Amber light slants through the tall windows of Evermore Keep and lies in bars across the flagstones. Garlands of golden leaves wind around the pillars, a black ribbon knotted into each for the dead. The castle smells of roasted meat, fresh bread, spiced wine, and the crushed grapes from the vineyard harvest. Beyond the open doors, musicians tune their instruments, and servants weave between long tables laden with food. Spears lean in the corners between the wine barrels. Nobody remarks on it.

Count Leoric stands before the assembled guests, delivering a speech about the enduring spirit of his people. Something about the land, the dead, and the duty of the living. It is all noise to Zayn. He catches maybe every seventh word.

He shifts to suppress a yawn behind his knuckles. His brass cuirass has gone hot in the sun. The linen collar chafes. He would honestly have fallen asleep on his feet like a horse, if not for the women gathered near the dais. Wine-red silk, garnets at throats, a neckline or two cut shamelessly low. Better company than grain yields. Especially the woman standing beside the Count. Her presence is doing wonders to keep his eyes open.

If this is what grain yields look like, I'm converting to farming.

Zayn straightens a little, his attention settling on the Viscountess. He doesn't know her personally yet, but that's half the fun. Taking another slow sip of wine, he allows himself to appreciate the view more comfortably.

"Quit gawking." A muttered baritone interrupts his thoughts.

Zayn glances sideways at Jareesh. His commander stands with his hands clasped behind his back, not even looking at him. The expression on that scarred face is as unreadable as ever. Except for the faint crease between his brows.

"Admiring," Zayn corrects, bringing the goblet to his mouth again. "The Count has a way with words... and genes."

"She is not your usual barmaid or farmhand."

"Chivalry doesn't suit you, Commander."

The commander doesn't respond. No deep sigh or deadpan stare, his frown still remaining. Zayn leans closer, lowering his voice. "Something's wrong?"

Jareesh answers with a grunt. That is all he gets. Conversation closed. Zayn studies him for another moment, then exhales through his nose.

Very insightful, brother.

Whatever has put Jareesh in such a mood, the man clearly has no intention of sharing it. Zayn decides not to press his luck. There are far more pleasant things to occupy his attention. Such as the Orc standing a short distance away.

He takes a proper look at Val'Ria, and his brows rise with genuine surprise. He has never met an Orc before, and the stories have hardly prepared him for the woman in front of him. She's a sight. Taller than him, powerful build and a presence that could fold him in half and he would probably enjoy it.

No tusks. Only the Orc men have them. Not that he's sure what to do with the information.

He wonders, briefly, whether Orcish women are essentially human women, only greener and bigger. Val'Ria is not looking at him. She's not looking at anyone. Her teal eyes are fixed on the roasting spit like it owes her money. Zayn follows her gaze briefly and decides that some mysteries can wait.

At last, Leoric brings his speech to a close. The applause is polite and brief. Musicians strike up a lively tune, servants begin pouring wine, and conversations spring up in every corner. Then the fiddles start, corks pop, and the noise doubles.

Zayn had expected something more elaborate. A procession, perhaps, a dozen formal toasts, or some tedious ritual involving a ceremonial blade and a basket of grapes. But Leoric seems to have little patience for such things. A short speech, a few words of remembrance, and now everyone is free to eat, drink, and make merry.

He watches the crowd begin to mingle, waiting for a suitable opportunity to introduce himself to the Viscountess. Approaching her with the Count at her shoulder seems unwise. In the meantime, he spots Morrigan Solenne.

The Guard Captain stands near one of the pillars, clad in her captain's plate rather than the fine fabrics favored by the rest of the gathering. Copper hair scraped back, a face set in permanent disapproval. He makes his way over, wine goblet in hand.

"Captain Solenne. I was beginning to think you'd fled the festivities."

Morrigan turns her head. Green eyes, flat as a shut door, settle on him. "What gives that impression?"

"Just a hunch."

"Then you thought wrong."

"Ah. A relief. I was hoping you'd stay long enough to dance."

Morrigan raises an eyebrow. "With you?"

"Now, don't sound so surprised. I'm an excellent dancer."

"You're an excellent something, I'm sure."

Zayn presses a hand to his chest. "That almost sounded like a compliment."

"It wasn't."

"You're breaking my heart, Captain."

"Then I suggest you stop talking and let me do my job."

He laughs, taking no offense. Her irritation only encourages him. He tilts his head, offering her a more conspiratorial smile. "Come now, Mori. Surely you can spare a poor traveler a little kindness."

The change in her expression is immediate. Her eyes go cold. "Don't call me that. Ever."

Zayn blinks, his smile holding for a fraction of a second too long. "What? Mori?"

"Try it again."

"Well, I was hoping—"

"Quiet."

He raises both hands, wine goblet balanced precariously in one of them. "Understood. Captain Solenne. A thousand apologies. I hadn't realized the name was more guarded than the castle gates."

"Just Morrigan. Or Captain Solenne. Pick one."

"Morrigan it is. I'll endeavor to remember it."

