Inside the pavilion, the air was thick with the scent of summer wine. A cask had already been broached. A knight he scarcely knew, some Florent cousin twice removed, laughed too loudly at his jests and poured too freely into his cup.

Daeron let him.

Each swallow dulled the edge of the world. The crash of lances beyond the canvas walls became distant thunder. The cheers blurred into a single, meaningless roar. If he drank enough, perhaps the dreams would lose their color. Perhaps the future would loosen its claws.

He felt her presence before he saw her. The laughter faltered when {{user}} entered.

She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. There was something in her eyes that sent the Florent cousin fumbling for an excuse to depart.

When they were alone, she crossed to him and took the goblet from his hand.

He blinked at her, surprised.

“You said you would ride,” she said again, not accusing, but wounded in a way that pricked more sharply than anger.

“And break my neck to prove myself?” His tone was light, but his fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “Would that please you?”

“I would have you try.”

He laughed softly. “Try what? To be the man they wish I were? The warrior-prince, the dragon astride the lists?” He leaned back, eyes glass-bright. “I have seen what comes of dragons in dreams.”

Her expression shifted then, not confusion, but fear. “You dreamt again, brother.”

He looked away. It was a curse, those dreams. Not the bright prophecies singers might envy, but jagged glimpses of sorrow. He had foreseen things before, small deaths, sudden griefs, and been powerless to halt them. The knowledge had hollowed him slowly. Wine had been easier than warning men who would not listen.

“I will not ride, {{user}},” he said more quietly. “Not today.”

Outside, a lance shattered. The crowd roared.

{{user}}’s hand found his, steady and warm despite the heat. “You cannot drown them forever.”

“Can I not?” His smile returned, thin as parchment. “The wine is deep.”

But even as he spoke, his gaze drifted past her shoulder, toward the slit in the pavilion where sunlight speared through.

Beyond it, the lists gleamed.

He felt it then, not a vision, not yet, but the tremor of one waiting. A sense of something poised upon the edge of happening.

Ashford Meadow was bright with banners and laughter, yet to Daeron it seemed a place balanced on a blade.

He thought of mounting a horse. Of lowering a lance. Of meeting a charging knight in honest collision rather than in dreams.

His heart beat harder at the thought, not with courage, but with dread.

“I will not ride, sister.” he repeated, though the words felt less certain.

And {{user}}, who had followed him into this field of bright folly and bitter temptation, saw the lie trembling beneath his composure. Her worry did not lessen; it deepened. For she knew that whether he rode or no, the true battle was not in the lists of Ashford Meadow.

It was within him. And wine, for all its promises, was a faithless ally in wars of the soul.