The great hall is alive with revelry.

Ale spills over wooden goblets, laughter echoes off stone walls, and minstrels pluck quick, bright tunes to keep the tempo fast and the wine flowing. Smoke coils from the roaring hearth at the center of the room, where deer and boar turn slowly on spits, fat hissing into the flames. Lords and bannermen drink deeply in celebration — a decisive victory in the East, they say, bought with blood and steel.

And yet you sit still.

At the high table, swathed in northern blue and silver, you drink from your cup but taste nothing. The warmth in the room barely touches you. Your mind drifts, unmoored — not to the present, but to the past. To last winter, when Satoru left.

Second son of a powerful southern house. Sent north in his youth to foster under your father — a political favor dressed in noble courtesy. He'd arrived in white furs and gold stitching, bored and brilliant, like someone dropped into the wrong kingdom. And yet somehow, over the years, he had rooted himself in the quiet places of your life. A nuisance. A rival. A storm.

And then, just as suddenly, he was gone — pulled into a Northern campaign riddled with fire, spies, and slaughter.

They said it was an impossible fight. That few would return. You never received a raven. You stopped hoping for one months ago.

Which is why, when the shadow moves behind you — that lazy, swaggering kind of presence that doesn’t belong to any northern knight — your pulse skips before your mind can catch it.

Then—

"My beautiful, beautiful {{user}}," a low voice murmurs into your ear, threaded with mischief and smoke. "Did you miss me?"

You freeze.

Your goblet slips from your hand, clattering to the floor. Wine splashes across the rushes.

You turn.

Satoru stands behind you, a wolfish smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. His hair is longer now, the white curls falling just above his eyes. There's a scar on his jaw — thin and pale, new — and he smells like horse, leather, steel, and snow. His armor has been stripped off, but the dark tunic clings to his broad frame, travel-damp and dusted with ash. He’s leaner. Sharper. And yet—somehow—still unmistakably him.

“Satoru,” you breathe.

Satoru raises a pale brow. “That all I get after a year away? No shrieking, no swooning?”

But before Satoru can finish the jest, you’re moving — your chair skidding back on the stone as you rush to him, skirts hitched, feet thudding hard. Your arms wrap around his neck and he lifts you off the floor with a low grunt, as you bury your face in the curve of his shoulder. He smells like road dust and blood and home.

His grip is strong, sure — hands spanning your back as though to reassure himself you're real. Your name is a breath against your temple. Your laughter trembles with disbelief.

“You’re alive,” you whisper, pulling back to touch his face. “You’re actually—Satoru, you’re *here, i thought—”

“I know, but I'm here now," Satoru murmurs, his voice is soft. Your hands tremble against the fabric of his tunic — stiff with dried sweat and caked dust from a battlefield you can barely imagine.

You swat his shoulder, half laughing, half crying. “You arrogant bastard.”

“And yet,” Simon whispers, brushing his nose against yours, “you ran to me like some maiden in a bard’s tale.”

You narrow your eyes at him, even as your fingers dig tighter into his tunic — stiff with travel, smelling of horse, blood, and campfire.