They exited the Emerald Forest as the sun began to sink down the horizon, and by the time they made it to Barrowton and located the nearest inn, night had fallen completely. Before they entered, Priscilla pasted a customer service smile onto her face. People liked politeness and that’s about all she could manage right now.

And with her fucking luck, there was only one room available again. The innkeeper shifted uncomfortably as Priscilla just stared at him with a blank smile for a long moment.

“That’s fine,” Priscilla said. She paid the man and snatched the key before walking up the stairs, her pack resting heavy against her back. She opened the door with a little more force than was needed and set her pack onto the couch, ending the argument about the sleeping arrangement before it could even begin. Priscilla had been proven right, after all.

“I’m going to eat,” Priscilla murmured as she walked past Sulaiman, not looking at him once. Her pants were filthy with the stink of gore and mucus, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care as she walked into the dining area of the inn.

She nearly turned right around as she approached it. The noise of the customers wasn’t deafening, but there were a lot of people here and they were all talking, so the conversations layered over each other and made everyone talk a little louder than normal.

Priscilla grit her teeth as her stomach growled. She armed herself with a strained smile and entered, ignoring just how many eyes in the room turned to her. There was a man behind a small station that looked like it served drinks, so she made a beeline there.

The man’s eyebrows rose as she approached but he didn’t say anything besides, “What can I do for you, miss?”

He gestured to a menu she had missed in her approach. Priscilla ordered a simple meal of the soup of the day before hesitating. There were several types of teas and alcohols available to order, but that wasn’t quite what she wanted.

“Do you have anything that would help with a nasty headache?” she asked, turning a pleading look to the worker. He paused, cocking his head before nodding. He relayed her order to the cooks before he brought out a steaming drink of… something. It smelled like an unholy mixture of a floral tea and a latte of all things, and looked like neither as it thickly sloshed around the cup.

He didn’t elaborate and she didn’t have enough energy to ask. She’d take any solution at this point.

Priscilla took her meal and drink to an unoccupied table and sat down heavily, hoping that a nice, quiet meal would help make her feel better and less like the hulk waiting for someone to put a toe out of line.

She really should stop hoping for things.

Someone slid into the chair across from her, and Priscilla wondered, just for a moment, why me? Are you fucking with me, god of cowards?

Nevertheless, she raised her eyes up from the soup that was calling her name and took stock of the person who chose to bother her. It was a stocky young man with an air of confidence and expectation, his smile widening when she met his gaze. He had some friends sitting at the table behind him, and another uninvited guest chose to join, a dark haired man that slid into the chair next to the first.

Priscilla wanted to tell them to fuck off, but she stayed her tongue because if she offended the wrong person, she might just start a bar fight she would quickly lose in her current state. She couldn’t afford to get seriously injured because she was on a strict timeline, so Priscilla just looked at her uninvited guest because he was the one who interrupted, so he would be the one to start this conversation.

“Hey there,” the man said, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I saw when you arrived and I had a few questions I wanted to ask you.”

“Get to the point,” Priscilla said, her tone short. She wished she could zap the food directly into her stomach and skip all human interaction.

The two men exchanged a look and she mentally dubbed them annoying Pest A and B.

“Well, we were wondering why your companion hadn’t joined you,” annoying Pest A said.

“We have been traveling together all day, and we’re allowing each other some reprieve from each other’s presence. We’re both looking forward to resting well tonight.”

There was no way in hell that she was going to tell this pest anything, or even hint at any sort of conflict. That was just begging for them to ask more questions and waste even more of her time. They ought to get the hint to leave her alone.

But instead there was something that bloomed in Pest A’s eyes that Priscilla didn’t like, something cruel and smug.

“Well,” Pest A drawled, “I’m impressed you managed to spend the entire day with a Muloian. Having a savage like that hovering over my shoulder the whole time… I’d be hard pressed to stay sane myself.”

