"You heard me," the princess said coldly. "Shake hands. Now."
She fixed both knights with an unyielding stare.
"No chance," Noah scoffed, turning his back on Eric as he wiped the remaining blood from his lips.
"Not in my dreams, too," the second-in-command knight muttered, crossing his arms over his broad chest and facing away as well.
The two men might as well have been sulking boys.
"If you refuse," Anna continued, "I will report everything that happened today to the commander."
Both men gave short, dismissive laughs, as though the threat amused them.
"My lady may do as she wishes," Noah said flatly.
Even Eric made no effort to stop her.
Anna exhaled sharply, irritated.
"Very well. Then I will make sure he punishes everyone involved—including the men who stood by and did nothing to stop the fight."
That did it.
Faces in the gathered crowd drained of colour. A ripple of unease spread among the onlookers, and movements shifted.
Noah, however, remained nonchalant.
Seeing his unreadable expression, the princess added, "I suppose my escort wouldn't care if I were punished as well. In that case, I'll inform him now."
She turned as if to leave.
"My lady," Noah spoke at once. "Why would the commander punish you? You weren't involved."
Anna turned back, looking at him.
"Sir Navin said he came to warn you to stay away from me," she replied without turning back. "That makes me the cause of this fight. Should I not share responsibility?"
"The commander would never punish his wife," Eric said quickly. "It would disgrace a Cassian man to harm his spouse."
"Ah—but you forget," Anna said quietly. "This is a knight's camp. Every person here answers to his command. Any disturbance earns punishment. That includes you, me and all of us."
Brows furrowed, and unease deepened from the statement.
"It would still be absurd to punish you," Eric insisted.
"Is it?" she asked. "My previous guards were almost punished severely. I begged him for mercy, and it was the last favour he granted them. He will not be so lenient again."
Silence fell like a weight. This was indeed something to be worried about.
"If you continue this stubbornness," Anna went on, "everyone here will bear the consequences. Is that truly what you want?"
Doubt finally crept into their expressions.
"My lady," Rafe spoke up at last, troubled. "There's no need to involve the commander."
"You saw it yourself," she replied, meeting his gaze. "They refuse to reconcile properly. What choice does that leave me?"
The healer fell silent.
"The Knights of Gerhard may endure a flogging or two," she continued softly. "But I do not know what would be done to me."
Her gaze lowered.
"I suppose it means little to you if an Ardelian woman is punished and humiliated before the entire camp."
"That's not true," Eric protested at once. "Cassian men honour women—it is our pride!"
"Then honour me now," Anna said steadily. "Is it truly too much to ask for a handshake? Or do you value punishment more than my dignity?"
"No," Noah said immediately, "I'm your escort! I won't allow harm to come to you."
"Nor will I!" Eric added. "It would be disgraceful if my actions led to your punishment."
"Then do it," the princess said. "And from this moment on, I do not wish to see you fighting again. If you must settle matters, do so after this campaign. I will not interfere then."
The two knights faced one another.
What the lady had said did not dissolve the hostility between them, but it fractured it, respect cutting where rivalry could not.
She had no command over them, no title to enforce obedience, yet she was the commander's wife: a woman he had chosen to protect, to answer for, and to place above them both.
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, they clasped hands. The shake was brief, firm, and utterly joyless.
A murmur spread through the gathering knights, disbelief rippling among them.
They had just watched a woman end a brawl between men who were accustomed to settling disputes with fists and steel.
Anna turned to the crowd.
"The matter is settled. Disperse."
The knights quickly scattered. What they had seen lingered with them—an unranked lady halting a brawl that blades and command could not, her presence alone ending the clash.
As the crowd dispersed, Anna approached Eric, the last still standing there, brushing the dirt from his clothes while Noah had already moved off.
"Please have your injuries treated, Sir Navin," she said, now in her usual soft voice.
"It's nothing much," he muttered. "Just a nosebleed."
A pause ran between them. Then—
"Thank you."
He looked at her, raising a brow. "For what?"
"For your warning," she replied. "I know you meant well."
Eric hesitated before answering. "I wasn't trying to frighten you. I know what happened the night the commander brought you here."
She nodded, inviting him to continue.
