Darian.
Cade crooked two fingers.
It took the boy three full minutes to make it down—through the hall, down the inner stair, out across the yard—running with all the desperation of a child who thinks he might miss something important. He arrived flushed, hair sticking to his forehead, breathing hard.
He planted himself at Cade's side like he belonged there.
"What do you see?" Cade asked over the thud of fists and bodies.
Darian, still panting, said, "They're fighting."
"That's right," Cade said. "But look closer."
The boy squinted. Men moved in staggered bursts, shoulders heavy, swings slower than they'd been that morning. One man nearly toppled when he tried to change direction too fast. Another's punch lacked its earlier snap.
"They're tired," Darian said finally. "They're… slow."
"They're exhausted," Cade said. "Their bodies quit hours ago. But they keep going because the mind commands it." His voice was low, steady, almost calm. "Any fool can swing a sword. Any lord can shout an order. But a man who can force himself past his limits?"
He tapped Darian's chest twice with two fingers—gentle, but firm.
"That is the man who survives the next war," he said. "That is the man who wins."
Darian swallowed and nodded, small hand fisting in the hem of his tunic as if to hold on to the words.
"They were miners. Farmers. Butchers," Cade went on. "Men no one wanted. Now they are becoming something greater than soldiers."
Darian's eyes stayed fixed on the struggling men, on the way they still moved together, still tried to cover each other's blind spots even as they staggered.
"What are they becoming?" the boy asked.
Cade allowed himself the faintest of smiles.
"They are becoming Blackwoods."
Darian's chest swelled as if he'd been the one praised.
Cade looked down at him. "Where is your sister?"
"In the solar with Father," Darian said. "She said she was coming down in a few minutes"
Ten minutes later, she came.
Alysanne descended from the rear stair that led down to the yard, the hem of her dark red gown lifted just enough to keep from trailing in old mud. Her hair was braided back from her face, the plait pinned in a crown, a few loose strands curling at her temples where the river wind had caught them.
The first thing she saw was Cade.
He was bare to the waist, skin slick with sweat, old scars pale against the wiry strength of his back and arms. He stood alone in the chalked circle at the center of the yard, chest rising and falling in a slow, measured rhythm.
Facing him, side by side, were Eli and Henry.
"Again," Cade said.
They came at him together.
Eli darted in first, faster than his wrestler's build suggested, aiming a hard jab at Cade's jaw. Cade slipped it, shoulder rolling, only to find Henry already on him, low and driving, trying to hook a leg. Cade twisted, deflecting the weight, but took a glancing elbow to the ribs.
Darian whooped from the sidelines, his small voice cracking with excitement. "Get him, Cade! Break them!"
Alysanne flinched at the word break.
Cade never fought fair. Neither did Eli or Henry. That was part of the training, she knew in some distant, reasonable part of her mind. War was not fair; bandits were not fair; the men who had burned their villages during the rebellion had not fought honorably.
But seeing it… that was different.
Eli feinted a left hook. Cade shifted to parry, reading the pattern he'd seen a hundred times before—only for Eli to spit, sudden and vicious, straight for his eyes. Cade turned his head just in time; the spit streaked across his cheek instead of blinding him.
"Cheap," Cade said mildly.
"Effective," Eli grinned, stepping in close with his guard high.
Henry used the opening. While Cade's attention flicked to Eli for half a heartbeat, Henry snapped a low kick at Cade's groin. Cade rotated his hips, taking it on the upper thigh instead, but the impact still jarred him.
Alysanne's hand flew to her mouth.
Gods, what kind of monster puts men through this? she thought.
A moment later: What kind of monster throws himself into it with them?
Cade's response was immediate and ugly.
He pivoted, caught Eli's wrist on the next swing, and drove a knee up toward his face. He didn't aim for the nose, not quite—enough to break, not enough to kill. Eli, expecting a right hook, dipped his head to duck just as he always did when he thought a blow was coming high.
Cade's knee met his cheekbone with a crack.
Eli went staggering sideways and crashed to one knee, eyes wide and unfocused, fingers digging into the dirt as he fought for balance.
Cade turned toward him, sensing an opening—too focused for one heartbeat on the damage he'd done.
Henry punished it.
