained.
Because he yearned to look into those defiant green eyes across the barrier of the lists and know he would not flinch.
But part of him hoped for—and sincerely wanted—more.
Hal paused, Perrin’s hand settling on his shoulder like an anchor.
Then the corners of Hal’s mouth lifted with the promise of a smile.
“Alright, Ser Alaric. I agree; we have unfinished business. So, next time,” he declared, voice all hard iron and resonant with his oath, “I’ll drive you into the earth. ”
Triumph and relief rushed Alaric, who heard in that declaration a promise he desperately wanted to meet. “Next time.”
It hadn’t ended, whatever had begun between them. It hadn’t ended last night with Alaric’s cruelty, nor with his win in the lists. There could be more, between the three of them.
In that shared breath, the unspoken thawed between them: Perrin’s steadfast devotion, Hal’s hard-won trust, the fragile unity they formed together, and the place Alaric hoped to find, somewhere in amongst it.
Then, to prove to Ser Halden and Squire Perrin alike that he meant every word, Alaric bowed to them.
“It has been an honour,” he said. As he rose, he noted the quiet prick of approval tilting Hal’s lips, and the sterner, unmoved expression on Perrin’s face. But, he thought, it’s a start.
“I should be going,” he murmured.
Hal nodded as though granting leave, yet no man amongst them stirred.
The invitation remained, quietly ajar. Finally, Alaric pulled himself away, and only at the tent’s threshold did he turn.
Hal sat pale but resolute; Perrin, watchful and determined beside him.
They were a singular bastion, and they intrigued Alaric more than the tournament he’d come for.
“Heal swiftly,” he said, voice soft but firm. “Both of you.”
With that, he stepped back into the glare of the afternoon.
The voices of the tournament swelled in his ears, accolades tumbling in his wake, yet his heart recoiled from their hollow triumph.
He leaned a hand against the canvas, chest tight with an emotion he had no name for.
A kind of pride, a tender sort of victory, but all of it shadowed by a kind of glee.
He had proved his point. But in that proof, he had unearthed something far more vital.
There would be another circuit, another field.
Hal would mend, stubborn and determined as he was.
And across the lists, they would meet again, lances levelled, hearts laid bare.
Next time, he tried to promise himself, he would not falter toward desire.
He would nurture this professional rivalry in Hal, and in Perrin, and with it, he would find himself as Alaric the Nameless.
At last, he turned away toward the dutiful life that awaited him, though his thoughts lingered behind, counting the weeks until those green eyes would shine across the barrier once more, wondering if his courage could at last keep pace with his desire.
Sunlight broke across his polished cuirass like liquid fire. Behind him, the tent stood silent. Before him, everything was beginning.
Isembard Alaric Blackmere, Crown Prince and Heir Apparent to the Throne of the Sevenfold Realm, Anointed of the Concordant Gods, and Chosen Scion of the Radiant Line, stepped forward to meet it.
THE END