A lot of first-time soldiers are like that. Doesn't do to let them carry on thinking they can do anything, but doesn't help to humiliate them either. 

So he's not going to offer her a piggyback.

He gives her a leg up, and they make it over the wall. 

He takes her to his favourite tavern, the one he used to think was far too expensive for most nights - to her, it's still going to be a different world. 

Eloise draws her light-blue cloak over herself, halfway hiding behind Voltur. She holds onto his arm, both of hers wrapped tight around him, peeking out from the shadow of his broad frame. Despite her nervousness, excitement lights up her moonlike face. 

“What does one do here?”

He takes a second to breathe in the smell of stale beer and wood-smoke. 

Gods he's missed this place. 

He just smirks at her, leads her over to a table, and tips a serving-boy probably his week's wages to get them a couple of flagons of what a dwarf would call baby food. 

"To start with," he declares, "one drinks."

Gods what is she doing here–

Eloise settles down in a rather horrifically uncomfortable wooden chair in a rather horrifically smelly building, and she takes a sip of a rather horrifically bitter drink. She gags.

She likes it.

“You drink this for fun?”

"Yes. It gets better once you're halfway down."

He takes a drink, glances around the place, looking for familiar faces.

Then he takes pity on her. 

"I think the trouble is," he declares, leaning over, "is that you're not meant to sip it. You're meant to quaff. Like this."

He demonstrates. 

She stares at him. And then slowly, uncertainly, she lifts the tankard to her lips. It’s most of the size of her head, and twice that of her hand. 

And then she tilts her head back and downs it.

She coughs and splutters, slamming it back down. “You lied! That remains as foul as the time Gregory brought back a dead toad as a pet.”

He laughs louder than he has in some time. The dwarf-ale helps. 

It might make her smile a bit too.

"Maybe you need to try it a few times. Acquired tastes, you know. A dead toad?"

“Yes. Our father dropped him as a baby. Or so I hear.” She goes quiet for a bit, but then smiles at him. A rare, genuine smile. “What next, then?”

He is interrupted in replying by the woman at the next table deciding to noisily jump up and dance on it.

She has no idea how to react other than to stare in wonder. A small laugh leaves her lips, guarded, but the cracks in her spirit begin to open. She leans in close to Voltur. “Is this a common happenstance?” 

Her voice is far louder than she intended it to be. Perhaps something to do with that gods-awful drink she can’t stop sipping. Regardless, it is better to shout here, she thinks – it is beginning to be so rowdy she can barely hear her own mind.

"Not common enough!" he shouts - someone's found a fiddle, and he's waving his flagon to the music. 

The woman on the table is rather pretty. 

He nudges Eloise. 

"Come on! Drink up, the second flagon is always better."

The woman on the table is rather pretty.

“Hm?” She looks over at him again, halfway startled. The candlelights shine in her eyes. “Oh– gods, alright.”

She faces that second flagon with an expression Voltur recognises from regarding his men-at-arms before a battle. And, indeed, she shows the same bravery.

“I do believe you were correct,” she slurs, leaning into that impossibly broad shoulder. “Only on a technicality. The second was marga– margal… marginally better.”

He shouldn't have got her the third one. 

He should have remembered that a flagon is two pints and she's a small girl. 

He also probably shouldn't have tried the shots on top of that himself. 

But it's too late for that now. 

He pats her on the arm a little clumsily and leans closer to her. He's warm and quite gentle even now. 

"'m always right in the end." He shakes himself. "So what d'you think of this fine estabblishment now, El- sorry, Lady- wait, Miss Bridgerton?"

“The best. The most… prettiest.” Eloise sighs wistfully, her eyes somewhere across the room. “Please. My name is– name is just fine.”

A grin slowly spreads on her face. “Do you ever feel pigeonholed into a role, Voltur? I ash– assume… ahem, I can call you that. If we are to be friends.”

Pigeonholed is a funny word.

Pigeonholed. He likes pigeons. He used to chase them when he was a boy. His mother told him he could keep it if he ever caught one. 

He then realises he's said that out loud. 

"Of course, Eloise. Gods I miss calling people by their names."

He looks at her, follows her gaze to the other side of the room. The dancing lady is still going. Must be her first time seeing how the rest of the world dances. 

"Not until I came to town, no. Nobody much cared what I did. Then all of a sudden I've got these responserberl- these duties." He looks at her sideways, a sort of tipsily cunning look. "So what hole do they want to put you in, then?"

She rests her chin on the table morosely. “You should meet my sister, Daphne. The– the Duchess.” Her tone is saccharine.

“Oh. No offence,” she amends half-heartedly, glancing up at him through long eyelashes. This table is rather comfy, she thinks. “It is simply that– that she is perfect. She left the shape of the hole I should fill.”

Eloise clearly does not understand the joke.

She sighs then, lifting her head. A lock of hair slips into her face. “Did you ever catch a pigeon?”

"'m sure I will. I keep having these nightmares where the Queen makes me recite all the, you know, the names and titles and things, of everyone in the ton, from memory."

He rests his head on his hands so he can look her in the eye. She's tiny compared to him. Lots of feelings in a very tiny body. "Iwoulda thought she'd already done it for you? Got one Duchess in the family, hooray, don't need two?"

"Never did catch a pigeon. Wonder if I could do it now. I slew a dragon, you know? There's going to be," he makes a face, "songs about it."

Her mouth forms a perfect ‘O’.

”You SLEW a DRAGON?!”

Lots of lung space in that tiny body too. People have turned around from three tables away.

“When?! How?! What colour?!”

"End of the war. Sword. Black." He takes a swig. "Y'see, turns out - so, your dragons, right, they say in books and things, no offence, there's these different colours and here's what they're like and, you realise, that's all written by sort of the people who made it back, right? 'Snot like that when you're there. It was, it was, the Black Wyvern of Densing Clowns, it was this colour like the bottom of a pit - not like a black dog, just, you felt like there was something wrong with your eyes when you looked at it. And it did this thing like a scream and made the air eat itself. Turns out it was stirring up the war all the time, that's why we couldn't put it down. Clever bastard. Had to lure it onto the battlefield and that took some doing. Melted a whole platoon. But then I could grab it and hold on for dear life and, long story, I had a sword forged by some ancient hero and it could cut dragonscale, and it fell, and it was like, like a shadow lifted from all men's hearts, and they said I should have a dukedom for it." He hiccoughs. 

“Wow.” She says, and instantly feels stupid. But what exactly do you say to something like that?

She tries again. “…Wow.”

…

“Densing Clowns?”

He frowns. "That doesn't sound right. Clensing! Clensing Downe."

He falls silent a moment, then refocusses on her with some effort. 

"So what'sh the rest of your family like? I only met your brothers for a minute. Don't know what it must be like to grow up like that."

HE’S JUST GLOSSING OVER THE FUCKING DRAGON—?

“Ah. Yes, I thought you and Benedict seemed to know one another.” 

What does one say to a dragon slayer?

“They are alright, I suppose. Sometimes.”

A black dragon slayer?

“I have seven brothers and sisters. It is all rather suffocating most of the time, I can hardly get a word in edgeways if I… do not shout.”

He looks so normal. Yes, he is probably very strong, and Eloise has read stories about such feats, but staring at Voltur now, she realises she only has his word to take for it. She can hardly believe it.

“Do you still have the sword?” she blurts out.