In all the years she tended the bar, Everna had never made as many blunders as she had in the past two days.

The bottle of whiskey slipped from her hands. Amber liquid spilled across the countertop, dousing the front of her dress. Now half empty, the bottle struck the mug, which she'd only just filled, and sent it skidding over the edge of the bar. The bottle struck the floor at her feet and burst into a shower of glass shards.

"Son of a bitch!" She snatched a handful of rags from the wicker basket beneath the counter and tossed them onto the puddle seeping across the bar. With another rag draped over her open hand, she knelt to pluck the glass shards from the floor.

That was the second bottle she dropped since her shift started and the fifth since she'd returned home.

"Gods help you, girl," Banor said from the other side of the bar. She glanced up to see him lean over the counter, shaking his head. "That wasn't my drink you dropped, was it? That's alcohol abuse, you know!"

Everna rolled her eyes. "Banor, it's noon. You're the only one drinking right now."

Banor scrunched his nose, though she could hardly see it beneath the tangled braids of his beard. "Bah! You humans and your 'drinking times'! Best time for a drink's whenever you feel like having one. No wonder you lot are always so stiff."

"Some of us have jobs we don't neglect," Everna pointed out. She dropped the last glass shard in her hand and dumped the mess in the waste bin before pulling another bottle of whiskey from the shelf. "And some of us can't drink half a tavern and still function."

"'Cause I'm not a twig like you.” He snatched the bottle from her hand, popped the cork, and downed half of it in one go. "Put some meat on them bones, lass, and you won't be stumbling around like a newborn fawn after a few sips."

"Mom can drink you under the table, so I don't think that has anything to do with it," she countered.

"Your mother isn't normal," Banor called over his shoulder as he stumbled back to his spot near the door.

She shook her head, though more out of habit than anything. A drink wasn't a terrible idea. It may be just what she needed.

Everna threw a quick glance about the tavern and pulled an open bottle from beneath the counter. Her parents, who returned home a day before she had, wouldn't approve, but they weren't there. Sir Swiftbrook enlisted her father's help in dealing with a bandit issue south of town, and her mother was upstairs in the kitchen.

A half a mug, just to take the edge off, wouldn't hurt.

No sooner than she pulled the mug from beneath the counter and pulled the cork from the bottle, Melenda climbed onto the stool in front of her, disappointment twisting her features.

"Drinking on the job, are we? Maybe you should take your parents' advice and take a few days off. You're not right, and it's obvious."

Everna bit back a groan. In the last two days, she'd faced an endless stream of concerned complaints and unwarranted advice from both the staff and the patrons. She knew they meant well, but their concern only stressed her further. She'd run out of excuses for why she couldn't lock herself upstairs for a few days.

"It's just an off day," she said with a dismissive wave. "We all have them."

Melenda frowned, the lines of her face highlighted by the shadows cast by the torched chandeliers. "There's off days, and there's off days."

"This hasn't exactly been my week," Everna reminded her as she took a generous sip from the bottle.

Gods, how she wished she could say more. If she could talk to even one person about her circumstances, it may help unravel the tangled ball of nerves bouncing about her stomach. But the Inquisitor demanded secrecy. Their plan wouldn't work if the whole town knew.

It was frustrating. She'd made no progress at all. Mayor Ashburn's room was empty when she returned, everything tossed out for the sweepers and the floor scrubbed clean of blood. She had nothing — not a single shred of evidence to point her in the right direction.

The one potential suspect she had, she couldn't investigate. Windmore wouldn't cooperate. Even if, by some miracle, he did, she didn't have the authority to deal with him. Sir Swiftbrook would have to do it, but he hadn't seemed all that convinced Windmore played an intentional role in her framing.

Perhaps he hadn't, and she merely hoped he had, for it was the only possibility she had to work with.

The hypothetical scenarios she studied during her classes, as well as the real ones she encountered while shadowing the Inquisitors, were far easier. Those cases had plenty of evidence — witnesses, reports, speculations, and conjecture already put forth by the professionals. Her teachers had the answers. The Inquisitors had access to information and tools beyond the reach of the public.

