Chapter 11 A Flower Pressed in Blood #2
It clung to armour, to tents, to the bodies laid beneath white sheets, softening their outlines into something too quiet, too gentle for the truth beneath. It crept into boots, numbed fingers until they could barely hold a sword, and froze the air in men’s lungs until every breath felt stolen.
Clyde sat on a half-rotted log outside his tent, the snow gathering in his hair and melting down his collar.
His gloves were stiff with blood that no scrubbing seemed to banish.
He’d washed them in the stream twice already, until his fingers cracked from cold, but the stains remained—a shadow, a ghost, like all the others that followed him.
Behind him, the camp murmured. A boy named Renn, no older than seventeen, hummed a lullaby in the dark, his voice cracked and low, breath rising in clouds. He sang for comfort, or for memory, or to keep from crying. Clyde ignored it. He had no lullabies left in him.
Instead, he stared at the blank parchment on his knee.
For three nights he had told himself he wouldn’t write. That silence was mercy. That Aerion, peacock prince of Valemont, was safer not knowing what the warfront had become—the dead couriers, the beasts that should never have appeared this far west, the slow, grinding losses.
And yet.
Every night his hand reached for ink. Every night he hesitated, the words clawing at him and refusing to form. He could fight a man in steel, stand unflinching before a beast’s maw, but a page… a page undid him.
Finally, his jaw tightened, and he dipped the quill.
The words came slowly. Each one scratched into parchment as if carved into bark.
Aerion,
The snow is constant now. It covers everything—tents, armour, graves. It makes the world look clean when it isn’t. I keep thinking of you when I see it. Pale, cold, impossible to hold for long. It melts in my hands.
They say the war will stall here through the winter. The army won’t be moving much further forward until spring. That means letters will take longer. A month each way, if they reach you at all. Two months before I can read your words.
Are you willing to wait that long, for every reply?
—Clyde
When he finished, Clyde read it once, then again. His throat tightened. There was so much he hadn’t said—so much he couldn’t.
He reached into his satchel, fingers brushing something small, brittle. A wildflower, purple and gold, crushed flat against the leather from when he had pulled off his boot. It must have caught there days ago, clinging to him as stubbornly as memory. He stared at it a long time.
Then he pressed it between the pages. A fragile thing, half-dead, but still carrying the ghost of its colour.
He folded the letter, sealed it with black wax, the mark plain and utilitarian.
No crest. No flourish. Just his hand.
Instead of calling for a courier, he lifted his arm to the sky.
A hawk sat waiting on the tether. Their couriers had begun turning up dead on the roads—slit throats, stolen dispatches.
The rebels were clever, vicious. If Aerion’s letters were intercepted…
Clyde didn’t let himself finish the thought.
He tied the message to the hawk’s leg with steady fingers. The bird’s yellow eyes gleamed in the firelight as if it knew the weight it carried.
“Fly,” Clyde murmured. His voice cracked in the frozen air.
The hawk launched into the night, wings cutting through the snow. Clyde watched until it vanished into grey sky and white flurries, carrying his heart two months away.
Then he sat back down on the log, gloves heavy with blood, chest hollow with silence.
And for the first time since he was a boy, Clyde bent forward, braced his elbows on his knees, and let his head hang in his hands.
The warfront stank of smoke and damp wool.
Tents sagged under the weight of snow, cookfires sputtered, and the stew was thin enough to see the bottom of the pot.
Men huddled in twos and threes, sharpening blades that would dull again by morning, trading stories with voices so low they barely carried above the wind.
Despair had crept into the camp like frost. Quiet at first, then heavier, settling into shoulders, into eyes, into the slump of backs. Clyde saw it everywhere he looked.
And as commander of the western flank, it was his burden to break it.
He rose before dawn, shaking snow from his cloak, and roused the younger knights with his boot. “On your feet,” he barked, his tone flat, unyielding. “If the enemy doesn’t kill you, the cold will. Swing your swords before your arms forget how.”
Groans met him, but the boys obeyed. They always obeyed.
By midmorning, the clash of steel rang through the frost. Clyde stalked between sparring pairs, calling corrections. “Footwork, not flailing, Renn.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy wheezed, sweat steaming off him in the cold.
“And you,” Clyde snapped at another, knocking the lad’s shield aside with his own gauntlet. “That arm drops again; you’ll be gutted before you see the blade.”
They cursed him under their breath, but they listened. They kept moving. That was all he needed.
