Chapter 7

Rhosyn's position this time she woke from an artificially induced slumber was much less comfortable. The wooden slats of a chair dug into her arms, wrenched back and tied firmly behind her. Still, her eyes opened sluggishly, despite the sharpness of the discomfort dragging her towards consciousness.

As she blinked away the bleariness in her vision, the reason for her placidity became apparent. Paul sat in a chair across from her, expression wary as he muttered soothing nonsense. It left her too tired to struggle against her bonds, but he wasn't keeping her fully asleep.

Instead of trying to tug free, she took inventory of her situation, looking down to find her ankles and calves roped to the legs of the chair.

"I see my accommodations have been downgraded." Her voice came out more drowsy than scathing, but Paul still grimaced when she looked back at him.

"It was the one piece of furniture around here we thought you might not be able to break," he admitted.

"You're stronger than you look, but we already knew that," a female voice chimed in.

Rhosyn turned her head, the movement feeling slow, as if she were underwater, and was greeted by a familiar round face.

"Olivia!" A mix of relief and disappointment washed over her. She was glad to see the girl safe, even if she had hoped Paul's sister hadn't also fallen in with Ansel.

"I would say it was good to see you again but…" Olivia twisted her hands fitfully in the apron she wore.

"Tying me to the chair wasn't the greeting I had hoped for. And after I had been so worried about you!" Rhosyn's words came out with more bite now that Paul was no longer talking, his Talent only working with his voice.

"I couldn't let you hurt any more people," Paul admitted ruefully, his tone devoid of any persuasive hypnotism.

"You can't blame me for roughing up the people who I thought had kidnapped you," Rhosyn argued.

"But now you know we're not here against our will—" Olivia started.

"Which doesn't make me any less inclined to punch something," Rhosyn shot before biting her tongue. Olivia's eyes widened and Rhosyn shoved down the guilt she felt at causing such an expression. Even though that doe-eyed look made her look like the child who had been plagued by nightmares until her brother's Talent awoke, she was a teenager now, and old enough to know wrong from right.

"Nate and Contessa, they—we have fought too hard to give you the chance for a life where you don't have to run from the law. And then you throw it all away…for what?" Rhosyn fumed. "You've thrown in with thieves. After all we've gone through."

Rhosyn swallowed thickly, the acid taste of hurt clawing up her throat. How could Paul and Olivia be siding against her? Not when they had been in that group of children captured by Caleb and the Rattlesnakes, who Contessa and Nate had risked life and limb to get back.

But the real bitterness came from the fact that a small part of her understood. After all, hadn't she just slipped into the haze of a street brawler so easily when faced with a challenge? Her police training had flown out the window in a mere second, leaving her throwing punches in a gambling den like she had never left.

"It's not like that," Paul chimed in softly. "You've—I'd hoped you'd understand, if you'd just give us a chance to explain."

Olivia's wide eyes continued to fix her with a beseeching stare. Rhosyn slumped, the awkward angle pulling at her shoulders as they bent around the chair behind her.

"You have until my arms go numb to convince me that I wouldn't be a corrupt police officer for not arresting you alongside Ansel."

The siblings exchanged a glance before both started speaking at once.

"We couldn't stay at the Gower's—"

"We heard the Foxes—"

They both cut off until Olivia nodded at Paul to continue. He took a deep breath, before beginning again more calmly.

"When we were first offered the positions with the Gowers, we thought it was the best thing we could ever hope for. A chance that we only ever dreamed of as Talented children." Paul shifted in his seat. "We barely read the sponsorship papers and jumped in. But after years in the factories as children, it didn't take us long to after we started to realize what it actually was—indentured servitude."

Rhosyn frowned. Contessa wouldn't support something like that—not after fighting so hard to free so many orphans from the horrendous working conditions in the factories—and sponsorships had been her idea. She opened her mouth to chime in before snapping it shut. Chief Thorne had impressed upon her, with great difficulty, that interrupting witnesses was not a good way to go about gathering information.

