The wagon was not built for grace. It bounced. It creaked. It groaned in a way that suggested it had once been a perfectly respectable vehicle but had since accepted its life as a rolling death rattle.
The boards beneath me shuddered with every rock and rut in the road, and the faint scent of horse—mixed with the slightly less faint scent of Dunny—hung in the air like a permanent passenger. In short: not the ideal environment for mastering a delicate, precise, borderline-lethal martial technique that required "absolute, razor-perfect energy diffusion" in the words of our dear Salem.
I sat cross-legged on the boards, one hand resting lightly on my knee, the other hovering just over the worn wood. The diagrams from Salem's book swam in my head—lines and arrows that, in theory, showed the path of energy through my body.
In practice, they looked more like the drunken scrawl of someone trying to draw a treasure map on a sinking ship. I closed my eyes, tried to split the enhancement into micro-fragments, as he'd said, and send them everywhere at once. Legs, arms, core, spine—
"Too slow," Salem's voice cut across the wagon like a whip.
I opened my eyes to see him sitting across from me, one leg crossed over the other, arms folded. He didn't even look like he was trying to be critical—it just happened naturally, like breathing.
"I was halfway through the process," I protested. "Some of us need a moment to coax our chi into submission or whatever mystical nonsense this is."
His head tilted the barest degree. "If it takes you that long, you'll be dead before you move."
I blew out a long breath through my nose and started again. Focus. Diffuse. The energy was a living thing—slippery, stubborn—and it didn't like being told to go everywhere. I could send it to my legs easily. My arms, sure. My lungs, my bones. But all of them at once? It was like trying to play four different instruments with two hands while someone narrated your every failure in real time.
"You're holding your breath," Salem said. "Don't."
I glared at him. "You're telling me to move faster, and breathe? Next you'll tell me to keep my core engaged and my aura pure."
His mouth quirked—not quite a smile, but the ghost of one. "Close."
We went on like that for what felt like an hour. I'd start, I'd nearly get it, he'd interrupt. Or I'd start, botch it entirely, and he'd tell me exactly where I'd gone wrong, down to the angle of my shoulders and the rhythm of my inhales. By the seventh attempt I was seriously considering flinging myself out of the wagon just to escape the commentary.
And then, on the ninth try—something shifted. I didn't get the full burst, but there was a strange, electric hum in my body, as if every muscle fiber had suddenly sat up and paid attention. My pulse was steady, my lungs full, my frame almost… coiled.
Salem's eyes flicked up from my hands to my face. "You're close."
"How do you know that?" I asked. "You're not in my head."
"No," he said simply. "But I can see it."
That was not an answer, and yet somehow it was.
By the time the sun began sinking into the trees, painting the road ahead in molten gold, I was sweaty, irritable, and about three-quarters convinced that if I heard "too slow" one more time I was going to test the sonic burst on Salem's face.
The scent of old ale hit me before I even heard the music. It rolled in on the breeze, mingled with woodsmoke and something fried. We rounded a bend, and there it was—a three-story tavern squatting beside the road like it had grown there, windows glowing, voices spilling out in drunken harmony.
The wagon slowed, and I was off it before the wheels stopped. My boots hit the packed dirt, and I took the steps two at a time. The heavy front door swung open under my hands—and for one frozen, absurd second, every single head in the place turned toward me.
And then they cheered.
Not polite applause. Not mild interest. A roar of drunken approval that rattled the rafters.
"Ah," I said to myself. "Home."
Salem followed me in at a far more dignified pace, his expression somewhere between long-suffering and faintly amused. Rodrick came behind him with a sly smirk that said he'd been here before—or at least, in enough places like it to know the game.
Dunny, naturally, announced he was going to stay outside and "tend to the horses," which I chose to interpret as "avoid being touched by whatever's living in the tavern's beer lines."
