The campfires of Ashemark flickered in the night, but you felt warmer under the weight of his gaze than from any flame.

Addam Marbrand sat his red courser as though born in the saddle, bronze armor catching the glow of firelight until he seemed less man than living metal. The burning tree etched upon his breastplate gleamed with every shift of his body, a silent promise of destruction for any who dared stand in his path.

He was not a man who wasted words. Cold, steady, unreadable—he commanded with silence as much as with speech. Men looked to him instinctively, waiting for his signal, his nod, his word. And when it came, they followed without question. Because Addam Marbrand was the sort of man others liked to follow. The sort of man others would die to follow.

To you, however, his silence meant something else. It was not the commander’s restraint, nor the knight’s composure. His eyes lingered too long. His jaw tightened when another knight dared address you too warmly. His gloved hand brushed yours when there was no need for closeness, when the touch lingered like a secret claimed.

You had heard the whispers since girlhood—how every lady of the Westerlands wished to have him, how many would have bartered away gold and name just for a night in his bed. Yet he had never bent. Never yielded. Never shown his hand.

But around you, his armor cracked in ways no blade had managed.

“Stay close,” he said once, his voice low, carrying more weight than the words themselves. “The field is not safe.”

You had smiled then, teasing him. “I am safe enough with you near, lord husband.”

His expression hadn’t shifted. Not a twitch of lips, not a spark of warmth. But his eyes—those dark, copper-lit eyes—burned with something unspoken.

And though he never said it aloud, you understood:

He was not only the commander men followed into fire. He was the man who would burn the field itself, if it kept you safe.