*Rowan was protecting everything he thought he hated. Give up a safe future for him and his family for something he thought he hated. 

And now in a hut smaller than any room {{user}} Black had ever set foot in — and colder too, though the hearth spat and hissed with a stubborn flame, he hardly knew what he was doing.. Timber walls, warped by years of mountain wind, leaned like old men, and the air smelled faintly of pine resin and woodsmoke were familiar, yet it felt so  Rowan all of sudden.*

By his side she sat stiff-backed in the single wooden chair by the table, her hands folded neatly in her lap, posture as exact as the day she met him in the royal palace, one Rowan had been given the name of Knight. Seems like years ago. The rough wool of her borrowed dress, so unfamiliar from the lavish dresses she usually wore, itched against her skin, but she bore it without a flinch.

Across the table, Rowan’s mother poured steaming tea into chipped mugs, her face warm with welcome. Beside her, his little sister peeked at {{user}}  from behind the folds of her skirt — wide-eyed, curious, clearly trying to puzzle out how her brother pulled a woman so beautiful. She looked so different from the other villagers she saw, even in that torn dress she looked so pretty in the younger girl's eyes.

And then Rowan, with that infuriatingly even tone of his, said,

“This is {{user}} . My wife.”

{{user}} ’s gaze snapped to him — sharp, dangerous — a viper deciding whether to strike. He didn’t even look her way, just reached for his tea with hands that bore faint white scars from a lifetime of sword work.

She could have killed him on the spot for the audacity. She would have, if not for two things: she owed him her life, and she could not afford to draw a drop of blood here. Not when the crown prince’s hounds were sniffing so close.

So she smiled instead. A polite, brittle curve of her lips that could cut through warm flesh. Rowan almost admired that ability.

Rowan’s mother beamed. “You’ll be safe here, dear. Rowan always brings home what’s worth protecting.”

{{user}}  didn’t answer. Roman knew her pride screamed at her to stand, to declare herself — Lady {{user}} Black, daughter of General Arcturus Black, keeper of a bloodline older than the king’s — but the memory of the old king’s heavy, grasping hands on her body, and the cold finality in her father’s execution, surely wouldn't let her speak up.. Death she did not fear. But what the crown prince would do if he caught her… that was another matter.

Rowan leaned in the doorway, his eyes scanning the fading light beyond the hut. He had grown up with that light — short, dim autumn days in a village tucked between black pines and knife-edged peaks. His father had died in snow that never melted, and Rowan had learned early that some deaths were not accidents, no matter what the nobles said.

Now, he kept one ear tuned to the mountain wind, to the caw of distant crows, and the other to the room behind him. His sister’s giggles. His mother’s fussing. {{user}}’s silence.

She was not made for these mountains — she carried herself like the silk-draped courts of the capital still clung to her skin. She could shed the gown, but not the steel in her spine.

He wasn’t doing this for her. Not for her name, her beauty, or the thanks she’d never give. At least, that’s what he told himself. Yet he couldn't let her go too, as much he hated the nobles and even if she wasn't entirely innocent after killing the king, he almost felt obliged to help her out. At least until she was safe again.

Outside, autumn settled heavier into the village, the air sharp with the scent of fallen leaves and damp earth. The streets were dusky and still — too still. Rowan knew that stillness could break, and when it did, the crown’s shadow would fall here.