All annoyance fled from Priscilla as she took in their words and realized what these fuckers were trying to do, the stupid fucking reason they decided bother her to make her shitty day even worse. A deep and burning rage filled her, making her hands twitch with violence as the very little self-control she had left disappeared like it never existed.

“Oh fuck off,” Priscilla spat, slamming her hands on the table as she stood. Some of the soup spilled over the side of the rim and the sudden action made her head pound, but it was worth it to see the startled looks on Pest A and B’s face as they jerked backwards.

“I don’t know why you thought it was a good idea to come over here,” Priscilla said slowly, letting venom sink into every word as she leaned towards them, “but I don’t take kindly to hearing you spew racist bullshit as if it’s the natural order of things.”

Pest A recovered enough to speak. “I just wanted to check in because I was worried –”

“About who?” Priscilla asked derisively. “Me? You don’t even know my name and I certainly don’t care about your supposed ‘worry’ when it's steeped in prejudice.”

Pest A wet his lips and Pest B jumped to his rescue, something wild in his eyes.

“You know how Muloians are with Kavendash women,” Pest B said, “and what they do –”

“You’re such a fucking dumbass,” Priscilla said loudly and enunciating the last two syllables slowly so these pair of dumbasses could understand the sheer amount of contempt she had for them. Pests A and B’s faces went white and red respectively, with Pest B seeming like he was gathering the energy to go on a racist tirade.

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“You –”

“You’re a cunt and a moron,” Priscilla spoke over Pest B, sneering at the pathetic man, “and you’re not a quarter of the man my companion is, and, hell, he has more honor in his pinky toe than you do in your entire body. He doesn’t deserve to have shitstains like you accusing him of being a rapist, and, while we’re on the subject of people who don’t deserve to be bothered by your existence, I’m pretty fucking tired of listening to your voices – gods above and below, are you annoying to listen to, yapping like a damn chihuahua, yap, yap, yap.”

Pest B made a move like he was going to stand and Priscilla reacted fast.

She reached out with the hand Asha was on, wrapping it around the man’s collar and dragging him in close before he had the chance to realize what was happening.

“Say another fucking word,” Priscilla said in a low tone, smile creeping up her face as she saw fear enter his eyes when he couldn’t break her grip enhanced by her lovely Asha’s magical strength, “and I’ll beat your racist ass until I feel better, which might take quite a long time with how pissed off you’ve made me by forcing me to listen to that bullshit when I was just trying to quietly eat dinner. And, no, that’s not a threat, that’s a fucking promise.”

She released him suddenly and he fell across the table, making her soup bowl lose its battle with gravity and tip towards him. He yelped when the hot liquid hit his skin and Priscilla laughed at his pain because the dumbass deserved it, the sound echoing through the now silent dining room.

“Anyone else have any stupid fucking opinions about my companion?” Priscila asked, sweeping her gaze over the dining room despite how that movement made her eyes ache. Many people found other things to look at, frantically shaking their heads. A few looked back with open surprise, and one other man looked like he was about to stand and say something.

Priscilla stared him down, her smile never wavering as she clenched her fist, practically begging him to be stupid and let her get out her aggression even if she’d likely end up getting her ass beat with how her head throbbed in time with her pounding heartbeat. His nose was large enough that it looked satisfying to break, and that would be her one goal in the fight before she slipped into blissful unconsciousness. Asha’s own determination to fuck him up combined with hers, and made Priscilla’s smile widen.

The man swallowed, face going white as he quickly turned away from the expression on her face.

A pity.

She returned her focus to the dumbasses that originally started this.

Pest A was staring at the table like she might forget he was the one who originally spoke and Pest B was trying to ineffectively wipe the soup off him and while avoiding large movements that might draw her attention back to him.

Surprisingly, the extremely thick drink the bar man had given her was still upright. Priscilla decided that eating was a lost cause with how spectacularly she had messed things up, and just chugged the thick drink. For a reason she couldn’t understand, the damn drink tasted like honey, which was far better than she thought it would taste.