"In the factories, they paid us, but they forced us to live in their rooms and charged us more than we made. After a few weeks, we were in such deep debt that they basically owned us, while acting like they were saints for taking in children who lost parents to the Inquiries." Paul's face twisted at the memory, the movement pulling on the scar in his forehead and hairline. It had healed to a shiny white, not nearly as gruesome as Nate's, but Rhosyn still remembered how he got it. He had arrived into her care, head wrapped in bandages after being injured in his escape from factory service.

"The Gower's house was the same. After he paid our pardons, took us in, and dressed us for his house, we owed him so much that it would take decades of work to ever be free of him," Paul explained.

"Did he mistreat you?" This time, Rhosyn couldn't stop herself from interrupting.

Paul hesitated.

"The whole time we were there is such a blur," Olivia chimed in. "We were so busy, I could barely keep up with my work and think straight at the same time."

Rhosyn had to take a deep breath in and out through her nose to stay composed. Olivia's voice was so small, still so terribly young. Her childhood had been stolen from her by the textile factory she worked in, and the job that was supposed to be her salvation had apparently worked her so hard that her mind became addled from lack of sleep.

"Why didn't you come to me?" Rhosyn asked, her voice low. Only through an effort of will did she restrain the growl that threatened to creep in, both in anger that Mr. Gower would treat them so badly they felt the need to run away and that they would choose a random thug to help them over her.

"I…I don't know." Paul seemed genuinely baffled as he tried to dig up an answer. "I just—I went on an errand for the Gowers, and at the market I heard a rumor that a new gang was helping Talented people leave London. It felt like the first time my head had been clear in months when I heard that. So, I followed the man who had been gossiping.

"I had to use some of the…skills…you taught me," Paul looked sheepish, "but I eventually tracked the rumors back here. I met Ansel and the Foxes, and they told me he could help. He would even steal our sponsorship papers from the palace so they couldn't hunt us down and force us back. And then…well, I guess you can fill in the rest."

For a moment, Rhosyn thought Paul was infusing his words with his Talent again, as her mind couldn't seem to keep up with what he was saying. In the long pause when he finished, staring at her with a mix of expectancy and apprehension, her mind hummed with all the force of the factories in the industrial district.

"The Foxes?" she asked, her police brain homing in on that detail first. Her investigation into Foxes left her thinking that they were more myth than reality, and Paul had stumbled on them by accident.

"That would be us." Ansel stood in the doorframe, leaning casually against it with his arms folded, one leg crossed in front of the other. It would have been a relaxed pose, but something in his posture told Rhosyn he was ready to jump into action in a moment's notice. To be fair, she hadn't given him a reason to believe that any given conversation with her wouldn't end in a fight. He must have appeared there sometime during their talk, with his uncanny knack for stealth.

"You?" Rhosyn echoed. She had surmised Ansel had gang help, but he seemed to be suggesting that he led the gang.

"Well, my associates and I," he clarified with a shrug.

"…The circus?" Rhosyn asked.

"We are a group of many skills," Ansel said, the hint of a wry smile tugging at his lips, even though the rest of his expression remained serious. Rhosyn stared for a second, taking in the lines creasing his forehead that seemed too deep for his age and the hollows under his eyes. They looked like hers.

"I wouldn't have thought clowning and crime had much overlap," Rhosyn admitted.

"Little John is our strong man, and he seems to do just fine at standing in as the muscle."

Rhosyn blinked dumbly. "So, Archer's Circus…is the Foxes?"

Ansel bowed his head in affirmation.

With this admission, more pieces of the puzzle started falling into place. Contessa's office had been robbed of the sponsorship papers the night Archer's Circus had performed there, and the thief had disappeared into the hubbub of the dressing room. The supposed turf fight with the Foxes had occurred in the rail yard the night the circus train had arrived. And the gang had supposedly sprung into life out of thin air a few weeks before, when Ansel and his advance guard of performers arrived in London.

Rhosyn slumped. She swung her head to look at Paul and Olivia again. Grown as they were now, something in their expression still made them look like children waiting to be scolded for some mischief or another—although truth be told, they were some of the less devious children she had minded at the Den over the years.

