Vineburg was an absolute, breathtaking paradise. The oppressive, heavy clouds of the North and the pastel strangeness of Woolhaven were gone. Here, the sun shone like spun gold over endless, rolling hills of vibrant emerald grass. We passed through immaculate, pristine villages with white-washed walls and terracotta roofs.

  But beneath the staggering beauty, the geopolitical reality of the Realm remained. The fields were packed with thousands of Clayborn the genetically bound servant class, toiling in the dirt to harvest the massive, magical grapes that fueled Dankmar's wealth. It was a paradise built entirely on the backs of slaves.

  And speaking of wealth, I was currently experiencing a financial hemorrhage of apocalyptic proportions.

  Sitting in the saddle of Coin Biter, I pulled up my HUD. I had to grip the pommel just to stop myself from passing out.

  Almost two million gold in the red. Lady Lydia Ironvine had officially cut the Crown's funding, shifting the entire financial weight of fifty thousand hungry soldiers directly onto my shoulders. If we didn't reach Dankmar's capital and plunder his vaults soon, the Iron Bank of the Pontificate was going to literally repossess my organs.

  "Halt the column!" King Brandan’s voice roared from the front of the vanguard. "Let the beasts drink!"

  I snapped my HUD shut and looked ahead. We had reached the geographical centerpiece of the Duchy: The Violet Sea.

  It wasn't a metaphor. It was a massive, sprawling inland lake, and the water was a deep, shimmering purple. The air was overwhelmingly fragrant, thick with the sweet, intoxicating scent of crushed grapes and fermented magic. Dankmar’s ancestors had literally rerouted the magical ley-lines to turn an entire lake into a reservoir of raw, unrefined wine.

  The army broke formation, exhausted men and beasts rushing to the shoreline.

  "Last one in is a rusted gear!" Pontifex Malachia cheered. The Glitch-Child didn't bother taking off her shoes. She sprinted down the grassy bank and launched herself directly into the Violet Sea.

  SPLASH BZZZT! The wine reacted to her static, sending up tiny, sparkling pink bubbles. Melina Milkwright laughed, hiking up her skirt and wading into the shallows, splashing the glitching Pope while her father, Moro, watched with a booming chuckle.

  I tied Coin Biter to a nearby olive tree and walked down the bank.

  Standing exactly twenty paces from the water, looking entirely miserable, was Freyda Skullwarden.

  While the rest of the army was stripping off their heavy wool to enjoy the balmy Vineburg sun, the giantess was still encased in full, heavy plate armor. Sweat was beading on her scarred forehead, her hair plastered to her neck. She stood as rigidly as a stone statue, her hand resting on her broadsword, violently ignoring the paradise around her.

  "You know," I said, strolling up beside her and casually leaning against a boulder. "If you stand out here in the sun much longer, you are going to literally bake inside that steel. I can already smell the metal cooking."

  Freyda stiffened, keeping her eyes locked rigidly on the horizon. "A knight of the vanguard does not abandon her armor in hostile territory, Merchant. The enemy could be hiding in the vineyards."

  "Freyda," I sighed, gesturing to the lake. "The Pope is currently having a splash fight with a baker's daughter in a sea of literal Merlot. I think we have a five-minute window to relax."

  She shifted her weight, the heavy armor clanking. A drop of sweat rolled down her nose. "I do not... swim."

  "I didn't ask you to swim," I smiled, stepping just a little closer. "But I am officially ordering you, as the Master of Coin, to at least take off your gauntlets and pauldrons. If you pass out from heatstroke, I have to pay Dr. Fenris to revive you, and I am currently negative two million gold in debt. You are a financial liability right now, Lady Skullwarden."

  Freyda blinked, thoroughly flustered by the economic logic. "I... I suppose..."

  "Here, let me help," I said smoothly.

  I stepped right into her personal space. Freyda was significantly taller than me, so I had to reach up slightly to unbuckle the heavy leather straps holding her massive steel shoulder guards.

  She inhaled sharply, her breath hitching as my fingers brushed against her collarbone. Her heart was suddenly hammering so hard against her breastplate I could almost hear it.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  "You are very... close, Wilhelm," Freyda murmured, her voice dropping to a gruff, panicked whisper. Her face was turning a shade of red that perfectly matched the wine-lake.

