Swords for Show: The Quest Is Fake. The Feelings Are Not.

About Swords for Show: The Quest Is Fake. The Feelings Are Not.

The quest is fake. The feelings are not. Silas Thorne has run 412 staged quests for wealthy clients who want adventure without actual danger.

Scripted forests. Professional illusionists. Carefully choreographed dragon fights.

Signed waivers for everything — including, as of last Tuesday, equine behavior. He is extremely good at this job. He is also extremely good at feeling nothing about it.

Then Sunny Vale walks through his door. The new hire is warm, quick, and relentlessly perceptive — which is either an excellent quality in a quest bard or an exceptionally dangerous one. Silas has not decided.

What he has decided is that Sunny is performing warmth while thinking about something else entirely, and that this is somehow the most interesting thing that has happened to him in four hundred and twelve quests. He has not filed this observation anywhere useful. The Rent-A-Quest team is not helping.

Grog — six foot eight, under a vow of non-violence, and currently crocheting a corrective hat — has opinions about the new hire, which he expresses through the quality of his attention. Fiona’s pyrotechnic failures are objectively more beautiful than other people’s successes. This remains her chief professional challenge.

Gerald, professional illusionist, has blacklisted a horse, filed four counter-motions before breakfast, and is invoicing for the collar. He is perfectly fine. Thistle anticipated all of this.

He has a form. But when a real threat begins to surface beneath the staged ones — and the Bureau of Authentic Heroism starts asking deeply inconvenient questions — Silas discovers that the most dangerous quest he has ever managed is the one that stopped being fake. Swords for Show is a dry, witty fantasy romance with found family, workplace comedy, slow-burn chemistry, and staged heroism gone dangerously off script.

Perfect for readers who enjoy witty fantasy, found-family chaos, and slow-burn romance in the spirit of Terry Pratchett, Legends & Lattes.