"So, you were just trying to run away, and the Foxes were your way out." It wasn't exactly a question, but the siblings nodded in affirmation. A few pieces of the puzzle were still missing though.

"Why are you stealing Talented away from their sponsorships?" She directed the question at Ansel.

He signed heavily and pushed off the doorframe, taking a few steps further into the room. "That is a question with a lot of history behind it."

Rhosyn looked pointedly down at her ankles where they were bound to the chair. "It doesn't look like I'm going anywhere."

Paul, Olivia, and Ansel all grimaced in unison.

"Sorry," Paul mumbled under his breath.

"I would prefer not to have you bound at all times," Ansel admitted. "But your fists have already cost me my juggler for tonight's show. If my performers keep getting mysteriously injured, people might start asking questions."

"I suppose promising to be on my best behavior doesn't mean much at this point." Rhosyn tried to look contrite, but it wasn't an expression that came to her naturally.

Ansel shook his head. "How do I know you won't run off and tell your Chief all you just learned about our little operation?"

Rhosyn chewed her lip to keep herself from spitting back that he didn't. After all, she should do just as he said. The Foxes had done more than break the Talented siblings free. They had broken into the palace—Contessa's own office—and stolen a small fortune in jewelry from several upper city families.

A good police officer wouldn't hesitate to put the entirety of Archer's Circus behind bars. But the fear that Rhosyn had pushed aside for too long reared its head and couldn't be pushed down this time.

Maybe she wasn't a good police officer.

She desperately wanted to be—wanted to claim that she lived fully on the right side of the law and had reclaimed the life she might have had if she hadn't chosen to throw her lot in with the Lion's after she aged out of the Den. After all, Chief Thorne worked tirelessly to turn the police around and make them the protectors they were always meant to be. Rhosyn had never wanted to do anything but help the people of London, and joining his new force had seemed like the best way.

But the dirt of the lower city had rubbed its way under her skin.

Rhosyn closed her eyes, steeling herself. She picked her next words carefully. "If I'm being held hostage, I can't very well tell the Royal Police where Olivia and Paul were. It would be a shame if I weren't to escape until after they had left London. Then, they'd be outside our jurisdiction and the Royal Police would be unable to see that they were returned home safely."

Ansel cocked his head, his green eyes inscrutable. Paul and Olivia, on the other hand, slumped in relief.

"Thank you," Olivia breathed emphatically.

Their gratitude twisted her gut with guilt even as it lightened her heart.

The Lions protected their own.

A knife sprang into Ansel's hand, having been hidden somewhere beneath his sleeves. The thin lamplight in the small room reflected off a blade sharp enough to make Nate proud. Ansel knelt before Rhosyn's chair and gave her a long look.

Her throat felt tight as she swallowed with difficulty and nodded. She would not run. She told herself that this was a compromise—a necessary evil. Rhosyn hadn't promised Ansel that she wouldn't get the Foxes arrested for their crimes. She had only suggested that she wouldn't be doing so until after Paul and Olivia were far away.

A dull snick and the ropes around Rhosyn's calves loosened, sliced cleanly through by Ansel's blade. She flexed her legs and rolled her ankles as he stood and rounded her chair.

The heat from his body soaked through her uniform as he bent over her to cut away the binds on her arms. As he leaned in, his breath disturbed the curls at the nape of her neck, long since escaped from the knot she tied them in for patrol. She tried not to focus on the goosebumps it raised as her wrists sprang free and she was able to move her arms into a more comfortable position.

As she stretched, pulling her arms alternately across her chest to regain her mobility, Ansel rounded the chair and looked at her appraisingly.

"If you're going to be the Foxes' guest, you'll need something else to wear. Olivia, Paul, can you see if you can dig your friend up some clothes?"

Rhosyn looked down at her uniform and grimaced. It was rumpled and dusty after three days of wear, a stain on one thigh from a spilled drink as she jumped over tables. She had even managed to lose one of the golden buttons that dotted the navy fabric. Not to mention, it wouldn't do to have her walking freely in a gang hideout wearing the outfit of an officer of the law.

