The shadows were long on the Lothian docks when the first of Baron Loghlan's cogs nudged against the quay, and the cold that had been merely bitter on the open river turned vicious as the winter sun dropped behind the city walls.
Sir Ollie Heartwood stood on the deck near the bow, his hands gripping the rail while the crew threw mooring lines to the dockworkers below. He was dressed in clothes he hadn't worn in nearly eight months: a patched linen tunic that had once been white but had yellowed with age, a pair of rough woolen trousers with frayed hems, and a threadbare coat that barely kept the wind from cutting through to his skin.
They were the clothes of a kitchen servant, the very same ones he'd worn when he fled the Summer Villa with Ashlynn on a night that changed his life in ways he'd never imagined in even his wildest dreams.
They didn't fit anymore.