He stepped in and brought an elbow down hard into the side of Cade's jaw. The strike knocked Cade off his feet; he hit the dirt shoulder-first, rolled with it, and came up on one knee, grit embedded in the skin at his back where he'd slid across the yard.
Henry closed in, trying to capitalize, reaching to clamp a forearm around Cade's throat.
Cade scooped a handful of dirt and sand and flung it upward.
It caught Henry square in the eyes.
He cursed and clawed at his face, blinded for a moment.
Cade surged forward from his knees, hooking Henry's ankle and dragging him down. They hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, each trying to find the other's throat. Cade moved like he had been born in the dirt—hips driving, weight shifting, turning chaos into leverage. He slipped an arm under Henry's chin and locked it in place, legs wrapping around his waist.
Henry fought it. Of course he did. Fingers clawing at Cade's forearm, heels digging furrows into the ground, muscles straining as he tried to twist free. Cade only tightened the hold, forearm biting into Henry's windpipe, his face expressionless.
The rule was simple: never tap. Never give up. You passed out or you got out.
Henry's struggles slackened. His hands scrabbled once more at Cade's grip, then fell away. Cade held the choke a heartbeat longer, then two, just to make sure, before he finally let go and rolled his friend onto his side.
Henry lay there, chest heaving as air flooded back in, coughing hard enough to make his eyes water even more than the sand had.
Eli had made it back to his feet. Blood trickled from a split along his cheekbone. One eye was already swelling.
"Again?" he asked, half-laughing, half-breathless.
"Not today," Cade said.
Alysanne had never seen them train like this.
She looked from the battered men to the others of the Thirty ringed around the circle, watching with respect and a strange kind of hunger. They all bore bruises. Some had old cuts reopened. None of them looked away.
What kind of man drills his men like this, she thought again.
And what kind of man steps into the circle and lets them do the same to him?
Darian tore across the yard toward a passing maid, eyes blazing. "Did you see?" he shouted. "Did you see them? Eli went down like this—" He threw himself dramatically to the side, landing in the dirt, then scrambled up again. "And Cade choked Henry until he went all red and almost killed the bastard—"
"Darian!" Alysanne called.
He skidded to a stop, turning with his grin already dimming.
She crooked a finger. He plodded over, streaked with dust, eyes still bright.
"What did I tell you about that mouth?" she said, resting her hands on her hips, trying to glare and failing entirely.
"That it's… mine?" he ventured.
"That I will wash it out with soap if you keep talking like a sellsword in the yard," she corrected. "You can think your cousin is a terror without shouting it at every maid in the hall."
"But he is," Darian said earnestly, glancing over his shoulder at Cade. "He's the best."
"I know," Alysanne said softly before she could stop herself.
She smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "Now. Go and fetch him. Tell him I'll see to his cuts. And tell him goodbye before you go to your lessons with the maester. If you don't go, he'll have my head."
Darian nodded, took off at a run toward Cade, and nearly slid into him in his haste.
Alysanne watched them walk back together, the big man bending his head as the small boy chattered at his side. She couldn't hear the words, only the rhythm: Darian's excited stream, Cade's low replies, the way Darian leaned in as if every answer were a secret.
She realised it then, like a knife turning slowly in her chest—how happy that sight made her. It felt like something she hadn't had in years: a picture of a future that wasn't all war and ash.
When they reached her, she was already waiting by the archway leading back into the keep.
"Darian," she said, smoothing her voice into something stern again, "go with Maester Torren. No sneaking off to find Cade again until supper. Do you understand me?"
Darian pouted, glancing from her to Cade as if hoping one of them would relent.
Cade only lifted a brow.
"You'll see me at dinner," he said quietly. "Do as your sister says."
Darian sighed as if he'd been handed a life sentence, then nodded solemnly. "Yes, Cade" he said, and meant it, and let the waiting maids take his hands and lead him back inside.
Alysanne watched him go until he vanished around the corner.
When she turned back, it was only Cade and her in the yard. Eli and Henry had been dragged toward the well by a few of the Thirty, laughing and groaning about it in equal measure. The rest of the men were already sorting themselves out, fetching water, clapping shoulders, prodding bruises with rough humour.
Cade stood there, bare-chested, streaked with dirt and sweat and someone else's blood, the early evening light catching in his grey eyes. There was a small cut across his brow where Henry's elbow had grazed bone.
