Chapter 30 Blue Ribbon
The afternoon slipped through my hands like water. Wipe. Pour. Turn. Smile just enough. Not too much.
My body remembered before my mind had time to argue. I moved through the crush of bodies like I’d never left it—sidestepping a reaching hand before it could land, catching a tipping mug before it spilled, sliding coins off the bar and weighing them without looking.
One man let his fingers drag too long along my wrist. I didn’t pull away. Like most would. That would have given him power.
I just twisted the tray in my hand, sharp and sudden, knocking his knuckles back against the wood. Not hard enough to cause a scene. Hard enough to make a point.
“Careful,” I said, light as anything. “I charge extra for that.”
His friends laughed. He didn’t try again. I didn’t think about it after. Didn’t think about anything.
That was the trick.
The ring didn’t press against my skin anymore, but the absence of it dulled under the rhythm. Under the weight of coin stacked in my palm. Under the steady scrape of cloth over wood.
Something solid. Something I could count.
The innkeeper started watching me different by midafternoon. Less suspicion. More calculation.
By the time the light outside turned thin and gray, he jerked his chin toward the back room. “You count?”
I wiped my hands on my apron and followed.
The coins spilled across the table in a dull, familiar clatter. I sorted them without thinking—copper, silver, the occasional flash of something better. My fingers moved fast, stacking, recounting, correcting his numbers without asking.
He grunted once when I slid the final pile toward him. Didn’t say thank you. Didn’t have to. When I stepped back into the main room, it had shifted.
Dusk brought a different crowd. Louder. Looser. The kind that stayed too long and forgot how to keep their voices down.
I slipped into it anyway.
Let it swallow me.
For a while, I forgot to look at the door.
I noticed him anyway. Not when he came in. When everything else tilted toward him. It was small. Subtle. A few heads turned. A pause in the noise that didn’t quite become silence.
I didn’t look right away. But I knew he was there.
I took my time finishing a pour, setting the mug down, collecting coin.
Then I glanced up.
He was already watching me.
Corner booth this time. Half-shadowed, one shoulder to the wall, hands steepled like he had all the time in the world. The firelight caught along his jaw, traced the edge of that bruise, made it look darker than it had this morning.
He didn’t call me over. Didn’t move.
Just waited.
Like he knew I’d come anyway.
I told myself I wouldn’t rush.
“Thought you’d forgotten where the bar was,” I said, sliding into the seat across from him before I could think better of it. His mouth twitched.
“Unlikely.”
Something slid across the table toward me.
I looked down.
A pastry. Honey-glazed, sticky at the edges, sugar dusted uneven across the top like it had been handled too much on the way here.
I frowned at it, then at him. “You steal this?”
His brow lifted, slow and easy. “Would it matter?”
I picked it up anyway.
Took a bite.
Sweet hit my tongue first—sharp and bright—then softened, melting slow. I hadn’t tasted anything like it in… I didn’t know how long.
I swallowed before I could think too much about it.
He was watching me.
Not like before. Not like he watched a room, or a fight, or a deck in rough weather.
Softer.
Like he was waiting for something.
“Why?” I asked, licking a bit of sugar from my thumb before I realized he was tracking the movement.
His gaze flicked up, met mine again.
“A Bribe of a sort” he said. “Figured you’d earned it.”
I huffed. “You’ve never needed to bribe anyone before.”
He leaned back slightly, stretching one arm along the back of the booth. Close enough that if I shifted, I’d brush against him again.
“Not true. Brought Bram that bottle from the cove.”
“That doesn’t count,” I said, tearing off another piece of pastry just to give my hands something to do. “Bram would drink seawater if you told him it was rare.”
That got a real laugh out of him.
Low. Warm. It settled somewhere I didn’t want to examine too closely. Then he went quiet.
Looked down at the table like the grain of the wood had suddenly gotten interesting.
I waited.
He didn’t fill the silence. Didn’t make a joke. Didn’t push. Just… sat there.
I finished the pastry slower than I meant to.
When I set the last piece down, my fingers were sticky. I wiped them on my apron, aware of his eyes again, heavier now.
“Don’t get used to this,” I said, softer than before.
“Wasn’t planning on it.”
But the way he said it—didn’t quite match. I stood before I could ask anything else. Before I could stay.
The room swallowed me again, noise and movement and heat closing in.
But something had shifted.
I didn’t find the ribbon until later.
My hand slipped into my apron pocket between orders, searching for coin that wasn’t there.
Instead—fabric. I stilled.
Pulled it free just enough to see the color.
Blue.
Soft. Clean. Tied into a bow too neat to be an accident.
I glanced up without thinking. Only one person could have stuck this in my pocket. I looked for him.
He was gone.
I shoved the ribbon back into my pocket like it might burn me if I held it too long.
Didn’t touch it again.
Not until I was alone.
—
The next day, it was a comb.
Left where only I would find it. Carved smooth, little shells pressed into the wood like someone had taken their time with it.
The day after, silk. Faded, but fine. The kind you didn’t just stumble across. Each time, he acted like it was nothing.
A joke. A flourish. Something to pass the time.
Each time, he left before I could decide what to say about it.
At first, I told myself it was a game. Something he did because he could. Because he liked to see me react. I told myself I didn’t care. That it didn’t mean anything.
Then I started checking my pockets before my shift ended.
Started noticing when he wasn’t there.
Started feeling the weight of those small things in my hand—ribbon, comb, silk—and not putting them down right away.
The ring was still gone.
That hadn’t changed. But the sharp edge of it—dulled.
Just a little.
Blurred by sweetness and blue ribbon and the way his eyes lingered too long when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Blurred by the dangerous, creeping thought that maybe—just maybe—he wasn’t doing it for the game at all.