She had nothing but blank slates and few resources. There would be no speaking with the witnesses, interrogating suspects, or reviewing the Guard's records. Everything had to be done off the books and from within the shadows — two things she had no experience with. The Courts, so she once believed, placed great importance on procedure, as evidence gathered through other means would not hold in court. Without the verification processes, they had no way to tell whether the evidence submitted was legitimate or fabricated.

She wondered then if the Courts would accept any evidence she put forth.

"Everna! Gods above, you're spilling it!"

Melenda's words yanked her from her thoughts. Startled, she jerked her hand back and nearly sent both the bottle and the overflowing mug to the floor. Again.

"Shit."

"All right, that's enough!" Melenda snatched her rag from the waistline of her apron and threw it onto the new puddle spreading across the bar. "You're done for the day."

"Melenda—"

"I won't hear any protest from you!" she scolded, wagging her finger at her. "Go upstairs and rest. Bree can manage the bar for one day."

"I'm in charge of—"

Melenda crossed her arms over her chest and raised a brow. "Your parents are in charge, and you know as well as I do they'd take my side."

Everna scowled. Her parents wanted her to remain upstairs for the week, but she'd hoped a day or two of normalcy would offset the anxiety gnawing at her gut. Distraction had never failed her. She just needed another hour or two to get back into her usual rhythm.

Yet she knew it was a pointless endeavor, arguing with Melenda. She had that look in her eyes, and Everna knew if she didn't give in, Melenda would have her mother downstairs in no time at all. Once her mother stepped in, there would be no more discussion.

She wasn't fond of the idea of being hauled up the stairs by her ear or, worse, if her mother brought the wooden spoon with her. She repressed a shudder at the thought.

There wasn't a person raised in Pendel who didn't fear the dreaded wooden spoon.

With a reluctant sigh, Everna set the bottle on the counter. "I hate you sometimes."

"You only hate me when I'm right," Melenda snorted. "Honestly, child. Do you have any idea how worried we all were?"

"To tell you the truth, I expected to be greeted by an angry mob. I'm shocked that most people don't seem to care."

Beyond a couple of backhanded remarks and snide comments from the more skeptical townsfolk, she faced very little backlash in response to the Courts' decision. Most people, it seemed, were more concerned with speculating about what was to come now that Mayor Ashburn was gone. For the first time in thirty years, his name would not be on the ballot for the upcoming election.

"That is because most don't believe you're responsible."

Everna glanced up as Andryll dropped onto the stool beside Melenda. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, and the vibrant emerald green of his irises seemed far duller than she remembered. Though a hint of a smile tugged at his lips, he leaned heavily against the bar. He looked as if he hadn't slept in days; it was a strange sight to behold.

Elves didn't sleep.

"I still find that hard to believe," she said. "With how the town rioted when Windmore arrested me, I would've thought they'd be at the gate with torches in their hands."

"Well, believe it or not, it's true," Melenda said. "Not for your character, mind you. Most people don't believe someone like you could kill Arden."

"How comforting to know people think so highly of my character."

Andryll snorted, though it sounded more of a sigh, and leaned forward, his chin resting on his hands. "Humans are notoriously emotional creatures. They rarely think before they react, and it's often not until afterwards do they stop to consider things with more clarity."

"You have a point," Everna said.

"Though it is worth mentioning that in smaller, close-knit communities such as this, people are hesitant to believe one of their own is capable of such things," he continued. "Humans are fickle creatures. Both cynical and naïve. Fiercely loyal, yet distrustful. And you all wonder why us elves find you more amusing than anything."

That made far more sense. Her courses required some measure of understanding of both human and non-human behaviorism. Though individuals in their own right, most races exhibited a predisposition towards specific tendencies, which resulted from both their inherent behaviors and their culture. Those tendencies were necessary to understand how to deal with the emotional and psychological aspects of their job.

