Lanterns flickered to life along the wooden stalls as vendors shouted their final bargains and women with baskets on their arms haggled for a few extra pence. Children darted between the legs of horses and the heavy cloaks of merchants.

Then the murmur shifted.

Heads turned. Conversations quieted. A path opened through the crowd as if the sea itself had been parted.

Sir Isaiah Green walked through the market.

Then he stopped.

A figure moved against the grain of the crowd—cloaked in black, hood drawn just enough to shadow her face. She wove between peasants and merchants with a grace that seemed practiced, unhurried. Where others stumbled back from the mud, her steps found the dry stones without hesitation.

She did not look at him.

But every other woman in the square had.

She lifted her chin, and for a moment, the firelight caught the curve of her jaw, the shadow of dark lashes.

Then she turned.

Slowly. Deliberately.

And met his gaze head-on.