Paul nodded. "Something of mine might work, even if the pants are a little short."

With that, he and Olivia scurried off to do Ansel's bidding. The door banged against the frame as they left, and they found themselves alone. Ansel stood before Rhosyn, close enough his thighs nearly brushed her knees. She tilted her head up to look at him.

"So, what now?" he asked.

She stared at him, lifting a quizzical brow. "Aren't you the one in charge here? You don't seem to have mastered the art of holding someone hostage."

"And you have?"

Rhosyn shrugged, "Maybe not holding a hostage. But I have put lots of people behind bars, and I'm certainly better at conducting interrogations."

"This wasn't an interrogation." Ansel let out a frustrated huff through his nose. "It was a…persuasion."

"Well, now that I've been persuaded, I'd like to stretch my legs if you're leaving the plan up to me." Rhosyn stood, forcing Ansel to take a step back.

He immediately stepped forward again as Rhosyn's knees buckled, an odd mix of wobbly and stiff after being tied for so long. Ansel caught her with one arm under hers and the other around her waist. Rhosyn threw her arms around his neck on reflex.

They stood like that, perfectly still. Rhosyn's nose was a few inches from Ansel's, close enough that she could make out the shimmering lamplight reflected in his eyes. The way they held each other, it was almost like the time they first met, dancing at the King's ball. But that wasn't the first time they had met—that had been a chase over steep roofs, ending in Rhosyn's humiliation.

That thought gave Rhosyn the impetus she needed to wrench away, legs much more prepared to hold her weight this time. The man who had flirted with her—who had made her hope she had successfully left her past behind her, while making her wonder if she were broken for wanting to shatter the layer of veneer that coated his manner—that man was a lie.

This man was the Hood. More a representation of the past that she was trying to leave behind than her present. And while the Hood's manner was also naturally flirtatious, she chafed at the way she had jumped to his challenges.

"I did untie you, but I'm not sure giving you a tour of the premises is wise," Ansel admitted, drawing Rhosyn from her thoughts, apparently completely unfazed by their recent proximity.

She jutted out one hip and rested a fist on it. "You have your insurance for my cooperation."

For now, she added silently.

Ansel bit the inside of his cheek as if considering. It was a more human gesture, speaking of indecision and doubt, than Rhosyn had ever seen on him as Mr. Blakely. She found herself softening her posture.

"You don't even have to let me see where we are, just let me walk the hallways," she compromised. After all, she could learn plenty about the Foxes from inside their hole, even if she didn't know its precise location.

"Alright," Ansel conceded. "But I'm not letting you wander anywhere alone."

"Of course not. You need to tell me the story of how you found yourself stealing Talented away from their jobs."

Ansel gave her a long-suffering look as he led her from the small room into a narrow hallway. It was dingy and cramped, with doors lining it all the way down. He didn't speak as he led the way down past the doorways, some stood open to reveal tiny bedrooms and others closed, voices coming from within. It looked so much like the safehouses where her friends in the Lions lived that if she closed her eyes, she could pretend she was seventeen again, visiting the teenagers who had aged out of the Den and her care.

"It started when Mr. Archer still owned the circus actually," Ansel started without any preamble as they turned the corner at the end of the corridor towards the stairs.

"Mr. Archer?"

"The one whom the circus is named after. He was my…mentor."

Rhosyn considered the back of Ansel's head as he led them down the stairs. He didn't elaborate for a minute as they squeezed past others, many of whom nodded courteously at Ansel before catching sight of her and paling. Their shock at seeing her walking free told her that most of them witnessed the scene in the common room earlier. She grinned.

Finally, they arrived on what Rhosyn surmised was the ground floor, where a familiar room full of tables and chairs greeted them.

"Will, get our friend here something to eat and drink. She'll be staying for a while." Ansel shouted toward a group of men gathered around a table with their heads bent together. One of them looked up, staring for a moment before hurrying to do Ansel's bidding.

