The Next Morning — Quiet Bonds
Towan wiped the sa table for the third ti, more out of habit than necessity.
The bar was quiet again—too early for the usual travelers, too late for the drunks from the night before. A single rchant snored into his plate of eggs near the window.
Herb leaned behind the counter, flipping through a half-torn inventory ledger and muttering sothing about how the “butter always disappears faster when mages stay the night.”
“You know,” Towan said, tossing the rag over his shoulder, “when I leave, you’re gonna fall apart.”
Herb looked up with a raised brow. “Excuse ?”
“I’m serious,” Towan grinned. “You’re doing everything yourself. You need soone to help. Hire soone. Anyone. A dishwasher. A polite burglar. Hell, a ghost that knows how to mop.”
Herb chuckled. “I had a ghost once. Wouldn’t stop reorganizing the spice rack alphabetically.”
“Sounds better than you,” Towan shot back.
They shared a laugh, the kind that ca easily when the world didn’t feel like it was about to end. For a few heartbeats, it was just two people, a bar, and so badly folded napkins.
Outside — Later That Day
Towan sat on the back steps, breathing slowly, letting the wind brush past his face. He was starting to feel normal again—at least, physically. The breathing thod helped. The calm helped.
He closed his eyes, fingers brushing against the ring.
(You're getting better. Still not enough... but better.)
Then—
A shift.
Barely there. Not an energy signature. Not a spike of hostility.
But sothing pulled at the edge of his awareness. Like the way a predator might watch, not from the bushes—but from behind your own shadow.
The ring didn’t react.
Because this wasn’t Essentia being used.
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It was just being understood.
Later That Afternoon – Bar Nonsense & Burnt Bread
Towan stood behind the bar, staring down at the smoking remains of what was supposed to be toast.
“…I don’t even know how this happened,” he muttered.
“You turned the dial up, not on,” Herb replied from the pantry. “That’s not a toaster, that’s a cremation device.”
Towan grabbed the tongs and tried to scrape off the blackened surface. “Think anyone’ll notice?”
The rchant from earlier blinked awake in his corner booth and coughed pointedly.
Herb poked his head out. “Just give him the jam.”
“You think jam fixes everything.”
“It fixed my last marriage.”
Pause.
“…You’ve been married?”
“Mind your business, fla-boy.”
Towan, apron tied in a haphazard knot that defied both gravity and common sense, had just managed to pour three mugs of ale without spilling a single drop.
Miracle of miracles. He allowed himself a small, triumphant grin. Three mugs. Zero chaos. He was practically a professional now.
Then—
She walked in.
The tavern’s usual murmur stuttered into silence, like soone had smacked the room’s volu knob with a hamr.
Elegant cloak—real silverthread embroidery, the kind that cost more than the entire building they were standing in. Velvet gloves, pristine. Shoes so polished they reflected the ceiling beams like mirrors.
Shoes that had never once t dirt, much less the questionable stickiness of the Drunken Hound’s floor.
A serving girl dropped a spoon. It hit the floor with the kind of dramatic clang that only happens in plays and nightmares.
Herb squinted, ale dripping forgotten from his tilted mug. “Uh-oh.”
Towan blinked and wiped his hands on his apron—an unfortunate reflex that left his palms sticky and the apron slightly worse off than before.
“Who is she?”
“Lady Len Verestra,” Herb whispered like her na might summon ghosts or lawsuits. “Daughter of the governor of the Lockeheart District.” A pause. Then, more urgently: “What in the seven hells is she doing here?”
Lady Len moved with the poise of soone who had never stubbed a toe in her life. She didn’t walk—she glided, as if gravity had signed a contract promising not to embarrass her.
She stopped at the bar, stared at the empty stool for a full two seconds (as if gauging whether or not it had rabies), then sat. Perched, really—like a dove on a branch.
The stool wobbled slightly.
It had never experienced this much dignity before.
“I’d like to see,” she said, in a voice soft and sharp like fresh parchnt, “what your people do for fun.”
The silence grew thicker.
Towan, whose brain had imdiately exploded sowhere between “your people” and “fun,” stared.
Fun?
Did she want a drinking contest? A brawl? Was this a nobles' attempt at anthropology?
His brain gave him one last, desperate suggestion before going fully offline:
Feed her.
“Would you like so stew, miss?”
He didn’t an anything by it. No flirtation. No subtext. Just the simple warmth of soone who worked in an inn, trying to be kind to soone who might combust if they touched anything unpolished.
And he smiled. The Towan Smile—a soft, lopsided, unintentionally disarming thing.
It hit harder than any spell.
Lady Len stared.
Then—
A blush.
A real one. No court-trained flutter of lashes. No demure fan-wave. Just straight-up, full-face panic-flush. It shot from her cheeks all the way up to her ears, like her body had just realized soone genuinely saw her for the first ti.
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