The air was thick with smoke and laughter. A fiddler sawed away in the corner, and somewhere a tankard hit the floor with a wet thunk. I began weaving through the crowd, every few steps catching the eye of some broad-shouldered local who would lean down to offer me a drink, a seat, or an innuendo so clumsy it tripped over itself before it reached my ears.
It took me a full minute to remember I was still in my Divine Femmeform. Ah. That explained it. I ignored most, teased a few—light touches, a smile here, a wink there—playing into the role more than was strictly necessary. Tonight was a night to relax, after all.
Off to one side of the room, near the base of a wide wooden staircase, was a desk. Behind it sat a woman with her hair pulled into a bun so tight it could have been used as a weapon, square glasses perched low on her nose, and silken robes that looked far too fine for a tavern this loud. Her quill scratched against paper as I approached.
"You look like the sort of person who could make a census form sound seductive," I said.
She looked up sharply, cheeks already pinking. "I—what?"
"I'm just saying," I went on, leaning one elbow on the desk, "if you ever tire of the hospitality business, you could have a very promising career in administrative intrigue."
Her blush deepened. Before I could push it further, a hand smacked the back of my head—not hard, but with enough familiarity to make the point. Rodrick, naturally.
"Focus," he said, grinning.
Salem slid in beside me, all smooth efficiency. "We need a room," he said to the woman, who immediately fumbled with the key rack behind her. Her fingers shook, and she dropped the first key entirely before recovering and handing it over.
It was decided—Rodrick and Dunny in one room, Salem and I in the other. We climbed the stairs, the noise of the tavern dimming behind us.
Our room was simple. Two narrow beds, a washstand, a window with the shutters thrown open to the night air. The moment the door shut, I felt it—that quiet tension that threads through the air when two people are thinking entirely different things about the same moment.
Salem began to undress without ceremony, stripping down until his shirt hung loose in his hands and his chest and back were bare. My gaze caught for half a heartbeat longer than it should have.
"Well," I said lightly, "this is either a training session or the start of a very different kind of evening."
He didn't bite. Just smiled faintly, the kind of smile that says I know exactly what you're doing, and it won't work. "Focus on training," he said.
"Cold," I murmured, but he was already pulling on a fresh shirt. He left for the bathroom without another word.
I sighed. Focus on training, he said. As if there was any world in which that was going to happen. My nerves were still humming from the day, my body tense in all the wrong ways. I needed to take the edge off. And there's no better edge-softening agent than good, old-fashioned alcohol poisoning.
I slipped into the corridor, moving quietly—only to find Rodrick leaning against the wall, tapping his foot.
"Knew you'd try something like this," he said.
I raised an eyebrow. "Try what? Go for a peaceful evening stroll?"
His grin was all teeth. "Sure. To the bar."
We regarded each other for a moment. Then we both smiled the same smile.
Moments later, we were at the bar, eyes wide with anticipation as the bartender poured two drinks, the amber liquid catching the firelight like bottled sunsets. The first sip burned just enough to remind me I was alive. Rodrick, for once, looked utterly relaxed—shoulders loose, expression open.
"You know," I said, swirling my drink, "you're almost pleasant company when you're not trying to skewer me in a training bout."
"And you're almost tolerable when you're not running your mouth," he shot back.
We traded jabs and laughs, the kind that settle warm in your chest instead of cutting sharp. For a while, the noise of the tavern faded into the background. It was just the two of us, the clink of glass on wood, the comfort of knowing we'd both be alive to regret this in the morning.
Eventually, Rodrick stood, stretching. "Think I'm going to head to bed."
I raised my glass in a lazy salute. "Coward."
He smirked, and was gone.
The bar had settled into that deep, late-night hum that always felt just a touch dreamlike.Not quiet—never quiet—but softer now, the sharp bursts of laughter dulled into a low roar, the music reduced to a fiddler playing something lazy in the corner, the occasional thump of boots against old wooden floors. It smelled of ale and damp wool and the kind of sweat that came from joy rather than work.
