Chapter 1 #2
Not fully knowing the answer myself, I shrugged. “Because you offered.”
I angled my head at her, studying the rain caught in her lashes, the shimmer of her skin like silver spun with salt. No one like her walked into a fight unless they were looking for something. And I’d bet every tarnished coin to my name—all three of them—she wasn’t searching for someone like me.
Supper. Saints preserve me. When was the last time I shared a table with someone who wasn’t trying to hire me, rob me, or run me through?
Most who walked beside me wanted coin or vengeance, often both.
They asked questions, demanded explanations, and tried to mend what never asked to be made whole.
But she didn’t. She moved with a quiet certainty, with no need to impress the world or prove her place in it.
A meal shouldn’t matter. But the way she’d said, very well—simple, solemn, as if agreeing to far more than food—split something open in my chest. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for.
Only that I caught myself wondering what she might look like when she laughed.
We walked in silence, boots and bare feet patting an uneven rhythm. Had my worn-out boots stood a chance of suiting her, I might’ve offered them. But she gave no sign of minding the cold or the cobbles.
Oronder slept the way only cities do after they’ve bled out all their noise.
It wore its ruin openly, shamelessly baring its scars.
Overhead, clotheslines sagged with rain-soaked fabric, strung between dilapidated buildings.
Rotting shutters clung to brick, framing windows that flickered with half-spent candles.
We passed three drunkards slumped beneath a drooping awning.
One muttered something crude beneath his breath.
Quinnève gave no reply, her gaze trained ahead—a woman who’d buried worse men and never learned their names.
Once, I thought I could fix pieces of this place.
Hammer a board over a leak. Stop a brawl.
Buy a drink for someone lonelier than me.
A thousand nights had taught me better. You don’t save a place like Oronder.
You survive it. And tonight, for the first time in longer than I’d admit, I wasn’t enduring it alone.
A rusted lantern swung above the entrance of the Withering Whistle. Half the letters on the sign had been scorched off, and the rest leaned like they’d shared too much drink with the regulars. Inside, the heat hit us like a breath held too long: smoke, old wood, and the stubborn reek of sour mead.
Wren, stocky and scowling, looked up from behind the bar. His balding head gleamed as he groaned. “Saints above and below. Not you again.”
“Evening, Wren,” I said, grinning as though it might make him less murderous. “Any chance you’ve got room for two?”
“Room, aye. Credit, nay.” His gaze slid from me to Quinnève and back. “Your tab’s long enough to reach Aurillion and back.”
I scratched the back of my neck. “I’m good for it.”
“You’ve been ‘good for it’ since last summer. I’ve yet to see a coin to prove it.”
“Well,” I began, nodding toward Quinnève, “she saved my life this evening. Surely you wouldn’t deny my rescuer the reward of your cooking.” I grinned at him. Compliments had a way of opening doors with Hearths.
Snorting, Wren ran his gray eyes over the fresh wounds on my face, which I was sure were already beginning to swell.
He flicked his fingers toward the fireplace; a few sparks jumped from his hand and caught the waiting logs, coaxing the flames to stir and climb higher. A wave of heat washed across my back.
Quinnève startled. I caught the twitch of her fingers at her bodice, the widening of her eyes before she smoothed her expression. Over Hearth magic? Odd, considering it was the most common of the lower-order gifts. Even children didn’t flinch.
Wren jerked his chin at a table by the fire. “You bleed on the floor again, you’re mopping it up with your shirt. And you’re doing dishes after.”
Quinnève hadn’t said a word since we’d entered, though her eyes drank in every detail of the space.
Heads turned as she walked behind me. It went beyond the usual tavern ogling, taking a warier tone.
One man knocked over his mug, staring. Another made a symbol with his fingers like a ward.
A drunk at the bar slurred something halfway between a proposition and a benediction.
She didn’t bother to acknowledge any of them.
We sat. The bench creaked under my weight, and I winced as my ribs reminded me they still existed.
I’d sat at this table more times than I cared to count—bruised, broke, half-drowning in whatever drink would let me forget.
Yet tonight felt different. Not only because I wasn’t alone, but because she sat there as if she’d always belonged.
As if some part of me had been waiting without knowing for whom.
