HEXED

Chapter Twelve: Big Mouth

The town of Ravensmere smelled like woodsmoke and river mud, and the first building either of them cared about was the tavern — low-ceilinged, loud, and smelling gloriously of roasted meat, which after two days of road rations was very nearly enough to make Wren weep on the spot.

"We are supposed to be investigating a dark and mysterious threat," she pointed out, as Alaric flagged down a server with an eagerness she'd never once seen him direct at official state business.

"We are supposed to be doing that on full stomachs," Alaric said. "I refuse to face down whatever's out there having eaten nothing but road bread for two days. Bring the roast," he told the server, "and ale. Two."

"You don't even know what's in the roast."

"It's meat, Wren. It's cooked. I have very low standards tonight."

He ate like a man who'd never once been allowed to eat without an audience of advisors judging his table manners — fast, unguarded, sauce on his chin at one point that he wiped away with the back of his hand instead of some dainty cloth, laughing at something the tavernkeeper said with a looseness Wren hadn't seen on him once since the castle. It was, against every instinct she had to resent him, a good look on him. Dangerously good.

She was three ales deep into pretending she wasn't enjoying herself when the men at the next table noticed her arms.

"You," one of them said, a broad-shouldered fellow with a beard like a hedge that had given up on itself, "look like you could put up a fight."

"I contain multitudes," Wren said, which had, by this point, become something of a personal catchphrase.

"Arm wrestle," the man said, slapping the table hard enough to rattle every cup on it. "Winner drinks free the rest of the night."

Wren looked at Alaric. Alaric, mouth full of roast, simply shrugged in a way that clearly said *this is not my problem to solve* and reached for more bread.

"Fine," Wren said, rolling up her sleeve with the theatrical relish of a woman who had absolutely nothing to lose and everything to prove. "Let's go."

She won the first match in under four seconds, slamming the hedge-bearded man's hand to the table so fast he looked personally offended by physics. She won the second against a taller man who'd clearly expected his height to matter, and it did not. By the third opponent, half the tavern had gathered around the table, cheering, slapping coins down on bets, and Wren felt something loosen in her chest that had been wound tight for months — this, at least, was simple. This was a game with rules she understood, a fight she could actually win outright, no cursed deck involved.

"Where'd a woman like you learn to wrestle like that?" the third man asked, nursing his crushed pride along with his hand.

"Years of dragging useless men out of taverns," Wren said sweetly, and the crowd roared with laughter.

That was, naturally, the exact moment Alaric — three ales in himself, apparently, and considerably less careful with his tongue than usual — decided to be helpful.

"She works for me," he announced, grinning, entirely too pleased with himself, gesturing grandly at Wren like she was a prize horse he was showing off. "Best decision I've made all year, frankly. I'm Prince Alaric Verion, and I have to say, your town has *excellent* ale."

The tavern went silent so fast it was almost audible, like someone had physically reached in and yanked the noise out of the room.

Wren closed her eyes.

"You absolute," she said, very quietly, mostly to herself, "*enormous* idiot."

The hedge-bearded man's face had gone from jovial to stone in the span of a single sentence. "Verion," he said, low and ugly, like the name itself tasted like something spoiled. "You're the one who doubled the river tax last winter. My brother lost his boat because of that tax. Man couldn't pay it, so they took the boat, and he's been fishing off borrowed nets ever since."

"I—" Alaric started, and Wren could see, in real time, the exact moment the ale-warmed haze burned off him and the full weight of what he'd just said landed square in his gut.

"And the grain levy," said a woman near the back, arms crossed, voice shaking with something that had clearly been simmering a long time before tonight. "My children went hungry that winter so your castle could keep its granaries full for a war that never even came."

The room was closing in now, chairs scraping back, men and women rising to their feet with the particular slow, dangerous momentum of a crowd that had found, finally, a target close enough to touch. Wren counted at least fifteen of them between her and the door, and every single one looked like they had a very specific grievance and absolutely no intention of letting the prince walk out unscathed.

"Right," Wren said, exhaling long and slow, already reaching for the deck at her hip. "You just *had* to open your big mouth, didn't you? Couldn't just be a normal, anonymous i***t enjoying his roast. Had to announce yourself like the main event at a jousting tournament."

"In my defense—"

"There is no defense, Your Highness, there is only the fifteen furious taxpayers currently deciding whether to break your nose or your kneecaps first."

She drew a card, and this time, standing in the middle of a tavern full of righteous, boat-losing, grain-starved anger, she didn't wait to see what it gave her. She *asked.*

*Something loud. Something that doesn't hurt anyone, but makes them stop.*

The card flared to life in her palm, and this time when the fire came, it didn't come as an explosion — it came as a wall, a sudden curling sheet of flame that rose up between Wren and Alaric and the advancing crowd, bright and hot and utterly harmless to anyone who wasn't foolish enough to walk straight into it, but more than enough to make every single one of them stagger backward with a collective gasp.

The tavern froze, firelight dancing wild across a dozen shocked faces.

"Nobody move," Wren said, voice carrying easy and clear over the crackle of her own conjured flame, equal parts threat and performance, the old con-artist showmanship rising back up in her like it had never left. "This i***t is going to apologize. Properly. With actual words and actual sincerity, and then we are all going to sit back down and finish our drinks like civilized people, because frankly, I've had a very long two days and I would like, for once, to end an evening without anyone trying to kill anybody."

She glanced sideways at Alaric, who was staring at the wall of fire, and then at her, with an expression that suggested he was recalculating, once again, exactly how much he did not know about the woman he'd brought along on this trip.

"Well?" Wren said. "Go on, Your Highness. Apologize. I believe you've had some practice."

Alaric swallowed, straightened, and turned to face a tavern full of people who hated him, flame crackling protectively at his back, and for the first time all night, said something that sounded like it actually meant it.

"I'm sorry," he said. "About the boat. About the grain. About all of it. You're right to be angry, and I'd like — if you'll let me — the chance to actually fix it."

The silence that followed was long, and uncertain, and entirely uncomfortable, but nobody moved to throw a punch, which Wren decided, given the circumstances, counted as a win.