CHAPTER 198: SHADOWS IN THE CROWD

Morning broke restless.

Not the clean kind of dawn where fog lifts and the streets clear, but one that felt heavier than night itself. The city hadn’t slept. The songs hadn’t stopped. Even as Inigo cracked eggs into the pan, their names still echoed faintly from some tavern down the street.

Lyra sat at the table, hair still braided from yesterday, bow leaned against her chair. Her eyes never stayed still. Window. Door. Window again.

"You’re jumpy," Inigo said, voice low.

"I’m alive," she countered. "For now."

The skillet hissed between them. Neither spoke again until the smell of fried eggs filled the room.

By the time they opened the stall, the plaza was already choking with people. Not just the usual adventurers or students now—it was nobles, merchants, even clerks with their robes tucked high enough to run across cobblestones.

The chalkboard outside had been decorated by Riko with more flourish than usual. He’d added a crude drawing of a spatula crossed with an arrow. Beneath it he wrote:

BURGERS • FRIES • FRIED CHICKEN — PLATINUM TASTE

Lyra groaned when she saw it. "You’re feeding the wrong fire."

"It’s good branding," Riko protested, already scribbling orders onto slips.

Inigo didn’t comment. He slid patties onto the grill with mechanical calm, the hiss loud enough to cut through the chatter outside.

When they threw open the shutters, the roar nearly shook the wood from the hinges. Cheers, claps, shouts of their names like they were generals instead of cooks.

"Two doubles!" Lyra barked, forcing herself into rhythm.

"Fries up!" Maddy shouted, ladle steady as if she were manning a spear line.

The fryer sang, paper crinkled, grease popped. Orders moved like clockwork. But above it all, Inigo felt the press of eyes—not just hungry eyes, not just curious ones, but eyes that lingered too long. Eyes that weighed, measured, judged.

The first rush was dying down when Elise appeared, slipping through the side door with her usual sharp grace. Today, though, she didn’t smirk. She closed the door behind her like she was trying to keep the world out.

"You’ve become the tribunal’s knife," she said flatly.

Inigo didn’t look up from the fryer. "Knives cut both ways."

Lyra shoved a wrapped burger across the counter, then turned. "Who’s bleeding?"

Elise placed a folded parchment on the prep slate. The seal wasn’t wax this time, but ink—a black stag pressed into the page. "House Aram isn’t waiting for the council’s seizure order. Their men are already moving coin, already hiring shadows. Two of our clerks vanished before dawn."

Riko froze mid-pour. "Vanished?"

"Not the kind that come back," Elise said. She looked at Inigo and Lyra, eyes sharp. "You need to understand—this isn’t just bandits on a road anymore. Nobles don’t forgive humiliation. Especially not when half the city is singing about it."

Lyra’s hand brushed the bow at her side. "Then let them try."

Elise leaned closer, voice dropping. "They will. And not in alleys with knives. In courts. In rumors. In the market. They’ll paint you villains before they ever send a blade. Platinum or not, the guild can’t shield you from that."

Inigo finally turned, flipping a patty with calm precision. "Then we don’t play their game. We keep cooking."

Elise’s mouth tilted in something that wasn’t quite a smile. "You really believe food will hold the city?"

"I believe hunger doesn’t care about politics," he said simply.

Rumors in the Line

By afternoon, the rumors had arrived.

Customers whispered them as they ate—half-truths, twisted tales already reshaping reality. That Inigo and Lyra had stolen treasure from nobles’ vaults. That they’d slain a dragon under the council hall. That they’d poisoned House Veyr’s wine.

Lyra ground her teeth every time she heard one.

"Let it go," Inigo murmured once, catching her glare at a particularly bold merchant.

"It’s lies," she hissed.

"It’s songs," he corrected. "Lies don’t get remembered. Songs do."

And still, the line never thinned. If anything, it grew thicker. People came not just for food now, but for the chance to brush shoulders with myth. Nobles who’d sneered at the stall days ago now leaned across the counter, offering coin triple the price for a basket of fries. Adventurers bragged about "sharing a table with the Platinums."

Riko basked in it. Maddy tried to keep up. Lyra endured.

Inigo salted fries, flipped patties, and thought about balance. Salt and fat. Fame and danger.

When the shutters closed at dusk, exhaustion hit harder than any battle. Riko collapsed onto his stool, flour in his hair, grease on his apron. Maddy slumped beside him, muttering about wrists and ladles.

Lyra leaned against the counter, arms folded. "This isn’t sustainable."

Inigo scrubbed the flat iron with steady strokes. "Neither is war. Yet it happens."

She gave him a sharp look. "Don’t get poetic on me."

"I’m not," he said. "I’m practical. Food buys peace. For a coin, for a night. We give them that, and maybe they forgive the rest."

She sighed, rubbing at her temple. "And if they don’t?"

He rinsed the rag, wrung it dry. "Then we’ll cut again."

The night was cooler, quieter. Or so it seemed, until Lyra stiffened near the window.

"Inigo," she said softly.

He looked up from the skillet. Outside, across the plaza, a figure leaned too long in the shadow of a lamp. Watching. Not a customer. Not a bard.

A watcher.

They didn’t move to confront him. Not yet. The figure vanished when a patrol of city guards passed, slipping into an alley like smoke.

Lyra’s jaw tightened. "Accidents in alleys," she murmured, recalling Elise’s words.

Inigo cracked another egg into the pan, the hiss loud in the quiet. "Then we stay out of alleys."

They ate their late meal in silence, bowls of rice and egg, grease and salt still clinging to their clothes. Outside, the city hummed with songs and whispers, stories that grew larger with every telling.

Inside, the fryer ticked as it cooled, the bow leaned against the wall, and the skillet hissed steady as a heartbeat.

The calm wouldn’t last. Elise had been right. But for tonight, the cook and the archer sat side by side, eating simple food in a world that was becoming anything but simple.