Chapter Text
Arc 1: The Retrieval
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The tavern smelled like spilled ale, fried food, and sweat.
It always did after sunset.
The fishermen came in loud and hungry. The farmers took the area near the wall, where they could complain about taxes and their wives in peace.
You had been a waitress for six years. Before that, you had washed cups in the back. Before that, you had been the quiet child your mother kept close whenever unfamiliar ships came into port.
You did not remember much from before the island.
Sometimes there were pieces. White stone under sunlight. A high room with curtains too heavy to move in the breeze. Your mother’s hand tight around yours. The sound of her breathing hard while she carried you down steps you could not see the bottom of.
Mostly, there was only your mother’s fear.
She had brought you here when you were small, to an island so unimportant most maps forgot to name it properly. A place of fishing nets, muddy roads, and people who knew everyone’s business.
She died three years ago.
The cottage was yours now. So were her old warnings, though you had never known what to do with most of them.
Do not speak of where you were born.
Do not trust men in clean white coats.
If a ship comes with a world government flag and no trade goods, run.
There had been no ships like that in years.
So you worked. You learned which customers tipped, which customers lied, and which customers needed their fingers bent backward before they understood the meaning of no.
“Another round over here!”
“You still owe for the last one,” you called back, balancing three mugs in one hand and a plate of fried potatoes in the other.
Old Merek slapped berries onto his table. “I was testing your memory.”
“You’ve been testing it every night for six years. It keeps passing.”
The table laughed. Merek raised his mug in salute.
You slid the potatoes in front of Ellen the net-mender, ducked under Torren’s arm as he turned too suddenly, and caught a falling cup before it hit the floor.
Behind the counter, Lysa gave you a flat look.
“You missed one.”
“I caught it.”
“With your elbow.”
“Still counts.”
Lysa snorted and went back to wiping down the counter. She owned the tavern, though half the village behaved like she had been placed on the earth solely to keep them fed and drunk. She had once broken a chair over a man who tried to leave without paying.
You admired her deeply.
The front door opened again. Wind pushed in first, cold and damp off the water, followed by three dockhands you knew and one man you did not.
The stranger took a seat in the far corner.
Hood up. Cloak dark. Boots too clean for the road, steps too quiet for a drunk.
Your eyes slid over him once.
Traveler, maybe. Passing through, definitely. Trouble, possibly.
The night rolled on.
You moved between tables with practiced speed, collecting empty mugs, dodging elbows, cutting off fights before they grew teeth.
“Your wife said if you sing that again, you’re sleeping in the goat shed,” you told Harvin when he climbed onto a bench.
He dropped back into his seat immediately.
You were reaching for a stack of bowls when a hand closed around your waist.
Not a bump. Not an accident.
A grab.
The tavern’s mood shifted before you even turned.
You looked down at the thick fingers pressed into your apron, then slowly back over your shoulder.
The man attached to them was a trader from the mainland. Red-faced, broad, drunk enough to be stupid, not enough to be forgiven for it. He grinned up at you like he had discovered something clever.
“Come on,” he said. “Be friendly.”
Someone nearby muttered, “Oh, bad choice.”
You set the bowls down very carefully. “You have three seconds,” you said.
He laughed. “Or what?”
You took his wrist, peeled his hand off your waist, and punched him square in the face.
His chair tipped backward.
He hit the floor with a crash that rattled every mug on the nearest table.
There was silence.
Then the tavern exploded.
Men howled. Someone slapped the table hard enough to spill his drink. The trader groaned on the floor, both hands over his nose.
“Out,” Lysa said.
The trader rolled to his side, cursing through his hands. Blood dripped between his fingers.
“You broke my nose!”
You picked up a rag from the nearest table and tossed it onto his chest.
“Then something about you finally improved.”
Two dockhands hauled him up by the arms and marched him toward the door while he stumbled and spat threats no one took seriously.
“You’ll regret this!”
“Unlikely,” you called after him.
The door opened. Wind rushed in. The trader was thrown out into the muddy street.
The door shut.
Someone shouted, “Drinks for the lady!”
“You still have to pay for them,” Lysa snapped.
The tavern laughed again and settled back into its noise, warmer now, brighter. That was how it always happened. Someone tested the boundaries. You reminded them where they were. Everyone here had watched you grow from a silent child into a woman with quick hands and a quicker mouth.
You flexed your fingers once.
Your knuckles stung.
The hooded stranger in the corner had not moved. That was what caught your attention the second time.
Everyone else had turned to watch the punch. Everyone else had laughed, shouted, reacted. But he sat exactly as he had before.
You could not see his face clearly, but you knew he was watching.
You looked away first, irritated with yourself for caring.
Travelers stared. Men stared. People with secrets stared. It did not matter.
You had survived worse than being looked at.
Near midnight, the room began to thin. Farmers went first. Then the fishermen.
When you looked toward the corner again, the stranger was gone.
Your hand stilled on the stack of plates.
The bell above the front door had not rung.
Lysa noticed your face before she followed your gaze. “What?”
You looked toward the back hall. The stairwell. The shadow near the side door.
Nothing.
Only the low fire, the scrape of Lysa’s rag over the bar, and the wind pressing against the shutters.
Lysa’s mouth flattened. “You want me to tell Torren to linger?”
“No,” you said, still watching the back hall. “Not yet.”
Outside, across the muddy road and beneath the eaves of the closed smithy, Shamrock Figarland lowered his hood.
The tavern’s lamp caught the edge of his red hair before the night took it again.
So.
It was her.
The missing daughter of the Holy Land, hidden for years on this dull little island, pouring ale for fishermen and breaking noses in a tavern that smelled like smoke and cheap beer.
He had expected fear. Confusion, perhaps. A woman raised in the lower world, ignorant of what she was, easy enough to secure once the truth closed around her.
Instead, she had bloodied a man’s face and made half the room cheer for it.
Shamrock looked through the tavern window.
Inside, you were laughing at something the older woman behind the counter said, your sleeves rolled to your elbows, your hair loosened from work, your knuckles reddened from the punch.
Not polished.
Not obedient.
Not tame.
Worth handling personally.
A Holy Knight waited in the alley behind him.
“Commander?” the man asked quietly.
Shamrock did not look away from the window.
“Confirm the perimeter,” he said. “No action tonight.”
“We have confirmation?”
“Yes.”
Inside, you turned suddenly, as if you felt the weight of his attention.
Your eyes searched the window.
For one brief moment, through lamplight and warped glass, you looked almost directly at him.
Shamrock smiled.
“Not tame at all,” he murmured.
Then he stepped back into the dark.