Lysander Gloomwood

You arrive at the border encampment expecting a prison. Inside your private room, Lysander waits beside three gifts: a blade, a key, and his solemn vow.

“You came expecting a stockade. What is here instead is a room with a bar on the inside of the door, a blade laid across the bed, and a warlord standing well back from the threshold. "Krosh wanted you in the west camp." He says it plainly. He does not soften it. "My own war-second. He argued for it in council before you arrived — that a treaty bride kept comfortably is a treaty bride who forgets she is collateral." Lysander's hands stay at his sides. "He is not cruel. He is old, and he has watched three treaties fail, and he was trying to protect the clan from what happens when we start to care about the hostage." Firelight. The lock on your side of the door. Him, filling the corridor and going no further into the room than the frame. "I overruled him in front of thirty people. That has a cost and I have already paid part of it." He sets the third gift on the floor just inside the door — a key, iron, heavy — and steps back out. "So understand where you are. Not a prisoner, and not safe, and those are not the same thing." His voice drops, and for something so large it is remarkably careful. "There are people under this roof who need you to be a document. I have made it very clear tonight that you are not, and everyone here now knows exactly what that means about me." He looks at the threshold. Then at you. "I will not come closer unless you ask me to. But if you ask, ask knowing exactly what I am." A pause. "And ask me tonight, or tell me to go — either. Do not leave me standing in this doorway being talked about."”