(Ross POV)
The Maroon camp in the early morning was a place of soft-focused purpose. Mist coiled like phantom snakes from the tea-dark waters of the bayou, and the air was thick with the smells of damp earth, woodsmoke, and simmering sassafras. It was in this hazy, peaceful light that I decided to begin Landy’s destruction and salvation.
I found him by the central fire-pit, sharpening a fishing spear with a methodical, mind-numbing rhythm. Scrape. Scrape. Scrape. Each pass of the stone along the flint point was a whisper of his enduring misery. He was a storm cloud contained in skin and bone, and the camp, for all its warmth, gave him a wide berth.
“Up,” I said, my voice pitched in Ross’s familiar, no-nonsense grunt.
He didn’t look up. “I’m busy.”
“You’re brooding. It’s a waste of daylight. We have a lesson.” I nudged his boot with my own. “The Art of the Entrance.”
That got his attention. His dark eyes lifted, shadowed with skepticism and a profound lack of interest. “The what?”
“Lesson one. Posture and Presence.” I crossed my arms, planting my feet in the mud. “You can’t woo a lady if you slouch into a room like a beaten dog. You have to command the space before you even open your mouth.”
From a nearby stump where she was mending a net, CeeCee let out a snort. “Command the space? Ross, the only thing he’s commanded lately is a one-way ticket to Sorrow Town. Population: him.” She didn’t even look up, her fingers flying through the tangled cords. “Leave the man to his spear. It’s less painful for everyone.”
I ignored her. This was my operation. My beautiful, terrible, necessary operation.
“Stand up,” I commanded.
With a sigh that could have wilted flowers, Landy set down the spear and rose to his full height. He was a head taller than me, all lean, corded muscle and simmering power. And he carried it all like a sack of rocks.
“See?” I said, circling him like a drill sergeant. “You’re all collapsed. Shoulders up around your ears. Chin tucked like you’re expecting a blow. You look like you’re apologizing for existing.” I poked him between the shoulder blades. “Stand up straight. Imagine a string pulling you up from the crown of your head.”
He adjusted, his posture shifting from ‘beaten dog’ to ‘sullen prisoner facing a firing squad.’ The stiffness was almost comical.
“God’s teeth,” CeeCee muttered, squinting at him. “Now he just looks like he’s got a stake shoved up his—"
“CeeCee,” I cut her off, my voice sharp. “Your commentary is not part of the curriculum.”
“Someone’s got to provide the realism,” she shot back, finally looking up. Her eyes met mine, and in them, I saw a flicker of concern beneath the mockery. What are you doing to yourself? they asked. I looked away.
“Alright,” I said, focusing back on Landy. “Now, we’re at a ball. A grand one. In New Orleans. Crystal chandeliers, a floor so polished you can see your reflection in it. You’ve just entered. The doors are thrown open. All eyes are on you.”
Landy’s gaze was locked on the dirt floor of the camp. “Why are all eyes on me? I’m just—"
“Because you’re you,” I interrupted, a flare of Rose’s frustration breaking through. “Because you walk into a room and you’re the most interesting person in it, you just don’t know it. Now. Look up. Find her. Find Rose across the crowded room.”
His eyes snapped to mine at the name. There it was—that brief, electric shock of pain. Then it was gone, replaced by a forced neutrality.
“Good,” I said, my throat tight. “Now, the look. It’s not a stare. It’s not a challenge. It’s… a promise. You see her, and in that one look, you promise her that the room, the music, the hundred other people, they don’t exist. Only she does. Show me.”
Landy tried. He really did. He looked at me, Ross, the scrawny boy with chopped hair and a bound chest. His expression cycled through confusion, embarrassment, and finally settled on a sort of pained consternation. It was less “a promise” and more “I think I ate a bad piece of possum.”
CeeCee dissolved into a fit of giggles, burying her face in the net.
“Oh, sweet heavens,” she wheezed. “Landy, if you look at a woman like that, she’s gonna think you’re about to repossess her horse. That’s not a promise, it’s a threat!”
Landy’s shoulders slumped, the carefully constructed posture crumbling. “This is ridiculous.”
“It’s not!” I insisted, desperation clawing at me. “It’s a skill, like any other. You don’t punch a man the same way you… you hold a woman’s hand. It’s all about intention. The intention in your fist is to break. The intention in your gaze is to… to build. To connect.”
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He looked at me then, truly looked, and for a moment, I saw the artist in him, the man who carved poems into trees, considering the theory. “Intention,” he repeated, the word foreign on his tongue.
“Yes. Now, try again. Imagine I’m her. I’m Rose. I’m wearing a green dress, the one that matches my eyes. I’ve just seen you. And you’ve just seen me.”
I held my breath. Landy’s gaze softened. The hard, defensive edges around his eyes smoothed away. He wasn’t looking at Ross anymore. He was looking through me, at a memory, at a ghost in a green dress. His posture didn’t just straighten; it settled into a natural, easy authority. His chin came up, not in arrogance, but in quiet confidence. And his eyes… his eyes held a warmth, a deep, unwavering focus that made my knees feel weak. It was a look that could stop a heart. It was my heart it was stopping.
“There,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “That’s it. That’s the promise.”
The moment hung between us, fragile and perfect as a soap bubble. And like a soap bubble, it was destined to pop.
The sound was as out of place as a gunshot in a church: a twig snapping, too sharp, too deliberate, from the tree line beyond the clearing.
