Chapter 11 A Flower Pressed in Blood
Chapter eleven
A Flower Pressed in Blood
The first week, Aerion waited with amusement.
Or at least, that was the mask he wore.
He checked the doors more often than he’d admit, striding across the marble floors as though on his way to some important task only to pause, pivot, and linger by the tall windows overlooking the courtyard.
From there he could watch the gates where couriers rode in and out, their saddlebags stuffed with letters and decrees.
He told himself he was admiring the roses that lined the walkway, the symmetry of the paving stones, the polish of the armour on the guards below.
But always—always—his gaze flicked to the gates.
No letter.
No seal.
No Clyde.
He told himself it didn’t matter. He told himself the Hound was too stubborn to write so soon.
By the third day, he had turned it into a joke.
“Perhaps he’s forgotten how to hold a quill,” he remarked to a pair of handmaidens as they laced him into a new doublet.
“Or perhaps he tried to write and grew so bored of his own silence that he fell asleep over the parchment. That would be like him.” The women giggled dutifully, though their eyes slid to one another when he turned away.
By the fifth day, the joke had grown teeth.
“Well?” he demanded of Heston one afternoon, sprawled in his chair with a goblet of wine in hand. The butler had entered quietly, as he always did, hands folded before him, back bowed just enough to be respectful but never servile.
“Nothing today, my lord.”
Aerion clicked his tongue against his teeth, a sharp little sound in the silence of the solar. “Of course not. The Hound could go longer without words than most men could without breath. Stubborn brute.”
He laughed as he said it, sharp and bright. The laugh carried, bouncing off the marble and tapestries, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
Heston only inclined his head, studying him for the barest flicker of a moment before asking, “Shall I have the kitchens send up sugared plums, my lord? They are fresh in from the south.”
“Plums?” Aerion scoffed, rolling his eyes as he tipped his goblet, watching the wine swirl. “You think to sweeten my mood with fruit?”
“No, my lord,” Heston said evenly. “Only to give you something else to think about.”
Aerion froze, goblet hovering mid-air. His smirk returned a beat too late, polished but brittle. “Careful, Heston. If I find out you’re more entertaining than the court, I might drag you to supper just to watch their faces sour.”
The butler inclined his head again, as though it were no more than jest. He withdrew in silence, leaving Aerion alone with his wine, his smirk, and the echo of his own laugh that hadn’t quite sounded like his own.
By the second week, his amusement had curdled.
The couriers still came and went, their saddlebags fat with missives, but none bore Clyde’s hand. Aerion stopped lingering at the windows. Instead, he carried the absence into council with him, wearing it like armour.
“Three more petitions, my lord,” intoned the chamberlain, voice thin with nerves as he laid the parchments down in neat stacks.
Aerion lounged with one boot propped on the long oak table, twirling his quill between two fingers. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he sent it stabbing into the pile so hard the tip splintered and ink spattered across polished wood.
“Three too many,” he said flatly. “I don’t care if they want roads or bread or bloody cathedrals. Tell them to marry each other and pray.”
A ripple of unease moved around the chamber.
“My lord, that is hardly—”
“Do I look like I asked for your counsel?” Aerion snapped, his voice like a lash cracking across the chamber.
The chamberlain’s mouth pressed tight, his knuckles whitening as he gathered up the stained parchments. He bowed stiffly, but no words came.
Aerion leaned back in his father’s chair, smirking as though the exchange had amused him, though the air stank of tension and fear.
That evening, Heston entered the solar with a bottle of pale summer wine, the kind imported from the southern vineyards, crisp and sweet. “Perhaps something lighter, my lord—”
The goblet struck the wall before the sentence finished, shattering on stone. Red spilled down plaster like blood.
“Bring me what I asked for,” Aerion hissed. “Not a sermon.”
Heston bowed as though nothing had happened, but his eyes lingered on Aerion a fraction too long—steady, assessing, unflinching. For the first time in days, Aerion looked away.
The next morning, he stalked into the sewing room where a seamstress bent nervously over his robe. He caught her fumbling with the sleeve, her needle slipping just shy of the proper line.
“Is this the best work Valemont can muster?” Aerion hissed, jerking his arm back. “Crooked seams for a lord’s garment? Shall I parade your incompetence at court? Or should I have the stitches pulled with your teeth?”