What Andryll spoke of was what her instructors referred to as willful ignorance — denial. It was a phenomenon commonly observed in murder cases, one often displayed by family members or close relations of the accused. Even when faced with irrevocable truth or a direct confession, they denied what was so clearly before their eyes.

She spent many a class debating the matter. Scholars widely agreed that it stemmed less from logic and more from a misplaced perception of morality; they believed that because they themselves would never commit such a crime, they couldn't comprehend that someone else could. Some, however, argued that it resulted from selfishness, that most races (humans and elves especially) did not like to admit to wrong. They treated truth as a subjective entity based solely on personal perception rather than as an objective reality, as it conflicted with their personal beliefs.

As one of her instructors often said, there was no such thing as 'an individual's truth.’ There was truth and perception. Whether they aligned was irrelevant in both the eyes of the law and reality.

Everna believed it was a combination of the two, but one born of a more selfish desire to protect their own conscious. The guilt of association pushed them towards denial, and from there, to refusing the irrefutable. Their desire to remain correct for the sake of their own sanity prevented them from seeing past their own self-interests.

Perhaps Andryll was right; now that the initial shock had passed, and they looked at the matter with a more rational mind, they saw the discrepancies that weren't so obvious at the start.

Perhaps they simply refused to accept Mayor Ashburn's death.

Melenda's snort pulled her from her musings once more. "Amused? Most of your kind want nothing more than to see an arrow in our heads. Elves hate humans. Everyone knows that."

Andryll rolled his eyes. "It's not a matter of hatred. It's merely that your lives are so terribly short it's pointless to have any longstanding relationship with your kind. You change leaders and ideals every twenty years, it seems."

"Yet you married a human," Melenda pointed out. "And that's somehow acceptable."

Andryll pursed his lips. "It's tolerated."

Only because it wasn't a woman, Everna thought.

"Yes, well, you still contradicted yourself. Our spans aren't that short."

To that, Andryll snorted once more. "I'm young by elven standards, and I still remember when your capital city was nothing but a collection of huts in a field."

"Inversa?" Melenda asked, dubious. "They built Inversa as a city from the start."

"I was referring to Everna," Andryll corrected. "Inversa became the capital city only recently."

"Two hundred years is not recent."

"One hundred and fifty-seven. But when your life expectancy is barely a century, I suppose not."

"Well, not all of us are ancient enough to have met Queen Everna in person," Melenda scoffed. "We get it, Andryll. You're older than the kingdom itself."

A small smile touched Everna's lips as the conversation moved further into the realm of petty arguments. This was the distraction she needed; mindless banter simply for the sake of it. Her shifts used to be full of it, and where Melenda's penchant for prattling, especially while on the clock, grated on her nerves, it was now a welcome reprieve from the chaos within her mind.

Their voices became a comforting drone as she cleaned up the last of the glass and whiskey from the floor. She dumped the soiled rags into the wicker laundry basket and hefted it into her arms. With one final look at them over her shoulder, and a stern reminder to tell Bree to take over the bar, Everna started up the stairs.

Her family's home dominated the second floor of the tavern's building. She wouldn't consider her family rich, as the money they had was but pocket change for the nobility, but her parents had more than enough to live comfortably compared to most of the town. Every so often, the change between the faded simplicity of the taproom and the moderate luxury of her home served as a pointed reminder of that.

Maybe she was simply glad to be home again.

The stairs led to a sitting room decked with polished mahogany furniture — a wide sofa and a pair of plush arm chairs adorned with embroidered throw pillows — which her mother arranged around the stone fireplace set into the north wall. Old texts and trinkets her parents collected throughout their adventures cluttered the two massive shelves pushed against the south wall, which separated the sitting room from the hallway leading to the bedrooms. On the west side of the room, an arched doorway led to the kitchen, from which came the mouthwatering aroma of baked pastries.

"You know the festival's still another month and a half off, right?" Everna asked as she passed through the archway. "Those pies won't keep that long. Especially if Dad gets his hands on them."

