The witch-lanterns dimmed to a drowsy amber, and Starfall Court slowly turned into a living quilt of sleeping bodies. Young men and women, strangers an hour ago, curled together like litters of puppies, arms slung over waists, heads tucked into necks, sharing the faint heat of breath and heartbeat against the marble's lingering chill. A silver-rank adventuress with a scar across her lips tossed a thick wool blanket over four shivering kids without breaking stride; a grizzled dwarf ranger dropped an entire stack of travel cloaks and grunted, "Don't freeze, ye idiots," before clomping off into the night. Each gift was met with sleepy, grateful murmurs and sleepy waves, then the givers vanished back into the city's glow like it was nothing.
Brenn Tarwick snagged the biggest blanket (thick, deep blue, smelling faintly of cedar and pipe smoke) and burrowed into it with a contented sigh that sounded suspiciously like a purr. Within moments he was out cold, mouth slightly open, one arm flung wide, snoring in soft, rolling waves that reminded Elaric of distant surf.
Unfortunately for Brenn, paradise lasted exactly eleven minutes.
"Mmph… and then the ogre says, 'Best of three,' right? But I'd already cracked his wrist on the first go…"
Jannik "Toothless" Hale had rolled over in his sleep and was now half-draped across Brenn's chest, mumbling the same epic arm-wrestling saga for the forty-third time. His gap-toothed grin flashed every time he relived the (entirely fictional) victory.
Brenn's eyes snapped open. "Jannik, I swear on every god and fish in the sea, I will sew your mouth shut with fishing line."
"—so I let him win the second just to be sporting—"
Brenn groaned like a dying walrus and pulled the blanket over both their heads, muffling the legend to a persistent, infuriating drone.
Farther along the fountain's curved rim, tucked behind a screen of hanging ivy and the gentle splash of water, Elaric and Kalia had found a pocket of privacy.
Moon-silvered droplets slid down Kalia's brown skin as she straddled Elaric's lap, knees sinking into the folded blanket someone had abandoned. Her braid had come half-undone; black strands clung to her damp collarbones and the curve of her throat. Elaric's patched coat lay discarded beside them; his shirt was rucked up to his ribs, her palms gliding over the faint ridges of hunger-sharpened muscle, tracing every rib like she was memorizing him.
Their mouths met again and again, slow, filthy, open-mouthed kisses that tasted of sugar and shared breath and the faint bite of potato liquor. Each time they parted, the smallest thread of saliva stretched between their lips before breaking, glittering in the low light.
Elaric's hands trembled where they rested on her hips, thumbs brushing bare skin where her shirt had ridden high. When she rolled her hips forward (just once, a deliberate, teasing grind), the soft heat of her bare pussy lips dragged along the rigid length of his cock through the thin barrier of his trousers. Not entering. Never entering. Just slick, deliberate friction that made his breath hitch hard enough to hurt.
"Kalia," he rasped, forehead pressed to hers, "are we… are we moving too fast?"
She laughed, low and velvet, and did it again—slow, wet drag from root to tip that left a shining trail on the fabric and had his hips jerking helplessly upward.
"Scared, country boy?" The words ghosted over his lips.
Another roll, slower this time, the slick folds of her parting just enough to cradle him, hot and slippery and maddening. His hands clamped on her thighs hard enough to leave marks.
She stilled, cupped his face, and the teasing fell away like a mask.
"Listen to me, Elaric Voss." Her voice was steady, river-deep and deadly serious. "This body, this heart, this life; once I give myself to you, it's forever. Thick, thin, blood, and storm. I will belong to only one man until the day I die. If anyone ever tries to take what's yours, I'll cut my own throat before I let them. That's the bargain. So tell me true: do you want me the same way?"
The fountain's water kept falling, soft and endless. Somewhere beyond the ivy, Brenn's muffled pleading rose to a wail as Toothless reached the part where the ogre started crying.
Elaric looked up into dark eyes that held oceans and lightning both, felt the wet heat of her still pressed against him, felt the frantic hammer of his own heart.
He drew one trembling breath.
And answered.
Dawn came pale and rose-gold over the plaza, spilling across hundreds of sleepy, tangled bodies. Groans rose like a lazy tide as the great guild bells began to toll the first hour.
Toothless was still talking.
"—and that's when I flipped the table with one hand—"
Brenn, red-eyed and homicidal, had both hands over Toothless's mouth and was rocking back and forth, whispering broken pleas for mercy.
Kalia stretched languidly against Elaric's side, lips curved in a small, secret smile. Whatever answer had fallen between them in the dark had left them both soft-eyed and quiet, fingers laced tight beneath the borrowed blanket.
The guild doors boomed wide. Light poured out like molten gold.
A new day, and every promise it carried, waited just across the threshold.
