“I know when I’m in labor, thanks ever so much,” hisses Rane. “And this is not that. I’m just tired, Talis.” And then she softens. “I’m sorry. I know this is important to you, getting that ring back.”
“Did you just apologize to me?” I really can’t remember Rane ever apologizing for anything ever, and this includes stepping on my foot purposefully that one time that she thought I’d given her slightly, slightly less mash than the other warrior mares in the stable (I had not—I always give her more because she’s Rane).
Oh, gods. She’s being nice.
That’s…probably an early sign of labor for Rane.
“Get that look off your face, I’ll tell you when I’m ready to pop,” says Rane severely, but then her whiskers twitch a little on her soft, horsey muzzle, and she relents a little. “Fine. If I have to be hidden in the bushes with an ass, at least it’s this one. He doesn’t do much talking, thank goodness.”
“It’s safer for you in the woods outside of Mount Verlit than in Fury Wood, believe it or not,” I tell her softly, stroking her muzzle.
“Oh, I believe it—I’ve campaigned in Fury Wood. It’s not a charming place. Which is why I wasn’t happy we were going there tonight,” Rane tells me plainly. But then her voice drops to a conspirator’s whisper, and she leans her enormous face closer to me. “Just…be careful going into this city, my girl. All right?”
“I always am—” I begin to tell her, but she shakes her head emphatically.
“No. I mean with Cinda. And your heart. You haven’t told her the truth, that you’re not a knight, and that might change things. Just…be careful. Don’t let her in deep enough for her to hurt you too much.”
I stare at the horse, and I don’t say a word. She blinks her long, black lashes at me and snorts.
“I care about you. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“I appreciate it,” I tell her quietly, and I stroke the side of her face, lost in thought.
If Rane can see that I care for Cinda, then I’m done for. Rane doesn’t notice very much that’s outside of herself. Is it so obvious that I’m infatuated with the lady?
“Look, we need to discuss what we’re doing,” says Tahlia, breaking through my reverie. “Ladies, are you taking part in this?” She looks to Lellie and Cinda. Cinda nods enthusiastically right away, but Lellie looks to me first before she gives a short, curt nod.
“Of course. But only because Talis is involved. I am loyal to Talis, first and foremost. You must understand.” Her brow is up as she gazes at Tahlia. “If everything heads south, I will not hesitate to put you in harm’s way to save my friend.”
Tahlia gives a good-natured grin. “Sure, sure. Wouldn’t expect anything less of a knight. It’s all together and none apart with you ladies, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly,” I say quickly, and Lellie raises her brows, lounging against the side of the basket with her arms crossed. She waits for me to continue. “It’s just…” I stammer, thinking of everything I’ve heard the knights discussing amongst themselves, “we’re…we’re loyal to each other, yes, but the queen trumps that. And the good of all trumps even the queen.”
“See, you knights have too many morals,” Tahlia sniffs. “That’s too complicated. I don’t hurt anyone, but I take care of my own, and that seems to work out all right.”
“Ah, but you do have morals.” I give my sister a little smile. “Just like our mother did. You’re the Fox Queen, and you know you take care of your bandits. You’re loyal to them. If one was left behind in a heist, what would you do?”
“Go back and get her of course,” Tahlia says promptly without a thought.
“Well, see? That’s as firm and true and good as any knight’s code. And that loyalty’s to be commended,” I tell her with a little nod.
“Don’t go comparing me to any knight. I’m wanted in quite a lot of countries,” says Tahlia, her brows raised.
“We’re not saying you’re a good person, don’t worry. Remember, you did perform a small kidnapping this evening,” says Lellie dryly. “I think Talis is trying to say that you both have something in common. You’re both loyal. And that’s an important quality to have, whether you’re a knight or a thief.”
Tahlia snorts. “I won’t be lectured, knights, trust me,” she says, holding up her hands. “If I’m loyal to my people, that just makes me a good leader.”
“And very, very humble,” Lellie groans.
