Tress ate her porridge and she drank her wine. It was far from a filling breakfast, but she couldn’t muster the effort necessary to complain. She was in just too much of a good mood. Last night had been fun, and Dorvo was quite the gentleman. She certainly wouldn’t turn down another opportunity to spend a night with him.

Her brother sat down beside her, his own bowl in his hands. She noticed dark bags under his eyes, beneath his spectacles, and a frown on his face. Truss was many things, but one thing that he most certainly was not was a morning person.

“Sleep well?” Tress asked through a mouthful of porridge.

Truss mumbled something incoherent and began shoveling spoonfuls of food into his mouth.

“You should have found a girl to keep you company,” Tress told him. “I know I sleep a lot better when I’m not alone.”

“I cannot stress enough how much I don’t want to hear about your sex life, sis.”

She grinned. “I’m just saying. It’s solid advice. And if you find someone you like during the day, stake your claim. Make plans to see her that evening, or stay with her til then. That way no one swoops in before nightfall. You know, like I did with Dorvo yesterday.”

“Yes, everyone could tell that you were going to…” Truss trailed off. He took a bite of porridge, frowning. Once he’d swallowed it, he said: “Really, Tress. What would mother say?”

Tress shrugged. “Beats me. It’s not like she ever shared her thoughts on moonlight trysts before she died.”

Even as she said it, Tress could feel the mood souring. The twins were raised in a farmhouse near New Novantar. A border skirmish between the Free Cities and Tersen had broken out nearby when they were both small, and the family had been forced to flee. Tress and Truss had both managed to make it out of the violence alive.

Their parents, however, had not been so lucky.

Orphaned by the Tersi, the twins had been raised by their uncle, a member of the Adventurers’ Guild. It was how they had ended up in this life, and it was how they had met Garban. That dwarf was a good man—even if he was from the Republic.

Truss ate his breakfast in silence. There was little else to say now that Tress, like a damn fool, had gone and opened her mouth and ruined things. Her brother had always been the sensitive one, the emotional one. He was the sibling who had loved poetry and had loved people and loved all of it with an intensity that many found to be off-putting. Tress, by contrast, was the hellion. She was the troublemaker, and always had been.

Maybe that sensitivity was why she never saw take anyone to his room. Knowing her brother, the idiot would likely fall head over heels in love with any woman who deigned to sleep with him.

“Sorry,” Tress said.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

“Hm?”

“For mentioning, well… mom.”

“I mentioned mom,” Truss pointed out. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, but I was the one who brought up… you know…”

“Tress.” Her brother looked at her—really looked at her, in the eyes. That was something that Truss rarely did. He looked in the direction of people’s faces, he looked at their noses or their foreheads or the space right next to their ear, but he rarely looked them in the eyes. “I ruined the mood. I was judgmental when I should not have been. I apologize.”

He looked away from her, his shoulders slacking slightly, as though he were relieved to no longer be making eye contact. Truss went back to his breakfast, acting for all the world like the matter had been settled. Tress sighed and finished her own porridge.

She was just gulping down the last of her wine when Seahawk sat down at the table across from them, placing a small wooden box on its surface.

“What’s that?” asked Truss.

“It’s our new job.”

Tress blinked. “It’s our what?”

“I was up before the two of you,” Seahawk explained. “I finished my breakfast while you were still sleeping, so I went down the Guild Hall and got us a job.”

“Already?” Tress asked. “Well, it better not be another hunt. That boar from the last job almost killed me, you know!”

“That was not a boar,” said Truss. “Boars don’t get that big. And they don’t have that many tusks. Or horns. Or vines whipping out of their backs.”

Tress glared at her brother. “Alright then, what was it, smart guy?”

He shrugged. “Some sort of mutation probably. It had taken in a lot of ambient magic, and that had altered it.”

“Oh, a mutation? Altered, huh? And what was it before it was altered, I wonder?”

Truss very specifically kept his eyes on his bowl, and a bit of red crept into his cheeks. “Not a boar anymore,” he muttered.

Tress smirked. “Uh huh. Sure.”

“Ahem.” Seahawk tapped on the little wooden box. “If you two are finished? This job is an easy one. We’re just delivering this box to a scholar over in Academos Vynte.”

“Oh,” Tress said. “That doesn’t sound much like an adventuring job. Is there supposed to be some kind of crime guild after it or something? Maybe a dangerous cult?”

“As far as I’m aware, no,” said Seahawk. “I have a… friend at the hall who passed the job along to me. It’s an easy job but with good pay. My guess is that the scholar just wants extra assurance that it reaches him safely.”

Tress nodded. This was not out of the ordinary for Seahawk. Friends in the guild often passed weirdly easy jobs to her. Tress and her brother had been continuously employed ever since they’d teamed up with the strange scarred woman.

“Time limit?” asked Truss.

Seahawk shook her head. “He’ll be happy to have it by the end of the month.”

“Two weeks then,” said Truss. “And if we book passage on a ship, we can be there in a day or two. Maybe three if we can’t get passage immediately.”

“So to the docks then?” asked Tress.

Her brother nodded. “To the docks.”