Dawn in two places
In Starfall Court, the first rose-gold rays slid across the marble like warm honey. Kalia stirred beneath the borrowed blanket, the length of her bare thigh still draped over Elaric's hips. She smiled sleep-soft, leaned in, and pressed a slow, lingering kiss to the crown of his messy brown hair.
"Wake up, honey," she whispered, lips brushing the shell of his ear.
Elaric came awake with a startled, high-pitched squeak that would haunt him for weeks—like a cat whose tail had been stepped on. His eyes flew open, hazel and huge, blinking up at the guild's floating sigil. For one dazed heartbeat he forgot where he was, then felt Kalia's warmth curled against him and turned the color of fresh strawberries.
*Gods, let Maris's bakery be packed today,* he thought fervently, the prayer automatic. *Let her sell out before noon. She deserves it.*
Twenty districts away, in a narrow attic room above a quiet Lowmarket tavern, Maris Calder woke to sunlight striping across her bare skin.
She was gloriously naked, sheets tangled at her ankles, thighs sticky. Between her legs a slow, luxurious trickle still leaked from her swollen pussy, the aftermath of a night that had left her hoarse and grinning. Beside her, sprawled on his stomach, was a lean high-elf with silver-white hair and a constellation of faint freckles across his shoulders. He stretched like a cat, muscles rippling under smooth golden skin, and gave her a lazy, sated smile.
"Best coin I ever spent," he murmured, voice husky from screaming her name half the night.
Maris chuckled, low and satisfied, and rolled onto her side. The motion made another pulse of warmth slip free, sliding down the curve of her ass onto the sheets. "Wasn't that bad yourself, pretty boy. You fuck like a beast."
They rose together, unembarrassed. He dressed in elegant green leathers while she pulled on a simple linen shift that clung to every damp curve. At the door he dropped a small pouch of silver into her hand (more than fair), brushed a kiss across her knuckles, and vanished down the stairs with elven silence.
Maris stepped into the street, morning air cool against the heat still radiating from her skin. She walked bow-legged for the first three blocks, every step sending another lazy trickle down her thigh. The taste of last night lingered—salt, wine, the faint wintergreen flavor of elf skin—but the more she walked, the more another face kept sliding into her thoughts.
A skinny country boy with patched boots and earnest eyes. The way he'd clutched her pastries like they were holy. The soft, grateful bow he'd given her.
Her pussy gave a treacherous clench.
*Damn it.*
The elf had been pretty, skilled, generous with his tongue and his coin, but… adequate. Just adequate. What she suddenly, stupidly wanted was something thick enough to wreck her for days, something that would leave her limping and smiling and thinking of earnest hazel eyes every time she sat down.
She wiped her thigh with the hem of her apron, scowled at nothing, and marched toward her bakery.
Meanwhile, back at the guild
The great heart-oak doors boomed open at the sixth bell. Sunlight poured in like molten gold, and the smell that followed made every starving youth in the plaza whimper aloud.
Fresh bread. Smoked bacon. Herbed potatoes glistening with butter. Sausage links thick as a man's wrist, dripping fat. Pitchers of cream-thick coffee and cold milk and tart apple cider. Long tables had been set up in the main hall, groaning under the weight of the guild's traditional "new blood breakfast"—free, unlimited, and legendary.
Guild staff in crisp crimson tabards moved through the flood of newcomers, laughing. "Eat first, register second!" they shouted. "No one fills out forms on an empty stomach!"
Elaric, Kalia, Brenn, and a freshly revived Toothless found an empty circle of floor near one of the towering marble pillars and fell on the food like wolves.
Elaric tore into a flaky croissant stuffed with melted cheese and ham, butter dripping down his wrists. Kalia licked bacon grease from her fingers with deliberate slowness, dark eyes locked on Elaric's mouth every time he bit into a sausage. Brenn stacked six pancakes on his plate, drowned them in blackberry syrup, and moaned theatrically with every bite. Toothless tried to tell the ogre story between mouthfuls of scrambled egg and got syrup in his hair when Brenn "accidentally" flicked a spoon at him.
They laughed so hard cider came out Kalia's nose. Elaric wiped it away with the sleeve of his coat, then left his hand cupped around the back of her neck, thumb stroking the soft skin there like he couldn't bear not touching her. Brenn pretended to gag, but his eyes were suspiciously bright.
Around them the hall filled with the sounds of two hundred starving kids discovering that tomorrow could taste like bacon and butter and second chances.
For the first time in his entire life, Elaric Voss's belly was full, his hand was wrapped around a girl who had sworn herself to him forever, and his friends were warm and loud and alive beside him.
He bit into a warm honey bun—plain, simple, nowhere near as good as Maris's—and decided it was still the best breakfast in the world.
Registration desks opened in one hour.
Whatever came next, they would face it together, sticky-fingered and laughing and ready to burn the whole damn world down if it tried to take this morning away from them.