I glance at my sister, and I can’t help but smile. There’s a mischievousness to her eyes, and a light to them I haven’t seen in a long time—because I left. But here, tonight, she’s getting ready to plan a heist, and I’m transported back a few years ago. Heists and thieving jobs were Tahlia’s bread and butter. She lived off of the excitement and the planning, and it’s obvious that she was born to do this.
I tug at the collar of my stolen knight’s armor. Are we really so different? I stole armor tonight. I’m here, about to pull off a heist with her (dear goddess, let us pull off this heist!). Have I really changed so much, or am I still the same person?
If I get the chance to become a knight, is there any part of me that deserves it?
Lellie comes to sit beside me, brushing her arm against mine. “All right, Tahlia—so what is the plan?” she asks, genuinely curious. “And realize that I’m taking everything you say into account so that I can someday use it to hunt you down and arrest you,” she tells my sister sweetly.
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Tahlia’s grin is sharp and cutting as she opens up her palm. “All right, everyone, look closely. Fane gave me a bit of intelligence, so I already know where in the palace the general’s quarters are. This is the palace,” she says, drawing a circle with her finger on the edge of her palm that borders her wrist. “The general lives here.” She stabs the front, right corner of the “palace.” “We’re going to land here, outside of the city.” She brushes a finger against the first pad of her pinkie. “So, we must go through the city and make it from here to here.” She draws a line. It doesn’t look so long on her hand, but looks can be deceiving.
“Now, there’s going to be some intense shenanigans going on because of Wild Night festivities,” murmurs Tahlia. “I’m certain we’re going to be separated, and that’s probably for the best, so we don’t make anyone suspicious. It’s true that there’s a much smaller guard detail because most of the folks are in Arktos City right now, but that doesn’t mean we should let our guard down. The guards who are there are going to be on high alert because of the festival tonight. So act as casual as possible. It’s a party! So party.” Her grin is wide.
“In the city square that lies right in front of the castle is the Draco Fire Fountain. It’s impossible to miss—it’s got an enormous statue on it of the first queen of the Draco, Queen Verlit, founder of Mount Verlit City and Bright Coast itself.” Tahlia licks her lips excitedly. “At the stroke of two in the morning, we’ll gather together at the fire fountain, all right? We’ll meet there and then Fane will get us into the palace, we’ll enter the general’s quarters while Fane keeps watch, and then we’ll get the ring back and get out of there quickly and quietly. You probably haven’t done anything like this before,” she says, turning to both Lellie and Cinda. “Or have you?”
Lellie snorts. “I’ve never even stolen a kiss,” she says, her brows raised.
“I stole a bit of candy once,” says Cinda excitedly. But then she sighs. “But I felt so awful about it that I went back and paid for it.”
Tahlia groans. “Great. Just great. Well, then, just be advised. We must move silently and quickly. Just keep up, and we’ll get in and out as fast as possible. And then you’ll all be thieves.” Her grin deepens.
Lellie snorts, obviously unconvinced that attending a heist with her best friend makes her a thief, but Cinda looks pretty spellbound by the whole idea.
“All right. We leave no one behind. We move together, got it?” Tahlia holds out her hand, palm down, into the middle of all of u
s. “My heart is in this. Is yours?”
“My heart is here,” I murmur, just like we always used to do, and I place the palm of my hand on top of my sister’s hand. Lellie raises a brow and takes a deep breath, and then she murmurs the same words, and places her hand on top of mine.
Cinda breathes out, too, and then she says: “my heart is here,” and her voice is loud in the stillness, and her grin is wide and happy as she places her hand on top of Lellie’s.
“Together!” Tahlia shouts, and we throw our hands up into the air, like we’re thieves moving against a small coach, and not, in fact, aiming toward the dragon city. I glance over the side of the basket and my heart starts to pound even louder and harder in my chest.
We’re almost there.
“Since when did you start to plan things?” I ask Tahlia, mystified, as she pats down her corset, making sure everything is in place. She unhooks the sword belt and reattaches it to make sure it lies firmly against her.
“I had inclinations, once upon a time,” she tells me with a little smile. “But…Yeri taught me to be better. I don’t plan many heists. I just enter the situation and move as the fates take me. But…this one’s important. This one, I feel, our mother would have wanted us to plan.”
