Tristan glanced over his shoulder, as though checking for lurking spies. “Not much,” he said in a low voice. “It was all speech, smile, curtsy, cheer, speech again. The princess didn’t say anything.”
Aurora took another sip. “It must be pretty overwhelming for her,” she said.
“Facing the crowd like that?”
“Everything,” Aurora said. “They seem to expect so much from her.”
“You’re saying you don’t?”
“I don’t know. It seems a lot to ask one person who’s been asleep for a hundred years.” It was easier, somehow, to put her feelings into words when she could be anonymous, a nameless mouse instead of a lost princess. Not easy, but easier. “Do you think people really believe it? That everything will be better now she’s back?”
Tristan frowned at her. “I think some of them do,” he said. “The rest of them just want to believe.” Their shoulders brushed. “People have to have something to hope for, don’t they? Doesn’t really matter what. It’s better to believe in magic than think that we’ll all be hungry and poor for the rest of our lives.”
“And you? What do you believe?”
“Me?” He ran his fingers down the handle of his tankard, considering. “I realized a long time ago that no one’s ever going to help anybody. You can’t just sit around and wish. But perhaps we should talk about something else. Nell’ll have my head if she thinks I’m talking trouble. And trust me. You don’t want to make Nell mad.”
“Who’s Nell?”
“Owner of this great establishment,” he said. “She’s not a bad sort. Gave me a job when I needed it, even though I’m not exactly work material. But she likes to play it safe.”
“And you don’t?”
“Safe is boring, Mouse. It’s for old folk with businesses to run, not people like me and you.”
“Like me and you?” She smiled. “You barely know me.”
“I know enough to know I want to know you. Does that count?”
“I’m not sure it does.”
“Well, you’re new in town,” he said. “You could decide to be anybody! So I’ll go with the hope you’ll decide to be like me.”
“I’ll consider it,” she said. She gripped her own tankard with both hands, pulling it closer to her chest. “How did you know I was new here?”
“I would remember if I’d seen you before.”
She tilted her head to look at him. Blonde strands fell over her eyes. “And you’ve met everyone in this city, have you?”
“Everyone worth knowing,” he said. He nudged her hand. A shiver ran across the points where their skin touched.
“Tristan Attwater!” A rather large woman with a mop of graying brown hair marched toward them. “I don’t pay you to flirt, you know.”
“You don’t pay me at all, Nell,” Tristan said. “But it’s all part of the service.”
“Well, customers are waiting.”
He gave Aurora another smile and a shake of his head. “Duty calls. But it was nice chatting to you, little Mouse.”
“You too.” She smiled back at him, and a warm ache tugged in her stomach. “Tristan.”
Then he was gone, and Aurora turned to the stage, letting the trembling music fill all the emptiness that formed whenever she sat still too long. She rolled the few words she had exchanged with Tristan through her mind, trying to decode the tone of his voice, the warm smile, the way he seemed to see right through her skin. Occasionally, her eyes wandered over to him as he served and cleaned and talked, seeming perfectly content with everything he did. Once, he caught her watching, and he shot her a grin.
She had no idea how much time had passed, minutes and hours of music and stolen snatches of chatter, before Nettle left the stage and the crowd began to thin. “Thank you,” Aurora said as she passed the long-empty tankard across the bar to Tristan. She felt oddly peaceful, like all of her pain and stress belonged to some other girl.
“Nettle will be here tomorrow too, you know,” Tristan said with a slight tilt of his head. “So—see you soon?”
She shouldn’t. She knew she shouldn’t. It wasn’t safe, it wasn’t allowed, and if anyone found out . . . but her heart was already beginning to pound at the thought of another night trapped in those castle walls, unable to sleep, staring at the ceiling and thinking of life happening below. The words slipped out before she could stop herself. “Yes,” she said. Her voice trembled. “I’ll see you soon.”