  "Armor is a two-person job, Freyda," I replied softly, my eyes flicking up to meet hers. "Besides, underneath all this terrifying steel... you're actually quite warm."

  Freyda looked like her brain had simply short-circuited. She stared down at me, entirely paralyzed by the proximity. The fierce, terrifying butcher's daughter didn't know how to handle gentleness.

  Suddenly, a massive splash of purple wine rained down on us.

  "Stop flirting and get in, Broker!" Malachia yelled from the shallows, her hands on her hips, static popping around her wet hair.

  Freyda jumped back as if she had been burned, wiping the purple wine off her face in sheer panic. "I am not we were not he was merely unbuckling a liability!" she stammered loudly to the Pope, her voice cracking.

  I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing. It was absurd. I was two million gold in debt, marching to a treasonous war, and I was standing on the shores of a wine sea, teasing a socially paralyzed giantess.

  I picked up the steel pauldron I had removed from her shoulder. "Come on," I smiled, offering her my hand. "Just the boots and the gloves. Walk in the shallows with me. I promise not to let any hostile grapes attack you."

  Freyda looked at my outstretched hand. She looked at the laughing Pope and the cheerful Melina. She was so used to being the outcast, the monster meant only for the battlefield.

  Very slowly, her heavily scarred face softened. The severe lines around her mouth relaxed. She reached down, unbuckled her remaining gauntlet, and let it fall to the grass.

  She didn't take my hand that was a bridge too far for her dignity but she walked beside me toward the edge of the violet water, the ghost of a real, genuine smile touching her lips when she thought I wasn't looking.

  "Just the shallows, Wilhelm," Freyda muttered gruffly. "And if the King calls for the march, I am putting the steel right back on."

  "Deal," I grinned.

  For ten minutes, the war didn't exist. We were just broke, tired people standing in a sea of wine, stealing a moment of absurd, beautiful peace before we reached the gates of the capital.

  The Violet Sea was unnervingly warm, the fermented magic in the deep purple water clinging to the skin like silk. The noise of the Grand Army splashing and cheering faded into a distant hum as we waded further down the shoreline, finding a secluded inlet shadowed by heavy, drooping willow-vines.

  Freyda Skullwarden had finally shed her steel.

  She stood waist-deep in the wine-lake, wearing only her heavy linen gambeson and trousers. The fabric was soaked through, clinging to her massive frame and stained a deep, bruised violet. But she wasn't relaxing. Her broad shoulders were hunched, her thick arms wrapped tightly across her chest as if she were trying to physically shrink herself. She looked terrified.

  I waded up beside her, the purple water lapping against my ribs.

  "The water is actually incredible," I said softly, wiping a droplet of wine from my chin. "If we weren't two million gold in debt, I'd bottle this lake and sell it to the highest bidder."

  Freyda didn't smile. She stared down at her hands, submerged just beneath the surface. She was shivering, though the air was balmy and warm.

  "Freyda?" I asked, dropping the Merchant banter entirely. I took a step closer, the water shifting around us. "What's wrong? Is it the wine? Does it sting?"

  "It does not sting," she whispered, her voice incredibly fragile a sound I had never heard from the towering knight. Her hands tightened into fists beneath the water. "I... I should not have taken off the steel, Wilhelm. I should go back to the perimeter."

  She turned to leave, but I gently caught her wrist. She froze, her breath hitching wildly in her chest.

  "Look at me," I said, my voice steady and completely devoid of judgment.

  Slowly, agonizingly, the giantess turned back. Her jaw was trembling.

  "I am an offense to the eyes, Wilhelm," Freyda forced out, her voice thick with unshed tears. With a shaking hand, she reached up and unlaced the high collar of her soaked gambeson, pulling the heavy fabric down off her left shoulder.

  I stopped breathing.

  These were not battle scars. I had seen the clean, jagged lines left by swords, axes, and arrows. The marks covering Freyda’s shoulder, neck, and collarbone were meticulous, grid-like, and profoundly unnatural. They were surgical. Thick, raised keloids formed horrific geometric patterns. Patches of skin were mismatched in texture and shade, violently stitched together as if her flesh had been treated like a quilt.

