Oath

Chapter 18 A Garden Dreamt

Chapter eighteen

A Garden Dreamt

Five years passed in the blink of an eye, and in the longest crawl of days Clyde had ever endured.

He had kept them all.

Every one of Aerion’s letters.

The first was creased a dozen times over, the ink smudged where his thumb had lingered on the cruel words: I’m married. Is this what you wanted? Are you happy? Clyde had read it until the words blurred, until he hated himself more than he thought possible.

The second, stained with tears he’d sworn not to shed, told of Isolde’s birth. Clyde had traced the child’s name again and again, until the parchment softened and frayed at the edges.

The rest—the bitter ones, the furious ones, the hollow ones—he kept too.

Hidden in a wooden box tucked beneath his cot, wrapped in oilcloth against the damp.

When the wind tore through the tents and the snow threatened to choke them all, Clyde would open the box and run his fingers across Aerion’s handwriting.

He never let himself reply. Never let himself imagine what it would mean to ride back west, abandon the war.

Every day, he told himself he had done the right thing. That Aerion was safer without him. That the duchy needed an Archduke, not a ruined knight clinging to him like a shadow.

And every day, those letters broke him anyway.

When the final one came—You swore an oath to me.

Respond to your master!—Clyde read it in the dim light of his tent and pressed it to his lips.

His heart thundered. His throat burned. He nearly saddled his horse then and there, nearly rode west through snow and blood to throw himself at Aerion’s feet.

Instead, he did what he had always done.

He stayed.

He fought.

And he carried the weight.

The thaw came late that year.

Spring was not gentle. It had to be bled from the earth, hacked free from ice and rot. The ground softened in patches, muddy and black, smelling of turned soil and moss. Snow still lingered in the hollows, but green shoots pressed stubbornly through, daring the frost to bite them down again.

The war did not stop for it. Battles still clashed.

Men still died. But the soldiers noticed.

They lingered longer at the fires, letting the warmth soak in.

Their laughter came haltingly at first, with edges of fear—but it was laughter, nonetheless.

They wanted to believe they might live to see green again.

Even Clyde.

He did not laugh. Not the way he once had, brief and dry, the sound so rare the men had called it a gift. But he listened. He let the sound of others’ voices roll over him like distant waves.

He still spoke little. Still carried Aerion’s ribbon tucked against the inside of his chestplate.

Once, it had been bright—a strip of crimson silk tied at the end with careless hands, smelling faintly of cedar and Aerion’s cologne.

Now it was worn soft as wool, its edges fraying, the colour long since dulled to brown.

The iron of the plate rubbed against it every day.

Sweat soaked it, dried, soaked again. Still, it held.

When the ribbon shifted with his movements, he could feel it press against his ribs, a ghost of warmth where none should be.

At night, when he stripped his armour, he would touch it, just once, with calloused fingers—careful not to tug it loose, as though the silk itself were the last thread binding him to life.

Some nights, in dreams, he thought he felt it tighten—like Aerion had pulled it snug against his chest with his own hands. He woke with his heart hammering, the taste of longing sharp in his mouth.

He still carved words into scraps of bone and leather when the moon leaned low—names of the dead, fragments of thoughts, lines of poetry that he would never send.

He still checked the small wooden box beneath his cot, where Aerion’s letters lay bundled in twine.

He never opened it anymore. He just touched the lid.

As if to confirm they were still real, that they had not vanished into smoke like everything else.

But one night, he dreamed.

And in that dream, there was no battlefield. No mud. No ash. Just a wild garden, roses clawing at the sky, a ribbon bright and red again, tied around his chest not to shield him but to tether him. To keep him from drifting too far.

When he woke, dawn light weak through the tent canvas, his fingers went to the ribbon in his armour. He pressed it flat against his chest, feeling its frayed edge catch under his nail.

And for the first time in years, with dirt beneath his nails and ash smudged across his cheek, he broke his silence.

My lord,

I dreamt of a garden last night.

Not one of yours—not the manicured kind with trimmed hedges and lilies brought in by ship. This one was wild. Untamed. Roses taller than you. Thorns the size of my knuckles. Vines crawling through cracks in the stone like they belonged there more than we did.