"You'd better." She holds a dead-eyed stare briefly, then walks off. He has, somehow, made it worse.

Wonderful. I've been here less than a day.

He takes a generous swallow of wine, watching her disappear into the crowd. Perhaps he should have started with a compliment. Or a dance. Or, better yet, kept his mouth shut. A movement near the dais catches his eye.

The Viscountess is taking her seat at one of the high tables. Leoric remains standing, speaking with a handful of guests, apparently in no hurry to join her. Zayn pauses, mildly surprised. He had expected father and daughter to sit side by side, but Evermore seems to have its own customs. Or perhaps the Count simply prefers to keep everyone on their toes. Either way, he isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He begins to straighten his cuffs, then catches sight of Val'Ria again. The Orc has acquired a roasted goat leg. She's tearing into it like the leg insulted her mother. Zayn watches longer than he should. A few scraps tumble down on her cleavage and the front of her leather harness. Val'Ria glances down, shrugs, and continues eating as if it's a problem for later. Zayn's mouth quirks.

Smart girl. Has her priorities set.

With one last gulp of the wine, he sets his goblet aside. The Viscountess is seated now, the Count still occupied nearby. The crowd offers enough cover for a casual approach, and he has never been one to let a promising opportunity pass him by.

He crosses the hall with an easy stride, moving between the tables. His expression settles into the casual confidence that has served him well in courts, taverns, and places where he probably should not have been in the first place. He stops beside her table and inclines his head in a courteous bow.

"Viscountess." His voice is warm, amused. "Forgive the intrusion, my lady. I've been in this hall for the better part of an hour, and and I find myself wondering whether Count Leoric's seating arrangements have done you any favors."

He straightens, one corner of his mouth lifting. "Zayn. Just Zayn. At your service. Though I should warn you, women of your stature usually have a better name for me by the end of the night." His eyes meet hers, bright, curious and expectant. "May I join you?"

The gardens are quieter than the great hall, though the festivities carry over the walls easily enough. Fiddles, the clatter of dishes, a laugh rising sharp over the rest. Lanterns hang from the apple trees, their light catching on the season's last stubborn blooms.

Zayn crouches beside a flowerbed with one knee pressing into the soil. The scent of wet earth, fallen leaves and fresh roses has put him in a far too pleasant mood, given that he's not supposed to be here. His cuirass sits abandoned on a nearby bench, leaving him in shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. A pair of pruning shears rest between his fingers as he turns a dark red bloom, inspecting the stem.

"Beautiful thing."

Deep crimson, faint fragrance, thorns sharp enough to make the job worth doing properly. He snips beneath a leaf node and wraps the cutting in a damp cloth, tucking it into his belt alongside two others.

Three should do. He eyes the bush. Maybe four. Spare for the Orc.

A thorn finds his thumb. He hisses, sucking the bead of blood away, and mutters something unsavory about the plant's ancestry under his breath. Somebody clearly tends this bed with real devotion. Zayn respects that. He respects the roses slightly more, and he's never once let devotion get between him and something he wants.

Nobody will miss a few.

He's reaching for a fourth when footsteps sound on the gravel behind him. He goes still, shears frozen mid-cut, and turns his head just enough to see who's caught him.

Oh.

He straightens slowly, brushing dirt from his knee, and finds himself face to face with the Viscountess. Of everyone who might have wandered into this garden tonight, of course it's her, this one woman who's spent the entire evening flanked by the Count and half the nobility of Evermore. And here he is. On his knees, shears in hand, a stolen flower between his fingers.

He recovers fast, which is the one skill he's never had to work at. Shears vanish into his belt. Shirt gets a quick, useless smooth-down. Sadly, it doesn't retroactively explain the dirt.

"Well." He lets his eyes take their time returning to her face. "This is either the worst luck I've had all night, or the best. I haven't decided."

He holds the rose up between two fingers as if presenting evidence to his defense, and gives her a bow just shy of proper. "I'd assumed Evermore's gardeners kept the realm's finest roses to themselves. Turns out they've just been hiding them." A slow smile appears on his face. "Rather rude of them, don't you think, keeping something this good behind a hedge? Then again, I suppose the best things usually are."

He turns the cutting once between his fingers, considering it with more seriousness than it's earned, then closes the distance by half a step, enough so that the next line lands like it's just for her.

"For the record, the plant will survive. Pruning agrees with it. But..." He glances back at the rosebush. "Its keeper may see things differently. You, however, strike me as someone who could be persuaded to keep a secret. If I ask nicely enough."

He tucks the rose carefully alongside the others, then looks back at her, his signature smirk now concealing the slightly faster beating heart. "Tell me, my lady, how does Evermore deal with rose thieves? Worse than horse thieves, I'd hope, or better. I haven't quite decided which answer I'm hoping for." He tilts his head, his voice turning conspiratorial. "Though if a sentence is coming, I'd rather hear it from you than the Count. You have a far better face for it. And, the company matters more than the crime anyway."