Rhosyn watched him go, wondering why he seemed familiar until it hit her. "Your acrobats."

Ansel nodded as he took a seat at an uninhabited table, gesturing for Rhosyn to take another. "The Merry Men. The act that made the circus famous."

"I originally thought that one of them was the Hood," Rhosyn admitted.

"The Hood?"

Rhosyn cleared her suddenly stuck throat. "It's what I—we—the police started calling you, since we didn't know who you were. You always wore a hood though."

"I don't know if I should be flattered that I'm notorious enough to have a nickname with law enforcement." Ansel grimaced.

"The best criminals do." People still called Nate "the Beast" behind his back, but nobody would do it where the king or his intimidating bodyguard might overhear.

"If I were good at doing my job, I wouldn't be drawing enough attention to be infamous," Ansel admitted.

"Your acrobatics aren't exactly subtle." Rhosyn shot Ansel a meaningful look. "Now that I know who you are, I'm honestly surprised your act in the circus was knife throwing."

Ansel reclined, leaning the chair he was sitting in back on two legs and balancing there. "It wasn't at first. When Mr. Archer took me in, when I was just a boy, I was one of the first Merry Men."

"Then why did you take up knife throwing?" Rhosyn asked, as Will put a plate of bread and drippings in front of her and scurried away. She didn't hesitate digging in, saying around a mouth full of bread, "You clearly didn't leave acrobatics for a lack of skill."

"That's just it. I was too good at it."

Rhosyn wanted to say something scathing in response but was too busy chewing, so she settled for rolling her eyes, only to freeze when Ansel continued.

"Mr. Archer was afraid I was going to give away my Talent."

She forced her mouthful down her throat with difficulty. "You're Talented?"

Ansel smiled, the expression simultaneously mischievous and wistful. "You asked me how I started stealing the Talented away from the sponsorships, but in truth, it isn't anything new. It's what we've always done, since long before I was in charge.

"That's the beauty of the circus, you see. People come to see things that shouldn't be possible—things that are extraordinary. The spectators expect things to be inexplicably magical. So, when a lion seems to truly understand what his tamer is telling him, or a fire breather can shape flames like a sculptor…well, that's just the magic of show business."

Rhosyn stared. "You're all Talented?"

"Not all." Ansel shook his head. The silver strand of hair that Rhosyn had only seen neatly coiffed into his pushed back hairstyle, fell forward with the motion. "It was…a passion of Mr. Archer's. You see, he had a son who was Talented. Had a way of predicting the weather down to the second that was almost scary—as if he controlled the rain. They hid it easily when they lived in the country, but when Mr. Archer started the circus, he moved them to London for the bigger crowds.

"They learned too late that the cramped quarters of the city, combined with the bloodthirstiness of the Royal Police, made it nearly impossible to conceal a Talent for long."

Rhosyn's stomach dropped to the soles of her boots, the bread she had hastily swallowed turning leaden. "He…" She trailed off, not wanting to ask the question and fearing she already knew the answer.

Ansel nodded solemnly. "I think that Mr. Archer thought that if he could just smuggle enough Talented out of London, it would wash away the guilt he felt for his son's death. And so, he sent out word through whispers in the lower city that he was searching for incredible acts to go on tour. People were skeptical at first, but when they realized it wasn't a trap, the Talented flocked to him with all sorts of interesting displays, which he played off as clever tricks and sleight of hand. Then, he bought the train and headed out to the country.

"Acts would drop off at every remote stop where we put on a show, and Mr. Archer never said a word. Just gave them their coin and let them set out to start a new life. Every year, we would come back to London and fill up with a fresh set of performers."

A question built in the back of Rhosyn's mind and spilled off her tongue when he paused. "But you, you never left to start a life in the country where you could hide your Talent?"

Ansel let his chair fall back onto four legs and rested his elbows on the table. "Some of us—I—fell in love with performing. After being petrified to use my Talent for so long, it was liberating. It felt like cheating the system to flex that muscle in front of unsuspecting audiences and be praised for it, even if they never knew. After a while, the circus train became more of a home for some of us than London ever had been. So, a group of us stayed for the long haul."