The girl’s eyes welled, her lip trembling as tears spilled over. She dropped the needle, bowing so low the crown of her head nearly touched her knees. “Forgive me, my lord. Please.”
Aerion turned on his heel before she could finish, robe snapping like a whip as he stormed from the room. His jaw was tight, his nails digging crescents into his palms.
His hands trembled after.
By the third week, the absence had weight.
It clung to Aerion like damp velvet, heavy and suffocating, dragging with every step.
The keep seemed to echo with it—the hush of corridors stretched too long, the echo of doors closing two rooms away, the cold bite of marble floors beneath his bare feet.
He prowled the halls at night like a restless ghost, his robes dragging behind him like smoke, his hair unbound, shadows chasing him from torch to torch.
Sometimes, he whispered into the darkness, low, frantic, as if words could conjure flesh. As if Clyde might step from the gloom as he always had: silent and steady, sword at his hip, eyes grey and unyielding.
“Where are you?” he muttered once in the corridor, clutching his own arms against the chill. His voice cracked, brittle as glass. The sound fell flat against stone, mocked by silence.
At court, his laughter turned brittle too, sharp-edged and dangerous.
He sprawled across velvet cushions, jewelled goblet in hand, and sliced courtiers apart with a glance.
Their painted smiles withered under the weight of his words.
He mocked their gossip until they squirmed, sneered at their whispered confidences until they looked ready to choke on them.
And when he flirted, it was cruelty dressed as charm.
His fingers lingered too long on a wrist, a jaw, a throat, only to vanish the instant hunger sparked.
He pressed kisses into corners, lips hot with promise, then laughed in their faces and left them trembling.
He was hunger without satisfaction, a flame that burned only to scorch.
“They say he’s grown crueller,” a lady whispered behind her fan.
“Crueller?” another replied, voice trembling. Her eyes flicked to where Aerion lounged with lazy grace, his smile all gleam and threat. “No—hungrier. Look at him. Like he’s waiting for prey.”
Aerion heard them. He smiled. All teeth. Let them call him cruel, hungry, monstrous. Better that than empty. Better that than lonely.
Heston, ever the butler, never spoke of it.
But his hands lingered longer when pouring wine, as if measuring how much Aerion could endure before tipping into ruin.
The chamberlain flinched at every sharp word in council, quill scratching in nervous stutters.
The servants moved more carefully around him, as if every hallway now led to a lion’s den.
And Aerion fed on it. Their fear, their tension, their unease. He tore into it with claws and teeth.
Because it was easier.
Easier to bare his fangs, to make them cower, than admit what gnawed him hollow. That every shadow reminded him of Clyde’s absence. That every silence felt wider without his steady, wordless presence filling it.
At night, sprawled across his bed, Aerion pressed his face into Clyde’s last letter until the ink smudged faintly against his skin. He breathed deep, desperate for a scent that was almost gone, clinging to parchment worn thin from too many fingers.
“You bastard,” he whispered into the dark. “Why aren’t you here to stop me?”
But the shadows only pressed closer. And the silence, as always, answered louder than any cry.
By the fourth week, he stopped pretending.
He sat at his desk long into the night, candle wax dripping across the wood, parchment spread before him. He wrote furiously, ink blotting and bleeding from the press of his hand. Fury and longing in equal measure.
Why do you make me beg?
Have you forgotten me already?
Do you dream of me at all?
One by one, he burned them in the hearth, watching the words curl to ash.
Still, he kept waiting.
One night, he prowled his chamber until the wine blurred his vision.
His chaise became his battlefield, velvet cushions crushed beneath his restless body as he fell into them, staring at the ceiling.
The roses in the west garden had begun to wilt, their petals curling black at the edges, heads drooping as though in mourning.
He told himself they missed Clyde’s silence more than he did.
But when he finally collapsed into bed, he reached beneath his pillow and touched the corner of Clyde’s last letter. The parchment was worn soft, the ink faded where his fingers had traced the words too often.
“You bastard,” he whispered into the darkness. His voice cracked, breaking on the word. “If you don’t write, I’ll come drag you back myself.”
The silence answered him, louder than any battlefield.
Snow fell like ash over the warfront.