4. Chapter Four
Chapter Four
After the encounter with the soldiers and a quick game of dice surrounded by suspicious glances, Branwyn promptly kicked my boot and gave me her infamous we’re leaving look.
Now, she strode ahead without looking back, leather swishing against her thighs, the glint of her glamoured eyes catching the lamplight.
“Where are we going now?” I called after her.
“The tavern.” She didn’t slow.
“The tavern?” My brows rose. “We were just in one.”
“That wasn’t a tavern,” she tossed over her shoulder. “That was a pit of posturing brutes drunk on their own voices. And I’m not in the mood to watch you bait half-born until one throws you through a wall.”
“I wasn’t baiting.” I lengthened my stride to match hers.
She shot me a look that suggested she thought otherwise. “You might not notice, Aurenya, but when you open that defiant little mouth, you cut deep. And men like that? They'll find any excuse to gut someone in a back ally."
Branwyn looked over her shoulder, and I felt goosebumps rise on my arms.
We turned down a narrow street, stones slick beneath our boots. My thoughts circled back to the scarred one’s words—how Karthmor had landed between us like a curse.
“What was that back there?” I asked. “Your reaction to the comment about Scáthae training her women better?” I knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her wrath. Needed to, after that hopeless encounter.
“That,” she said, her voice low but burning, “was the kind of arrogance the Morrígan burns out of people. Half-born men who think women—particularly Scáthae’s chosen—are ornamental.
Weak. They forget who forged the first spears, who stood the walls while their fathers and brothers rotted in the dirt.
The Morrígan doesn’t tolerate that kind of thinking, and neither do I. ”
Her words came faster, louder with each new syllable.
“Every acolyte she blesses—every single one—earns it with blood and grit. And the Morrígan’s Kathari?
Those women could gut an overfed, horn-broken fool before he even thought to draw breath, then turn him into a goat afterward.
But still, they talk like goddesses’ daughters are simply pretty decorations placed upon the realms for their entertainment. They’re deranged.” She spat.
A small smile tugged at my lips. Yes. This was what I’d wanted. “You’ve got a lot of feelings about this.”
She shot me a wicked grin. “Godsdamned right, I do. And if you were smart, you’d share them, Aurenya. Not everyone’s going to fight your battles, sacred Seer or not.”
It wasn’t intended to be cruel, and I knew it—but the words still pressed heavy against my chest nonetheless. My role was to steady Fate, not to win glory. To see, not to fight. But tonight, I had acted outside my role, and by some miracle, I'd avoided the Old Gods’ gaze.
The current of Fate had faltered, and no vision could stop it.
Branwyn was right. I needed to start considering her words, to put those forbidden scrolls I’d stolen to use.
I walked with my head held high, my decision was made.
I would teach myself how to wield this godsforsaken dagger properly before whatever crack in the tapestry manifested again.
If Tairngire thought he’d break me into obedience, he had another thing coming.
Because while he was busy smirking in the Elders’ shadows, I’d be carving my own.
And I definitely didn’t want to be taught anything by a god who thought himself above even divine right.
Not that whatever ‘training’ he intended to put me through would involve combat or weapons, anyway.
I could just see his arrogant face laughing at me for attempting to wield steel.
No, if the Old Gods sent him, it wasn’t to train me in defense.
I knew that much. I needed to take things into my own hands, as I always did.
We turned a final corner. The thrum of music spilled into the street, lanterns swaying in the wind, frost winking on the windows. Branwyn’s focused expression softened into mischief. “Now, let’s drink somewhere worth our time.”
This tavern was nothing like the last. It was so much darker.
Smoke clung low, curling around ankles refusing to rise.
Amber lanterns burned dim, their light pouring instead of spilling, shadows sinking too deep.
The air stung of sweet spice—dragons’ blood burned, maybe, or some other herb smoldering unseen.
Strange eyes tracked us enough to feel the weight of being measured.
A few gazes lingered too long, catching on our leathers, the knives at our thighs.
Branwyn’s glamour could hide our physical appearance, but it couldn’t hide the edge of our presence.
The smiles directed our way weren’t what I would call friendly.
I followed her lead anyway, though—through the press of mismatched tables and hunched shoulders, keeping my stride easy, unhurried. The trick was to look like you belonged, especially when you didn’t.
At the nearest table, a man laughed low, his companion whispering something in his ear. Another lifted a cup in a mock toast, eyes fixed on us.