She found her mother standing in the middle of a messy kitchen, her hair speckled with clumps of flour and her apron stained with juices. Three empty pie crusts and several bowls containing an assortment of berries and fruits sat on the small worktable in the center. On top of the wood-burning stove sat two bowls covered with towels; dough left out to rise.

"This has been a rather stressful week," her mother said. "Until two days ago, I wondered whether my daughter faced the gallows."

She hummed. The Courts had spared themselves more trouble than they realized. Though they returned only two days before she had, word of her arrest had, somehow, reached them in Trenbrook. They were hysterical when she walked through the door, her father verging on tears and her mother shaking with fury.

Had her execution gone through, it would've been a disaster. Her parents accomplished far more daring feats than stopping a hanging. It wouldn't have been the first time they derailed one, either.

Everna plucked a blueberry from a bowl and popped it into her mouth. "I would've sent word as soon as I learned they'd spared me, but with the way the weather's been, we'd still be waiting for it to arrive."

"And yet, a letter from the capital arrived this morning," her mother said, nodding towards the small sideboard near the entrance. "It's for you."

The letter in question came in a thick, unmarked envelope. Everna turned it over in her hands and her fingers sank into the lukewarm wax. On the front, she found her name printed in nondescript letters.

"You said this arrived this morning?"

"It was with today's post," her mother said, waving her off. "Which your father collected and, of course, forgot about until just a few moments ago. As always."

Everna gave a doubtful hum as she pushed her thumbnail beneath the seal.

The envelope contained two folded pieces of paper, the first of which was a letter from the Inquisitor. She gave it a cursory read, picking through the legal jargon until she found the three sentences that actually mattered. It was but a vague dismissal of her case, one that served no purposed beyond personal record keeping. A false record, but a record.

The second letter, however, was much smaller, barely a scrap tucked inside the first. Unlike the letter, it wasn't written in the perfect, indiscriminate script customary of the Courts, but a scrawling, slanted handwriting she didn't recognize.

West gate. Midnight. Two days. Come alone.

"How did you know it came from the capital?" she asked as she tucked the scrap into the front of her shirt.

"Unless you've got yourself a sweetheart you're not telling us about—"

Everna bit back a groan. "I honestly have to wonder where you get these ideas from."

"It's called a joke, dear," her mother said. "Not that you ever could take one. Where else would an unmarked letter that arrived two days after you returned from the capital come from?"

"Jokes are supposed to be amusing," Everna pointed out. "Like Windmore's entire career. You're not joking. You've been nagging me since I turned sixteen to find a husband."

Her mother scoffed and wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron. "Fat lot of good it's done. Everyone else's daughters are married and off on their own and you, at twenty-three, are still living at home! Even Lyra's engaged!" She paused then and turned to look at her over her shoulder, and Everna bit back another groan. "Are you sure you're not interested in men? I've told you before that's not a problem. I have a couple of friends with daughters who—"

"And I've told you several times I'm not interested in women," Everna said.

"And yet, I can't think of any other reason you're unmarried. You're young, prettier than I was at your age—"

"And have a father who'd sooner axe a man than give him his blessing."

Everna wasn't against the idea of marriage, and she'd decided long ago she wanted children of her own someday, but her parents made it nearly impossible. Her father still treated her as if she were a child, and any talk of marriage or courting only led to a lengthy argument. Her mother would not settle for any man she didn't approve of. What Everna’s parents thought she needed was not at all what she wanted. Neither of them seemed to understand that.

She could only be thankful neither of them had known of the relationship she'd had during her studies.

"I also haven't had the time for that," Everna added, hoping her mother would drop the subject.

"Well, you have time now," her mother countered, and she barely resisted the urge to tell her he absolutely did not have time. "Someone has to give me grandchildren? Gods know your brother's a lost cause. He inherited your father's thick skull, that's for sure."

"I think Corden and I are living proof that Dad's not that dense."

"Seven years!" her mother cried, throwing her hands up. "It took your father seven years to realize I loved him!"