We lived in a small house off its edge. Crooked roof, chimney that smoked even in summer. The chair by the fire creaked when you sat in it. You kept bees. Said it gave you something to shout at that wasn’t me.

I sat under a fig tree and watched you argue with a sunflower.

You had dirt on your ankles. Honey smeared across your jaw. No crown. No cloak. Just you.

And I thought: This is what peace feels like.

Not a war ending. Not banners lowered. Not silence across a battlefield.

You.

You, and your goddamned garden.

—C

The letter arrived at dusk.

The sky was bruised purple, the sea below restless with a tide that snarled against the cliffs. Aerion had been standing in the west tower for near an hour, staring into that endless gray, as though he could bend it to his will—call a ship from the horizon, conjure a shadow from memory.

When the hawk came, he almost didn’t notice. The flutter of wings against the high stone was softer than the sea’s roar. It was Heston who entered, steady as ever, a small cylinder clutched in his careful hands.

“My lord,” the butler said quietly. He did not meet Aerion’s eyes, only offered the parchment and bowed himself out before Aerion could speak. His restraint, his composure, only tightened the coil inside Aerion’s chest.

Aerion’s fingers shook as he broke the seal.

He read.

And the fury came, fast and merciless.

“Five years,” he spat into the silence, pacing the chamber like a beast that had been too long caged. The parchment crushed in his hand, the inked words digging into his palm. “Five years of silence. Five years of burning myself hollow, and now—now—you write of gardens? Of sunflowers?”

His voice rose until it cracked against the stone walls, sharp as glass. He hurled the parchment, watching it strike the wall and fall, useless, to the marble floor. His chest heaved, his breath jagged, his eyes wild with the sting of tears he refused to let fall.

“I hate you,” he whispered. The words were thin, desperate. “Gods help me, I hate you.”

But hate collapsed under its own weight. The words cracked, then splintered, then broke apart into something weaker—something rawer. He staggered back to his chair and collapsed, his body folding in on itself as he dragged both hands over his face.

And then the sobs came. First low, stifled, as though he could keep them secret even from himself. Then harder. Shaking. Wracking. His breath came sharp and uneven as he pressed his forehead into his palm, shoulders bowed.

“Why did you wait so long?” His voice fractured into the empty chamber, too small to fill it. “Why did you make me wait?”

The silence answered him. Heavy. Mocking.

Until—

Small footsteps, soft against the stone.

“Papa?”

Aerion’s head snapped up, vision blurred.

His daughter stood in the doorway, framed by the glow of the hall sconces.

Isolde. She clutched a wooden doll against her chest, the hem of her nightdress brushing her ankles.

Her hair caught the dim light like pale gold; her eyes, impossibly blue, shone with quiet worry.

Too much of him. And just enough of her mother.

He tried to summon a smile for her, that sharp, careless twist of lips that usually came so easily. But it faltered. It broke.

So he opened his arms instead.

Isolde ran to him without hesitation, clambering into his lap with the certainty of a child who never doubted his love. She pressed her cheek against his chest, small hands gripping his tunic.

“Why are you crying?” she whispered, voice small and steady.

Aerion swallowed hard, his throat burning. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her as though she might vanish if he loosened his grip. His hand trembled as it threaded through her hair.

“Because someone I love is far away,” he whispered into the crown of her head. “And I am very, very tired of waiting.”

She considered this in silence, with that solemn gravity only children could summon. Then, as if deciding it was the simplest thing in the world, she lifted his hand from where it lay against her shoulder and pressed her doll into his palm.

The painted wooden face stared up at him, blank and smiling.

Isolde closed his fingers around it. As though to say: You’re not alone.

Something broke inside him anew, a softer break than rage, deeper than grief. His chest tightened until he thought he might choke. He kissed her hair, long and lingering, breathing in the warmth of her.

He held her for a long time. Long enough for his breathing to steady, for the sobs to fade, leaving only the ache.

At last, he shifted, drawing her gently onto his knee as he reached for parchment. He dipped his quill into ink, though his hand still shook.

Isolde leaned against him, her small hand resting on his arm, watching curiously as he bent to write.

Her presence steadied him.

For the first time in five years, the words did not come like rage.

They came like surrender.

