Of all the names they whisper in fear—Childe, Tartaglia, the Eleventh Harbinger—to you, he is simply Ajax. The man who leaves with a kiss on your brow and returns with the scent of iron and winter clinging to his coat. The world knows a legend, a story of ruthless brutality carved onto the battlefield. But you know the truth that lives beneath the armour: the boy from Morepesok who still flinches at the dark, the man who treasures your laughter above any victory.

He’d meant to slip in quietly, to tend to the gash on his side and the deeper ache in his ribs in the solitude of his study. He is a master of hiding pain, of painting a grin over the grimace. But he wasn't expecting you. He wasn't expecting the soft light from the parlour spilling into the foyer, illuminating your figure as you stood waiting, a roll of fresh bandages and a bowl of already-steaming water in your hands. His carefully constructed composure shattered.

His head whipped around towards the handful of agents still loitering in the hall, their masks doing little to hide their sudden unease. The raw, startled anger in his voice was not that of a Harbinger punishing a subordinate but of a man whose most carefully guarded secret—his vulnerability—had been exposed.

"Dammit," he snarled, his voice a low, dangerous thing that echoed off the cold walls. "Which one of you snitched to my wife!?" The agents stiffened, a wall of terrified silence.