You didn’t think she’d say yes. Not to the wine—certainly not to lunch. But there she is, tucked across from you in a booth that smells faintly of spilled gravy and road-weary boots, sipping a goblet of red that costs too much for how little it delivers.
Her coat’s worn, leather fraying at the cuffs, thrown over a simple cream linen dress that softens her edges. And her hair—gods, her hair’s down. No circlet. No guard. No titles.
Just Laeral.
You don’t flirt, not really. You ask her questions. Little ones. Safe ones. Harmless things to pull her out of whatever dire briefing or council argument she just escaped.
“So,” you murmur, nudging your cup across the table so your fingers brush. “Where do you actually eat when it’s not all banquets and masked balls? Where does the Open Lord sneak off to for a bite?”
She hums, as though considering whether to answer seriously or give you a diplomatic smile.
But something softens.
“There’s a place in Castle Ward,” she says, voice low. “No signage. You just… knock three times on a blue-painted door behind a bookshop. It’s called The Glass Eel.”
You blink. “A sushi place?”
“The sushi place,” she corrects, with a flicker of real fondness. “The woman who runs it—Kyori—she trained in Shou Lung and never speaks above a whisper. She makes this eel roll with mountain pepper oil and sea-prickle roe that’s so good I once saw Khelben stop mid-sentence to cry.”
You grin. “Sounds dangerous.”
“Oh, it is,” she says, eyes far away now. “Elminster’s convinced it’s a Zhentarim front. Vajra insists it’s a Harper safehouse. I think it’s just a woman with a knife sharper than most minds I’ve met.”
You see it then, that flicker of relief. She’s here now—not in council chambers, not managing Lords or putting out fires with diplomacy and half-lies. Just a tired woman with a story and a drink, in a tavern that’s far too beneath her.
You don’t say anything clever. You don’t have to.
Instead, you ask, “Do they serve lunch?”
She chuckles, and you feel it like a sunrise.
“I wish,” she says, glancing at the angle of the sun through the dusty window. “But I’ll have to take you one day. If we ever get a moment that isn’t on fire.”
You nod, like that’s something you could believe in.
But then her eyes dart to the clock above the bar.
“Oh no.”
“What?”
“I’m late,” she says, already standing. “Althena’s waiting—something about a Harper contact near Daggerford, and I’m supposed to approve something before the moon’s up.”
She shrugs off the leather jacket, folds it over one arm. Her dress catches the light just enough to remind you who she really is, under it all.
She steps close, gives you a quick, warm hug that smells like wind and lavender and old magic. Not a courtly embrace—something smaller. Personal. Real.
“Thank you,” she says, into your ear. “For the wine. For the quiet.”
She turns to the rest of your group with a quick wave and a flash of apology.
Then she sketches a glyph in the air with two fingers—clean, practiced, full of weight—and vanishes in a shimmer of silver.
You blink.
And then you’re just sitting there, across from an empty cup of wine, wondering how a moment can feel so long and so short at the same time.