Sallientheria Dawnreaver was not accustomed to being surprised.

  She had spent centuries bending kings to her will with nothing more than a smile and a fingertip along the jawline. Wars had been paused for her. Treaties signed. Nations toppled. Heroes—proper, golden, handsome heroes—had fallen to their knees for the privilege of being crushed beneath her heel.

  So discovering that she was… shaking?

  That was new.

  Not from fear, of course. From offense

  From the absolute of what she had witnessed in the clearing.

  Twelve Bloody Blossoms—some of the most lethal, graceful assassins in the Elven realms—had descended upon a mortal oaf. A mortal man who slept with his feet hanging out of a window, snored like an old goat, and had absolutely no control over his elbows.

  And they had lost. Not just lost. They had been humiliated

  That was the part she couldn’t process.

  He didn’t even fight like a man. He fought like… like a barnyard accident with opinions. She could have sworn she had seen him roll his arms around one another before smashing an elbow downward across the skull of one elf. Another had been sent sprawling when he had scooped beneath their arm and sent head over heels with an adjustment of his hip. Then he had made that one Elf slap himself.

  And yet those messy, ridiculous, primitive little chops had snapped bones like twigs.

  “Oh, wonderful,” she muttered, pressing a hand to her forehead. “He’s dangerous by ”

  Her initial plan—seduce, distract, kiss him into a docile heap, end his life in his sleep—was now entirely off the table. Not because she couldn’t do it, but because she now understood: the idiot was unpredictable.

  And unpredictability was the enemy of elegance.

  She took a steadying breath, adjusted her hair, and swept back toward the mayor’s estate, hips swaying with the effortless confidence of someone who knew people watched her even when they pretended not to. She would need an ally then.

  Mayor Strongarm’s Manor

  Roderick Strongarm fell to one knee the moment she entered, as trained.

  She let a finger trail along his jaw as she passed.

  He made a small noise that would have been embarrassing if he weren’t already used to embarrassing himself in front of her.

  “M–mistress,” he said breathlessly. “Did the Blossoms succeed?”

  Sallientheria stopped walking.

  Turned.

  Smiled sweetly.

  Roderick’s spine stiffened. He knew that smile.

  “That,” she said in a voice dripping with velvet menace, “is the question you wish to ask me.”

  “…Did the Blossoms fail?” he corrected immediately.

  “They did,” she said. “Spectacularly. Like drunken ballerinas.”

  Roderick winced. “Oh. Oh dear.”

  She settled gracefully into his oversized chair—her chair now, because she had decided it was—and crossed her legs so deliberately that he briefly forgot how to breathe.

  “Now,” she purred, “tell me everything you know about the mortal. His weaknesses.”

  Roderick straightened. “Well, ah—table manners, obviously. He eats like he’s trying to intimidate the food. He smells a bit like sawdust and motor oil. He tracks mud inside. He belches, passes gas from his nether regions, and his diction is absolutely.”

  Sallientheria’s eyelids lowered.

  “Real weaknesses, Roderick.”

  “…Oh. Right.” He cleared his throat.

  She tapped one finger against her lips. “Does he care for the Princess?”

  “I honestly have no idea,” Roderick admitted. “One minute he behaves like she’s invisible, the next he insults her father, the Duke, and half the Elven court. But I don’t think it was to protect her… I think he just sort of… stumbled into it.”

  She exhaled through her nose.

  Not quite a sigh.

  More of a sound.

  “And the dark one?” she said. “This Raven creature.”

  Roderick laughed. “Oh—Raven? No. No, no, no. They’re unhinged. Dramatic. Hank sort of saddled them together to keep them out of his own hair. I’m pretty sure they barely talk at all- except in vague notions of darkness and suffering.”

  Sallientheria did not blink.

  “…Of course they did,” she murmured.

  “And the magical wagon?” she continued.

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  “He calls it a ‘truck.’” Roderick leaned in conspiratorially. “And yes. If he cares about anything, it.”

  Sallientheria went still.

  Her tail—usually curled neatly around her thigh—flicked once.

  “So,” she said, voice low and satisfied, “the man does have a vulnerability.”

  Roderick nodded. Enthusiastically. “Yes. The truck! Of course!”

  Her smile sharpened.

  “Wonderful,” she said. “Then I know exactly where to apply pressure.”

  And somewhere outside, as though summoned by fate itself, Raven Blackthorne sensed a disturbance in the emotional spectrum.

  A rival had just stepped onto the stage.

  ----

  Cletus sat on a fallen log, elbows on his knees, hands wrapped around the cold mug Tom had passed him. They watched the sun crawl up over the horizon, throwing a pale November light across the clearing. A sharp, mean wind rolled in with it. It was the kind of wind that promised winter was pacing just behind the treeline.

  Tom took a long, almost meditative pull from his beer. Morning beer. Breakfast beer. “Liquid breakfast,” The human out worlder had called it. Cletus had been willing to try it once, and once had turned into several dozen times over the course of his life.

  “So,” Tom said gently, “you’ve had quite a night.”

  Cletus snorted. “Ain’t every night you wake up to a dozen knife-eared ninjas stuck in bear traps.”

  Tom chuckled into his mug. “Yes. An… unconventional diplomatic incident.”

  The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable. Just… thoughtful. Like the world was holding its breath, waiting to see if these two idiots were actually going to talk about anything important.

  Tom took another sip, then said, “I imagine you see His Majesty as an arrogant, condescending, boorish muckity-muck. Would that be right?”

  “Ayup.”

  Tom nodded like he’d expected that answer even before the question left his mouth. “Most people think so.”

  Cletus shifted, glancing sideways. He wasn’t sure where this was going.

