The Melody Before the Storm
Lara walked into the inn a little later than planned, and stopped short in the doorway, surprised. Bullhorn was decent, cheap, reliable — but never usually packed like this, wall to wall with bodies and noise.
She heard the lute before she understood why the place was so full. Mrs. Horn must have hired the best musician in town to fill the room to bursting. Lara had no idea how the woman could afford it — but one listen told her everything. This wasn’t ordinary tavern music. This was royal-court quality, somehow playing out of a corner stool in a Bullhorn back room.
The song was Fallen Kingdom — old, notoriously difficult, swinging hard between mournful verses and sudden bursts of frantic, battle-pitched speed before collapsing back into despair. She wanted to stop and just listen. But she wasn’t here for the music. She was here for the wild boy she’d only met twice, and she needed to focus.
She’d arrived twenty minutes early, expecting the usual quiet corner table and decent food. Instead she found the room packed to the walls, wine already flowing freely, barely any space left to breathe let alone sit. Doubtful they’d even manage to serve food at this point. She sighed, turned, and started working her way toward the door, deciding she’d just wait outside and find him there instead.
On the stage, as the final notes of the song rang out, Fate spoke into the sudden hush. “Great crowd to play for — but my date’s finally here, so we’ll finish this another time.” Groans went up immediately, calls for an encore, but the crowd parted easily enough as he stepped down from the little platform.
He crossed the room straight to Lara and held out his hand. She stared at him a beat too long, stunned, still trying to connect “wild boy from the shop” with this composed, handsome figure who’d just held an entire tavern in the palm of his hand.
He led her to a table already reserved — he’d made sure of that ahead of time — just as a heavyset woman with an enormous, warm smile came bustling over.
“Fate!” Mrs. Horn beamed, wiping her hands on her apron. “You didn’t tell me Lara here was the girl you were waiting for. Should’ve guessed, though — that was a beautiful piece. Where in the world did you learn to play like that?”
“Learn?” Fate said, deadpan. “I watched a man do it once. Looked easy enough, so I tried it.”
Both women stared at him in silence until he broke into laughter first.
“Very funny,” Lara muttered, unimpressed.
“Sorry — couldn’t resist. Old hobby, long time ago.” He turned to the innkeeper. “Mrs. Horn, might we get some food and wine?”
“On the house tonight,” she said, waving off the offer of payment. “You brought me more paying customers in one night than I’ve seen in months.”
She bustled off toward the kitchen. Lara studied Fate across the table, head tilted.
“What?” he asked.
“You look different tonight.”
“Of course I do,” he said. “Look at yourself — you dressed up for me. You look beautiful, by the way.”
Her face went red in patches. “Shouldn’t that be the first thing you say to a girl?”
“Should I save it, then? For our next date?”
“Next date?” she said. “I never agreed to a next one.”
He smirked, low and confident. “You will.”
Later in the evening, mid-drink, Lara set her cup down with a small clatter. “I don’t think you should have any more.”
Fate nearly choked on his wine as the serving girl walked off. “Sorry, Mom. Won’t happen again,” he managed between coughs.
Lara blinked at herself, genuinely startled. “Did I really just say that?” Her face twisted, half amused, half baffled at her own slip.
“You did,” Fate said, grinning. “Drink or don’t — just don’t kill the mood.” He gestured around the packed room, full of noise and warmth and firelight. “Before it gets too late, they’ll drink, talk, eat, dance a little. Basically just enjoy themselves. We should too.”
He ended up back on stage twice more that night, coaxed up by a crowd that refused to let him sit still for long, Lara eventually pulled into the noise and laughter herself. By the time they stumbled back out into the cool night air, dawn wasn’t far off.
“How are you less drunk than me,” Lara asked, leaning heavily against his shoulder as they walked, “when you drank at least twice as much as I did?”
“Counting how watered most of your drinks were,” Fate said, “probably closer to four times as much.”
She stopped walking. “You knew?”
“Of course. Women don’t randomly switch favorite drinks halfway through a night — unless the bartender’s quietly watering them down on the innkeeper’s orders. Don’t look so shocked. Most places do it.”