I nod, and then I place my hand on my sister’s shoulder. “Whatever happens…” I murmur, and I search her face. “I’m here for you. I’m sorry I left like I did.”
“I know you are, Talis.” There’s a momentary seriousness that comes over my sister’s face. “I just want you to be happy. Are you happy, being a knight? You still haven’t said.”
I stare at my sister’s face, stricken. I take a deep breath. Whatever happens tonight…I’ve got to tell the truth.
“Tahlia—” I begin, but Fane flaps her wings sharply, banking forward, and everyone in the basket has to struggle to maintain sitting upright.
“Hold on! We’re landing!” bellows Fane from above us. Her powerful wings beat much faster now, occasionally closing tightly against her body as she dives and then snaps the wings open, dives and then snaps the wings open. This…is not a gentle sort of landing. I fall to the bottom of the basket the first time she does it, and as I try to stagger up to my knees, she snaps her wings open again, so I fall completely flat against the bottom. The rest are not faring any better, save for Lellie, who was bright enough to stick by the handle, and is gripping it for all she’s worth so that she doesn’t get tossed about like a rag doll.
“Oof!” Cinda slams into me, and I manage to catch her, wrapping my arms around the softness of her waist and drawing her to me to try to keep from jostling around in the basket as much as the rest of us. Once I have her fastly against me, I manage to get an arm around the other end of the basket handle, and then I tighten my grip on both handle and lady.
Cinda grins, and then her teeth clack together—mine, too—as we dive a particularly steep descent, and Fane unfurls her wings a little sharply. “Thanks for saving me,” says Cinda, fluttering her lashes at me. She’s half-teasing, half-serious, and there’s something about the way that her mischievous, teasing expression feels to me…something good, an unfurling inside of myself, the tightness in me easing.
“It’s my pleasure,” I murmur to her, pitching my voice low so that only she can hear it, breathing the words into her ear. It’s the truth. It was my pleasure to wrap my arms around her, a pleasure that went bone-deep.
Cinda said that she didn’t want this night to end. I’m nervous about the upcoming heist, but if I’m being truthful…
I don’t want the night to end either.
Because, in the morning…well, Cinda will know. She’ll know that I wasn’t a knight this whole time, that I lied to her, that I kept lying to her each moment we were together. It’s a weight that’s so heavy on my heart that I can hardly bear it at this moment or any other. I want to tell her, want to tell her so badly, but—am I just imagining it?—it seems that every single time I try to tell her, something interrupts us.
I clear my throat, gaze down into the eyes of the beautiful lady before me. She senses the mood shifting, and the mischief and playfulness fades from her face as she stares up at me, as she wraps her arms around my neck, holding me just as tightly as I’m holding her.
“Talis—you were trying to tell me something earlier. Something weighs on you. What’s wrong?”
“I want to tell you the truth—” I begin, but just as I say the words, the basket falls with a bone-jarring thud against the ground.
And, it appears, we’ve landed.
“Oof…is everyone alive?” Lellie mutters from beneath a mound of her skirts that have flown up and over her head. She wrestles with them for a moment as I count my and Cinda’s limbs and figure out that we’re more, or less, intact. I help Cinda stand, and then I go to tend to the mounts. Rane is standing on wobbly legs, snorting over and over out of her nose, and Cossie is eating the edge of the basket again, blissfully unconcerned about everything.
“Is everyone accounted for? Good!” chirps Tahlia, springing out of a mound of twigs and branches that appears to be what once was the far end of the carrier. The basket itself appears to have been reduced to a pile of twigs.
I stare at said pile, fear rising in my throat.
How in the world are we going to get home in this thing?
The carrier’s handle is broken on one end, completely broken, and there are holes all throughout the bottom of the basket, where sharp rocks and stones from the ground appear to have jabbed through the basket’s weave. It’s in shambles, and if Fane lifted this thing up into the air again, it might disintegrate upon a touch from her claws.
