The chambers assigned to Marquil were too rge.

  Not ostentatious, not luxurious—just excessive. Stone walls stretched higher than comfort demanded, their tapestries heavy with stitched victories and long-dead heraldry. Everything in the room was designed to remind him that he now belonged to something vast, ancient, and entirely uninterested in his opinion.

  He stood barefoot on the cold floor long after the servants had gone.

  The bells had stopped ringing, but their echo lingered in his chest.

  Armor rested on a wooden stand near the wall, polished to a dull gleam. Whoever had cleaned it had done so with care, oil rubbed evenly into the joints, straps aligned with military precision. It was good work.

  Efficient.

  Impersonal.

  Marquil approached it slowly, eyes tracing the ptes the way he once traced fabric bolts in silent shops back home. His fingers hovered, then settled against the steel at the shoulder.

  Too rigid.

  It protected well enough, he supposed—but the articution was wrong. The ptes overpped without consideration for natural movement. A raised arm would pull. A twist would pinch. Over time, it would bruise the wearer where no enemy ever could.

  He frowned.

  It was instinctive. Automatic. The same way some people noticed crooked picture frames or uneven steps.

  He hadn’t meant to think like this again.

  Pulling his hand back, he crossed the room and sat at the small desk beneath the narrow window. Someone had thoughtfully left parchment, ink, and a quill—tools of record, not creation.

  Marquil stared at them.

  The crowd’s cheers repyed in his mind. The weight of the bde. The way his body had moved without hesitation, as though it had been waiting for permission.

  They’d looked at him like he was enough.

  That should have been satisfying.

  Instead, there was an ache beneath his ribs, dull and persistent.

  He picked up the quill.

  At first, he told himself he was only sketching to think. Mapping armor improvements, perhaps. A way to keep his mind sharp in a pce that clearly valued sharpness above all else.

  The first lines were hesitant.

  A curve here. A taper there.

  Not steel.

  Fabric.

  He paused, breath catching, then kept going.

  Sleeves narrowed at the wrist to allow movement. A waistline that followed the body instead of drowning it. A colr that framed the neck rather than choking it. His hand moved faster now, confidence returning with each stroke.

  He added seams where tension gathered. Panels where cloth should flex. He shaded areas where weight would fall and light would catch.

  The garment took shape quickly—too quickly for something improvised.

  Marquil leaned back, startled by the page in front of him.

  It was elegant.

  Impractical for battle, perhaps—but not for living. It was the kind of clothing that would make someone stand straighter without realizing why. The kind that whispered reassurance with every step.

  A knock at the door jolted him.

  Marquil flipped the parchment over instinctively, heart kicking harder than it had in the arena.

  The door opened before he could answer.

  “Still awake?” Gareth said cheerfully, already halfway inside. The knight from earlier—broad grin, broader shoulders, and not an ounce of subtlety to be found.

  “I thought you’d be snoring by now.”

  Marquil forced a smile. “Just… thinking.”

  Gareth ughed. “That’s dangerous around here.”

  He flopped into a chair, propping his boots on the desk without hesitation. “You should’ve seen the faces in the hall. Lord Aurevan hasn’t taken a personal interest in a new knight like this in years.”

  Marquil nodded, noncommittal.

  Gareth kept talking—about training schedules, mess hall rivalries, which captains barked louder than they bit. Marquil listened just enough to respond appropriately, his attention split between the conversation and the parchment beneath his elbow.

  At one point, Gareth squinted at the desk. “What’s that?”

  Marquil’s hand covered the page without thought. “Nothing.”

  Gareth shrugged immediately, interest gone. “If it’s not a bde or a bet, I don’t care.”

  They ughed—lightly, easily.

  When Gareth finally left, the room fell silent again.

  Marquil waited a full minute before turning the parchment back over.

  He stared at the drawing, something warm and dangerous unfurling in his chest.

  This world valued strength.

  It glorified blood and spectacle and obedience.

  But it wore its power poorly.

  Rough cloth for rigid roles. Armor that bruised its own. Status stitched without grace.

  Marquil dipped the quill again.

  In the margins, he began to annotate—not with measurements, but with ideas.

  What if cloth could move like muscle?

  What if beauty didn’t weaken, but reinforced?

  What if something as soft as silk could change the way a room breathed?

  A name surfaced in his mind unbidden.

  Not Marquil. Not knight.

  Something quieter.

  Smoother.

  Silken.

  He froze.

  Then, slowly, deliberately, he wrote it in the corner of the page.

  The candle guttered beside him, casting long shadows across stone and paper alike. Outside, the city slept, unaware that somewhere within its walls, a knight had just committed his first real act of defiance.

  Not with a bde.

  But with a stitch.