Chapter 2: The Routine
The dynamic in the training yard shifted. Kerr stopped offering corrections. The patient demonstrations ceased. Now, when Dairren faced him, blade raised with that familiar, petulant aggression, Kerr simply ended it. A disarming strike so clean and fast it looked like magic, the boy’s sword clattering away before he’d even completed his swing. Sometimes Kerr would use his foot, a quick, economical sweep that deposited the heir of the castle on his backside in the dust. He always offered a hand up, his expression neutral. “Again?” he’d ask, his tone carrying neither mockery nor encouragement. It was just a question.
Dairren would scramble up, face flushed with humiliation, and snatch his blade. “Again!”
And it would happen again. And again. Kerr was a wall. An immutable fact. He was holding back—every man watching knew he could break the boy in half—but he was no longer teaching. He was just proving a point, over and over, until the point was a dull, aching bruise on Dairren’s pride.
Lord Landra, upon his return from Denerim, tried to reassert his dominance. He donned his own gear, a finely engraved breastplate that had last seen use a decade prior, and faced Kerr in the yard. “Let us see the mettle of this prodigy,” he announced, his voice echoing with false bonhomie.
It was over in three moves. Kerr deflected a heavy overhead chop, sidestepped a clumsy lunge, and placed the blunted tip of his practice sword against the lord’s throat, right above the gorget. The lord’s eyes bulged. Kerr held it there for a beat longer than was strictly necessary, then stepped back and bowed. “My lord.”
He had no respect for either of them. But he was never disrespectful. The distinction was cold, clear, and noticed by everyone.
Landra watched now from the gallery where before she would have turned away. She watched her husband huff and glare, her son sulk and throw his sword. But mostly, she watched Kerr. She watched the sweat trace the channels of his back under his linen shirt, the controlled power in his shoulders as he effortlessly controlled every bout. A secret heat coiled low in her belly each time. That was the man who came to her in the dark. That strength, wielded with such exquisite tenderness.
It became a routine of a different kind. A desperate, hungry punctuation to the empty sentences of her days.
If Kerr found her in the study, the door would be barely closed before her hands were at the laces of his breeches. “Quickly,” she’d breathe, bending over the desk, scattering parchment. He would lift her skirts, and she would feel that first, perfect breach, the dizzying fullness as he sheathed himself inside her. He never rushed. Even when time was a razor’s edge, his rhythm was a smooth, languid dance. A deep, sliding withdrawal followed by an even deeper, gradual return. Over and again, a tide in a sheltered cove. It built a pressure that had nothing to do with force. It was a relentless, swelling presence that forced her eyes to roll back, her senses to dissolve into pure, white sensation. She would shatter around him, biting her own arm to stay silent, her body milking his own quiet, shuddering release.
In the hayloft, the scent of dust and oats thick in the air, she would pull him down onto the blanket they’d hidden there. In her room, late at night, she would wake to find him already sliding into bed beside her, his skin warm from the stable. Once, on a walk along the inner curtain wall, a sudden spring shower sent them scrambling into the recess of a guard tower, slick with rain. He pinned her against the cold stone, his mouth on hers, his hands hiking her sodden dress. The chilly roughness at her back was a stark contrast to the burning glide of him as he entered her, the sound of the rain on the flags outside masking her choked cries as she came apart.
It was six times a day, easy. Sometimes ten. A stolen five minutes in an empty buttery, her back against a sack of grain. A longer hour in the solar after dusk, her legs hooked over the arms of a broad chair. It was an addiction. A necessary oblivion.
She was reading in the solar, a shaft of afternoon sun warming the faded rug, when the door opened. Kerr stood there, a slight dusting of flour on his tunic—he’d been in the kitchens. Their eyes met. No words. He crossed the room, his boots silent on the stones. She was already pushing the book aside, already shifting in her seat, her heart hammering a frantic, welcoming rhythm.
He knelt before her, his hands pushing her knees apart. He buried his face in the softness of her inner thigh through her gown, his breath hot. “Missed you,” he murmured, the words vibrating against her skin.
“It’s been two hours,” she gasped, her fingers threading into his hair.
“Too long.”
