Friendly conversation buzzed all around them. Even in the tavern, the light-hearted festival atmosphere remained. Jet glanced around to be sure, but no plucky musician tried his or her hand in the corner of this particular tavern. Relieved of the assault on his eardrums, he let out an exhausted sigh. Festivals are nice, but every Tom, Dick, and Harry strumming their grandmother’s lyre on the streetcorner or belting out last year’s ballads in the square… it’s a bit much for anyone.

“Are you sure about this?” Elly murmured.

“For the last time, we do not have the time to kill every damn dragon we see!” Jet snapped, thumping down on a stool at the bar. He nodded at the bartender and held out a coin. “One ale and today’s special, please.”

The bartender nodded, pocketing the coin, and retreated.

Elly sat delicately beside him, eyeing the still-wet puddles of ale on the bar. “I mean leaving Gideon unsupervised.”

“He’s an adult,” Jet grumbled.

“He’s a criminal,” Elly replied.

Jet sighed. He tapped the pendant he wore. “If he kills anyone, he dies. He’s not ‘a criminal,’ he’s a murderer. It’s not like he’s in charge of some grand criminal enterprise. He might be a madman, but he’s not a criminal mastermind.”

“If you say so,” Elly said, shrugging.

“Besides, I can track him, roughly,” Jet said.

“Where is he, then?” Elly asked.

Jet touched the pendant and closed his eyes. A glowing dot lit up in his mind, a small distance away. He thumbed over his shoulder. “Within the town. A street or two that way.”

“A street or two that way is the whores’ street,” Kat muttered.

“He’s in the red light district? What a surprise,” Jet muttered under his breath. His food and drink arrived, and he dug in.

“The red light district…” Elly muttered.

Jet waved a fork at her. “What he does in there is none of my concern. I don’t even want to know.”

Elly wrinkled her brows.

“Why are you so concerned? Did you have some kind of premonition? A vision from the High God?” Jet asked.

Sighing, Elly shook her head. “The High God only steps in and grants me a vision when destiny is about to go awry, when the thread of fate is about to fray, when a great choice is arriving in my life. She doesn’t send visions about… friends, galivanting in the red light district.”

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Jet grunted.

“You and Gideon both seem to have a gross misunderstanding about how my visions work. Even when I get my visions, my dreams, they’re often cryptic and foggy. A knife in the dark, a foreboding feeling about a place. The High God personally appearing and speaking to me is—beyond rare. It only happened the one time she told me to follow you, in fact. It’s not like I can perfectly foresee things all the time.”

Jet started to nod, then froze mid-nod. He looked at Elly. “So when you muttered that thing about us getting stabbed at the tavern if we went back there to sleep… isn’t it possible it had already happened? If your visions are that imprecise.”

“Yes. Wait, huh? Did… you got stabbed at the tavern, is that what you’re saying?”

“When we came to see you the first time, remember? I was bleeding out?” Jet prompted her.

“That was at the tavern? I… huh. I suppose you could have spent the night there,” Elly said, a hand to her chin, brows furrowed. “Though… it’s always possible you would have gotten stabbed again.”

“The missus there, are you just going to sit there, or are you going to order something?” the bartender asked, leaning up against the bar to stare directly at Elly.

Flustered, Elly glanced around, then nodded at Jet. “Er, uh, I’ll… have what he’s eating?”

“Do you have money?” Jet asked.

Elly swallowed. She glanced away.

Jet sighed. He reached for his pocket.

“Sorry to trouble you. My followers were poor, and I didn’t want to burden them by asking for too much. I’m used to fasting, so I only need to eat once a day,” Elly apologized.

“Just eat your fill. We’ll be getting the bounties from those bandits and the wyrms soon,” Jet sighed, handing over another coin. I don’t need the healer starving herself for the party’s sake. It’ll do no one any good if she passes out in the middle of battle.

The bartender returned with Elly’s food and opened his mouth, then frowned. “Where’d the little one go?”

“The little one? Kat?” Elly asked, looking around. She peered around her, lifting her skirts and looking under her feet.

“Little thief ran off,” Jet laughed.

“She’s a child, Jet! What if she’s in danger?” Elly said.

Jet shook his head. “She’s been surviving on her own this whole time until we picked her up. She’ll be fine for a few minutes. I need a break, Elly. Give me a break.”

“Strange that she left before food,” Elly commented, frowning.

Looking at Elly, Jet nodded. “Do you really think she’ll settle down in a church? She’s a thief. A wild child. Is she really going to sit there quietly and read scripture?”

Elly shrugged. “Even if she doesn’t, I can’t just leave her alone. I have to try”

Jet poked at his food. He shook his head. “What on earth was His Majesty thinking, sending me on this mission? I’m not a jailer or babysitter. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’ve probably done everything wrong already.”

“You were chosen for a reason,” Elly said.

“Sure. For being too cowardly to face the True Dragon again,” Jet muttered.

“You aren’t a coward, Jet,” Elly replied.

“How would you know?”

She nodded. “You attacked that wyrm like it was nothing. I was frozen in place, but you and Gideon… like it was nothing, you took that monster down. Fear isn’t a weakness, nor is it a weakness you have.”

He clenched his fist, staring down at his food. “After Figaro died, I… ran. All that death, and just one monster… all I could do is run away. Over and over again. I was a disgrace. I—”

“You’re doing what you have to do to defeat it right now, aren’t you? You’re fighting, in the way only you can,” Elly said. She looked up at him and smiled, tucking her long hair behind her ear.

Jet sighed. He shook his head. On his plate, the food all mixed together, little more than a mush. He went to take a bite, then put his fork down, no longer hungry.

All at once, he pushed up. “I should go get Gideon.”

Elly smiled at him. “Let’s go. Together.”