Chapter 25
The morning came to Luna like a personal insult. Gray light through the shutters, the sounds of Vellhorn waking up below, and Alsen still asleep in the next bed with a faint, stupid smile on his face.
Luna sat up. She couldn’t believe what he did last night. But he lay in bed, an expensive shirt where he’d thrown it, the new boots in their place, too.
Last night, he walked into the room, didn’t notice her, didn’t react to her greeting him, and dropped into the bed, completely ignoring her in spite of her glaring at him.
As if she were furniture.
He paid more attention to the chair than to her.
Now, he slept with an insufferably satisfied smile. As if everything was great, better than ever. And this stupid Luna, whom he spent the past few weeks with, practically ceased to exist to him.
She clearly should have let the scorpions land on his back in the dungeon.
She swung her legs off the bed. Her feet found the cold floor. She dressed in silence, strapping the daggers under her blouse with practiced movements that didn’t make a sound.
Before she left, she stood over his bed for a moment.
The urge to kick him washed over her, even stronger than last night. She could plant one right in his ribs. He’d wake up confused and hurt, and she’d say good morning, glad you noticed me.
She breathed out through her nose. Slowly.
Then she picked up her backpack, climbed out the window, dropped to the street below, and headed for the merchant’s district.
Savnoj better have something exciting for her.
The Golden Duck turned out to be quite a few steps up from the taverns Luna frequented.
It occupied a corner building near the market’s southern edge, its sign depicting a duck that might have been golden once, before years of weather and neglect turned it into a dull, flaking brown.
The duck’s expression had a strange sense of distress to it. Luna must have been imagining it.
She found Savnoj at a corner table, alone, nursing a morning ale with bored ease. From what he’d said, he had nothing to do for a while, waiting for his comrade to recover.
He spotted her immediately. The grin came just as fast. “I didn’t think you’d actually show up,” he almost shouted across the inn.
“I’m full of surprises.” She dropped into the chair across from him. “You mentioned a job.”
“Straight to business. How boringly efficient. Almost as if you had something better to do.” He snorted, pushing his ale aside.
He leaned forward, lowering his voice to a volume that couldn’t be overheard from other tables.
“There’s a nobleman, Lord Havenwick. A minor noble, but with significant connections.
He’s been running some kind of side deal with the northern merchant guilds that his benefactors in the dragon’s court don’t know about. ”
“Skimming?”
“Most likely.” He scratched his scar. “Someone wants to know the details. What he’s moving, what routes, who’s on the take. The kind of information that could ruin a man, or make him very cooperative.”
“And you need someone to get into his estate.”
“His study, specifically. There’s a ledger. My boys can handle the distraction and the exit, but none of them can fit through a window without waking the entire district.” He spread his hands, gesturing at himself. “And I’m apparently too large, or so my boys keep telling me.”
Luna leaned back. “You strike me as the type of guy who has resources.” She motioned over the room. “Were I to guess, I’d say everyone in this room is somehow connected to you. I’d expect you to own this inn, too. So, why hire me for your dirty work?”
Savnoj snorted, and about a third of the people in the inn twitched in their seats, suddenly looking away. “Sharp eyes,” he said. “What gave me away?”
She shrugged. “You’re too high level for the city and its general area.
For Ambervale, too, so you’re sticking around for a reason.
You don’t strike me as the family type, so you’ve got something here that stops you from leaving.
Seeing this inn after meeting you at the runesmith, I’d guess you’re high up in the local underground. If not at its very top.”
He narrowed his eyes, analyzing.
“It also fits you wanting to rough us up on the way. You’re bored, and beating up weaklings is fun.
But you’re also experienced enough to recognize a lethal amount of magic.
Were I to make another guess, I’d say you tried to move on, found your limits, and returned home to be the biggest fish in a small pond. ”
He smirked. “I can see why the mage ditched you.”
“He hasn’t, and won’t. He’ll get over his newest fascination, and then we’ll be off. This nobleman thing sounds like something that’ll stretch into multiple days. I can’t commit that much time, plus I’m not all that interested in whatever test it actually is.” She rose. “But we can stay in touch.”
“We actually might. My offer stays open, in any case. There’s always a job to do.” He smiled. “And your faith in the mage might not get reciprocated.”
She rolled her eyes. She knew, all right? “See you around.” Luna took a few steps and stopped. “And by the way, if you or some of your boys have the smart idea to touch my sleeping bag, don’t. Just, don’t. All right?”
He waved it away with his hand. “Never had the thought.”
She left the Golden Duck with a smirk and without a job, which felt like the wrong outcome to a morning that started with purpose.
The sun had climbed past mid-morning. The market district was alive with its usual chaos, vendors shouting prices, carts rattling over cobblestone, the smell of bread and something fried competing with garbage and horse shit. Luna wove through the crowd absentmindedly.
