Chapter 13 A Kiss on the Throat
Chapter thirteen
A Kiss on the Throat
The morning broke red, the horizon smeared like an open wound. Frost clung to the ground in brittle shards, crunching under boot and hoof as the soldiers of Valemont formed their ragged line. Breath smoked in the air, too many eyes wide with hunger and fear.
Clyde stood at the front, helm under his arm, cloak whipping in the wind. He scanned the treeline where the enemy waited—a smear of dark shapes moving like a tide beneath the skeletal branches. His pulse was steady, but the air tasted of iron, and he knew what was coming.
“Shields up!” he barked. His voice cut across the muttering line, grounding the younger men, pulling them into shape. Renn was among them, face pale beneath his helm, his shield trembling faintly. Clyde caught his eye and gave the smallest nod. Hold.
The horns sounded.
Arrows blackened the sky.
Clyde raised his shield, the impact rattling through his bones as shafts thudded and splintered. A man to his right screamed, dropping as a bolt pinned his arm to his side. Another staggered back with an arrow in his throat, blood spraying bright against the snow.
“Forward!” Clyde roared, drawing his sword as the enemy surged from the trees.
Steel clashed. The line buckled, steadied, buckled again. Clyde fought like stone in a river, each blow precise, each step calculated. He cut down one man, pivoted, blocked another’s strike. The world narrowed to the ring of steel, the hiss of breath, the sting of cold on his skin.
Then—
A hiss. A whistle.
He turned his head at the wrong moment.
The arrow sang past his ear, so close it burned. It tore a bloody groove just beneath his jaw, grazing his throat before thudding into the cart behind him. The impact spun him half around, his vision white with shock. His knees buckled.
“Commander!”
Renn’s voice cracked the din. The boy shoved past two older soldiers, shield clattering to the ground as he lunged toward Clyde. He caught him under the arm as Clyde stumbled, blood soaking into the boy’s gauntlets.
“You’re hit—oh gods, you’re hit—” Renn’s voice shook, high and desperate.
Clyde’s hand clamped down over the wound, warm wetness seeping between his fingers. It wasn’t deep. He knew it wasn’t deep. But the closeness of it—the kiss of death brushing his skin—made his stomach lurch.
“Not… mortal,” he rasped, forcing himself upright, bracing on Renn’s slight frame.
The boy’s eyes were huge, frantic. “It was so close, sir. I thought—”
Clyde didn’t let him finish. He shoved him back toward the shield wall with a snarl. “Hold your ground!”
But Renn’s hands lingered a heartbeat longer, blood on his palms, before he obeyed.
Clyde lifted his sword again, vision sharpening into cold fury. The world roared around him—men screaming, steel biting, snow stained red—but the only thing he felt was the sting beneath his jaw and the echo of Renn’s voice in his ears.
He’d been spared by less than a breath.
And the thought of Aerion’s letters waiting in his tent struck harder than any blade.
The battle surged and broke like waves on stone. Clyde held the line until his arms burned, until every breath tore raw through his chest. The wound at his neck wept steadily beneath his collar, sticky warmth soaking the leather, but he fought on—because the moment he faltered, others would fall.
Snow churned red underfoot. Men screamed, steel sang. The world was a blur of smoke and blood until, at last, the enemy faltered, pulling back into the trees. Their horns wailed retreat.
The field quieted into groans and the crunch of boots on frost. Clyde’s sword hung heavy at his side. His vision tunnelled. His knees buckled.
He staggered to a half-shattered cart at the edge of the field and let his weight fall against it, the wood biting into his back. His breath came ragged, blood pulsing hot between his fingers where they pressed his throat.
“Commander!”
Renn was there again, stumbling through the carnage, helm skewed, shield long lost. He skidded to his knees in the snow beside Clyde, gauntlets already reaching. His hands were clumsy at first, fumbling for the wound, until Clyde growled, “Careful.”
Renn froze, then touched him again—but gentler. So gentle it made Clyde blink. The boy’s hands were trembling, but he cupped Clyde’s jaw with the careful reverence of someone holding something breakable.
The heat of those hands, the wide, stricken eyes—it pulled Clyde somewhere else entirely. Somewhere with velvet cushions and wine on the air. Somewhere with Aerion’s long fingers at his throat, tilting his head back with effortless claim.
For an instant, it was not Renn’s hand he felt, but Aerion’s. Not the battlefield he smelled, but the faint perfume of cedar and rosewater that clung to Aerion’s hair, the warmth of his laughter, sharp and mocking, softening only in rare, stolen moments.
The ache of it cracked him open.
