My heartbeat sped up. He was like me. Well, a little like me. But still…
“How do I know you’re not lying?”
He made a show of looking around the room. “We could wait and ask the guard, who should be coming through here on his rounds in about four minutes, or we could just agree we’re on the same side for now and get this done.” He swung his crowbar. “Your call.”
“What were you going to do with that?” I asked, using my lips to point at the heavy bar.
“Like I said, smash and grab. Not all of us are dainty lockpickers, Princess.”
“You break the glass, you’ll have guards down on us faster than four minutes.”
“Three minutes and thirty-five seconds now.”
I could see his point. And if he was telling the truth and his goal was the same as mine, I’d take the help.
“I’ll open the glass boxes. You look out.”
“Three minutes and twenty seconds.”
“I’ll get it done,” I growled, “if you let me work.”
He raised innocent hands as he took a step back…and right into a security square. The alarm screamed immediately, an eardrum-shattering screech.
“Whoops!” he said, laughing. Laughing.
A danger freak. I’d known them when I lived with the pirates. People who got off on the adrenaline of the job, the more dangerous the better. But I was not going to lose my chance. After the exhibit was over, the artifacts would go back in the vault, and I had no idea how long it would be until they were on display to the public again.
“Get to breaking, then, Cuz,” I said.
“As you wish.” He stepped up, took a practice swing, and then smash! The glass box holding the rattle shattered.
I reached in with my gloves and gingerly slid the artifact out between the shards.
Two steps and he was at the next box, and smash! And again, until he’d broken all the boxes. I removed each artifact and placed them safely in my bag, hit the button to inflate the protective lining, and hefted it over my shoulder.
Shouting in the hallway, and I knew we were out of time.
“You got a way out, Princess?” he asked.
I looked pointedly at the vent.
“Oh.” His face fell. I saw it, too. No way was he shinnying up and out of that vent with those broad shoulders and no anti-gravity boots.
“No worries,” he said with another outrageous smile. “You go. I’ll distract them.”
“But you’ll get caught!”
“Don’t worry about me. I’ve been in worse situations.”
I wanted to ask what, but it was too late. I could see figures coming our way. I had to go while I still could.
“Great meeting you, Cuz!” he said, swinging his crowbar. “Take care now.” And then he was running down the hall away from me, smashing jewel cases and everything else he could reach.
I didn’t waste the opportunity. In less than ten seconds I was up and out of the exhibit, belly-crawling through the vent, and on my way back to my ship.
“Evie?” I asked, hitting my comm.
“How can I help you, Vi?”
“Did he make it? That boy?”
“Your request is unclear.”
I sighed. “Are there any new records of detainment coming in from the Imperium security force?”
A second where Evie was working and then, “Affirmative. A young man has been detained. Would you like his statistics?”
“No,” I said quickly. The less I knew, the better. “But could you hold on to them? Store them in your memory? In case I want them another time?”
“Affirmative.”
I dropped out of the ventilation system on the far side of the museum. I looked around, but all the ruckus was far from me, on the other side of the grounds. I made it back to My Heart Will Go On without incident, fired up my engines, and left Imperium airspace.
But a little piece of me—maybe the part that wondered if he was some relation to me, if I’d found not just something of my home planet but someone—stayed behind, wondering if I’d done the right thing.
* * *
“This seat taken?”
I looked up from my very delicious daiquiri to find a stranger blocking my sun. Black hair long and loose in waves, brown skin, dark eyes, and some very nice, well-muscled shoulders.
“Depends,” I asked, appraising him through my sunglasses. “Who are you?”
“Well, the much more interesting question is who you are, Violet.”
I looked around for possible backup, someone to scream help at should I need it, but this close to sunset I had the beach to myself. And I’d left my comm back on the ship, sure I didn’t need Evie for a few hours of relaxation by the ocean. This resort town far away from the heart of the Imperium was known as a safe place, low crime because a lot of criminals liked the spot and professional courtesy kept things respectful. Even thieves needed a break now and then.
“You know my name.”
“I know a lot of things about you.”
“Seems you have me at a disadvantage,” I said coolly. I took another sip of my drink. The metal straw would make a good weapon in an emergency. He must have caught my look because he laughed, a very familiar laugh, and stepped back, raising his hands in innocence.
“Don’t get violent on me, Cuz,” he said. “I just wondered if you got those artifacts back to the people they should be with or not.”
Ah…it was six months and a very good disguise later, but now I saw it. The laugh, the raised hands. My mysterious accomplice from the museum heist.
“Sorry, never caught your name.”
“Does it matter?” he asked, dropping into the seat next to me.
“I like the hair. I was never a fan of blondes.”
“Told you.”
“How’d you find me?”
“It took me a bit,” he admitted. “But the purple dress, the flowers in your hair, the planet the artifacts you lifted came from, and a friend who has a connection to some pirates of questionable morals. It all came together.” He winked. “I got skills.”
“I see you are still annoying.”
He tapped his hands against his stomach. “Listen, do you want to do this or not?”
I frowned. “Do what, exactly? Why are you here again?”