I was propped on one elbow at the bar, staring into my glass like the amber swirl might line up into some divine pattern if I stared long enough. It didn't, of course. All it did was remind me how much I'd had to drink already, and how much I probably shouldn't keep going if I wanted to be even halfway alert for the rest of the trip.
But there's a certain heaviness that comes after a long day—the kind that doesn't let you sleep, that makes you feel like your body's tired but your mind's still pacing the room. So I drank. Slowly, lazily, letting the warmth bloom in my chest.
I'd just decided that I could probably survive one more before tipping into "ill-advised decisions" territory when the stool beside me shifted with the weight of someone new.
I didn't look right away—habit, mostly. People sit at bars all the time without meaning anything by it. But then I caught the faintest smell of something sharp and cold, like rain-soaked feathers, and curiosity won.
He was handsome. Not the kind of handsome that slaps you in the face, but the kind that takes its time, like it knows you'll get there eventually. The jaw was defined, touched with a neat shadow of beard, his mouth curled into something that might've been a smirk if it wasn't so warm. His hair—blond, long enough to gather into a ponytail—caught in the lamplight like molten gold, trailing behind him with an ease that felt almost… deliberate.
And then there was the cloak. Dark, tattered at the edges, but the collar—oh, the collar—was lined with raven feathers so black they seemed to warp when caught in the light. At the center sat a golden medallion, pinning the cloak shut, its engraving too worn to make out but important-looking all the same.
He plopped down on the stool beside me like it was a throne he'd been keeping warm all night. He didn't even look at me when he said to the bartender, "Something strong. Strong enough to make me question my life choices, but not so strong I start writing poetry about them."
The bartender didn't even blink — clearly this wasn't his first rodeo with the man — and poured something dark enough to make motor oil look like iced tea. My new companion took a dramatic sniff, swirled the mug like it was a fine wine, and then took a long swallow.
Just then, his entire face transformed — eyes squeezed shut, brows arched in bliss, a hum of delight escaping like he'd just found religion at the bottom of a tankard. And then he laughed. Not a chuckle, not a tavern-appropriate guffaw, but a deep, rib-shaking, tear-summoning cackle that turned half the room to look at him like he'd just announced free drinks.
Before I even had time to blink, he whipped around toward me, still grinning like we were conspirators in some grand joke.
"Here," he said, shoving the mug into my hands with the urgency of a man passing off a live grenade.
I blinked. "You… don't even know me."
"Exactly!" He leaned in just enough to invade my personal space without making it uncomfortable. "Which means I get to make a fantastic first impression before you decide you hate me."
"I like to know what's trying to kill me before I drink it," I said dryly.
"Oh, this won't kill you," he promised, eyes sparkling. "It'll might make you regret several of your life choices, this one included, but death? Nah. Besides…" His grin widened, just a hint of challenge in it. "You don't look like the wrong kind of coward."
I stared at him, caught somewhere between suspicion and morbid curiosity. My better judgment quietly got up, tipped me an imaginary hat, and walked out the door. I took the mug and sipped.
It hit like a well-planned ambush — rich, smoky, with a sweetness lurking at the edges like it was waiting for permission to be liked. Then the burn came, slow and certain, curling down my throat until my chest felt like it had been set on fire by a polite arsonist. I coughed once, not sure if I was impressed or insulted.
"See?" he said, watching me like he'd just won a prize pig at the fair.
"Not bad," I admitted, setting the mug down with a little more respect than before.
"That," he said, wagging a finger, "is a dangerous understatement. This is the kind of drink kings would go to war over."
"And here you are, giving it to strangers," I said.
"Strangers worth giving it to," he corrected cheerfully. "You've got a face like someone who's survived three more disasters than they were supposed to and still hasn't decided if they're proud of it."
I tilted my head at him. "That's oddly specific for someone who just sat down with me two minutes ago."
"That's my specialty," he said, spreading his hands wide as though revealing a great truth. "Oddly specific observations about people I've just met. I'm usually right, too — unless I'm wildly wrong, in which case I say it with enough confidence that people believe me anyway."