  “But,” Tom continued, “he is kinder than you know. More open-minded than most nobles twice his age and half as battle-tested.”

  Cletus blinked. “He kicked me outta the dinner hall.”

  “Because you told him,” Tom said with perfect politeness, “how he should parent his child. Surely such words would not be well received in your own world?’”

  Cletus shrugged. “Seemed fair at the time.”

  “I’m sure it did,” Tom said dryly.

  He set his mug down on a stump and leaned back, stretching his old bones with a soft grunt. “Look at me, Cletus.”

  Cletus did.

  “This face may be wrinkled and leveled by age, but it is not noble blood. I was not born into privilege.” He tapped his chest. “Four hundred years ago, I was a soldier. A frontline grunt. And he—our King—was a prince who should never have had to step foot in mud and blood and the echoing screams of his own people.”

  Cletus frowned. “But he did?”

  “He did more than that.” Tom’s eyes softened with memory. “We fought a war together. A terrible one. Demons and orcs on one side… elves, humans, and dwarves on the other. Entire kingdoms burned. Entire races nearly vanished.”

  He took another long sip, letting the morning light catch the rim of the mug.

  “I saw him pull a dwarf chieftain from under a collapsing siege tower. I saw him cover the retreat of human soldiers who barely spoke his language. I saw him stand in front of me when a demon general raised a blade against my throat.”

  Cletus’s eyebrows climbed. “He saved your life?”

  “Several times,” Tom said simply. “And I his.”

  He didn’t say it proudly. He said it honestly — the way old soldiers tell the truth without dressing it up. This was an Elf who had seen others die, had done much of the killing himself, and understood the real cost of battle and conflict.

  “When the dust settled,” Tom went on, “our armies stood victorious. The Dwarves returned to their mountains. The demons withdrew to their realm. The elves rebuilt their shattered cities. And the prince… became the king.”

  Cletus waited.

  “And me?” Tom smiled faintly. “I became the friend he refused to let out of his sight.”

  Cletus leaned back, fingers drumming thoughtfully on his mug.

  “Well I’ll be damned,” he muttered. “Ain’t how I figured it.”

  Tom nodded. “Kingship does not erase who a man was on the battlefield.”

  He paused, then gave Cletus a look that was both gentle and pointed.

  “And the same is true of princesses.”

  Cletus stiffened slightly. “Now hold on, I ain’t—”

  “I didn’t say you ” Tom said with a calm sip. “But Princess Liraeleth is her father’s daughter. A rebel. A dreamer. A bit impulsive.”

  He lifted his mug toward Cletus.

  “And very fond of people who surprise her.”

  Cletus looked away, cheeks warming despite the morning chill.

  “…I ain’t tryin’ to get caught up in none of that royal drama,” he grumbled.

  Tom smiled into his beer. “Of course not.”

  It was the politest lie Cletus had ever heard.

  The Crooked Lantern InnAelarion Vaelorian Stardusk Thalanthir

  stood in the middle of the common room as though it were a marble-floored throne hall.

  A crooked lantern—its namesake—flickered overhead, casting lopsided shadows across the room.

  “Who. Authorized. This. Idiocy.

  His voice ricocheted off the rafters, rattling dust loose and startling the inn’s resident cat into fleeing up the stairs.

  Kneeling on the warped floorboards—wrapped in splints, slings, and regret—was the battered leader of the Twelve Bloody Blossoms. Vaelorin had been propped against a chair with one leg shorter than the other. The chair wobbled in sympathy.

  “My liege,” the assassin croaked, bowing until his ribs audibly protested, “no command was given. We acted… in earnest, if profoundly misguided, loyalty.”

  Aelarion’s expression tightened into something that belonged on a battlefield, not in a tavern whose floor smelled faintly of spilled ale and wet pine.

  “My instruction,” he said coldly, “was . Not ‘launch a midnight assault on an exhausted human and his enchanted metal beast.’”

  Behind the bar, wiping down mugs with the reverence of a man who’d given up, Hank

  Princess Liraeleth Silverpetal Dawnstar Sylphrena

  Aelarion turned to the assassin. “Report.”

  The leader swallowed. “Four of my Blossoms are dead, Your Luminous Majesty.”

  Someone near the fireplace muttered a respectful “…damn.”

  “And the survivors?”

  “Severe conditions,” the assassin whispered. “Multiple fractures. Dislocated joints. One has lost the ability to unclench his jaw. Another keeps screaming about a bucket.”

  Hank nodded. “That’d be Cletus’s ‘emergency bucket.’ Shouldn’t’ve touched that.”

  The King shut his eyes as though pleading silently with the universe. The universe ignored him.

  “The human caused this damage?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “And the other one?”

  “Raven Blackthorne,” Liraeleth murmured.

  The assassin shuddered. “They dispatched the last of my men while… It was disorienting.”

  Hank shrugged. “Yeah, that tracks.”

  Aelarion stepped forward. The tavern’s mismatched floorboards creaked under his boots. Even the regulars—hardened adventurers accustomed to goblin raids and tax collectors—fell silent.

  “Hear me,” the King said, voice quiet but lethal. “If anyone, in this inn or in this kingdom, moves against that human without my direct order— remove whatever limb they used to do it.”

  Finally, the King turned to his daughter. For the first time, the fury drained, replaced by something older, heavier.

  “Liraeleth,” he said softly. “We will speak privately about your… involvement.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  As the wounded assassin was carried upstairs toward the healer’s rooms, Aelarion sat down on the least crooked chair he could find. It wobbled anyway.

  He sighed into his hands.

  “Adventurer inns,” he muttered. “Why must all diplomacy begin and end in taverns?”