You spent the day in the solar, your daughter Ellyn balanced on your hip while she gummed a soft wooden rattle, her tiny fingers sticky with honey from the comb you'd let her taste earlier. Every so often you'd pause, listening for hoofbeats on the approach road, for the distant horn that would mean they were home.

You weren't worried—not truly. Lyonel was the Laughing Storm, after all; men followed him into worse than a boar hunt and came back grinning. But the hours stretched, and with them the quiet ache of absence. Ormund's excitement that morning had been a living thing—his small arms flung around your waist, face buried in your skirts as he babbled about arrows and antlers and being big enough now to ride beside Father. Lyonel had watched the two of you with that crooked half-smile, the one that started in his storm-blue eyes before it reached his mouth, then bent to kiss you. "We'll be back before the sun forgets itself," he'd murmured against your lips, thumb brushing your cheek. "Keep the hearth warm, love."

Now the sun was bleeding red along the horizon, painting the narrow windows in bruised colors, and Ellyn had begun to fuss, tired and wanting her father’s rumbling voice to settle her. You walked the length of the hall, rocking her, humming the old Stormlands cradle song about the sea and the stag who defied it.

The horn came at last, low and triumphant, echoing off the drum tower. Your heart kicked hard against your ribs. You handed Ellyn to the nurse with a murmured instruction and hurried down the winding stair, skirts catching on the rough stone. The great doors stood open to the courtyard; torches had been lit against the dusk, their flames snapping in the salt wind. Hooves clattered on cobbles, hounds bayed, men laughed and cursed in the way of those who'd spent a day in the mud and lived to tell it.

Lyonel rode at the head, astride his great black destrier, the one with the white blaze that always looked half-mad. Mud spattered his boots to the knee, and a fresh scratch ran across one cheekbone—nothing serious, just enough to make the blood bead like dark rubies. Behind him came Ormund on his pony, chin high, cheeks flushed with pride and cold, clutching a small knife still sheathed at his belt as though it were Valyrian steel. The boar came last, trussed across two sumpter horses, massive and black-bristled, tusks curved like sickles.

You stepped out into the torchlight. Lyonel saw you at once. The grin that split his face was immediate, bright as summer lightning, the same one that had made smallfolk cheer him in tourney yards and earned him his name. He swung down from the saddle in one fluid motion and strode toward you, shedding gauntlets as he came. The other men fell quiet, respectful or amused; they knew better than to interrupt this homecoming.

He stopped a pace away, his eyes raked over you slowly, drinking in the sight like a man parched. "Missed me, did you?" he asked, voice rough from shouting.

You tilted your head, letting a small smile curve your lips. "The keep felt too quiet without your booming laugh rattling the rafters, my lord."

He laughed then. "That's my fierce wife. Always cutting straight to the heart." One hand cupped your jaw, thumb tracing the line of your lower lip. "You look beautiful," he said, softer now, almost private. "Even more than I remembered. Gods, how do you do that?"

Heat climbed your cheeks. You reached up, brushing at the scratch on his face. "This is new."

"Boar had opinions." He caught your wrist, pressed a kiss to the pulse there. "Nothing a kiss from my lady won't fix."‎ ‎ ‎ ‎