Half a Note

Teen and up · Complete · 20,739 words · 5 chapters

Warnings: No warnings apply

Tags: romantasy, rivals to lovers, enemies to lovers, slow burn, magic with a cost, weather magic, alpine fantasy, bell founders, hard of hearing heroine, original fiction, standalone

Every hail bell in Brenndal costs its founder one note of her hearing, for ever. Theres Gostner has given twenty-seven. She lip-reads the whole valley, finds her pitch by biting a tuning fork, and has kept one low note back all her life for the great bell, the Hulda, which cracked in last October's storm.

Then Floris Achterberg comes up the pass from the flat, rainy delta with two carts of bronze, a lathe, and an offer the Bell Wardens can't turn down: he'll recast the Hulda for half the price, and nobody will have to lose a thing. He's polite, he has perfect pitch, and he is going to get the whole harvest stripped to the canes.

The Wardens set a trial for Rope Day, winner takes the Hulda. And the one voice in the valley Theres can still hear whole is his.

A rivals-to-lovers romantasy of bell-founding, hailstorms, wine terraces and the price of a single note.

Chapters

Chapter 1: The Throat (4,303 words) A half-deaf bell founder gives her twenty-seventh note, and a lowlander says she was flat.
Chapter 2: Dumb Bells (4,247 words) Loam, wet larch, aniseed mice, a roll of forbidden forks, and a question.
Chapter 3: Rope Day (4,674 words) The trial pours, the first storm of the Ringing, and two bells on the terraces.
Chapter 4: The Casting Book (4,155 words) Two crews, one great mould, a page in an old book, and a sitting at the Torggl.
Chapter 5: Two Throats (3,360 words) A furnace lit at midnight, a straw burning down, and one note left to give.

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