He reached up, gripping Renn’s wrist, not to push him away, but to steady himself, to anchor against the flood of memory. His throat worked, though no words came.
Renn’s voice filled the silence, tight and desperate. “You’re alive. Gods, you’re alive. I thought—when I saw it, I thought you were—”
“Not yet,” Clyde rasped, forcing his lips into something that might pass for a grim smile.
The boy pressed a strip of cloth to the wound, his movements still awkward but careful, tender. Clyde shut his eyes. For a moment, he let himself pretend. Pretend it was Aerion leaning close, Aerion’s hand steady at his jaw, Aerion’s voice breaking with fear at the thought of losing him.
The pretense was a cruelty. But it was also the only warmth left in him.
When Renn finished binding the wound, Clyde opened his eyes again. The boy was still watching him, earnest, frightened. Clyde let go of his wrist, exhaling slowly.
“Back to the others,” he said, voice low, steady despite the tremor in his chest. “They’ll need you.”
Renn hesitated, then nodded, rising reluctantly.
Clyde leaned his head back against the cart as the boy moved away. Snowflakes drifted down to sting the cut at his neck. He closed his eyes, and Aerion’s face burned behind them, brighter than the cold, fiercer than the pain.
The camp was quieter by the time Clyde returned to his tent. Quieter in the way battlefields always were after—groans muffled by cloth, sobbing carried on the wind, men trying not to sound like boys. Snow still fell, softening the stink of blood, but it could not cover it.
Inside his tent, the lantern cast a dim gold glow across canvas and shadow. Renn followed him in, unasked, a strip of fresh linen in his hands. His face was pale under grime, eyes too wide, too earnest.
“You should lie down,” Renn said. His voice cracked, still pitched too high for war.
“I’ve stood through worse,” Clyde muttered, but he let the boy press him onto the crate beside the cot. His body sagged heavier than he meant.
Renn’s fingers were careful as he unwound the bloody makeshift bandage and replaced it with clean cloth. His touch was clumsy, but his care was undeniable—gentle where the battlefield had been brutal.
Clyde studied him in silence. The boy’s face was raw with youth, no more than twenty at most. Too young for this. Yet Clyde had stood at fifteen, armour too large, sword too heavy, fighting for men who forgot his name the moment he bled.
Cruel, he thought, to send boys to fight old men’s wars. Crueller still to see their hands tremble, not from fear of death, but from the effort to keep another alive.
“You’ll live,” Renn said softly, tying the knot at Clyde’s throat with surprising neatness. His hands lingered, calloused but warm, steady on Clyde’s shoulders. His eyes lifted, grey-brown and glistening, searching Clyde’s face.
It was then Clyde realized. The boy looked at him not as commander, not even as comrade. But with something softer. Something dangerously close to worship.
Clyde sighed, raising one scarred hand. He meant only to ease the boy’s trembling, to offer some shred of comfort. He patted Renn’s head as one might calm a restless hound.
But Renn caught his hand, turned it, and pressed a kiss into his palm.
The intimacy of it struck like a blade. Too soft. Too close. Too much.
Clyde pulled back sharply. His chair scraped against the ground. His breath came hard, uneven.
Renn froze, stricken. His face crumpled as though he’d just realized what he’d done. He stammered something—half an apology, half a sob—and fled, the tent flap snapping behind him in the cold wind.
Silence pressed in. Only the lantern crackled.
Clyde sat for a long moment, hand still tingling with the ghost of the kiss. He dragged it across his face, shame burning deep. He had no space for this. No room for anyone else. His oath, his thoughts, his heart—they were already bound.
He reached for parchment.
His hand still shook, but he steadied it against the desk. Ink pooled, then scratched slow into words.
A,
An arrow kissed me today. Too close. The healers call me lucky. I do not feel it.
I thought of you when it cut me. Red suits you more than it does me.
I won’t pretend the days are kind. But I am still here. Still writing. Still yours, if you’ll have me.
Do you still walk the halls at night? Do the roses still grow wild without me?
The snow here bites. But I find myself waiting for your words to warm me.
—C
He folded it, sealed it with black wax, and tied it to a hawk’s leg with care. The bird ruffled its feathers, restless, then vanished into the storm.
When the tent fell silent again, Clyde sat back, staring at the canvas walls, waiting.
He wondered when—if—Aerion’s voice would return to him on paper. And whether he could endure the silence until it did.
The hawk arrived at dawn.
Aerion woke to the sound of wings beating against the stone sill, the bird fierce and ragged from flight, feathers rimmed in frost. His heart lurched before he even touched the parchment tied to its leg.