Chapter 2 Araphi
Araphi
Two Days Later
Araphi Clauneck isn’t supposed to be in the Dragon’s Bane, a run-down watering hole deep in the twisting streets of the Rookery.
(A rich girl like her isn’t supposed to ever set foot in the most dangerous part of Harrow’s capital city of Ashaway, not that that’s stopped her before.) She isn’t supposed to be drinking phoenix-grade whiskey on an empty stomach.
And she most definitely isn’t supposed to be clutching a lute like her life depends on it.
She is, in fact, supposed to be at her own engagement party, an endless and elegant affair hosted at her parents’ mansion on the other side of the river—the third of many such celebrations scheduled over the next few months before her wedding in spring.
She’s been engaged since this last spring, and the thought of yet another party to celebrate the match makes her stomach hurt.
But maybe that’s just the pint of house ale she drained before the whiskey.
Or maybe it’s her nerves. Or maybe it’s the way her mother’s lute keeps poking into her hip bone, as if to remind her that she doesn’t fit in here.
Whatever the cause, it doesn’t matter. Because the bard onstage at the front of the tavern is finishing up their set, which means one thing: It’s Araphi’s turn to perform next.
Hastily, she glances around the tavern. It’s crowded tonight, as it always is at the beginning of the month, when the Dragon hosts bards from all over the kingdom to compete for a prize—really just a small purse of coins, hard-raised by the music-loving crowd—but one that carries with it the ringing approval of all the bards gathered there.
In addition to being famous for its whiskey and the number of people injured in bar fights every month, the Dragon has a legendary reputation among musicians.
The owner, Clara Morley, is a famous bard herself, and she built the Dragon in the same neighborhood where she grew up.
She named it after her professional nemesis, Laudie “the Dragon” Shelton, who Clara supposedly bested for years in music competitions, and who she eventually married.
(That’s another story altogether.) Tonight, Clara, a beautiful Black woman with gray braids piled atop her head, and Laudie, a box-shaped red-haired woman, hold court at a small table in the center of the tavern, right in front of the stage.
The Dragon’s Bane itself is built into a former church—one of the few mildly extravagant places in a district that otherwise runs from modest to tumbledown.
That’s because it was built by a king many decades ago, ostensibly as a gift to the poor.
Araphi learned about it at Auximia, and how, being unable to find a holy person in the capital willing to live in the discomfort of the Rookery, the crown was forced to abandon it.
With its soaring, vaulted ceiling, it has incredible acoustics, and Clara and Laudie have made the space their own.
All the pews have been removed, and a wide stage has replaced the altar.
Flickering torches are set into the stone columns, and candlelight from candelabras taller than Araphi dances off the arched rows of stained-glass windows, still decorated with pictures of gods and heroes.
Small round tables fill the nave. There’s a bar along one side of the church, the wall behind it hung with instruments Clara and Laudie play on occasion.
Because it’s Open Stage Night, the place is packed, and a low hum of noise fills the room as the bard currently performing plays their last notes.
“Another, another!” calls out the crowd as the bard bows.
Araphi’s heart races as the bard looks toward Clara, who raises a tankard and bellows in a smoky, melodic voice, “We’ll have one more, then!”
The couple beside Araphi at the bar cheers.
They’re a pair of brawny men with metalworker tattoos decorating their enormous, entwined bare arms. Clearly drunk and having a marvelous time, they’ve been loudly singing along to a tawdry bunch of drinking songs every child in Harrow probably knows—nothing like the haunting, relatively obscure ballad Araphi’s prepared.
The Dragon doesn’t seem like a ballad-friendly place now that she considers it, but Araphi has been working on this song for weeks.
In her parents’ wine cellars, with the door locked, yes, but she’s finally figured out the tricky third section.
She’s desperate to try it on a live audience instead of dusty bottles of Harrow’s finest vintage from one of her two fathers’ vineyards south of Ashaway.
Ballad notwithstanding, she’s worked hard to fit in here.
She’s even dressed for the Rookery. Araphi runs an uncharacteristically bare hand (all of her jewels, including her engagement ring, are tucked into the purse tied under her skirts) over her simple emerald-green dress.
She can’t help that it’s made of silk. Where does one get dresses not made of silk?