  "House Skullwarden," Freyda whispered, a single tear spilling over her eyelashes and cutting a path through the purple wine splashed on her cheek. "Our house words are 'The Form is Malleable.' To my father... to my brothers and sisters... the human body is not a temple. It is a toy box."

  She looked away, staring into the dark trees, the shame radiating from her like physical heat.

  "They call them the Flesh Pits," she continued, her voice breaking. "Deep beneath our keep. My siblings were prodigies. They could splice the muscle of a hunting hound onto a servant's leg. They peeled skin to make tapestries. They created... horrors. But I had no talent for the scalpels. I was just big. Clumsy. An oversized, defective lump of clay."

  Freyda closed her eyes, her massive frame trembling violently in the warm water.

  "So, they used me to practice," she sobbed quietly, the devastating confession finally tearing its way out of her chest. "When I was a girl, my own brothers strapped me to the tables. They wanted to see how much a giant could endure before the heart failed. They cut me apart, Wilhelm. They rearranged my skin just to see if they could. They made me a monster on the outside, to match the gargoyle they saw on the inside."

  She pulled the gambeson back up, trying desperately to hide her horrific, mutilated skin.

  "That is why I wear the heavy plate," Freyda wept, refusing to look at me. "I am not a knight, Wilhelm. I am a patchwork. I am a disgusting, ugly draft of a human being. Please... let me put the steel back on."

  She tried to pull her wrist from my grip, but I didn't let go.

  I didn't offer her pity. Pity would have destroyed her.

  Instead, I took a step forward, completely closing the distance between us in the chest-deep water. I reached out with my free hand and gently, incredibly softly, pushed the wet collar of her gambeson back down, exposing the horrific grid of scars on her shoulder.

  Freyda gasped, her entire body going rigid, expecting me to recoil in disgust.

  I didn't. I lifted my hand and pressed my bare palm flat against the thickest, ugliest scar over her collarbone.

  "Do you know what I see when I look at this, Freyda?" I asked, my voice a fierce, burning whisper.

  She shook her head blindly, the tears falling freely now.

  "I see a miracle," I told her, my eyes locked onto hers with absolute, uncompromising sincerity. "You were born into a family of absolute psychos. You were raised in a slaughterhouse by butchers who viewed human life as spare parts. They tried to torture the humanity out of you. They tried to cut away your soul."

  I stepped even closer. She was taller than me, so I had to look slightly up into her weeping, terrified eyes.

  "And yet," I whispered, my thumb gently tracing the edge of the surgical scar, "you walked out of that nightmare as the most honorable, fiercely protective, and genuinely good person in this entire damned army. They cut your skin, Freyda, but they never touched your heart. You didn't become a monster. You became a shield."

  Freyda let out a broken, shattered sob. She covered her mouth with her massive hand, her broad shoulders shaking as years of suffocating, agonizing self-hatred collided with a validation she had never known existed.

  "You are not ugly," I said, my voice dropping to a low, quiet hum that carried only between us. "The people holding the scalpels were the monsters. The people who made you feel like you had to hide inside a steel cage were the monsters. You, Freyda Skullwarden... you are a masterpiece of survival."

  She couldn't hold the wall up anymore.

  With a desperate, breathless sound, the giantess collapsed forward. She wrapped her massive, incredibly strong arms around my shoulders, burying her scarred face into the crook of my neck. She held onto me like a drowning woman clinging to the only piece of driftwood in the ocean, weeping with an absolute, world-shattering relief.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist, holding her tightly in the warm, purple water of the Violet Sea. I didn't care about the wine soaking into my coat. I didn't care about the two million gold deficit. I didn't care about the war waiting for us at the capital.

  I just held her, letting her cry out decades of pain into my shoulder.

  "I've got you, Freyda," I murmured into her wet hair, gently rubbing her back. "You never have to hide from me. Never."

  She squeezed me tighter, her massive frame trembling against mine. For the first time in her entire life, the butcher's daughter wasn't wearing her armor. And for the first time, she finally realized she didn't need it.