“You know a suspicious amount about bar tricks,” she said, narrowing her eyes but still walking again, arm looped through his.
They reached the counter of a second, quieter bar before either of them said much else. “Buy me one last drink?” Fate asked.
She looked at him sideways, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t get ahead of yourself.” She turned like she meant to walk off entirely.
“Almost forgot,” Fate said, catching her wrist and waist before she’d taken two steps, pulling her back in. He kissed her — deep, unhurried, full of heat. When they finally broke apart, breathless, he held her gaze.
“Your turn now,” he said. “To ask me out. I like being the one who gets chased, for once. If you’re waiting around hoping I’ll come find you — I won’t. I’m not that kind of dog.”
Lara stood frozen on the cobblestones, speechless, watching him walk off into the dark. Whatever she’d meant to say died in her throat.
Back in her room above the shop, she lay on her bed for over an hour without shutting her eyes once, staring at the ceiling, replaying the kiss over and over in her head.
He wants ME to chase HIM? Is he insane? she thought, equal parts furious and reluctantly amused. Does he have any idea how many offers I’ve turned down this month alone? She smirked despite herself. Men are so predictable. Give it two days — I’ll run into him again. “By accident,” of course.
Fate spent the following four days locked into swordsmanship drills, breaking only for food, sleep, and the occasional history lecture. Tivi reappeared in class the next day without a word of explanation, sparring with him like nothing had happened between them at all. He matched her pace easily enough, though he still capped himself to a single minute of peak speed before needing two full minutes of recovery — any match that ended before that one-minute mark got scored as a draw by unspoken agreement.
Her record over those four days read: thirty-one wins, three draws. Thirty wins, five draws. Thirty-three wins, one loss, one draw. Twenty-nine wins, two losses, one draw.
Fate eventually relocated his own private training to a quieter spot deeper in the forest, near the lake, unwilling to keep monopolizing Sari attention when she’d already helped him more than enough. Out there, he spent every spare hour sparring against Pan — without question the finest swordsman Fate had ever crossed blades with in any lifetime. The difference in their weapons was stark: Pan wielded a massive bastard sword, the kind built for a heavy knight’s frame, while Fate carried the thinner, lighter blade suited to a light knight’s style. Still, the insight Fate pulled from every exchange was enormous. Pan matched his speed and raw power so closely that the two of them deliberately capped themselves at the exact same level — strength for strength, speed for speed — letting them clash for hours without a single break to recover ki. Time well spent, by any measure.
On the fifth day, an unexpected visitor showed up at the edge of the training field — Aisin, robes marking him clearly as Fire Department rather than Light Knight.
Kate’s eyebrow arched the moment she spotted him crossing onto the field. “Master Aisin. You understand this is Light Knight practice time. You’re not exactly welcome here — you’re Fire Department, after all.”
“I’m sorry, Teacher Kate,” Aisin said, breathless, clearly having run most of the way. “Urgent message. For my brother.”
Kate glanced toward Fate, who gave a small nod, and sighed. “Fine. Be quick about it.”
Aisin bolted straight past her toward Fate, not even sparing Tivi a glance, words already spilling out too fast to track cleanly.
“Emi — she’s been taken — I overheard Dar and the others talking about it — they hired bandits to grab her on her way to the academy — they’re using her as bait, to drag you off the grounds, to make you pay for what happened before—”
“Slow down,” Fate cut in sharply, grabbing his shoulder. “Breathe. Panic doesn’t fix anything. Tell me how they knew her travel route.”
Aisin sucked in a ragged breath, forced himself to slow, breathing deeper each time until his voice steadied. “I told them. While we were drinking, weeks ago — I never thought they’d actually use her like that, I swear. I know we weren’t kind to you after your mother died, but Emi’s still your sister, even if it’s only on paper. I don’t know what to do. I can’t go to the teachers with this — Dar’s high nobility, and this is his world against mine. If the academy gets involved, he’ll just order the bandits to kill her outright and wash his hands clean.”
For a second, something ugly flared in Fate — the urge to turn that anger on Aisin.
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