Speak of the dragon, Fane lands on a higher, sharper crag of rock above us, and shakes out her wings and her head, licking her lips with a snake-like tongue as she stares down at us with her glowing dragon eyes. She appears to be growing smaller, or maybe it’s my eyes playing tricks. I blink them twice, and then Fane, the dragon, is no longer there, but it’s Fane the person, naked as the day she was born, stretching overhead, and yawning hugely on the top of that craggy rock.
“Sorry for the bumpy landing—the ocean winds are acting up tonight,” she tells us with a shrug, hopping down from the rock and prowling over to us. “Are any of you the worse for the wear?”
“I’m fairly certain all of us are,” remarks Lellie dryly, getting a grin from Fane for her troubles.
“Ah, well, this thing was on the way out, anyway. I’ve been meaning to get a new one.” Fane kicks the bottom of the carrier and watches where her foot touched it. The basket crumbles away there. She shrugs and grins happily at all of us. “But you made it here, didn’t you?”
“I thought…but you said it was sturdy!” Lellie’s voice is pitched high, and I glance at the knight in surprise. Her hands are curled into fists, and—for a brief heartbeat—I wonder if she’s actually going to punch Fane for this confession. The Draco stands there, fully nude, her hands on her hips and her chin pitched upward, as if triumphant, and the knight stands before her, fire practically radiating from her skin, her whole body, but specifically from her eyes. As if her eyes, themselves, might set Fane alight. It’s rare that you see Lellie in a rage, but I’ve heard that, on the battlefield, if she becomes a berserker there is literally nothing you can do to stop her.
That’s the look she’s giving to Fane right now.
I…would not be the Draco right now for all the gold in Arktos.
“Well, now, I did say it was sturdy. And it was. Before that landing” says Fane, picking and choosing each word carefully, giving the knight a wry, bright smile. “Anyway, we’re here now, aren’t we? You got exactly what you paid for. Don’t get your knickers in a twist.” She winks at Lellie, and then she steps forward, almost as if she’s about to wrap her arms around the knight and do a little dance—but, instead, she slides smoothly past Lellie, and strides toward Tahlia. “My clothes, please, Fox Queen. We’re losing moonlight.”
“I’m going to kill her. I’m g
oing to challenge her to a duel, and then I’m going to make that ill-begotten daughter of a—” Lellie begins, but I cut her off with a grimace, slicing my thumb over my throat.
“Best not to piss off the fire-breathing shapeshifter, hm?” I ask her, and she stops speaking, closing her mouth so tightly it appears to be sealed shut, her eyes still betraying quite a build-up of inner fire. When she manages to rein in her anger, she breathes out through her nose and then pins me to the spot with a still fairly fiery gaze.
“Talis, she’s not seen pissed off.”
“No doubt, no doubt,” I tell her, my voice crooning, “but we’ve just got to get through this, and then you can challenge her to a duel if you still want to kill her.”
Lellie thinks about this and looks a little happier. I grin, too. I know when she’s attracted to someone, and there are many signs she’s directing toward Fane. Wanting to kill her is a side road to the main city of lust.
“All right,” says Fane, taking the clothes from Tahlia, and she starts to wrap the breastband about her chest. “Everyone’s accounted for, yes?”
“Yes,” says Tahlia, before Lellie can say anything else. Cinda’s busy trying to braid her hair again, patting and pinning it into place, but even she rolls her eyes. We’re accounted for, yes—but a little jostled. “We’ll get separated, I’m sure, in the city—we’re going to meet at the fire fountain when the bell strikes two.”
“And the mounts?” asks Fane, throwing on her pants and shimmying them up over her rear.
“They’ll stay here,” I say, pointing to the ground. “If it’s safe here?”
Fane considers this as she does up the buttons of her shirt. “Well, I don’t think anyone will bother them. Some Draco say that this forest is haunted, but…can horses even see ghosts?”
“What kind of eyes does she think we have?” blusters Rane, but I pat the mare’s neck soothingly.
“Yes, I’m fairly certain they can see ghosts. But nothing’s ever frightened Rane—and I don’t think much bothers Cossie.” I glance thoughtfully at the donkey, but he’s making headway on his quest to eat the entire basket, so I don’t think he’s even listening to us.
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