"And it took three months after before he realized you were serious," Everna snorted. "I mean, you punched him in the face and screamed it at him. That'd confuse just about anyone."

Her mother fell silent as she wrapped a thick rag around her hands and removed two steaming loaves of bread from the oven. After setting them aside to cool, she sighed. "Look, honey, you're twenty-three. You need to think about the future."

"Can we please talk about something else?" Everna asked. "Let's go back to why you're baking enough pies to feed the town."

Her pleas fell on deaf ears.

"It's not that your father and I don't want you here. We appreciate the help with the tavern, but you've far too much intelligence and potential to tend a bar for the rest of your life. I think you should go back to the academy. Your father and I have enough to afford one more year."

Everna pinched the bridge of her nose. "I'm still thinking about it."

Her mother shook her head. "Thinking about it? Ever, you couldn't wait to get into the academy and, from your letters it seemed like you enjoyed it."

There were some aspects she enjoyed, but many she hadn't. She loved solving hypothetical cases and the debates, but she hated the hours of leafing through law books and writing essays until her hand could no longer hold her quill properly. She didn't miss days upon days of lost sleep and the splitting headaches from studying policy.

Towards the end, she wondered whether it was worth the effort. Did she truly want to spend the rest of her life in anonymity, jumping from one crime to the next until she gained enough prominence to sit in a courtroom and dispute laws? Had she pursued that path because she wanted to? Or was it because it was what people expected of her?

"I did, it's just... With recent events, I think I've had enough of the Courts for now."

Her mother shook her head and sighed once more. "I suppose you have a point. I can't imagine your trip to the capital was a pleasant experience."

Gods, why couldn't she tell her? Her mother knew to keep a secret, at least one that mattered. She'd done her fair share of snooping when she was younger; surely she had some useful insight or advice.

"I cannot believe it reached that point," her mother continued. "Leave it to Windmore, that gods be damned bastard. How he's not in a cell right now is beyond me. Swiftbrook's gone soft in his years."

"He can't supersede the Courts," Everna reminded her. "I don't know why, but they allowed it and there's no arguing with them. They're going to handle the case as they see fit."

"It begs the question of why," her mother said. She snatched the bowl of blueberries from the table and dumped a generous portion into one of the empty pie crusts. "Unless they considered it treason, as absurd of an idea as that is, there was no reason to send you all the way to the captial."

"I don't know, Mom. Based on my records and the reports, the Inquisitor decided it was a framing. There wasn't enough evidence to justify detaining me further."

Her mother made a sound at the back of her throat. "I'd say there was no evidence. What I want to know is how your sword ended up down there. Unsheathed at that. I've never seen you use it."

That was a question worth considering. Had she forgotten to lock the doors? Or had they entered her room through other means? No one went up the stairs as far as she knew, but with magic involved, there was no way to be sure. Someone may have slipped past her under the effects of an invisibility spell. There could be someone who wasn't in the tavern at all who went in through her window; she never closed it.

It had to be someone who knew she had it, but that could be half the town. Banor considered it his greatest masterpiece and bragged for months after he forged it — he still mentioned it when the odd adventurer wanted their weapons mended or replaced.

But there was one question more important than how.

"No, when did Windmore get ahold of it; that's the question we should be asking," she muttered.

It had to be after she'd returned to the taproom, but before Windmore returned with it. But how could someone have gotten into her room, found the sword, and passed it off to him without being seen? Half the town was present during that time. Even with the use of magic, someone would've noticed something amiss. Someone would've seen it through the window.

Unless he had it before he arrived at the tavern. Landen had left during that time, but he returned with the Guard, not before, and remained outside with Arlen and Manvel. He'd also gone back to his room at the same time as Mayor Ashburn, if she remembered correctly. He would've had to go up the stairs, which meant she'd have seen him, or he'd have to have scaled the walls and climbed through her window and someone else would've seen him. The old lady on the upper floor across the street was always looking out her window.

"Well, you won't figure it out in one night," her mother said. "Now, stop staring holes into my table and help me with these pies."

Letter

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