She had to find Alsen. Talk to him. Force him to snap out of the current fascination and get him back on track. They had a main temple to find, research to conduct, and a purpose that extended beyond chasing a woman in a green dress. She wasn’t even that pretty.
The adventurer’s guild was the obvious place to start. That was where he met the bitch, and where Alsen could freely discuss magic with her.
Luna approached from the side street, slipping into the shadow of the building across from the guild’s entrance. She didn’t need to be careful scouting the place, but things would be easier if she had never seen her.
She didn’t even have to look inside.
They came out together. Arleria and Alsen, walking side by side through the guild’s front door.
Arleria wore her adventuring gear, practical robes in green and pink, her hair tied back.
Alsen wore the new clothes, the blue doublet with silver threading, and he looked like a different person than the one Luna had been traveling with for weeks.
Not physically different. He carried himself differently. His shoulders sat easier, his stride had a looseness to it, and his face held an expression she had never seen directed at her. Open. Unguarded. Happy.
Insufferable.
They walked toward the merchant quarter. Luna followed, sticking to shadows. Not that they’d look for her.
She told herself it was reconnaissance. Checking his movements, making sure he wasn’t being targeted, assessing threats. All perfectly valid reasons for a companion to shadow her partner.
They stopped at a food stall. Arleria ordered something, and Alsen said something that made her laugh. Not in a controlled or manipulative way. An actual laugh, head tilting back, her hand touching his arm. Arleria’s touch lingered.
Alsen practically glowed.
Luna climbed on the roof of a textile shop, sitting behind a chimney with her legs drawn up. The vantage point was excellent. She could see their faces, read their lips if she focused, and track every gesture and expression. She had ample experience spying on others from her previous life.
As she watched, Luna wondered if it wouldn’t be better if she were worse at it.
Arleria leaned closer when she spoke to him.
Her body angled toward his, mirroring his posture.
She maintained eye contact a beat longer than necessary, and when she broke it, she glanced down before looking back up, a maneuver so textbook it might as well have been annotated.
Luna had seen the same moves too often, in taverns, in courts, and whenever a girl wanted to fluff the mighty werewolf.
Alsen received every signal with the blind gratitude of a man who had spent his life with books, not women. He didn’t even know he was being played. Or rather, he didn’t care, because the playing went both ways, and they were both enjoying the game.
They walked again. Luna followed along the rooftops, jumping between buildings where they were close enough, descending to street level where they weren’t. Nobody noticed her. Nobody ever did.
They visited a bookshop. Spent an hour inside, emerging with Alsen carrying two volumes and Arleria carrying one.
They talked about the books. Alsen gestured broadly, the way he did when he was excited about something theoretical.
Arleria matched his energy, her hands moving in smaller, more precise patterns.
They sat on a bench near a fountain. The midday sun caught Arleria’s hair. Alsen said something. She smiled. He smiled back.
Luna’s stomach growled.
She realized she had been sitting on a ledge above a bakery for nearly two hours, watching them talk about books and magic and whatever else people talked about as they were falling for each other.
Two hours. She could have infiltrated Havenwick’s estate, stolen the ledger, and been back in less time.
She dropped from the ledge, bought a roasted sausage from a stall, and ate it standing in an alley while trying to figure out why her chest felt like someone had put a rock in it.
It wasn’t jealousy. She refused to call it jealousy. It was a practical concern. Alsen was distracted. Distracted people made mistakes. Mistakes got people killed, or worse, got the people around them killed, too. She had watched it happen before. She made it happen before.
Luna gobbled down the sausage and went back to watching.
They had lunch at a place with outdoor seating. Not as fancy as the Silver Antler, but nicer than anywhere Luna would have chosen. She watched from across the street, perched in the window frame of an empty building.
They ate. They talked. At one point, Arleria reached across the table and fixed the collar of his doublet. The gesture was small, intimate, possessive.
Alsen let her. Of course he did.
The afternoon stretched. They visited the market. Arleria examined magical components at a stall while Alsen hovered beside her, offering opinions that made her nod or shake her head. They moved like people who had known each other for months rather than days.
Luna had known him for over a month, had saved his life, had slept three feet from him, had shared meals and camps and a dungeon that nearly killed them both. And he had never once fixed her collar.
He could have fixed a whole lot of other things on her if only he weren’t so damn stubborn.
By late afternoon, they parted at the same corner where they’d split the night before. Another lingering touch on the arm. Another look that lasted too long. Arleria walked east. Alsen walked south, toward their inn, wearing that same stupid smile he’d gone to sleep with.
Luna stopped following. She sat on a rooftop and watched the sun lower toward the hills, the sky turning the kind of orange that would have been pretty if she were in the mood for pretty things.
She spent the evening in the underground. Not for any particular reason. Just because the underground didn’t make her feel like furniture.
When she got to their shared room, Alsen already slept.