He was about to stab him right in the chest, when the strange woman moved swiftly, pushing the King away and reaching for the man, but before anybody could do anything, she touched him right in the chest. She barely touched him, but the man dropped the dagger, yelling in pain when she did. For a while, there was a big mess on stage, as some guards came up and escorted the Lords and the King away.

“See? I told you, just like a legend!” Tamara spoke in my ear. I couldn’t believe my own eyes at what I had just watched. I didn’t believe in magic – in fact, I believed in very little, after everything that happened to me – and yet, I was seeing it with my own eyes. There was more to that woman than met the eye, and she looked like someone who was more terrifying than all the Kings and the Lords altogether.

Meanwhile, the crowd was euphoric about what had just happened, and all around the square, you heard many people yelling “Did you see that?” or “See, told you she was from the desert!” and even “What a woman!”. However, it didn’t take long for the crowd to become quiet again, as the stage finally cleared and everybody had left, except for two guards and the assassin, who was still shivering from what she had done to him. One of them pinned the man down, while the other pulled his sword and looked at the crowd.

“Let him be an example of what happens to those that try to kill the King!” The guard lifted the sword and lift it, so as to cut his neck. His sword was high in the air when there was a whistling sound in the air and arrows came from above, hitting the stage and killing the two guards.

“Over there!” Somebody yelled, pointing up. I looked up, and what I saw was a terrifying sight: on the rooftops of the houses around the square, there were several men dressed in the same gray cloaks standing on the rooftops of the houses around the square holding bows and arrows, ready to shoot. People screamed in fear and started running away from the square.

“Get them!” I heard one of the guards say to the others, and they scattered in all directions, trying to reach the houses and pushing people out of their way. The men on the rooftops started shooting arrows towards the guards, and panic grew even greater than before. For a moment, that scenery brought me back to another time, and I could almost hear someone shouting and yelling my family’s name, as Adrian and I were–

“Let’s go!” Marian said, as she grabbed me by the wrist and took me away from the square. She held my wrist tightly, as all around us, people were trying to escape the fight, many of them pushing us and almost trampling us as we ran away from the main square.

“Where’s Lady T and Tamara?” I yelled at Marian as we ran.

“Tamara got Lady T and ran! It seems like she has quicker thinking than we give her credit for!” Marian yelled back. We ran through streets and squares, and just as I thought I couldn’t run anymore, I saw the sign of the Flying Ship. As we reached the front door, Tamara was already standing there waiting with the door open, her eyes looking frantically for us.

“Thank God you’re alright!” She said as we got in and held us tight. We rushed in and she locked the door. “I was so scared, I thought that you had been caught by one of the arrows!”

“Almost, but Marian took me out of there in no time.” I said, as a big wave of relief came over me.

“Girls, we have no time to lose.” Lady T was at the end of the hallway, looking a bit pale, but her piercing blue eyes were as alert as ever. “These rebels can try to break in at any minute, we have to lock all the windows and doors as quickly as possible.” And before anybody could say anything, Lady T walked into the dining room and we saw the light dimming inside as she closed all the windows.

“I’ll go upstairs,” I said as I went for the top floor. I went to all the rooms and closed all the windows until I finally reached Jay’s room. I looked around and remembered that just a couple of nights ago, I was lying on that same bed right next to him, and nothing would ever predict what had just happened. It seemed like the mystery of the cloaked figure I had seen around the inn had been solved: it was a man – or men, who could say under that hood? – trying to kill the King. But out of all the places, why search the inn? Were they trying to kill Jay? But if so, why didn’t they do it? Why wait until the very final day of the Gathering to take action?

As I walked towards the window to close it, I stepped on something that made me lose my balance – and my thoughts. I looked down and I saw something golden and shiny lying on the floor. I picked it up. It was a hairpin, the most beautiful hairpin I had ever seen in my life: it was all made in pure gold and shaped like a big leaf with very intricate patterns all around it. Whoever had made it had done a tremendously great job, it was a piece of art on its own – or so it seemed to me, who knew nothing about these things. And then it hit me that I hadn’t been the only one visiting Jay during those nights. I let that thought sink in. On one hand, I always knew from the beginning that we would never have a future together. After all, I was a maid and he was a Lord, and no maid had ever become anything relevant in Tharsic’s society, except for being a maid someplace else, wherever and whenever she was needed. I knew my place in the world and I never offered or asked for anything else from him but our nights together. But on the other hand, I couldn’t help but feel used, and by the looks of that hairpin, I was also cheated with somebody I couldn’t even compete with: a woman of noble birth, perhaps his next wife. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she was one of the guests staying there in that same evening. As I looked at that hairpin, I believed that this year would our last, and that meant I had to let Jay go.

There were footsteps on the corridor and in a few seconds, Marian walked in the room with a lit candle in her hand. She looked at me and I realized that in that precise moment, she knew my secret, if she hadn’t already.

“Lady T wanted me to double check if all the windows were closed. She also said that she would like to have dinner with us tonight.” That was odd: except when there were very important guests in the inn, Lady T liked to dine alone in her chambers. In fact, I had never even seen her drinking a glass of water in front of us, let alone eating a whole meal.

“I guess she feels like she needs some company, everything that happened,” Marian said as if reading my thoughts. “And how are you?” I didn’t say anything for a while. What could I say, anyway? Just this morning, it was just another year of the Gathering that was ending, but now there was a war raging outside between the royal guards and who knows who, and besides, I had just found out that my own lover had another lover too. I felt tears were about to fall, but I remembered a promise I had made a long time ago – in fact, it seemed like just another life that I lived a long time ago, in another era – and held them in.

“I’m fine,” I replied. “I just need to close that window over there.” I put the hairpin in my pocket, reached for the window and closed it. “Now, let’s go and have dinner.”