He offers her the rose, thorns carefully turned away from her fingers. "So. Will you be reporting me, Viscountess? You could, but it'd be a terrible, terrible shame. Besides," he shoots a wink before he can stop himself. "I'm really good at returning favors. No matter the time or place."

The road to Bloodstone Pass is a miserable stretch of rock and dust, but Zayn has been in a fine mood throughout the journey. Not that he'd say the reason out loud.

Count Leoric had been occupied with a dozen matters of defense and diplomacy, apparently needing his immediate attention. This left the Viscountess to oversee the fortifications at the pass in his stead. With Morrigan handling a vineyard dispute, Zayn had offered his services as escort, enthusiasm enough to earn him one of Jareesh's long, suspicious looks.

What? A man volunteers to serve his betters, and suddenly everyone thinks he's up to something.

Jareesh let him go anyway. The Commander has his own business lately, something he won't speak of. Zayn caught him deep in conversation with the maid earlier, not the kind of conversation Zayn would have with a pretty maid serving drinks. Too serious for that. He let it go. The Commander is allowed his secrets.

And so here they are.

The red-veined canyon is narrower than Zayn expected, mountains rising sheer on either side, broken by jagged outcroppings and stubborn patches of vegetation. The wind carries the cold, mineral smell of stone. Ahead, the defensive constructions stretch across the canyon in gates and barricades, each one built to slow an army until the pass itself does the killing for them.

The first gate is nearly finished. Timber beams reinforce its stone base, iron-bound doors standing open while workers haul the last materials into place. A second blockade rises behind it, a third further up the canyon. Zayn approves.

He spends the morning walking the works, asking questions, listening to the answers with more genuine interest than fortifications have ever earned from him before. He can already picture what a handful of well-placed archers and catapults will do to men trying to breach this blockade.

The workers, meanwhile, have discovered an astonishing new work ethic. Nobody leans on a shovel. Nobody lingers by the supply carts. Hammers ring out, orders get barked and obeyed, and men who'd been moving at a perfectly respectable pace an hour ago now look one word from sprinting.

Zayn watches two laborers haul a timber beam past, both sweating through their shirts in the autumn cold. "Remarkable."

He rests one hand on the parapet, the other finding the hilt of his longer blade out of habit. "An hour ago that fellow looked personally betrayed by the concept of labor. Now look at him. Practically skipping." His eyes follow the workers a moment before drifting back to her. "Your presence has done wonders for morale, my lady." He drums two fingers against the stone. "Though... I can't help wondering if we ought to be putting it to better use."

He turns, leaning his hip against the stone, the wind pulling at his curls. He brushes them back without thinking about it. "Good view up here. Good fields of fire, too, whoever built these platforms knew his business. But it's a fine day, the men have found their stride without me screaming at them, and I confess I've lost all appetite for spending it discussing siege engineering."

He steps closer, voice dropping into something private. "Seems a terrible waste of a good afternoon, doesn't it."

He lets that sit a moment. Long enough. His face stays all innocence, but there's a tilt to his head and a warmth in his eyes that says he means something else entirely, and he knows exactly how it reads.

"Why don't we find something more enjoyable to do, Viscountess? Something that doesn't involve timber, mortar, or the painfully unromantic subject of siege engineering."

He watches her take that in. Watches her decide what he means by it. Only then does he glance toward the far end of the pass, brows lifting like the thought's only just occurred to him.

"For example," his gaze drifts past her shoulder, toward the far end of the pass, lingering there a moment before he lets it drop back to her. "There's something I've been meaning to check."

He reaches into the satchel at his back and produces a brass-bound spyglass, its casing worn smooth with use, and raises it to his eye.

Beyond the last gate, the canyon narrows and opens onto the border. Mist gathers in the ravines. Past that, where the land falls into the Selúrien Dominion, a dark, unfamiliar forest stretches toward the horizon. Elven land.

His eyes scan the treeline. "I know what you're thinking. Stay put, inspect the remaining gates, go home with a report proper enough for his Countship." He lowers the spyglass. "But the Gloam Menagerie sits awfully close to that border, doesn't it? I hear a madwoman runs it."

Someone probably not my type.

He looks toward the mist-veiled mountains. "With a little luck, we might catch something being hauled in. A beast, maybe. Too many legs, too many teeth, the sort of things that can scare you more than castle ghost stories." He taps the spyglass once against his open palm. "Of course, we'd have to go a bit further. Past the last gate. Past the point where none of your entourage would go."

Will she bite?

"There are complications, I'll grant you. Count's orders. The murderous mountain wildlife. And the small matter of what happens if Selúrien notices us with our noses somewhere they don't belong."

He shrugs, shaking off the brief moment of seriousness that threatened to settle in. And once again, his usual smirk is back. "But if any of that worries you, there's no need. I'll stay close. Very... close, if the situation calls for it. You'd be safe and sound in my company."

He offers the spyglass, waiting to see if she'll take it. "And if you'd rather not risk it, that's quite all right too. I'm enjoying the company regardless." His smile turns conspiratorial, and he leans closer. "Still... what sort of life would it be if we never did anything we weren't supposed to?"