Liam looked at Ollie for a long moment, taking in the way the fabric pulled across Ollieâs shoulders and the way the seams strained where a scrawny kitchen boyâs frame had been replaced by the lean, hard muscle of a well-trained knight.
It was easy to forget, Liam realized, that it hadnât been that long since Cypress Knight had been a common kitchen boy. The events that had reforged the young man had been nothing less than extraordinary, and, for a portion of those events, Ollie and Liam had been enemies on opposite sides of a battlefield.
They might never have met each other in battle, but much of the refugee crisis that Ollie had spent his summer struggling against had been the result of Liamâs campaign against the outlying Eldritch villages. Ollieâs strength came, in part, from refusing to succumb to the weight of the tragedies Liam had created over the summer.
Those months of struggle had given Ollie a maturity that exceeded his years and made him seem even more different from the boy heâd been when he left Lothian lands. It wasnât just his muscles that had grown with the hard work of building a village for people who had lost almost everything theyâd ever known...
"Well," Liam said lightly. "Iâd say youâve outgrown more than the shirt."
Ollie managed a small laugh, but it faded quickly as his eyes drifted back to the spires of the manor. The last light of the sun was slipping away from them now, and the shadows were crawling up the pale stone like dark water rising in a well.
"Do you think theyâd even recognize me?" Ollie asked in a voice that was so quiet, the wind nearly carried it away before it reached the other two men. "My parents," Ollie clarified quickly. "If I walked through the stable yard right now, or into the laundry where Mum works, do you think they would know it was me?"
He wasnât talking about the clothes, and all three of them knew it. The boy who had left Lothian Manor eight months ago had been a gangly, red-haired kitchen servant who scraped turnips and hauled water and dreamed of nothing grander than keeping his head down long enough to avoid a beating.
The man who stood with them now had become one of the most powerful and the most feared champions of the Vale of Mists, the Cypress Witch who served a Great Witch and the âDemon Lady of the Vale.â
If the people on the docks knew who he really was, those guardsmen wouldnât be thumping their cudgels into their palms looking for an excuse to start a fight; theyâd be rushing to bar the city walls against him and praying that the Churchâs templars arrived before Sir Ollie brought the gatehouse down on top of them.
"Ollie," Liam said, and his voice lost its lightness. He draped an arm across the taller manâs shoulders with a casual closeness that he hadnât quite earned yet, but he hoped the young man wouldnât reject.
"Iâve seen you charging toward danger to save a woman who would have happily seen you burned at the stake just a week earlier," he said, recalling the way Ollie had pulled Sir Cynwrig onto a horse without even waiting for servants to fetch a saddle so they could reach Lady Cerys that much faster.
"Iâve seen you heal wounds that pained Sir Gavin for years, wounds that even the Church couldnât heal," he reminded the young man. "Youâre a worthy knight, and any parent who raised a son like you should be proud beyond words."
"And if it helps," Liam added, giving Ollieâs shoulder a firm squeeze. "Then, when the time comes, Iâll stand with you and tell them myself. Lord Liam Dunn, heir to the largest barony in the March, personally attesting that their son is one of the finest men Iâve ever known," he said, in a way that deliberately mocked his own worth compared to Ollieâs.
"That should carry enough weight to get you through the door, at least," Liam said with a slight smile.
"You, youâre a good man, Sir Ollie," Hugo said, stepping up beside Ollie. "I donât know your parents, but... My mother was proud when I became a knight," he said, swallowing back some of the feelings that surged in his chest when he thought of his own family.
"She was worried," Hugo added. "She was afraid Iâd have to fight in wars or that, that my father would," he started before firmly clamping down on that line of thought. "But mostly, she was proud of me, even after what my father..." he said, trying again only to stop halfway with a heavy sigh.
The cold breeze blowing across the water cut through Hugoâs patched winter coat like a knife, and the slender man shivered, hunching his shoulders and pulling the coat tighter against a cold that had little to do with the wind. Ghosts danced through his dark eyes, and the echoes of a familiar voice filled his ears.
"... grateful I donât send you back to Keating now that Bastian has recovered..."
"... finally get some use out of all the schooling Iâve been paying for..."
"... rather see you make something of yourself in Lord Owainâs service than turn into a thorn in Bastianâs side when he takes my throne..."
"... is how you repay me for the life I gave you? By betraying your own father?"
"I envy you, Sir Ollie," Hugo said, turning to meet the young knightâs pale gaze as he fought to seal up the ghost of a dead man who still haunted his heart. "If your parents werenât good people, if they didnât love you, you wouldnât be so worried about how theyâd think of you for what youâve become or what youâve done. The fact that their approval and their recognition matter to you..."
"It tells me that theyâre the sort of people who can love their son," he said around a lump that formed in his throat. "And the sort of people who are worthy of his love in return..."