C,

I wanted to burn your words. I wanted to curse your name. Five years of silence, and now you give me sunflowers and honey.

But I can’t. I can’t hate you, no matter how much I try.

Isolde is on my lap as I write this. She asks why I cry, and I don’t know how to tell her. Perhaps one day she’ll understand that a heart can break and still keep beating.

Do you know what you’ve done to me? You wrote of a garden, and now I’ll never see roses without thinking of you. You wrote of peace, and now I’ll never find it anywhere else.

You swore an oath. To me. To my life. And if you mean to keep it, then damn you, Clyde, don’t wait another five years to remind me you still breathe.

Yours,

A

The letter arrived a month later, carried on a hawk’s weary wings.

Clyde took it with hands still raw from polishing his sword. He broke the seal with his thumb, careful not to smear the ink, and unfolded the parchment slowly, as though it might vanish if handled too roughly.

The first thing he noticed wasn’t the words. It was the scent.

Even faint, dulled by days of flight, it was there: sandalwood, smoke, fig, the same perfume Aerion had worn since before Clyde had first pledged him. It clung to the parchment like a ghost of touch. Clyde pressed the page to his face, eyes closing, and breathed it in.

And for the first time in months, he smiled.

The lines carved into his brow softened. The iron weight on his chest eased, just a fraction. The ribbon in his armour seemed warmer against his ribs. Aerion was still the same—still reckless, still furious, still sharp enough to draw blood with words. Still his.

The ache didn’t vanish. It never would. But hope bloomed stubbornly in its place, fragile and green as the first shoots pushing through frost.

He sat down on his cot, lit a lantern, and took up his quill without hesitation. His hand was steady, his strokes sure. The words came easily, like water breaking through a dam:

My lord,

Your words reached me. They always do, no matter how far. I could not stop smiling when I read them, though the men thought me mad.

I feared you’d stopped carrying me in your thoughts. That the silence between us had grown too wide to cross. But then I held your letter and smelled it—still the same, still you—and I knew: I was never forgotten.

You ask what I’ve done to you. Do you know what you’ve done to me? Every oath I swore has turned to marrow. I can no longer remember the man I was before you tied me to your name.

Five years was too long. I will not make you wait again.

Yours,

C

He folded it, sealed it with black wax, and called for a hawk before the ink had even dried.

As the bird vanished into the pale sky, Clyde pressed his palm flat against the ribbon inside his chestplate, over the beat of his heart, and whispered:

“Not another five years. Not another five days, if I can help it.”

The hawk had barely vanished into the clouds when Clyde returned to the campfire. He sat down on a rough log, stretching his shoulders as though the weight of mail had doubled. But there was something different in his face.

A curve at the corner of his mouth. A faint softening around his eyes. It wasn’t much. But for Clyde, it was more than the men had seen in years.

“Gods,” muttered Sir Torren, squinting across the flames, “the Hound’s gone and grown teeth for grinning. Mark the day.”

A few of the younger soldiers laughed. One whistled. “Careful—he’ll bite them off if you stare too long.”

“Or,” Renn piped up, his voice lighter than his eyes, “maybe he’s found a sweetheart in the next regiment. Explains why he’s always lurking off with parchment.”

That drew a chorus of good-natured jeers. Sir Waldon—older, grizzled, a scar curling across his temple—threw a crust of bread into the fire. “Sweetheart? Ha. If the Hound’s writing love letters, I’ll shave my beard.”

The men roared.

Clyde shook his head, but he didn’t snarl, didn’t snap, didn’t bark them into silence. Instead, he let the smile linger, faint and private, like something he couldn’t quite cage.

“Not a sweetheart,” he said at last, voice quiet but firm. “Something worth holding onto.”

That shut them up for a breath. The fire popped, throwing sparks into the cold night.

Then Torren slapped his knee. “Hells, he admits it! The Hound’s got a lover. Saints save us all.”

The laughter rolled again, echoing out into the dark, but Clyde only reached into his chestplate, touched the faded ribbon hidden there, and stared into the fire.

The teasing washed over him, harmless noise. Let them think what they liked. He’d earned their jests, their camaraderie. They’d never know what it meant—that somewhere beyond the battlefield, a man with sharp eyes and a sharper tongue had written his name with love.

And that was enough.