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"If you'll excuse me..." As pleasant as the conversation is, you have other business to attend to. You did not come to the Red Raven to learn about the womanizer's love life. In all honesty, the less you know about whatever debauchery their strange southron faith permits them, the better for your sanity. You stand yourself up from the booth with the excuse that, "There are sensitive matters that I must attend to. I came here looking for Bran in the hopes that we could have a private conversation, and discuss some... personal business."
The two of them share a meaningful look, and nod at one another before turning back to you with fire in their eyes.
"We'll be rooting for you," Áine assures you.
"Come on, Áine," Cailyn stands up and beckons for her future "sister-wife" - a concept that fills you with mild disgust - to follow her. "Let's go peel darling away from Bran so the two of them can have a little alone time. <span class="mu-i">Though you better tell us of any developments later</span>."
She whispers that last part loud enough that you're fairly certain that you can hear Bran snort in laughter. Or perhaps the womanizer made one of his horrifically poor jokes. In either case, you have no intent to break Áine and Cailyn free from whatever delusion they've conjured in their minds as to the nature of your personal business. Given they've no problems living three women to one man, eager to lay without one another when he's unavailable for the job, they've no doubt something prurient in mind.
Maybe someday that will be true. After all, if <span class="mu-i">Geoffrey</span> could settle - even if it took <span class="mu-i">three</span> women to tame him! - then maybe you can find the time to fit a romantic pursuit into your schedule.
You look at the two men chatting away in their drinks, and for a moment you can <span class="mu-i">almost</span> see what the womanizer's two buxom brutes see in him. For a man raised among the commons, not more than one step higher than a serf, he has a princely bearing indeed. Locks of gold crown his head, just long enough to help frame his high brow and hazel eyes. He keeps himself from garish colors in his clothing, a habit many of his fellow adventurers could learn to keep themselves. Tall, broad, and powerfully built... if you didn't know his habits, he could easily be mistaken for some storybook's hero.
Yet to your eyes, for all those dashing features, he pales in comparison to the man next to him. Curly hair as red as the raven you painted for his tavern's sign, tied back into a loose ponytail save for one lock he always seems to miss that falls and frames his boyish face. Lean where his friend the womanizer is broad, and taller still, if only by an inch or two. But it's his eyes that sets your heart aflutter. A cold and icy blue that hides a flickering warmth behind them, and possessed of a mysterious power.
Somehow every time they meet your own, you return to the being the girl peaking out from behind her mother's skirt, only to get thoroughly charmed by Bran's boyish smile.