Rhosyn looked around the room they were in, with plenty of young men and women both milling about and sitting at tables with drinks or dice. The sight, the warmth of casual laughter, even the smell of cheap alcohol and tobacco—it would be enough to make Rhosyn nostalgic if not for the feeling that she was watching the scene through a pane of glass. These weren't the Lions, and the wary glances and wide berths everybody but Ansel gave her told her they still noticed her uniform, however rumpled. After so long trying to cover the blemish of her history with a spotless police record, she should have been proud that Ansel's compatriots saw her as the enemy. Instead, bitterness rose up in her throat to choke her.

"So, once you inherited the circus from Mr. Archer, you turned it into a band of thieves and kidnappers?"

A splintering thud, and the tip of a dagger buried itself in the table millimeters from where Rhosyn's hand rested. To her credit, she didn't flinch away, but the suddenly hard look in Ansel's eyes made her wish she had.

"Mr. Archer died for this circus, and those of us who stayed honor him by continuing what he started." Ansel's voice carried a flinty edge that gave Rhosyn pause. So far, as both the Hood and Mr. Blakely, she had delighted in teasing him, rising to the challenge of a suave attitude that promised to never take itself too seriously. The steel in his green gaze now, though, was something else.

It flashed away as quickly as it had come when Ansel pulled the knife from the table and leaned back in his chair. He tossed the blade with one hand and flipped it, catching it by the handle without looking, in an action that was as much soothing habit as it was intimidation tactic. It was the same way Rhosyn used to twirl her brass knuckles around her index finger.

"The Foxes were born out of necessity, but we're still Archer's Circus at heart."

Rhosyn sat back in her own seat, taking a deep breath to keep up with Ansel's changing posture as he slipped back into his curated demeanor. "The Inquiries are over. I wouldn't think you'd have much business smuggling them out of the city anymore."

"Do you have the life you would have if the Inquiries never happened?"

The question hit Rhosyn like a slap to the face. The dreams of being a sailor like her father—of visiting distant lands and never staying in one place for too long—had dissipated like smog from a smokestack the day she had decided to stay with the Lions. She knew she would never forgive herself if she turned away when she could give the children living in the Den a better childhood than she had. But the Lions had slipped away too, like so much smoke at the end of the Inquiries, and Rhosyn had grasped at the straws of yet another life, helping people in the best way she knew how.

"I have the life I need," Rhosyn bit out.

"Not everybody was so lucky," Ansel observed. "It seems to me that the Talented have two choices: continue to make a living as a criminal or sell themselves into a lifetime of servitude with a sponsorship. The Foxes wanted to give them another choice. A fresh start."

"And so, you steal them away from their sponsors."

Ansel inclined his head in his acknowledgment.

Rhosyn cracked her knuckles to distract herself from the desire to argue further. She wanted to tell Ansel that robbing the residents of the upper city who were trying to use their power to aid the Talented wasn't a long-term solution. But wasn't that what she and the Lions had done, stealing orphans away from brutal factory jobs?

It wasn't news to her that the law and what was right were not always aligned, but things were supposed to be different now. Chief Thorne was a good man. Contessa and King Byron worked tirelessly to right the injustices of the past.

Rhosyn was saved from having to answer by the appearance of Paul, a small bundle of fabric carried in his arms.

"These will have to do, although you might have to show an indecent amount of ankle," he admitted, putting the stack of clothes on the table.

"It would hardly be the first time somebody accused me of indecency."

"I doubt it will be the last," Ansel added, seemingly under his breath but still loud enough that Rhosyn shot him an exasperated look.

She pushed back from the table, picking up the pile of fabric. Maybe once she got changed, the Foxes would be more comfortable with her, and she would be able to glean more specifics of their activities to report back to Chief Thorne. And maybe she wouldn't feel like such a traitor to the uniform for walking freely among thieves.

Either way, it was time to live with the Foxes.