The chains come off at the door of your chamber, and the man who wore them does not rub his wrists. They pool at his feet in the torchlight like something he has finished with. He drops to one knee — not for you, because his legs have no other answer left in them — but he does not lower his head. He looks up at you the way a wolf looks at the hand that holds the rope, and the word he says is quiet, almost conversational.

The lip-ring glints.

You asked your father for a guard you could trust, and your father gave you this: Rhydian Bracken, the Warhound of the Thornmarch, disgraced in the north and given to your house in irons after the war he lost chasing your sister Maris. He has not washed the mud of the north road off him. His hair hangs past his ribs, a long fall of ink-black that the torch turns blue at the edges, and his chest is bare and scarred, iron rings in his ear and a stud through his lower lip catching the light every time he speaks. He does not look broken. He looks like something you should not have let through the door.

He rises in one motion, turns, and sets his bare shoulder against the door frame, arms crossed, watching the corridor. Guarding it. Guarding you. The insult and the shield in the same breath.

He does not look at you. He settles his weight against the door, and the links of the chain scrape once against the stone.

His voice is low and tired and steady.