At midday, when the drills ended and the men slumped by the fire, Clyde sat among them. He accepted a dented tin cup of broth from Merreck and pretended not to notice when it burned his tongue.
“Tell us again about Blackholt,” Marreck said, nudging him. “They say the ale there could drop a horse.”
“It could,” Clyde said, deadpan. “And it often did. Horses were cheaper than barrels.”
A ripple of laughter circled the fire. It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Another knight leaned in, grinning. “And what about the women? They say they’re wild in the north.”
Clyde didn’t flinch. He set his cup down, looked at the man steadily. “Wild enough to bite,” he said. “You’ve teeth marks, Marreck—you’d do fine.”
The laughter came louder this time, shoulders easing as men clapped Marreck on the back until he swore. Even Renn, pale and thin beside the fire, managed a crooked smile.
Clyde allowed himself the faintest curve of his mouth before standing again, looming over them all. “Eat. Rest. Tomorrow, you’ll fight twice as hard, or you won’t fight at all.”
They grumbled, but the spark was back in their eyes. Enough to last another night.
Clyde turned away from the fire, pulling his cloak tighter. He couldn’t tell them the truth—that their supplies dwindled faster than they could replenish, that the demonic beasts they’d fought were no natural enemy, that they were already outmatched before spring thaw.
But he could give them order. He could give them steel. He could give them the illusion of strength, and maybe that would be enough.
And when the fire’s warmth no longer reached him, he found his tent again, sat down on the same half-rotted log at its entrance, and let the snow bury him in silence.
The laughter lingered faintly behind him.
The ache of absence lingered sharper still.
The courtyard of Valemont Keep rang with the clang of hooves and the bark of protesting voices. Stablehands scrambled to cinch straps and shove saddles into place, while vassals crowded the steps, their cloaks flapping in the winter wind like the wings of frantic crows.
“My lord, you cannot—” Branvel wheezed, clutching his fur collar as if it might choke him.
“You’ll freeze before you’ve crossed the border!” another cried.
“Then I’ll freeze well-dressed,” Aerion snapped, yanking the reins of his stallion with a ferocity that startled the beast into rearing. His sapphire cloak swirled about him like a flame, his hair loose, his eyes fever-bright. “If the Hound refuses to write, then I’ll hunt him myself.”
“You cannot abandon the duchy—”
“Watch me.”
He had one boot already in the stirrup when the cry came:
“My lord!”
It was Heston, his butler, hurrying across the icy stones with no regard for dignity, one hand clamped around a cylinder of leather. His face, usually composed into polite indifference, was flushed with urgency.
Aerion froze.
Heston reached him, panting, and held the cylinder aloft. “By hawk. Just now.”
The world tilted. Aerion snatched it from his grip with shaking fingers, tore the seal, and unfolded the parchment.
The words blurred at first. He blinked hard, forcing them into focus.
Snow like ash. Pale and cold. Melts in my hands.
Will you wait that long?
—C
His throat closed. The reins slipped from his fingers. The horse shifted beneath him, sensing the sudden slack, but Aerion barely felt it. His chest heaved once, ragged, before he slid down from the saddle.
“Clear the yard,” he said, voice frayed but still edged with command. “Now.”
The vassals sputtered, protested, but no one disobeyed. One by one they retreated, casting uneasy glances, until only Heston remained, watching with quiet gravity.
Aerion didn’t look at him. He pressed the parchment to his chest as though it might still carry Clyde’s warmth, then turned on his heel and stalked back toward the keep. His boots echoed hollow on the stones, each step heavier than the last.
That night, he lit every candle in his chamber, as though fire might hold the shadows at bay. The letter lay open on his desk, the pressed wildflower trembling beneath his touch—faded, fragile, yet more precious than any jewel.
He smoothed it carefully into his journal, a secret he would never share. Then he pulled fresh parchment close, dipped his quill, and wrote with a hand that shook only slightly.
C,
I nearly rode out to find you. A few months is nothing as long as I know it’s coming.
– A
He sealed it with red wax, pressed his signet into it, and gave it to the hawk himself, his fingers lingering on the bird’s feathers longer than they should have.
When he finally collapsed into bed, the fire had burned low. His cloak lay in a heap at the foot of the chaise, his shirt half-unlaced. He pressed his face into the pillow, the scent of cedar and smoke still clinging to the parchment beneath it.
And at last, in the silence, a few tears slipped free—hot, bitter, unbidden.
“You bastard,” he whispered, voice breaking. “Don’t make me wait again.”
The darkness swallowed his plea. But somewhere in it, hope flickered like a candle that refused to die.