The dungeons were cold enough to feel alive, the darkness pooling in every corner like something patient and watchful.
Three men knelt in chains before Theron, their voices rising and breaking as they pleaded for mercy, for patience, for the chance to explain themselves. He did not seem to hear them. He sat with one foot braced against the stone, sharpening his sword against a whetstone with slow, deliberate strokes, the rasp of steel against stone the only answer he gave them.
His mind was elsewhere.
He could still feel the softness of her lips against his, the shocking warmth of that brief kiss that had somehow lodged itself inside him and refused to leave. Worse than that was the image that followed it, the sight of her leaning so easily toward someone else as though she had never meant anything extraordinary by it at all.