“This is promising,” I muttered, letting my gaze roam without holding too long.
“Watch what you say,” Branwyn murmured back, lips barely moving. “Places like this have ears everywhere.”
In the back, a card game ended with the slap of a palm and the scrape of a chair. A shadow shifted, and I felt the faint prick of attention—someone unseen marking us.
I didn’t slow. Didn’t let it show I’d noticed. My hand brushed the hilt at my thigh—a blade that had seen shadows tonight.
As we moved deeper into the tavern, the air shifted. Not the smell—gods, that was the same: charred meat, sour mead, damp leather, but something beneath it.
We continued past a table of dice players until a voice stopped us—low and threaded with smoke.
“Going somewhere, little wolves?”
I looked up to find a man leaned back at an empty table, like he’d been waiting for trouble.
Not handsome, at least not in the way bards sang about, but carved from shadow and dryness.
His mouth curled just enough to prickle the back of my neck.
His gaze dragged over us, unhurried, savoring, like he meant to memorize every inch for later.
Branwyn’s glamour held. To him we were Eleanora and Maeve, sisters from nowhere. Yet he watched like he knew more lay beneath.
My Sight itched. I reached with it, trying to sense what he was—half-born, demigod, mortal, divine.
Nothing. No threads. Just absence.
Like Tairngire. Unease coiled in my chest,
My breath hitched. His eyes snapped to mine with unnerving precision, as if he had felt my reach. Hot, unblinking, the kind that pins prey in place.
I smoothed my face into something careless, curling my lips into a crooked grin. “Touchy,” I said. “Do you always glare at women who cross your path, or are we just special?”
An unnamed expression flitted across his face, there and then gone. “Oh, you’re special.”
He didn’t blink, only tapped his chin with a long finger. "So,” he drawled, “where are the wolves headed this fine, stinking night?”
My stomach churned with the way that he kept calling us wolves. What an unusual way to address two random women in a tavern…but, then again, everyone here was unusual so it shouldn't have been a surprise. However, it still struck me as strange.
Branwyn leaned on the back of a chair, casual as a cat stretching in the sun, inspecting her nails. “South,” she said. “On a small business matter.”
“Small?” His eyes narrowed with amusement. “Carrying around steel like that for something trivial, are you?”
I tilted my head, keeping my smile steady. “Depends on your measure of trivial.”
He leaned in, elbows on the table. “Hmm. And what does Scáthae have you weighing these days?”
Branwyn’s glamour held. Good, he could at least see Scáthae’s mark clearly, but also bad. Because that meant he was something other than mortal and I had no way of identifying it. The thought caused unease to crawl across my skin, eliciting gooseflesh to rise.
“Interesting patron,” he continued, studying the flicker across my face. “She doesn’t hand out her blessing to just anyone.”
Branwyn’s lips curved, but she stayed silent.
I was still rattled by the nothingness around him. “We serve wherever she sends us,” I managed.
“Ah, I see.” He scrubbed a hand over his chin. “Surely, you won’t mind a few questions, then.” He leaned back and snapped his fingers. “Who arms you?”
Oh, so the peculiar man wants to test us?
I gave him a sly smile. This was my specialty. After all the time I'd been forced to spend with my nose in a book, I was given an opportunity to use my knowledge. This was my favorite activity on our nights out.
Branwyn arched her glamoured brow and crossed her arms, ready to watch me work my magic.
A memory stirred of a scroll I’d once read in the temple library’s west wing—Corraín, a war-smith, famed for spiral-marked blades. “Corraín’s forge,” I said smoothly.
His jaw ticked. “What’s your rate?”
Another scrap of lore, too predictable. Scáthae’s chosen never took simple coin. “A third of steel, a third of silver, a third of what feeds the bones,” I replied without pause.
He swirled the dregs in his cup. “Where was your last winter?”
“Eryndral Keep,” I answered easily. It was a name I pulled from the margins of a worn campaign map I’d found discarded on a beaten path. I’d memorized every crooked line, every faded mark.
His gaze sharpened, a hint of frustration behind it. I found it almost amusing. “Your contract mark?”
I described it exactly as the histories recorded: a raven in mid-flight, clutching a spear, the tip turned downward. For a long beat he only stared. Then the corner of his mouth lifted—lacking warmth, but in concession. I'd won, and he knew it.
“Well,” he said softly, “how interesting.”