The embroidered leather vest she’s laced atop it is doing amazing things for her cleavage—a fact clearly not lost on the curvy barmaid behind the counter, who keeps meeting Araphi’s eyes in ways that make her stomach tighten further.
“Are you playing tonight?” the barmaid asks, setting a fresh ale in front of Araphi.
The woman, who can’t be more than a few years older than Araphi’s twenty-two, has a golden freckle in each of her blue irises.
Her dark hair is pulled back in a long braid, and there’s a canyon between her breasts that Araphi would very much like to—
No.
She isn’t here to bed a barmaid. She’s an engaged woman, after all.
Though she’s certain her fiancé wouldn’t mind.
A great block of a man, Denby hasn’t been slowed by their engagement in his very public pursuits of other lovers.
But it’s the principle of the thing. The principle being: Araphi is adjusting herself to the idea of being married by reluctantly refusing one beautiful person’s bed at a time.
It’s miserable. She’s miserable. But that’s perfect practice for marriage, she supposes.
Anyway, she’s here for music, not mischief.
“I am playing next, I think,” she answers lightly, meeting the barmaid’s eyes. “Last one of the night.”
Gods, the eyelashes on this girl. Araphi can almost feel them against her cheek. Or feathering her thighs.
No.
She. Is. Here. For. Music.
“Well, good luck,” says the barmaid, unleashing the full force of her smile on Araphi, who nearly falls out of her chair as desire races through her.
“Thanks,” she manages. “Maybe I’ll see you after?” She certainly won’t.
“Maybe,” says the barmaid. “Ask for Ruby.”
“Beautiful name,” Araphi says before she can stop herself. It’s been five weeks since she had anything besides a few cool cheek kisses from Denby. Surely she’s allowed to flirt just a little bit?
Ruby’s gaze slides over Araphi. “I’m full of lots of lovely things—as are you, I’d imagine.”
Now Araphi does fall off her chair. Not from Ruby’s words, though they certainly unbalance her, but rather because the absolute haystack of a man next to her shoves up dramatically as the onstage bard’s last notes ring out.
He cheers exuberantly, swinging his arms in a wide arc and nearly taking Araphi’s head off in the process.
She ducks, saving her lute before it smashes to the ground.
When she pops back up, Ruby is gone, and the ale she’d left for Araphi has been picked up by the brute who’s still on his feet, clapping.
Next to him, another patron spills a tankard of ale, and a fight breaks out.
A clay mug crashes onto the floor. Swords are drawn.
Is Araphi really going to try out a ballad on this crowd?
This was a terrible idea—one that’s certainly going to get her killed.
Or trampled at least. Or perhaps someone will throw a tankard at her head.
The thought sends a frisson of excitement through her—a feeling not unlike that time her cousin Yael dared her to touch an electric eel in the waters off the private beach at Hazelbend, their mother’s ancestral estate.
Standing on the precipice of failure or greatness in the Dragon’s Bane makes Araphi feel more alive than she has in months—ever since her engagement to Denby was deemed the best thing for the Clauneck family.
It would erase any debt they felt they owed the Oreborns after Denby’s father kept his mouth closed about Yael’s first vanishing act this past winter.
Now, it will serve as a distracting spectacle while Yael, freed from the family for good, continues to stir up trouble.
It’s a solid plan, and Araphi knows it. She’s been raised her whole life to be nothing more than a vibrant socialite whose wedding and eventual children will shore up the Clauneck dynasty.
She’s excelled at this so far, but increasingly, she finds herself uninterested, or perhaps unable to pretend that’s all she wants.
Which is silly, of course, because the Claunecks need an heir—no, specifically, they need her.
They have fallen just a little from their place of untouchable power, as Yael’s exploits have chipped away at the family’s investments and footholds, which means there’s more pressure on Araphi to act the part. And that includes marrying Denby.
At the front of the tavern, Clara rises to her feet, consulting the list in her hand, where Araphi had signed her name when she first arrived. Raising a hand and whistling shrilly, which makes a hush fall over the crowd, Clara calls out, “Next up, we have the bard Phi Runesong!”
Araphi swallows hard, but a surge of joy goes through her to hear her stage name called out (because she certainly cannot use her family’s name).