It starts as curiosity. You're cloaked and hooded, the wool worn thin at the seams but lined with fox fur — the kind only noble daughters wear. Your boots crunch softly in the frost as you slip past the gate guards, slouched and half-dozing, their breath thick in the cold air.

The tavern sits just beyond the village square, a low, timbered building with light spilling golden through the cracks. You’ve ridden past it countless times. Heard the songs from the saddle, the laughter, the crash of mugs. Always wondering. Never daring.

Until tonight.

The warmth hits you first. A crush of heat and noise, thick with smoke and the scent of roasting meat and damp wool. Laughter rolls through the rafters like thunder. The floor is sticky beneath your boots, and the ceiling sags with age. No place for a lady.

Which is precisely why you came.

You find a seat near the back, hidden in shadow. Hood still up. Fingers trembling slightly inside your sleeves. A tavern boy passes by and drops a cup beside you — dark ale, bitter on the tongue. You sip anyway. It burns, and the taste makes you cough.

Still, you don’t leave. And that’s when Satoru walks in.

He’s out of his riding cloak already, pale hair windblown, shoulders broad beneath a dark doublet laced half-crooked. He doesn’t look like a nobleman — not truly — but he’s too clean, too sharp, too aware to be mistaken for anything else. The moment he sees you, his steps slow. His gaze sharpens.

Then he moves.

He crosses the tavern like a storm cloaked in silk — not rushing, not shouting, but undeniable. People shift out of his way instinctively, as if sensing the danger beneath the pretty face and easy smile. He reaches your table in moments, snatches the cup from your hand, and sets it down hard, the metal clanging against old wood.

“What in the name of the Seven are you doing here?” he hisses, voice low and cutting, eyes glittering like frost under firelight. He braces his palms on either side of the table, caging you in without touching. “Are you insane?”

You blink up at him, defiant even as your heart pounds. “I could ask you the same.”

“I live in places like this,” he growls. “You don’t.”

You scoff. “You were born a bastard. In a brothel, if the rumors are true.” They're not but you know they agitate him anyways.

Satoru's eyes flash. “A bastard who knows how to break a man’s fingers in five places before he has time to scream," he hisses. "Which is what's needed in places like these."

You scoff, meeting his icy blue eyes evenly, hair and identity hidden under your hood, but defiant as you lift your chin. You came and Satoru can't force you back; he may be your childhood friend, your partner in crime and a feared soldier but this tavern is yours for the night, and curiosity is a sin you wish to sate tonight. He seems to realise that he has no edge, no chip in the game, no way to pull you out from here.

"Fine," Satoru hisses, grinding his teeth as he yanks a chair to sit beside you, closeby like a guard dog at your feet. "Fine, you wish to indulge in lunacy tonight, go right ahead but I'm keeping my eye on you the entire goddamn time."