His grin was big and confident. “Imperium’s throwing a birthday party. Heard the empress herself is going to be there, wearing the crown jewels, the ones they usually keep under lock and key. Seemed like the kind of job a princess might be interested in.”
He cocked an eyebrow at me.
I took another sip, stalling. I worked alone. Well, me and Evie. I didn’t need a partner. But…maybe I wanted one.
“What’s your name?” I asked again.
“My friends call me Trevan, but it’s an Imperium name and I always hated it. My partner can call me…Valerian.” He flushed, looking at me with hesitant eyes. He’d picked a flower name for himself, something natural, a reminder of the land.
But I wasn’t ready to accept his story quite yet. “First tell me how you got out of the museum.”
“I didn’t. I was arrested. But they couldn’t find the artifacts, so they couldn’t hold me for theft. Just criminal mischief for breaking the glass. I did four months in minimum security on a prison planet, and here I am.”
He’d done time for me. I was touched.
“What do you say? Partner?”
I sighed. Did I truly want this? Another person to potentially lose, someone to be responsible for? Someone to keep me from being so alone.
“You’ll have to meet Evie. And she has to like you.”
“I can do that.”
“And I’m the captain of the My Heart Will Go On, so whatever happens on my ship, I’m in charge.”
“Still not a problem.”
He leaned over and took a sip from my drink.
So annoyingly rude. I had to laugh.
“Sure, Val,” I said, decision made. “Let’s go take back some pretty rocks from the empress. But listen, you are going to have to learn to pick a lock.”
He stood, held out a hand, and pulled me to my feet. Somehow he’d commandeered my drink for himself. Thief!
“Or maybe you will come to appreciate the benefits of a quick smash-and-grab. Hey! Val and Vi.” He nudged my shoulder. “I like it.”
“Or Vi and Val.” I let the names sit on my lips. “It has potential,” I admitted.
Another grin as he finished my daiquiri. “You bet it does.”
The sun plays coy on the morning that Dream takes to the woods. And she’s encouraged: the way it peeks above the horizon—like she peeks around corners to make sure the coast is clear—almost feels like an act of solidarity.
It’s early winter, and the cool air bites at the tip of her nose as she creeps through the shadows along unlit alleyways she’d typically avoid…not that anything bad ever happens in the town where Dream has spent every day of her short sixteen years. She keeps to brightly lit places out here for the same reason she keeps to them at home: Dream is afraid of the dark.
But she can’t let that stop her now. The big iron gates to the city loom, open as always, and the varied treetops of the forest—some pine, some oak, some she can’t readily identify despite the number of times she’s climbed them—poke into the sky beyond.
It gives her the burst of resolve she needs.
This isn’t a decision she made lightly, this vanishing just before dawn, very much on a mission. Though she certainly didn’t give proper thought to the low temperature. As numbness spreads beyond her extremities and up into her ankles and palms, a wave of doubt crashes over Dream. She stops and looks over her shoulder at the peaks of the red-shingled roofs she’s left behind. Within one of those dwellings are Mother and Father and her mother’s father and her father’s mother, all surely on the verge of waking to find her gone. Dream can almost hear the tongue-lashing she’d receive from the older women at the sight of her poorly covered arms. (Though they’d been the ones to order the froufrou dresses with thin chiffon sleeves.)
She’s tempted to turn back. Slip into her warm bed as though she never left. Choose one of the “suitors” her parents have been parading before her over the past few months, and settle into the life they’d prefer for her. It’s not like it’d be a bad life. The men, though not much older than her, have all been perfectly chivalrous fellows who doted on her and would certainly give her anything she wanted. Doesn’t hurt that they were all really cute, too….
She sighs and shakes her head as that thing, that feeling she’s had lately, tugs her in the opposite direction. Dream has yet to figure out adequate words for it, but it’s like a drumbeat thumping within her veins and setting her blood on fire: there’s a monster in these woods. (Everyone knows that much.) And it needs Dream. She can feel it.
As if in confirmation, the moment Dream crosses the threshold between open field and trees, a rogue gust of warmth presses through her skin down into the marrow of her bones.
She’s not cold anymore. Quite the opposite now. After a quick look around to make sure she’s alone, Dream exhales and lets her head fall back. It’s been over two years since she last set foot in these woods (nothing like an overprotective mother to kill her fun). But now the trees loom large around and above her, and Dream feels better than she has in weeks. “Man, is it good to be back,” she whispers into the breeze.
Everyone in town thinks Dream is strange. She knows that for sure. They always have. When she was small, she was that bizarre one who thinks she’s some sort of lady knight—as if such a thing could exist, and now she’s that one who talks to the trees. (She got caught one time, five years ago, and hasn’t been able to live it down.) It’s always driven Mother bonkers that Dream insisted on wearing her prettiest dresses but returned home—daily—with them covered in smudges, the chiffon snagged, and/or holes in the lace.
(As a riiiiip rings through the air, Dream turns to see that her hem has snagged on a gnarly exposed tree root. She smiles. “Ha!”)