It was a dangerous feeling. The kind that made men do stupid things, like believe in second chances they didn't deserve. Hope’s a bastard like that. It doesn’t knock first. It slips in, quiet as fog, and by the time you notice it’s there, it’s already taken root inside you.
It was a small thing, her staying. A woman sitting at a table across from a man with blood in his teeth and nothing to offer, but small things become holy when you’ve gone long enough without them. A shared table. A warm meal. Comfortable silence.
“Is this the establishment where you customarily take supper?” she asked, fingers worrying at her skirt. Her tone was polite, but there was a strange weight beneath the words, measuring how much disappointment to carry into the rest of the evening.
“When I can. When Wren lets me. I rent a room in the back building, he owns both.” I glanced at the bar. “The food’s passable. The ale’s terrible. But they stay open late and don’t ask too many questions.” I tried on a smile. “The company tonight is much better than usual.”
A faint flush touched her cheeks. And I, fool that I am, leaned toward her as if it might warm me instead of burn me.
“Quinn, can I call you Quinn?” She inclined her head in a movement that looked close enough to agreement. “How long have you been walking around like that?”
Her expression turned inward, eyes shadowed. “On this occasion? Merely a few hours.”
I crossed my arms. What a strange way to answer that question. Before I could decide if her response was closer to poetry or warning, Wren thumped down two bowls of stew and a plate of flatbread, then circled back to the bar, muttering to himself.
She reached out, slowly, like the steam might bite. Quinn leaned over the bowl. “It smells...real.”
“It is.” I handed her a scuffed spoon. “By the loosest definition.”
She held the spoon as if it were a holy relic. I half expected her to whisper a prayer before using it. I watched her from the corner of my eye. Each bite was cautious, thoughtful.
“So,” I said after several quiet minutes, tearing off a piece of bread, “want to tell me what you were doing walking barefoot into a tavern full of ruffians?”
She didn’t look up. “I was seeking someone in need of aid.”
“Congratulations," I said dryly. “You found the worst option.”
“The timing is of greater consequence than the selection,” she said.
“You believe in fate, then?”
“In my experience, very little occurs without reason.”
I swallowed another bite. “What was the reason tonight?”
“You.”
She stated it as fact. My heart stuttered. For one breathless second, I let myself believe her. Maybe I was the reason. Not a mistake, wrong turn, or a ruined night—but the person fate had purposefully placed in her path. It hit harder than any fist I’d taken in the last decade.
It scared the seven hells out of me.
I choked on my spoon.
She didn’t laugh, but her gaze flicked to me with the barest glint of amusement, as if she knew exactly how much power she held in that moment, and how little she needed to use. It earned me the slightest curve of her mouth.
“You posed the question,” she said.
“I did.” I leaned back, ignoring the stab of pain in my side. “What happens now? You keep rescuing broken men until your halo dims?”
Her gaze dropped to the rim of her bowl. She traced it with one finger, slow and deliberate. “You accepted my help.”
The last time I accepted help, it cost me a broken wrist, a horse, and what little pride I had left.
Before that, it was a promise from a captain who forgot my name once the war ended.
Help had always been a trade I never had enough of to barter for.
The word on her lips sounded closer to a promise rather than a debt to be fulfilled.
“In the middle of a bar fight, agreement seemed the polite course of action.”
Her gaze lifted then, pinning me to the bench with its intensity. “What you agreed to is not without consequence.”
My stomach went tight. “What do you mean?”
She folded her hands again. “We were bound the moment you accepted my assistance.”
My spoon froze mid-air. “Bound?” I echoed, slowly lowering it. “To what, exactly?”
“To one another.”
The room pressed in from all sides.
“Is that a metaphor?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light, though my throat had gone dry.
“No.”
“Then you're going to have to explain, princess, because where I come from, bound has...implications.”
“I am no princess. And yes, it bears implications.”
I should’ve laughed, brushed it off, called her mad, and changed the subject.
She wasn’t being coy or teasing. She meant it.
And something inside me—something ancient and quiet and long since buried—rose to meet it.
Like a hound roused by the scent of home.
Touching her had rearranged something I couldn’t put back.
My throat tightened. I managed a swallow. “What does being bound mean?”
She folded her hands atop the table. “It means we have a fortnight.”
“To do what?” My heart thudded, a hammer against my sternum.
Her shoulders dropped with a small, weary sigh, as though she’d carried this truth for miles. “To complete your quest.”