"I would have advised against it, had I known earlier."
"So you believe he's guilty," the princess said gently.
Eric's eyes drifted, appearing solemn. "There was no concrete evidence, but every circumstance pointed to him. The commander defended him anyway. Because of that, our unit was deployed season after season."
"Was there a witness?" she asked, curious.
"I saw it myself," Eric said. "So did others. He was bare from the waist up, carrying the woman's body, covered only by his tunic."
Anna's brow furrowed. "You said the victim was covered with his tunic?"
"Yes. The authorities later confirmed she had been s*xually assaulted."
"And why were you there?"
"We had returned from a task. He had been left behind to guard supplies."
She absorbed this silently.
"From the investigation, they claimed the woman died before we left," Eric continued bitterly. "She was a slave, and because the incident happened in Dracor, he walked free."
"If she died earlier, that means he's innocent," Anna said, putting two and two together.
"Hard to say," Eric replied. "The body had been badly violated, so the time of death was only an estimation. Your escort was fortunate. He was merely demoted and survived a hundred floggings."
"Sir Brooks was punished that severely?" she asked, her eyes widening.
Eric's lips curved, not in amusement, but in cold disdain. "Such disgrace should have earned him a public execution, my lady. He should be thankful that he only earned scorn from us."
Hearing this, Anna's mind returned to the night Kyren had found her.
Rafe's insistence on marriage echoed clearly now—that only a marriage bond permitted a man to lie with a woman.
It had never been merely law or custom, but the consequences that made it absolute.
Anna regarded Eric quietly now, weighing his words against what she knew, what she had seen, and what she felt.
Then, at last, she spoke.
"Sir Navin… did it ever occur to you that what you saw might resemble the night I met my husband?"
The second-in-command knight blinked. "What do you mean?"
"Kyren found me near the lake. He was barely dressed as well, and he carried me in his arms."
"That's different!" Eric protested. "The commander is honourable, while Sir Brooks is not! He was a mercenary who had his hands sullied with dirty jobs!"
That fragment of hidden knowledge caught her off guard.
So Noah had once been a mercenary.
Anna knew all too well what such a profession entailed. Kaizer had kept many of them—for 'protection,' he had claimed.
She did not comment on it. This was not about Noah's past occupation, but about the accusation that had once been placed upon him.
She pushed aside her reaction and spoke again, framing her words around Eric's perception of the incident.
"You know that because you trust the commander," she said calmly. "But if someone neither knew nor trusted him as you do, wouldn't they come to the same conclusion just like in Sir Brooks's case?"
A brief silence fell between them as her words stirred a line of thought in Eric's mind.
"From your own words, you already judged Sir Brooks before the incident," Anna continued gently. "Because of his past, you cannot believe otherwise."
The second-in-command knight looked away.
"I know what I saw," he said stubbornly.
"I understand," Anna replied gently. "But sometimes what we see is shaped by what we expect, rather than by what is factual."
"What do you mean?" Eric asked.
The princess paused, choosing her words with care, as a detail surfaced in her mind that perhaps no one else had truly questioned.
"You said he covered the victim with his tunic, didn't you?" she asked.
"Yes. Why?"
She tilted her head slightly.
"Why would a man who assaulted a woman bother to cover her body afterwards? Don't you find that… strange?"
She let the question linger before adding softly, "Perhaps it's worth thinking about."
The remark struck deeper than Eric expected.
It was as if a new angle had been opened before him, forcing him to view the incident from a different perspective altogether.
Still, uncertainty clung to him.
"…I'll consider what you've said," he admitted at last, setting his long-held judgment aside.
"I appreciate that," Anna said. "As for Sir Brooks… since he has already paid dearly, I hope you won't allow the men to harass him any further."
Eric exhaled slowly. "For your sake, I will see to it."
Anna smiled.
"Thank you, Sir Navin. I should be going now. It's been enlightening speaking with you."
The knight nodded with a slight bow of courtesy before the princess turned and walked away.
Eric watched her retreating figure, small and delicate against the backdrop of the camp.
A quiet realisation dawned on him.
Who would have thought that the camp's little lady could subdue hardened knights—not with force, but with reason alone.