Even so, Mother has yet to stop replenishing Dream’s dreamy wardrobe. As a child, Dream was never permitted to wear the leather trousers that were more suited to her rambunctious style of play, so she got used to running/jumping/climbing/tumbling while draped in layers of tulle and chiffon. And Dream likes the dresses. They feel good on her long, lithe limbs and accent her heart-shaped face. In fact, this has been her saving grace: her “overt femininity.” (God, does she hate that word. It’s so…limiting. As evidenced by the way that Mother side-eyes Dream for “being so rough-and-tumble while wearing such feminine garments.” It annoys Dream to no end.)
And that is why she’s in these woods. Well…partially why, at least. Four days ago, some new suitor and his parents came to call. (Stunning jawline and gorgeous deep brown skin on this one, but his eyebrows were even more manicured than hers. Definitely a deal breaker.) And the moment Dream entered the room in her shimmery indigo gown, the boy’s mother burst into applause. “Aha!” she said, ecstatic. “Now, that is a true lady. Poised and well-postured.” She pulled her own shoulders back. “Nothing like that…person we encountered last week. Would you believe the young lady greeted us wearing trousers? And had grit beneath untrimmed fingernails? Her father said something about a metalworking hobby, but we didn’t even bother to sit down. You’d think that after what happened to that so-called princess, these girls would know better—”
“Ah.” And Dream got up and left the room without another word.
Ever since then, said princess—“so-called” be damned—has been at the center of Dream’s every thought. Dare was this princess’s name….
“Is her name,” Dream corrects under her breath.
As of this morning, Princess Dare has been missing for two and a half years. She vanished a fortnight after her fourteenth birthday, and the search for her was abandoned after mere days. Disdain ran deep for the “princess” who dressed like a boy yet outright refused to court one.
Dream scowls as she forges deeper into the woods and the hem of her voluminous skirts gets heavy with grime. It bothers Dream that Dare’s memory only survives in their pitiful principality because Dare’s disappearance was the closest thing to a scandal any of the townspeople had ever seen. Most presumed Dare ran away under the cloak of darkness (and good riddance, the royal family must be so relieved, can you even imagine?). But there were some who believed a fearsome monster had snatched and eaten her in the dead of night (even so, good riddance, at least she didn’t suffer much).
The latter isn’t entirely unfounded because there truly is a monster. It took up residence in the woods around the time of Dare’s departure, and after multiple eyewitness accounts of a horrifyingly ugly and frighteningly formidable beast living in a house made of human bones, many assumed Princess Dare was its first victim. “I’ve heard the creature is drawn to the aberrant,” some say. “It has a penchant for the deviant,” whisper others.
Then there are the Pursuers: a group that believes wholeheartedly in the monster, but also in the notion that Princess Dare is very much alive and in need of rescue. And not only from the foul beast; from her “abnormal proclivities” as well.
It should come as no surprise that the majority of Pursuers are thick-headed boys: hubris-driven imbeciles out to prove their manhood and worthiness of utmost respect and admiration by venturing into the woods, weapons in hand, and emerging with Dare cradled in a set of strong arms, her princess-y nature obscured by her frailty and filth.
(Gross, Dream thinks. And not at all because she just stepped into a puddle of muck.)
The hero of heroes would have a knapsack slung over
one chiseled shoulder, and within that knapsack would be the severed head of the monster. Princess Dare would come to and fall madly in love with her rescuer, thereby transforming into the lady royal everyone would claim they knew she could be.
Only two would-be heroes—out of over one hundred—had ever returned from the forest. Both of them woefully empty-handed and driven too mad by what they’d seen to even speak of it. But the Pursuers were undeterred. In fact, Dream’s current trek through the woods was spurred on by one of them: an admittedly strapping suitor—different from the one with the awful mother, delightfully tall and handsome, with skin the cool, dusky brown of a walnut shell—was so butt-hurt by Dream’s rejection, he puffed his chest up and said, “Well, that’s a relief. Now I can fulfill my true calling: taking down that wretched beast in the woods so I can return the Dare girl to her proper place.”
Dream would’ve laughed in his face if not for the fissure of rage that opened up inside her chest.
Not only because these Pursuer boys see the “rescue” mission as their chance at glory. That they see the life of a young woman as little more than a proving ground for their bravado. And not only because they believe Dare—or any young woman—to be incapable of fending for herself. It’s not only that, deep down, the intentions of these scoundrels are utterly dishonorable. That Dream knows what they really want is to be thought of as The Man Who Made Dare into a REAL Princess.
What makes Dream angriest is that she knows they’re mistaken. It’s why she’s in these woods.
She’s going to prove them wrong. About Dare, yes, but also about herself.
The townspeople, the suitors, they think of Dream as the dream girl. The dream wife. Pretty, sweet, compliant. Everything Dare was—is—not.
But they are incorrect. They don’t know Dream, and they certainly didn’t know Dare.
Dream, though, knew Dare.
Knows her.
Dream knows Dare doesn’t need to be rescued. Not in the least.
A Universe of Wishes Page 15