He rucked her skirts up, his mouth finding her through the thin linen of her smallclothes. The damp, hot pressure of his tongue drew a sharp cry from her. He hooked his fingers in the fabric and tore it aside, the sound shockingly loud in the quiet room. Then his mouth was on her, earnest and devoted, licking and suckling until her hips lifted off the chair and her world narrowed to the point of his touch.
When she was teetering on the edge, he rose, freeing himself. He lifted her, turned her, and bent her over the polished table. The sun-warmed wood met her cheek. He entered her from behind, a slow, inexorable possession that stole her breath. This angle was deeper, somehow more intimate. Each measured stroke brushed a place inside her that made her see bursts of light behind her closed eyelids.
“Look,” he whispered, his voice rough at her ear.
She opened her eyes. In the silvered mirror on the far wall, fogged at the edges, she saw them. Saw herself, pale and disheveled, draped over the lord’s table. Saw him, towering behind her, his powerful body moving with that familiar, devastating leisure. The sight was so indecent, so profoundly real, it tipped her over. Her climax tore through her in a silent, seismic wave, her body clamping around him in rhythmic pulses. He followed, his rhythm finally stuttering, a low groan escaping him as he pressed deep, holding her there, joined.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing. He softened, slipped from her, and gently turned her around. He kissed her, softly, wiping a tear from her cheek she hadn’t known was there.
“The flour,” she said weakly, brushing at his tunic.
“From the sack in the buttery,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “An hour ago.”
She laughed, a breathy, spent sound. This was their life now. A secret map of moments scribbled across the castle’s stone.
Later, cleaned and rearranged, she sat by the window. Kerr was back in the yard, running drills with the men-at-arms who now watched him with a blend of awe and wary respect. She watched his easy grace, the sun glinting on his auburn hair.
A cold clarity settled over her. This couldn’t last. It was a bubble, shimmering and fragile. Someone would see. A servant would talk. Her monthly courses, which she tracked with a new, dread fascination, would tell their own tale eventually. The thought should have filled her with ice. Instead, she looked at him—at her man, moving with such surety in the failing light—and a reckless, terrified resolve took root.
She would take this, for as long as she could. Until the world crashed in. Because for the first time in her adult life, she wasn’t just breathing. She was alive, and she was his.
She was alive, and she was his. The knowledge was a shield. It made the slights in her own home suddenly transparent, laughable in their petty cruelty.
At dinner that evening, Lord Landra grunted over his wine. “This vintage is piss. Did you not check the cellar ledger, woman?”
Landra set her own goblet down with a precise click. “I did. It’s the same vintage you praised last month. Perhaps your palate is failing along with your temper.” The words hung in the sudden silence, cool and flat. Her husband stared, his jowls quivering, unable to formulate a response to this new creature wearing his wife’s skin.
Dairren, seeking his own foothold, sneered at Kerr. “Don’t you have to polish saddles or something, squire? The table’s for nobles.”
Kerr didn’t look up from his bread. “I’m here at your mother’s invitation.” He took a slow bite, chewed, swallowed. “The saddles are fine.”
The next morning in the yard, Dairren came at him with a raw, spitting fury. He abandoned all pretense of form, hacking like a woodsman. Kerr parried each blow with minimal shifts of his wrist, the impacts shuddering up Dairren’s arms. “Stand still!” the boy screamed, sweat flinging from his hair.
Kerr obliged. He stopped moving his feet. He simply angled his body, letting a wild swing glance off his shoulder. Before Dairren could recover, Kerr’s palm shot out. It wasn’t a strike, but a firm, open-handed push against Dairren’s chestplate. The boy stumbled back five steps and sat down hard in a puddle. “You’re off balance,” Kerr said, his voice devoid of inflection. He turned and walked toward the well, leaving Dairren sputtering in the mud.
He didn’t let them lay a hand on him. Not ever. It was a physical law. Lord Landra attempted a “friendly” grapple once, an arm around the neck in the hall, trying to demonstrate some forgotten hold. Kerr didn’t throw him. He just stiffened, every muscle turning to granite, and subtly shifted his weight. The lord found himself slipping, dislodged, left holding empty air as Kerr continued down the corridor. The rebuke was silent, absolute, and humiliating.
And when it was over, when the posturing and the noise faded, he would find her.