Two hours isn’t a long time. I mean, it’s long enough to eat, have a conversation, or walk from one end of a small town to the other. But it’s not long enough to figure out how to separate a magistrate’s daughter from a man designed by the universe to be irresistible to women.
I sat on the wall and watched Ren work, and he was good. I knew he would be. I’d built him to be good. He knew when to lean forward, when to laugh, and when to look at someone with the expression I’d described in Chapter 1 as "the quiet confidence of a man who has never been refused anything he truly wanted." I’d written that line and thought it was smooth. Sitting across the square and watching him use it in real life, I understood what it really was: a weapon.
Clara was polite. She smiled when he spoke, nodded at the right moments, and did all the things a person did when they were being charmed without quite realising it yet. The magistrate sat beside them, watching Ren with the evaluating attention of a man who’d spent years reading people. He wasn’t charmed. He was interested. There was a difference. He saw Ren the way you saw a well-made tool: impressed by the craftsmanship, but still aware of the edge.
I couldn’t wait two hours. The longer Ren sat on that platform, the deeper his roots grew. Every minute he spent near Clara pulled them closer together. I checked Scrivener’s Eye and saw the threads forming, thin and new, stretching between Ren and Clara. They were faint and barely developed, but they were there.
I had to break those threads before they thickened.
The festival crowd was growing, with more people, more stalls, and more noise. The lanterns had been lit as the light faded, their paper glowing red and gold against the darkening sky. A musician had started playing a simple, repetitive melody on his stringed instrument, something warm that blended into the crowd’s chatter. The smell of roasted meat was thick enough to lean on.
I stood up. My knee cracked, and the shirt that was too small pulled across my back while the trousers that were too short caught against my calves. I looked exactly like what I was: a hungry, bruised man in stolen clothes who was about to walk up to a guarded platform and interrupt a conversation between a magistrate’s daughter and the most charismatic man in the world.
I had one advantage, though. I knew something nobody else in that square knew. I knew about the letters.
In Chapter 6 of my draft, I’d given Clara a secret. She’d been receiving anonymous threatening letters for weeks and had told no one. Not her father, not her attendant, nobody. She carried the fear alone because I needed her to be isolated. Ren was supposed to discover the letters accidentally, earn her trust by showing concern, and use their shared secret as the foundation of their relationship.
I was going to steal it.
I walked through the crowd. People moved around me without really seeing me, because I was still an extra. The golden threads ran through the crowd, connecting the festival to the platform, the platform to Ren, and Ren to Clara. I moved through them like a ghost walking through furniture. Nobody stopped me or paid me any attention.
The platform was ahead. Three feet off the ground, with a wooden railing, a small canopy, and three people seated beneath it: the magistrate, Clara, and Ren. Two guards stood at the base of the steps, and they weren’t the bored gate soldiers. These were the magistrate’s personal guards, with better posture, sharper eyes, and the kind of alertness that came from taking their duties seriously.
One of them noticed me when I was ten paces away. His eyes narrowed, and he shifted his weight. He probably saw a man wearing ill-fitting clothes, with a bruise on his face and a look of purpose as he approached a guarded platform. His training told him that something about it wasn’t right.
"Stop there," he said. He wasn’t loud, but his voice carried without any need to shout. It was the kind of voice that came with practice.
I stopped. Ren was sitting three feet above me, close enough to hear everything. He glanced in my direction, and his eyes passed over me the way eyes passed over a chair. I guessed that, in his eyes, I still registered as scenery.
"I need to speak with Clara Dale," I said, using her full name and making sure I spoke loudly enough for everyone on the platform to hear me.
The guard stepped forward. "The magistrate’s daughter is not available for conversations with strangers. Step back."
"Her life is in danger," I said. "She’s been receiving threatening letters for weeks. She’s told no one. I know who’s sending them, and I know what they’re planning. I need five minutes."
The guard hesitated. Not because he believed me, but because "threatening letters" was specific enough to sound unusual, and unusual was above his pay grade. He glanced towards the platform.
The magistrate was looking at me, his eyes suddenly still. Clara was looking at me too. The polite smile she’d been wearing for Ren had disappeared, and her eyes widened. She wasn’t exactly frightened, but I could see the recognition in her expression. The words threatening letters had struck something she’d been carrying alone for weeks. Now a stranger was saying them out loud in front of her father, Ren, and a crowd of festivalgoers.
Ren was watching me as well. His expression had changed. He wasn’t looking through me anymore; he was actually looking at me. His blue eyes were focused and evaluating, the charm still present on his face but with something colder underneath. He was sizing me up, and if only he knew how terrified I was of him. Nobody knew his strength better than me, of course. I’d designed it myself.
"Clara," I said, addressing her directly instead of calling her the magistrate’s daughter. "I know about the letters. I know about the attack. I know it’s coming tonight. Five minutes. That’s all I need."
The square grew quieter. It wasn’t completely silent; the musician was still playing, and the crowd was still murmuring. But the space around the platform had tightened, the way it did when something happened that people felt before they understood it.
Clara stood and looked at her father. The magistrate looked back at her, and something passed between them that I couldn’t read. It was one of those silent conversations between a father and daughter, a decision made in half a second that would’ve taken me a whole paragraph to write.
"Let him through," Clara said.
The guard glanced at the magistrate, who gave a short nod. He stepped aside, allowing me to approach the platform.
I climbed the steps, and the wood creaked beneath my feet. Ren was only six feet away, watching me with those blue eyes, and the golden threads between him and Clara were pulsing, agitated. I could see them in my peripheral vision, thin lines of light stretching and contracting like muscles tensing.
Clara was standing, and so was the magistrate. Ren remained seated, but his posture had changed. He wasn’t relaxed anymore. He was coiled.
Up close, Clara looked even more tired than she had that morning. The shadows beneath her eyes were darker, and her fingers were curled at her sides, not quite forming fists. She was holding herself still, the same way she’d held herself still at the market whenever she wasn’t speaking to a vendor. She was carrying a heavy burden, and I was about to make it heavier.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Her voice was steady and quiet, belonging to someone who’d been waiting for someone to say the word letters out loud and was terrified that someone finally had.
I went straight to the point.
"My name is Joseph," I said. "I know about the letters. I know about the Thorn Collective, and I know they’re coming for you tonight."
Ren stood. He was behind Clara now, and his presence was the kind that changed the temperature of a room. I could feel the weight of him pressing against me like a hand on my chest. The story wanted me to step back, defer to him, and disappear.
I didn’t step back.
Clara looked at Ren, then at me. Her eyes moved between us, and I could see her weighing her options. She was deciding whom to trust, and I suspected she was making that decision based on what she felt, what she feared, and what she needed.
The golden threads between Clara and Ren pulsed. They were thin, they were new, and they were still trying to form.
Clara looked at me. "Talk," she said. "You have five minutes."
Ren’s expression didn’t change, but something behind his eyes did.
[Author’s Archive Update]
Current Divergence: 12%.
[Quest Update]
Secondary Objective: Intercept Clara Dale.
Status: IN PROGRESS. Companion bond forming. Narrative weight increasing. The script cannot classify Joseph as a doomed extra while a companion bond is active.
Note: The hero has noticed you.
The last sentence made me shudder inwardly.
But I stood on the platform with Clara in front of me and Ren behind her, and for the first time since waking up on a tavern floor, I wasn’t running from the story. I was running towards it.
The fireworks were going to start soon. The Thorn Collective would come through the east gate, and I had five minutes to convince a woman I’d invented that I was the only person in that square who could save her life.
Which was probably a lie, considering she had the king of plot armour sitting right beside her.
I opened my mouth and started talking.