Without quite thinking about it, Alysanne reached for his hand.
"Come," she said.
He didn't ask where. He let her lead him.
They climbed the worn stone steps up into the keep, their joined hands hidden by the fall of her sleeve. They passed a pair of servants; Cade felt the way their eyes skittered aside, how their backs straightened. Alysanne felt it too, the small ripple of silence that followed Cade wherever he moved now that word of his deeds in the war had begun to seep through the hall.
She did not let go of him.
Her chambers were on the south side, overlooking one of the inner courtyards. She shut the door behind them and slid the latch into place, the soft click sounding louder than it should have.
"Sit," she said, softer now, nodding toward the bed.
Cade sat on the edge of it, the old wood creaking faintly under his weight. The room smelled faintly of lavender and ink. A Blackwood banner hung above the hearth; there were half-finished letters on the small desk beneath the window.
Alysanne crossed to the shelf beside the hearth, took a small clay bottle of vinegar and a roll of clean bandages, then came back to him.
Instead of standing, she climbed into his lap, straddling him, skirts rustling as they spilled around both their thighs. She was warm, and he could feel the steady weight of her on his legs, the worn linen of his trousers sticking slightly to drying sweat.
"Hold still," she said.
She poured vinegar onto a strip of cloth and pressed it to the cut on his brow. Cade flinched—barely, but enough for her to see.
Alysanne laughed, a small, surprised sound. "You'll stand there and let two men beat you half senseless," she said, "but a little vinegar makes you twitch."
"It stings," Cade said simply.
Her smile lingered as she dabbed the cut clean. Up this close, she could see everything: the faint scattering of old scars across his chest, the pale line along his ribs where some loyalist blade had kissed him at the Trident, the way his grey eyes tracked hers with slow, unnerving focus.
He watched her the way he watched a battlefield—like he was committing every angle to memory, every line of her face, the exact shade of brown in her eyes.
She smoothed the bandage over the cut with careful fingers.
"My father has been speaking of marriages," she said, because it was easier to look at the wound than to look directly into his eyes when she said it. "Mine, in particular."
Cade said nothing. The silence was not surprise. He had expected this; he would have thought less of Tytos if the old lord hadn't begun taking stock of his daughter's value.
"There's talk of a Blackwood–Mallister match," Alysanne went on. "Of me being sent to Seagard to wed young Patrek Mallister, unite river and coast. Or of being given to one of Lady Whent's nephews. Boys, really. Fourteen, both of them. Old enough for a sword, young enough to still believe songs."
She swallowed, then let out a mirthless little huff.
"They speak of me as if I were grain to be shipped where it's most needed."
Cade's eyes didn't leave her face.
"And which fool," he said quietly, "do they expect you to choose?"
Alysanne froze.
Her hand left the bandage and went to his jaw instead, fingers curling along the sharp line of bone, thumb pressing into his cheek. It was not a slap. It was possession. It was a warning.
"Don't," she whispered. "Don't ever ask me that."
They were close enough that she could feel his breath on her lips. Her own trembled.
"You know damn well," she went on, voice very low, "that I will not be given to anyone who isn't strong enough to have me."
Cade's hand found her waist, steadying her, weight warm and solid through the fabric of her gown.
"Alysanne," he murmured. It wasn't gentle. It was intent. "I am not the man they would choose for you."
"No," she breathed. Her eyes didn't leave his. "But you are the only one I would choose."
Silence stretched between them, thick as smoke.
Outside, somewhere in the yard below, a man shouted. Another laughed. The sounds bled faintly through stone and wood, reminders of other lives still moving in the castle.
In here, there was only the bed, and her weight on him, and the line his thumb traced unconsciously along the curve of her waist as if learning it.
She leaned in. Her lips brushed his—not fully, not yet, just a ghost of contact. A question. A dare.
Cade's hand tightened at her hip.
For a heartbeat, he did nothing. It would have been easy to push her off. To say something cool and cutting about duty, about blood, about the folly of wanting what the world would never freely allow.
Instead, he let himself answer the question she hadn't spoken.
What followed was quiet but not gentle, urgent but controlled, like everything else about Cade Blackwood. The door stayed locked. The room remained small and dim and thick with the sound of breath and whispered names.
They both knew it was forbidden. They both knew it was dangerous.
Neither of them stopped.