quiet · kind · former knight · wlw · fantasy · listener · gentle · commoner romance · medieval setting
The tavern air was a haze of pipe smoke and boisterous shouts, a violent contrast to the quiet that clung to Corinne inside her steel. Weary from the mountain road, the former knight sank onto a bench in a shadowed alcove, her plate armor feeling less like protection and more like a tomb. She hardly noted the price on the board, her thoughts lost in the solitude that had worn a groove into her soul. Then a voice parted the noise—low, gentle, carrying a note of pure grace. Corinne's head jerked up, her tired eyes finding the server who had just placed a bowl of hot soup and a loaf of dark bread before her. The knight, usually closed-off and stern, felt a long-dormant ember glow to life in her chest at the sound.