For a moment, Isadora stood perfectly still beside the Doll counter, her posture immaculate, hands folded neatly behind her back, as though nothing at all were amiss.

  To a casual observer, she looked composed.

  But those who knew how to read violence could see it in the minute adjustment of her shoulders and the way tension that had been wound tight for hours began to settle.

  Once she was sure Eleonora had been shepherded safely out of the guild hall, Isadora turned and began to walk across the hall.

  As her boots struck the stone floor, a strange unease rippled outward through the room, like a disturbance traveling across still water.

  Various conversations faltered and chairs scraped softly as people shifted without realizing why.

  Their Hands drifting casually and unconsciously toward their weapons.

  Every seasoned adventurer in the hall felt it at once, that quiet, crawling instinct that whispered danger.

  Isadora for her part did not hurry. As each step was measured and the sound of her boots was steady and unchanging, a slow cadence that seemed far too loud in the growing silence.

  She had waited far too long for this moment and endured too much restraint.

  Stay out of it, she thought, as if willing the idiots now watching her to remain seated.

  Just give me a minute.

  That’s all I need, she finished thinking as a faint cold wintery smile touched her lips.

  By the time she reached the bar, the guild hall had gone almost entirely quiet.

  The dwarf stood behind the counter, wiping down a chipped mug with a rag so moldy and foul it looked more likely to infect the glass than clean it.

  He glanced up, irritation already stamped across his ugly face as Isadora approached.

  His eyes flicked over her, taking in her measure.

  Maybe it was dwarven pride or perhaps a stubborn ornery belligerence.

  But for whatever the reason, he did not see the danger now in front of him.

  As the guild hall grew ever more silent, the air tightened withheld, bated breath.

  Isadora’s voice cut through the tension like a knife through butter.

  “Hey,” she called sharply. “You. The ugly fuckwad behind the bar.”

  The dwarf frowned and straightened, heavy brows knitting as he stared at her in disbelief. He set the mug down with a solid thunk, the sound sharp and intrusive in the silence.

  Stepping out from behind the counter, he wiped his thick hands on his apron, jaw tightening as his eyes flicked over Isadora’s immaculate posture and the duke’s livery emblazoned on her surcoat.

  Understanding dawned, and his lip curled.

  “Yeah?” he sneered.

  “What do you want, footstool?” The old insult for noble servants carried easily across the hall.

  Others might have said bootlicker or noble tosher, but the intent was the same.

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  The insult didn’t land at all.

  Isadora scoffed.

  “Better a noble’s footstool than a whore’s stunted bastard,” she replied coolly.

  “I’m surprised they even let you grow a beard.”

  For a heartbeat, the world held its breath.

  Somewhere, a chair creaked and a mug sloshed it contents spilling unnoticed over the drinker's knuckle.

  Several patrons leaned back instinctively, already sensing that something had gone terribly wrong.

  Then the dwarf moved.

  He lunged toward her with a raised fist, intent on teaching the “noble tosher” a lesson.

  But he barely had time for his eyes to widen before Isadora slipped inside his swing, her timing flawless.

  She seized him and drove her forehead into his face with terrifying force.

  The crack echoed through the hall like a snapped branch in winter as the dwarfs' nose broke.

  The dwarf reeled back with a wet, strangled sound as his nose shattered.

  Blood burst forth immediately, pouring down his face in a streaming flood.

  He staggered, arms flailing uselessly, shock locking his body in place.

  Isadora did not pause.

  Her gauntleted hand came around in a brutal arc.

  The backhand struck with a precise and practiced violence, snapping his head sideways as the sound of his jaw breaking rang out.

  Then his teeth came loose and scattered across the stone floor in dull, ugly clacks as they bounced once, then twice.

  Before finally rolling to a stop like spilled dice.

  This caused a deeper silence to follow.

  It was not the awkward hush of etiquette.

  Nor the tense quiet before a brawl.

  This was the instinctive stillness of people who had just watched the balance of power shift.

  The dwarf collapsed to one knee, wheezing, clutching his ruined face.

  Blood streamed between his fingers, dripping onto the floor as he stared up at her in raw disbelief.

  Pain warred with confusion on his ruined face.

  In his mind, this encounter had never ended any other way than with the footstool being thrown out after of course he’d had his fun with her.

  Isadora loomed over him like an angel of death.

  Her breathing was steady, and her expression was perfectly calm. Insultingly for the dwarf she wasn’t even sweating and still looked as though she’d just stepped off a parade ground.

  “You don’t seem so tough,” she said evenly, her voice low and cold enough to turn water to ice, “when your opponent isn’t a sixteen-year-old girl.”

  A murmur rippled through the crowd as realization spread of what this whole incident had been about.

  The dwarf slumped forward, gasping through his ruined face, trying and failing to not to cry as the full weight of the unimaginable pain set in.

  Isadora straightened and turned slowly, her gaze sweeping across the hall as every eye dropped in submission.

  When she spoke again, her voice carried effortlessly through the hall.

  “The girl you humiliated and drove away yesterday was not just any sixteen-year-old,” Isadora said, her tone calm and unforgiving.

  “She is Eleonora Duanna, the daughter of the Duke of Willowvale.”

  The effect was immediate.

  It was one thing to anger a minor count or an imperial baron.

  It was something else entirely to insult a duke by publicly humiliating his daughter. For most commoners, Eleonora stood only two or three steps removed from the imperial royal family itself.

  Close enough that her last name alone carried weight and consequence.

  If the Duke of Willowvale learned of this, he could blacklist the entire local guild without hesitation.

  Meaning contracts would vanish overnight and patronage would completely dry up.

  The loss would bleed them into ruin in a matter of months. The duke, by contrast, had more than enough wealth to ruin the local Adventurers’ Guild without ever feeling it in his own coffers.

  Faces around the hall drained of color as understanding spread, one horrified glance at a time.

  Some looked away.

  Others stared at the floor.

  A few finally understood what they had allowed to happen.

  But Isadora was not finished.

  “Be very glad,” Isadora went on, “that I am not reporting yesterday’s behavior to my master.”

  She paused, just long enough for the weight of that sentence to sink in.

  “And pray,” she added softly, “that my lady chooses forgiveness.”

  She knew perfectly well that Eleonora would, since her heart was far too kind not to.

  But the idiots here didn't need to know that.

  Isadora turned on her heel and walked away, boots clicking against the stone, leaving behind the now screaming and crying dwarf who was still on the ground writhing in pain, as she exited.