Every Maroon in the vicinity froze. The morning’s gentle sounds—the chirping birds, the soft chatter—vanished, replaced by a predatory silence. Maman Brigitte, who had been stirring a pot of grits, didn’t look up, but her hand slid slowly to the hatchet tucked into her belt.
Landy’s posture changed instantly. The wooing gentleman vanished, and the Chevalier of the fighting pit took his place. His body coiled, every muscle ready.
A man stepped out from behind a thick tupelo gum tree. He was wiry, dressed in filthy buckskins, with a face that looked like it had been used to sharpen axes. A long rifle was slung over his shoulder, and a pistol was tucked into his waistband. Bounty Hunter. The brand of stupid that thought one man could take a whole Maroon camp.
“Well, well,” the man drawled, his voice a nasal whine that grated on the nerves. “Look what the cat dragged in. Or should I say, what the swamp coughed up. Landy, the famous Chevalier. Monsieur Fred’s gonna be mighty pleased to see your head in a sack.”
He took a step forward, his eyes glinting with greedy anticipation. He’d clearly been tracking for days, and the sight of his prize had overridden any sense of self-preservation.
Landy took a step to meet him, his fists clenching. The old response. The brute force solution.
And a wild, insane idea bloomed in my mind. The lesson wasn’t over.
As Landy began to shift his weight for a charge, I shoved him hard in the side. “Posture!” I hissed.
He stumbled, off-balance, and shot me a look of pure, unadulterated confusion.
The bounty hunter blinked. “What the—?”
“Don’t charge,” I whispered fiercely to Landy, my eyes locked on the hunter. “Acknowledge him.”
Understanding, slow and dawning, broke through Landy’s battle-ready glare. He remembered the lesson. The intention. He stopped his forward momentum. He straightened his spine, rolling his shoulders back until he stood tall, not as a fighter, but as a lord on his own land. He smoothed the front of his rough-spun tunic, a gesture of absurd fastidiousness in the midst of the swamp.
The bounty hunter stared, utterly nonplussed. This was not in the script.
Landy then gave a single, curt, almost regal nod in the man’s direction. It was not a greeting. It was a dismissal. An acknowledgment of an inferior’s presence.
The hunter’s mouth opened and closed like a fish. “You… you gonna come quiet, boy?” he stammered, his confidence cracking.
“No,” Landy said, his voice calm, low, and devoid of all emotion.
Then he moved.
It wasn’t a brawler’s lunge. It was the same efficient, fluid motion he used in the pit, but now framed by that ridiculous, perfect posture. He covered the distance between them in two swift strides. The bounty hunter fumbled for his pistol, but he was too slow, too confused by the theatricality of it all.
Landy didn’t throw a wild punch. He didn’t roar. He simply brought his fist up in a short, devastatingly precise arc. The crack of knuckle on nasal bone was a sickening, definitive sound. The hunter’s head snapped back. A spray of blood painted the green fronds behind him. He crumpled to the ground without another sound, out cold before he hit the mud.
The entire camp was silent for three full heartbeats.
Then, Landy turned back to me. He didn’t look at the unconscious man at his feet. He looked only at me, Ross, his unlikely teacher. He straightened his tunic again, a tiny, deliberate gesture.
A slow grin spread across my face, a real one, born of adrenaline and a bizarre, soaring pride. I gave him a single, approving nod.
“Good,” I said, my voice cutting through the stunned silence. “Menacing elegance.”
A snort of laughter came from CeeCee’s direction. Then another from one of the hunters. Soon, the whole camp was chuckling, the tension broken by the sheer, absurd brilliance of it.
Maman Brigitte walked over, peered down at the bounty hunter, and prodded him with her foot. She looked at Landy, then at me, her wise, old eyes missing nothing.
“Take this trash to the holding pit,” she said to two of the larger men. “We will decide what to do with his… presence… later.” She then turned her gaze fully on me. “Ross. Your lessons are… effective.”
She walked away, leaving Landy and I standing in the clearing. The body was dragged off. The camp slowly returned to its rhythm. But something had shifted.
Landy was looking at me differently. Not with the softness he reserved for the memory of Rose, but with a new, sharp curiosity. The brooding storm cloud had parted, just a little. He had engaged with the world again, not just as a fighter, but as a student. As a participant.
He walked over to me, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. It was the first I’d seen since the plantation burned.
“Menacing elegance?” he repeated, a hint of wry amusement in his tone.
“You have to admit, it has a ring to it,” I said, my heart still hammering from the violence and the victory.
He nodded slowly, his eyes scanning my face as if seeing me for the first time. “The promise,” he said quietly. “You think it worked?”
He was asking about the lesson. About the look. The one he’d given me before the world had so rudely interrupted.
I thought of that look, the one that had been meant for Rose and had landed, with the force of a cannonball, on my soul.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I cleared my throat, forcing Ross’s gruffness back into it. “Yeah, it worked. Don’t get a big head about it. We still have to work on your small talk.”
I turned and walked away, towards CeeCee and the safety of her mocking commentary, feeling his gaze on my back the entire way. The first lesson was complete. We had survived. More than that, we had, for a fleeting moment, thrived.
And I had learned something, too. I had learned that Landy’s love wasn’t a fragile butterfly I had to hide from. It was a weapon. And I was just beginning to learn how to wield it.