She let the cup drop onto the table into the spilled soup, splashing it further on the pests, and began to walk out the room.

Priscilla pulled out a gold coin and tossed it to the man who had given her the drink, who caught it with a startled look. He saw it was a gold coin and did a double take.

“For the trouble,” Priscilla said and continued without stopping.

She stalked through the inn, thankfully not encountering anyone else. Priscilla stood in front of her room just long enough to take a deep breath and prepare herself to see Sulaiman again. Priscilla ripped the door to the room open like one ripped off an old bandaid.

For some reason, Sulaiman was standing near the doorway, as if he had sensed her about to enter. Well, maybe he did, he did have magic that could enhance his senses after all. Any other day, Priscilla might have been tempted to tease him about it, but after that horrible dinner, Priscilla could only hope that sleep would bring her relief.

She shut the door firmly behind her, attempting to walk past him.

A hand snaked out, lightly touching her elbow.

“I’m–”

She was on a hair trigger and her body moved before Priscilla could think.

Priscila brushed off the hand that was trying to hold her, twisting his arm and startling Sulaiman as she pushed him against the wall, a single move away from dislocating his shoulder.

A dark part of Priscilla urged her to threaten him again and make him hurt for daring to touch her, daring to speak to her when she didn’t want to hear his voice.

But the more reasonable part of her, the part that still remembered that this was Sulaiman and not the dickhead from downstairs, asked her just why she was doing this. She was hurting him for no other reason than a lack of self-control on her part. Her teachers would be ashamed of her for the excessive use of force – and there was no way that Mr. –– wouldn’t be ashamed of her for hurting someone that she claimed to care about all because he touched her.

Priscilla let go of Sulaiman like she was burned, shame curling heavily in her gut.

“You should probably order food and eat it in the room instead of the dining room,” Priscilla muttered, unable to look up from the floor, unable to even bring herself to apologize as her tongue felt like lead in her mouth.

She turned around and began to undo the straps on her armor, and though Sulaiman hesitated for a moment, he did leave the room, shutting the door quietly behind him.

Priscilla dropped the armor to the floor and sank into the couch, pressing her palms roughly against her eye sockets as she tried to assuage the pain and keep the frustrated tears at bay.

“Why am I like this?” Priscilla asked, sniffling as she finally had a moment to herself to decompress.

“It’s okay, master,” Asha said after a brief hesitation, its concern clear in their bond as it shifted from a leather glove into something soft and fluffy. “Everyone has bad days, and you can’t be perfect and good all the time.”

“But I have to keep it together,” Priscilla whispered. “I can’t just–”

“You should rest, master,” Asha said, voice firm. “It’s been a long day and you’ve spent every moment of it in pain. No one can blame you for not being able to keep it together after the day you had.”

Priscilla sniffled and lifted her head up. She knew Asha was probably making good points even if Priscilla didn’t believe them herself.

But Asha was right that Priscilla needed sleep.

She stripped the rest of the way and threw the filthy clothes into a pile on the floor and pulled a nightgown on. Priscilla roughly opened the blinds and then crawled onto the couch, using a cushion as a pillow.

“A–hem,” Asha began like it needed to clear its nonexistent throat, “so the poison needle frog lives in tropical climates and it uses tools, which is weird for a frog. It licks sharp branches to get its natural poison over it and then uses the ‘needles’ to stab its prey – and you best hope you don’t come across the needle frog’s spawning ground because the poison the babies make are extra potent, with some saying they’d rather saw off their own limb without painkillers than touch it again.”

Asha’s attempt to make Priscilla feel better did bring a smile to her face, even Asha was just repeating what Priscilla had read to it before.

But it was the thought that matters, and Priscilla drifted to sleep to Asha’s dulcet tones.

And she fell right into a nightmare.