There was no reason her hand should be shaking.
None.
She was Lady Len Verestra. She had given speeches that swayed trade policies. Held court while merchants and ministers alike squirmed under her gaze. Memorized four languages before her twelfth birthday—one of them dead, just to prove she could. She had been trained never to falter.
And yet—
He’d smiled at her.
Not a bow. Not groveling masked as courtesy. Not some rehearsed compliment about her hair in that exhausting highborn dialect everyone used to flatter without actually saying anything.
Just… a smile. Warm. Uncalculated. The kind you’d give a friend. A stranger. A person.
Her eyes flicked toward him again, as if pulled by some unseen force.
Towan was talking to Herb now, laughing at something—probably something absurdly common, like the virtues of thick bread or the sheer luxury of socks that didn’t itch. But it was real. Unfiltered. The kind of laugh nobles never allowed themselves in public, lest it betray actual human emotion.
She looked away sharply. Her cheeks burned.
This is ridiculous.
Her mind spun into damage control.
(Okay. Breathe. He’s clearly noble. That posture—loose, but balanced. Those manners… too refined for a street vendor. House Faelien? No, their children wield cutlery like daggers before they can talk. House Darrus, perhaps? But their line has that hawkish nose, and his is…)
She bit her lip.
(…Wait. What if he isn’t noble?)
The thought hit like a misplaced step on a staircase.
(But then—how? How does someone smile like that without training? Without a dozen etiquette tutors drilling the exact curvature of ‘polite but not overly familiar’ into their skulls?)
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Her fingers drummed against the table, restless.
(Unless… he was trained. Differently. Look at him—there’s an ease to his essentia, subtle but there. Commoners don’t move like that. Don’t breathe like that.)
A traitorous thought slipped through:
(…He’s enchanting.)
Behind her, the tavern door groaned open—a sound usually drowned out by rowdy chatter, but now, in the wake of her quiet crisis, it may as well have been a thunderclap.
“Lady Verestra.”
A man’s voice, deep and disapproving, cut through the room.
Her bodyguard, Ser Varras, stood in the doorway, his polished armor hilariously out of place among the ale-stained floorboards. His expression was technically neutral, but his nose wrinkled ever so slightly, as if the very air here offended him.
“Why did you run to… this place?”
The pause before “this place” was just long enough to convey: ‘I would rather lick a boot than call this establishment by its actual name.’
“Oh. I just wanted to see how ‘fun’ was handled here” The noble lady’s reply was smooth—too smooth, the kind of practiced calm that made Herb immediately suspect she was lying through her perfectly polished teeth.
Her gaze flicked to Towan, just for a heartbeat, before darting away again.
Towan, meanwhile, was sizing up Ser Varras with the casual scrutiny of someone who had faced down actual monsters.
"He’s not weak, huh," he muttered to Herb, voice low. Then, with the quiet confidence of a man who had seen real strength, added: "But I’ve known people who could break mountains."
(Lytharos, who fought like a storm given flesh. Leon, who moved faster than thought. Eryndar, who I bet could stare down a dragon and make it blink first.)
Ser Varras’s eyes narrowed. (What’s a noble doing working in a place like this?) His instincts prickled—Towan’s features tugged at his memory, echoes of old bloodlines, but nothing concrete. (House Velthas? No. Maybe a bastard of House Krayne?)
The silence stretched, taut as a bowstring.
Then—
Lady Len turned back to the bar, locked eyes with Towan just long enough to make his ears warm and her pulse skip, and said, with flawless noble composure:
"…Thank you. The stew was… enlightening."
(A word never before used to describe tavern stew in the history of the realm.)
And with that, she swept toward the door, her cloak billowing behind her like a dramatic punctuation mark—the period at the end of a sentence no one had expected her to write.
Ser Varras, still reeling from the fact that his lady had complimented peasant slop, stared after her in disbelief. (Did she just—?) His glare snapped back to Towan. (Did he do something? Poison? Charmcraft? Blackmail?)
Their eyes met.
An unspoken challenge crackled between them—a silent clash of essentia, a predator’s instinct sizing up another.
Varras’s jaw tightened. (…He’s been trained by a master.) Not just any master—someone old, someone who didn’t bother with flashy techniques because they didn’t need them.
Not another word was spoken.
But the message was clear: This isn’t over.
Then, with a last lingering look that promised future trouble, Varras turned and followed his lady out.