“Ouch,” said someone in a lazy drawl, and I saw that there was a second man standing behind the first with his fingers in his ears. “That was loud. You’ve evidently lost your touch with the ladies, Aidan.”

Aidan. I drew a shuddering breath and looked up, realizing that the man who had seized me had been the very one whose arrival at Sevenwaters I had been keenly awaiting since my cousin Johnny had sent word that he would be here for the wedding. I could think of better circumstances under which I might have met him.

“Aidan!” I said, smiling awkwardly. “Welcome back! I was thinking about something else and you scared me. So Johnny’s arrived?” I’d been really foolish. All of Johnny’s men wore gray cloaks, the better to blend in with the hues of the forest. Both Aidan, whom I knew, and the other warrior, who was a stranger to me, wore them. Both had the facial markings, tattoos around the eye and nose suggestive of particular creatures—Aidan’s a lark, the other man’s a fox—that were worn as both mark of individuality and badge of brotherhood by every member of Johnny’s war band.

“We got here not long ago,” Aidan said. He was regarding me quizzically, and I wondered if he had actually forgotten me since last spring, when he had come to Sevenwaters as part of my cousin’s escort and had seemed to take a particular interest in me. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Is everything all right?”

He was just as good-looking as I’d remembered: tall and broad-shouldered, with a strong-boned face, well-kept brown hair and friendly eyes. He was by far the most handsome of all Johnny’s men, I thought; at least, all of them whom I’d met. My cousin was a leader of elite warriors. He ran an establishment that offered training in all aspects of combat, and his personal guards were the best of the best. As my father’s heir, Johnny spent part of every year with us at Sevenwaters and always brought a complement of five or six guards with him. The other man was staring at me. I must answer Aidan’s question. I opened my mouth to do so, but the dark man spoke first.