From there, the conversation just… happened. He was good—too good—at it. A question here, a joke there, little comments that coaxed more out of me than I'd intended to give. And he laughed. Gods, he laughed, great loud bursts that startled the people around us but never seemed forced.
Somewhere between the third and fourth exchange — somewhere between his bad joke about a goat with a gambling problem and his unsolicited theory about why tavern chairs were the greatest invention of the last century — I let slip that I was headed to Port Fallas for the tournament.
That made him perk up like a cat hearing the word fish. His back straightened, his grin pulled just a little wider, though it still had that easygoing looseness to it. "No kidding? Port Fallas, eh?" He tapped the side of his mug twice, then lifted it in mock salute. "I'll be there too!"
"Going to fight?" I asked, half expecting him to say yes just so he could follow it with a dramatic flex.
He laughed — an earth shattering, shoulder-shaking laugh that made the barmaid pause mid-wipe and mutter something about spirits preserve us. "Me? Oh, no. I don't fight. I'm a sponsor."
"A sponsor," I repeated, dragging the word out until it sounded like it belonged in a bad play. "That sounds suspiciously like a noble way of saying gambler."
"Close!" he said, slapping the bar as though I'd just guessed his birthday. "Except we don't just throw coin at a name and hope for the best. No, no, we work in favor of the contestants. Give them little… advantages. A scrap of intel here, a perfectly-timed distraction there… occasionally something else if the moment calls for it. It keeps the whole bloody thing from turning into a dull slugfest."
"You should sponsor me," I said before my better judgment could catch up and slap a hand over my mouth.
That got me another one of those deep, delighted laughs — the kind of laugh that made the nearby drinkers look over like they wanted to join in, even without knowing the joke. He slapped his thigh this time, nearly tipping his stool, and the bartender sighed like he'd seen this man tip over a hundred times before. "Bold! Oh, I like you."
"So you'll do it?" I asked, leaning in.
He tilted his head, squinting at me in exaggerated scrutiny, then looked up at the ceiling like the answer might be hiding in the rafters. After a dramatic beat, he nodded with the gravity of a king declaring war… and then immediately ruined it by winking. "Done."
And then he stuck out his hand, fingers loose, wrist floppy, like he was offering me not a handshake but an invitation to join him in a three-legged race.
His grip was warm and steady, the sort of handshake that wasn't just agreement but commitment. There was a strange certainty in it, like he already knew the shape of our deal before I'd even thought to make it.
It was the kind of grasp that anchored you — palm to palm, firm enough to leave the faintest impression in the skin afterward. I held it a fraction longer than I meant to, and when I finally let go, my fingers tingled. I liked it more than I should have, the way you like the taste of something you know is bad for you.
The conversation loosened after that, as if the handshake had unlocked a gate. I found myself telling him things that I would have guarded under any other circumstance, as though the warmth of his voice and the flicker of candlelight made my secrets less dangerous.
I told him about home — not the home I talk about in passing, but the real one, the mess of politics, grudges, and the slow, gnawing weight of always needing to be two steps ahead. I told him about Salem's relentless critiques, the way he could take a perfectly fine moment and sharpen it into a lecture that somehow found a flaw I didn't know I had.
And then, gods help me, I even admitted my grudging admiration for Rodrick.
"Rodrick's good," I said, rolling the rim of my mug between my fingers. "Better than me with a sword, anyway."
The man's gaze was steady on me, and when he spoke, it was so casual, so utterly unremarkable, that for a second I didn't register the depth of what he'd said.
"Don't even worry about it. You were always better with the spear anyway."
I blinked. "...What?"
I sat back an inch, my hand tightening unconsciously on the edge of the bar. My voice came out slower than I intended, each word placed with the care of a man setting down glass on stone.
"What did you say your name was again?"
For a heartbeat, his eyes flickered — not with surprise, but with recognition, like I had just caught up to a race he'd been running alone. And then his grin widened, bright, warm, and yet somehow edged like a blade.
"Japeth," he said.