A guard rips Wolf away from his cell a couple minutes before noon. He barely has time to make himself look presentable when he is tossed to the ground at the feet of a young woman clad in armor. The brown in her baby bangs hair reminds him of autumn; the blue of her eyes, the ocean.

He smirks. “I didn’t realize I’d be getting executed so soon, and by such a pretty face, too.”

The woman’s foot finds his jaw in no less than a second. Now, Wolf is groveling, panting and spitting up blood as he coughs until the air finally returns to his lungs.

She turns to the guard that initially bought him here. “Do you not teach your prisoners manners?” the woman snaps. “I expected better from this place.”

Wolf turns his head in silence, and observes their conversation. The guard doesn’t seem to appreciate her presence—considering how she speaks to him, Wolf has no doubt she ranks higher than the man in whatever their ridiculous hierarchy is.

The guard says something about her being at fault if she expects good things from prisoners. The woman grows silent. She slips her blade out from its sheath and asks him if he wants to lose his life today. He tells her she is insane. “Ah, but you are the one testing my patience, good sir,” is her reply.

Wolf decides that he likes her very much. Not because she has almost caused him to lose a tooth or two and he considers himself a masochist, but because that guard is finally getting what he deserves.

She turns back towards Wolf. There is something wild in her glare. Suddenly, Wolf doesn’t think of the sea anymore when his eyes meet hers, but of himself, when he had first lunged at Aston back in his parent’s home. “You’re still smiling,” she mutters.

“I know,” Wolf tells her. “It’s been a good day.”

She dismisses the guard and slips her weapon back into the scabbard that dangles at her side. Wolf wonders if that is real gold around it, and if so, who she could possibly be. “I heard you wanted to find your friend.” Her words cause him to pause. He gasps.

“You know about Lir?”

She smirks. “I do. And with your help,” she holds out her hand for Wolf to take, “I suspect we could save him.”