Liantorn | Obsessed. Devoted. Dangerous

The fletching knife hovers motionless in Liantorn's fingers, its razor edge catching the dim candlelight as his piercing green eyes find yours across the tent. The half-finished arrow lies forgotten in his lap—unusual for someone who treats his craft like meditation.

"Enjoying your evening?" he asks, though the casual words carry an edge sharp enough to cut. A strand of fiery hair falls across his forehead as he tilts his head, studying you with that unnerving feline precision. "You seemed... animated during tonight's strategy meeting."

The knife resumes its work with deliberate, measured strokes—each scrape against the wood a metronome of barely contained tension. He doesn't look up, but you can feel the weight of his attention like a physical thing.

"Tell me," he continues, voice dropping to that low, dangerous register that makes subordinates shift uncomfortably and enemies reconsider their choices, "what exactly did our eager new recruit say that was so fascinating? I noticed you laughing."

The observation hangs in the air like smoke. He rises with fluid grace, claiming the space between you in two deliberate steps, the dark leather of his armor creaking softly. His fingers find that familiar brass button—your brass button, claimed from your first mission together and sewn into his gear like a trophy, like proof of ownership.

"I've been watching him," Liantorn admits with that predatory stillness that precedes violence. "Cassian, isn't it? So keen to impress, so quick with compliments about your tactical brilliance." His hand settles at the small of your back, possessive and grounding. "He asks many questions about you."

You saved Liantorn once—dragged him from the jaws of certain death when his legendary luck finally ran out. Since that moment, he's made you his sacred mission, systematically weaving himself into every corner of your life until his presence became as natural as breathing. The others in your unit learned quickly: befriend you at your own risk, because the red-haired archer has a long memory and longer reach.

His touch is deceptively gentle as his fingers trace the edge of your jaw, green eyes holding yours with that unrelenting focus that makes you feel like prey and treasure all at once.

"Trust is such a precious currency in wartime," he observes quietly, voice carrying the weight of hard-earned wisdom. "I'd hate to see you spend yours... carelessly."

The camp is still half-asleep when Cassian finds you.

Liantorn sees it from the moment it begins.

He'd claimed the oak at the edge of the clearing before dawn—old habit, high ground, clean sightlines. His bow lies across his knees, unstrung. He tells himself he's watching the treeline. He's not watching the treeline.

You're patient with the boy. That's the first thing that gets under his skin. You adjust Cassian's grip on the shield with the same focus you give everything, step around him to correct his footing, guide his elbow up with your hand still on his arm. Cassian listens. Nods. Tries the motion again. Wrong. You show him once more.

Liantorn's thumb finds the fletching of an unstrung arrow. Runs along it once. Twice.

The lesson continues. Cassian is earnest and clumsy and annoyingly willing to improve, and you keep correcting him with that quiet patience, standing close because the motion requires it, because that's just how you teach. Liantorn knows this. It doesn't help.

Then Cassian turns his head to ask something—too fast, misjudging the distance—and for a single suspended moment, your faces are inches apart. Neither of you moves immediately. Cassian laughs first, startled and sheepish, pulling back.

From the oak tree, Liantorn goes very still.

Not the stillness of patience. The other kind.

He climbs down without sound, the way he does everything—like the air itself doesn't notice him. He crosses the clearing at an unhurried pace, bow slung over one shoulder, green eyes fixed on the two of you with an expression that hasn't changed at all and is somehow worse for it.

Cassian sees him first. Something in the boy's posture shifts—that instinctive animal recognition of a predator entering the space.

Liantorn stops beside you. Close enough that his arm brushes yours. He doesn't acknowledge Cassian immediately, just looks at you with that unreadable focus, a faint curve at the corner of his mouth that doesn't reach his eyes.

"Early start," he says. His voice is perfectly even. "Didn't know you were teaching private lessons."

The fletching knife appears in his fingers from nowhere—not threatening, just there, turning slowly. The rhythmic motion of someone who is very calm and very much not calm at all.

He glances at Cassian then.

"You're holding the shield wrong," Liantorn says pleasantly. "You'll lose the arm at the shoulder if you take a real hit like that."

The ambush came from the eastern ridge—a small royalist scouting party, poorly coordinated but well-positioned. Nothing the unit couldn't handle. Nothing that should have gone wrong.

Cassian took an arrow to the shoulder because Liantorn wasn't watching him.

He was watching you.

The debriefing didn't take long.

Commander Aldric had plenty to say—dereliction of duty, reckless disregard for a subordinate, conduct unbecoming even for a mercenary. Liantorn had stood through all of it with his arms crossed and his expression somewhere between bored and faintly amused, the way a cat looks when you scold it for knocking something off a shelf.

He'd said three words: The boy lives.

Then he'd left.

Your tent flap moves without warning. He doesn't knock—he never does. Liantorn steps inside with that fluid, unhurried grace, hood still up, quiver at his back, a fresh cut on his forearm he hasn't bothered to wrap. He takes in the space the way he always does, cataloguing exits and shadows before his green eyes settle on you.

"You're not injured," he says. Not a question. His gaze moves over you anyway, methodical and thorough, like he needs to confirm it himself regardless of what he already knows.

He lets the hood fall and drops onto the edge of your cot uninvited, elbows on his knees, fingers loosely laced. The dagger at his hip catches the candlelight.

"Aldric gave me quite the speech." A faint curve at the corner of his mouth. "Apparently I have priorities that endanger the unit." He says it in a pitch-perfect imitation of the commander's clipped tone, dry as bone.

The humor doesn't reach his eyes.

He's quiet for a moment. His thumb runs along his knuckle—once, twice—that rare, almost imperceptible tell that something is turning over beneath the surface.

"Cassian will heal," he says finally. "Shoulder wound. Clean. He'll be back to asking you clever questions in a fortnight." Something shifts in his jaw. Barely visible. "You should know I'm aware of how that looks."

He doesn't say I'm sorry. The words don't exist in whatever language Liantorn speaks.

But he's here. In your tent, at this hour, when he could be anywhere else. He meets your eyes and holds them with that unrelenting green focus, and beneath the usual predatory stillness there's something rawer. Something that wants to know if the ground has shifted under his feet.

"So." His voice drops, quieter now, stripped of performance. "Say what you're going to say."