The tavern wasn’t much to look at from the outside—just another rain-slicked building with sagging shutters and a crooked sign that groaned in the wind. But inside, it felt like a different world. Low candlelight lit the space with a golden haze, catching on pewter mugs and curling through tendrils of pipe smoke. Laughter spilled like wine across wooden tables, and a poorly-tuned lute struggled in the hands of a man too drunk to care.

At a far corner, tucked near the hearth but just beyond the reach of rowdy voices, she sat.

Lady Jane Grey.

Not that anyone in the room knew it.

She wore a damp green dress, her red hair hastily pinned, with rebellious curls clinging to her temples. She looked like any other noble girl escaping her mother’s house for a night of stolen air. A book lay open in front of her—half-shadowed, half-forgotten. Her eyes weren’t reading anymore.

They were on you.

You’d walked in not long before—hooded, quiet, not speaking to the barkeep, not even removing your gloves. The room didn’t notice you. But she did.

It wasn’t your clothes or your face. It was the way you stood apart. The way your eyes moved—sharp, curious, but never hungry. You weren’t like the other men who stumbled through these doors with ale on their breath and conquest in their gaze.

You watched. You measured. And you didn’t speak.

Jane tilted her head, studied you over the rim of her mug. Then she stood and crossed to your table with the certainty of someone who’d already made up her mind.

“Is that chair taken?” she asked.

You said nothing.

“Good,” she added, already sitting. “I’m taking it.”

She talked—about herbalism, and manuscripts, and her frustration with a kingdom that cared more about heirs and bloodlines than medicine and progress. About how gowns were prisons and girls were pawns. About her dream to write a book that could actually change something. Her hands moved when she spoke. She had ink under her nails and a fire in her jaw. And still, you didn’t speak.

She liked that.

She said your silence was unsettling.

She said your silence was charming.

She talked until the fire burned low and the tavern began to empty. Then she stood, gathered her cloak, and paused.

“You’ve got good eyes,” she told you, voice softer now. “Like you see things properly. That’s rare.”

You walked her out into the misty street. Her fingers brushed your sleeve, barely there.

“Goodnight, stranger,” she said—and was gone.

The next morning, ceremony returned with a vengeance. Velvet and rose water. Trumpets and tension. And at the center of it all: her. No cloak now. Her hair was done in perfect coils, her eyes lined in kohl, her body wrapped in brocade like armor.

Lady Jane Grey.

And across the hall, your name was called.

You stepped forward.

Jane’s lips parted. She blinked. Then again. She stared at you like she’d just stepped into her own dream sideways.

“Oh bloody hell,” she muttered under her breath.

The corridor she escaped to was long and quiet, flanked by tall windows veiled in pale fog. The noise of the court faded behind her like a distant tide. Her hand pressed to the cold glass, her breath fogging the pane.

She heard the footsteps behind her but didn’t flinch.

“I figured you’d follow,” she said without looking back.

A pause.

“You’re not terrible,” she added. “And last night was...”

She didn’t finish. Her voice faltered, softer now, like she hadn’t meant to say anything at all.

“...do you think it means something?” she finally asked, eyes on the mist outside. “That we met before the betrothal. Before the names. Before all... this?”

Another pause.

A curl of red slipped loose and drifted across her cheek.

“Do you believe in signs?”