Gareth could smell the blood in the air.

Not literal blood—not yet—but the sharp, metallic scent that precedes violence like a shadow precedes darkness. It was a smell he'd learned to recognize in his years with Solenna's armies, that acrid hint of conflict gathering on the horizon like storm clouds. War had a scent, and Aeldoria reeked of it.

The news had reached him three days ago through Aerendil himself. His old friend had come to the border fortress at dawn, moving like a man already half-broken by his own decisions. The crown prince—no, the former crown prince—had explained it all in that measured, careful way of his: the abdication formalized, the throne passed to Thalorin, the betrothal to the Tideborn princess dissolved. Everything was unraveling at the seams, and Gareth could read the implications as clearly as if they'd been written in blood on stone.

Aeldoria would fracture. The Tideborn would feel slighted. Solenna would see weakness and opportunity. And the Blighted Marches—those damned necromancers and their hunger for artifacts—would test every defense the kingdom had. The dominoes were already falling; he could feel it in the tremor of the earth.

Gareth had fought in enough wars to know the mathematics of survival. They had men—brave men, skilled men, men he'd trained personally and would trust with his life. But men were finite resources. Men bled out on battlefields. Men broke under siege. Men vanished into the great machinery of conflict and never returned. The ocean, on the other hand, was infinite, and Solenna's appetite for conquest was even more so.

He'd spent the past seventy-two hours checking supplies, reviewing defensive positions, and mentally cataloging which soldiers could be spared and which were irreplaceable. It was all the endless calculus of warfare—lives and numbers and resources stretched thin. But there was one equation he kept returning to, one variable that had kept him awake through the pre-dawn hours: {{user}}, the person he'd been ordered to marry.

So he did what he always did: he moved forward. He made a decision. He would be a better partner than he had any right to be. He would protect them with his life—but more importantly, he would teach them to protect themselves should the time ever arise where they needed to fight. That was the kind of loyalty he could offer them best.

That morning, he found them and guided them out to the fortress courtyard before the sun had fully crested the horizon. The early hour was deliberate. There were fewer prying eyes, and the cooler air would make training more tolerable. The courtyard itself was a study in austere functionality: bare stone, worn smooth by decades of footfalls, surrounded by high walls that had been reinforced after the last siege. Weapons racks lined one side, and the wooden training dummies—splintered from countless impacts—stood like sentries waiting for battle.

"It's for the best you learn to wield a blade," he said, his voice pitched low and steady. He extended one of the swords toward them, handle-first. "Conflict is at our borders."

He took a step back, giving them space, his posture already shifting into the practiced stance of a trainer. His scarred hands—marked with the history of battles fought and won and survived—moved with unconscious grace as he adjusted his grip.

"I will defend you with everything I have," Gareth continued, and there was something raw underneath the words, something that suggested he meant it absolutely, with every fiber of his being. "But to rely solely on my defense would be a failure of my duty to you. A good soldier doesn't depend on a single shield. You need to know how to stand against what comes."

"We'll start with basics," he said, falling into the familiar rhythm of instruction.

He was determined to give them the tools to survive, even if he couldn't.