Above them hung the sign for the Siren’s Sting, complete with a lovingly painted depiction of a plump, cheerful sea nymph holding an improbably foaming mug of ale.
Isobelle caught Gwen’s eye and beamed at her, noting that the other girl’s only response to her trademark killer smile was a tightening of her already-worried features, like someone preparing for a blow. Isobelle softened her smile, winked, and murmured, “Brace yourself.”
She pushed the door open.
They stepped into an ocean of raucous sound, women packed in tightly with drinks in hand, everyone raising their voices to be heard over everyone else. The fiddler (a woman, of course) had the dance floor hopping, and Isobelle recognized a few noblewomen in town for the tournament who had snuck away from the castle to join the fun.
Isobelle squared her shoulders and pushed her way through the crowd, letting it half carry her and Gwen toward the bar.
They reached the bar together, where the tavern owner herself was taking orders. Isobelle braced herself with her forearms to hold her space, squeaking as she was jostled against the wooden counter. Without speaking, Gwen put an arm behind her to fend off the crowd—she used her left arm, which made sense. The right one would be smarting after that hit she took from the second round with Sir Evonwald.
Isobelle glanced up to make a joke about that, but her gaze snagged on the other girl’s, and she forgot what she’d planned to say. There was a challenge in those moss-green eyes, a kind ofbarricade that Gwen had shut herself behind.
This was, Isobelle reflected, the first time she’d heard of a lady needing to storm the castle to reach a knight.
“Good evening, ladies, how can— Oh, Lady Isobelle!” The tavernkeeper had turned toward them, her face splitting into a grin. She was a middle-aged woman with sleek dark hair and black eyes and a nigh-uncanny talent for remembering the names of everyone who walked into her tavern. “But where are your friends? Surely you didn’t come alone?”
“Hi, Jinna! I’m here with my new friend Gwen.” Isobelle turned slightly so the woman could see Gwen standing behind her, face still frozen in confusion at the hubbub.
“Well, then your first round is on the house.” Jinna gestured to the board on the wall behind her, where a dozen handwritten drinks had been listed. “Gwen, since you’re new here, I do things a little differently in my place, and I mix my own drinks for my customers. Each coquetel is handcrafted, each guaranteed to conjure exactly what its name promises.”
Isobelle scanned the list, noting such tempting options as “Midnight Rendezvous” and “Twinkle-Toe Toddy,” until her eyes lit on the final drink on the menu. She found herself grinning. “I’ll have a White Knight, please.”
“An excellent choice. And you, Gwen?” The tavern owner’s gaze flicked across to Gwen, and Isobelle’s did, too.
Gwen blinked and tried to respond naturally, though even Isobelle could see the faint indicators of panic around her eyes and lips. “Oh. I, uh... do you have ale?”
Jinna raised her impeccably arched eyebrows, and Isobelle half expected her to push back and insist Gwen try something moreadventurous. But, displaying that uncanny knack she had of anticipating her patrons’ needs, she simply nodded, letting Gwen stick to the familiar. “Coming right up, ladies.”
Isobelle realized she was staring at Gwen too, watching her even more intently than Jinna had, and wrenched her gaze away toward something, anything, else. “Oooh, there’s a table opening up against the wall. Grab it, quick!”
Looking mildly relieved to have a reason to run away, Gwen ducked through the crowd, dodging a cluster of dancers moving toward the fiddler, then making a lunge for the table, getting a hand on it just before a trio of well-dressed women reached it. One of them opened her mouth to argue, but then they all took a look at Gwen’syou would not believe the night I am havingexpression, and silently but unanimously took a step back.
As Isobelle slid into her chair opposite Gwen, she braced herself, trying to remember how her rehearsed pitch began.
But Gwen’s eyes slid from her face, fixing instead on the tavern owner bustling away behind the bar. “She said this was her place,” she murmured, just loud enough to be heard over the din. “She owns it?”
Isobelle nodded. “My friend Sylvie told me about this place a few months ago. Jinna’s a widow, and her husband didn’t have much when he died. But she bought this place from the previous owner after working her way up, and now... well, you can see what it is now.”
She glanced out toward the dance floor stuffed full of women dancing and talking and gesturing wildly, laughing at bawdy jokes and shouting over the music. There were men in the crowd here and there, but they were decidedly in the minority.
“It’s a little like something... magic,” Gwen murmured, a slight wistfulness slipping past the defenses in her expression. “I never knew a place like this existed.”
Isobelle watched Gwen’s profile as she gazed out at the spectacle. She was aware of a strange tugging in her chest, a need to speak or act, though she hadn’t the faintest idea what to say.
And then Jinna was there, shattering that moment of tension. She set down Gwen’s ale, and then Isobelle’s drink, a white concoction topped with a sprig of mint and several blackberries speared through with a miniature wooden lance.
Gwen stared at it as Isobelle thanked Jinna. “What on earth isthat?” she murmured finally. “She said... cocktail?”
Isobelle grinned. “She did. It’s all the rage on the continent, and Jinna imported the idea. I would’ve ordinarily gone for the Midnight Rendezvous, but I couldn’t quite resist trying the White Knight. It seemed... thematically appropriate.” She raised the lance to her lips and popped one of the berries into her mouth, her eyes never leaving Gwen’s face.
Gwen’s barricades snapped back into place, so firmly that a faint frown line appeared between her eyebrows and her rosy lips flattened into a line.
“There’s no need to be so cross.” Isobelle lobbed her opening salvo across the net with a flash of her dimples. “I came to congratulate you on your victory.”
The frown line did not go away.
“No need?” Gwen echoed. “You wake me in the middle of the night, drag me out of my house, make me come to this... this... mad place, and accuse me of being...” She trailed off, then lifted her hands to scrub at her face, her voice muffled. “You’re likesomething out of a ballad,” she muttered, more to herself than to Isobelle. “And not one of the more believable ones.”
