Chapter 9

The floorboards creaked incessantly as Rhosyn paced back and forth across the small room. It was nearly annoying enough to make her stop, but she had too much energy to work out, despite her little brawl with Ansel earlier.

The past hours were the first Rhosyn had spent alone with her thoughts since being captured by the Foxes. Now that Rhosyn had offered her aid, Ansel had deemed it safe to leave her alone in his room, although he had locked the door. She supposed she should welcome the opportunity to regroup, but instead she only fretted.

After their conversation, Ansel had left again, saying he needed to make arrangements for their mission to the palace. Rhosyn knew that it would happen rather quickly, but when he said they would head out when he got back, her heart rate doubled. In just a matter of hours, she would be helping a criminal steal documents from the crown.

The thought shouldn't make her palms sweat, but still, she ended up repetitively wiping her hands on her pants. It was hardly the first time in her life that she'd be breaking the law—not even the most serious infraction in her ledger. If things went well, they wouldn't be spilling any blood.

She clung to that thought with a vice grip. By volunteering to crack the safe for Ansel, she was preventing the Foxes from robbing a family of their wealth and potentially being less scrupulous with their violence in the process. With her on the job, she could make sure the operation was as quiet and peaceful as possible. After all, wasn't saving lives and preventing crimes her job as an officer of the Royal Police?

At that thought she stopped pacing in favor of flopping back on the bed in the center of the room, her hair spreading out around her in a chaotic splash of crimson. Since joining the Royal Police, she had been able to protect her city by following the law and ensuring others did too.

The end of the Inquiries had marked a profound shift, where Rhosyn went from seeing the police and the Crown as her enemy to her allies. When Contessa's father, Chief Cook, had been leading corrupt law enforcement, breaking the law had clearly been in the name of justice, and Rhosyn had done it happily to be what the people of London needed.

When Chief Thorne took over, and the new King started taking steps to protect the Talented, the Royal Police were now on the side of righteousness, and Rhosyn had once again shifted to be what was needed—as close to a model police officer as she could be with her shadowed past. But if the law was no longer corrupt, why did she now feel like she had to break it to do the right thing?

With a groan, she dug the heels of her hands into her eyes so hard that lights exploded in her vision. Ever since meeting the Hood—Ansel—everything that had once seemed clear had become muddied.

A rustling at the window grabbed her attention. In a second, Rhosyn rolled off the bed, landing on the balls of her feet in a defensive crouch. After days on edge, her reflexes were primed to respond quickly to any unusual sounds.

The rustling turned into scratching, and she inched towards the window, staying low so as to be out of the line of sight of anybody at the sill—an impressive feat given that Ansel's room was on the fourth floor.

A clicking and then a metallic scrape indicated that the lock had broken—forced open instead of finessed—and the window swung open on loudly protesting hinges. The muscles in Rhosyn's thighs tightened like coiled springs, prepared to leap forward and dislodge the intruder as they clambered onto the sill.

Instead, a familiar silhouette, dark against the hazy evening sky swung up effortlessly, perching in the window frame with all the ease of a sparrow in flight.

Rhosyn blinked at the maneuver as Ansel paused, seemingly spotting her defensive posture. Even Scarlett, who for some reason insisted on entering through Rhosyn's bedroom window even though she was perfectly welcome to use the door, didn't boast such gravity-defying maneuvers.

This was also Ansel's own room, which begged the question, "And you chose to risk me punching you out of a fourth story window frame instead of using the door to your own room because…?"

Ansel dropped into the room, his boots barely making a noise despite the creakiness of the old building's floors. "I wasn't particularly worried about falling. I am rarely a victim of gravity," he admitted.

Rhosyn put her hands on her hips, but he just shrugged.

"After years on a trapeze, falling from a window doesn't seem like an immediate threat."

Realization dawned. "Your Talent."

She had been so concerned with learning of the dual role of Archer's Circus as the up-and-coming Foxes that she had barely registered Ansel's admission that he had a Talent—and that he had stopped performing as an acrobat because it had become obvious.

He smiled wryly. "Don't ask me what exactly it is, because I've never really had a satisfactory answer. The closest I've come is enhanced balance, but that doesn't seem to capture it. Whenever I climb or do acrobatics though, I can almost see in advance how things are going to work out. Like…"

"Like a sixth sense," Rhosyn finished for him. It was something Nate had said about his Talent, which also seemed to defy definition, especially to someone like Rhosyn who had no Talent at all.

"It makes running over rooftops easy, and can even come in handy in a fight, but unfortunately does not give me an advantage at many other things," Ansel admitted. "For example, I forgot that I locked the window in case you decided to make an ill-advised escape attempt, and now I have a broken latch."

"Which once again prompts me to ask, what do you have against doors?"

Ansel considered her, saying after a moment, "You wanted discretion. I left this evening and none of the Foxes saw me return. If we leave and return for the palace the same way, nobody has to know that I alone wasn't responsible for stealing the sponsorship documents."

Silence stretched, as Rhosyn drew a blank on any appropriate response. She and Ansel had pushed against each other at so many junctions, but here he had gone out of his way to honor her preference for secrecy. It was an acknowledgment of the concession she was making by doing this for them, and calculated as it was, it tugged at a string under Rhosyn's sternum she hadn't known was there.

"We better get going then," she eventually said, and the moment dissipated.

Ansel nodded, stepping around her to the foot of the bed. He opened the trunk there and rustled inside for a moment before emerging with a familiar garment: a jacket with a deep hood. He pulled it on and lowered the hood over his head, before tossing a similar article to Rhosyn.

She followed suit, glad to have something to cover her hair. The garment was too broad across the shoulders, and too short at the wrists, but it would do the job.

Next, he reached into his pocket and produced a bland-looking bundle. He handed it to Rhosyn, who unrolled it curiously, only for her heart to stutter at the shine of a full set of lock picks.

"I got them especially for you," he admitted.

She chuckled as she rerolled the packet and tucked it into her boot. "You really know how to charm a woman."

When she stood, the police officer was gone, replaced by a gangster with a shadowed face and hidden lockpicks. He was the Hood, and she was his thief.

Ansel looked at her and nodded in satisfaction before stepping towards the still-open window. He hesitated when he reached it. Then he reached for his sleeve, rolling it up to reveal a hidden sheath much like the ones that Nate—and now Contessa—had always used to conceal his numerous knives.

Ansel unstrapped it hurriedly and thrust it at Rhosyn's chest, as if doing it quickly before he had a chance to change his mind. "Don't make me regret this."

"I make no promises about regret," Rhosyn said as she took the outstretched offering and began strapping it to her own forearm. "But I do promise not to stab you when your back is turned."

"I guess that's the best I could hope for." Ansel's tone was rueful, but he smiled, nonetheless.

Rhosyn found herself smiling at him too. At the feeling of the leather straps against the skin of her forearm—the familiar yet foreign weight of a blade—the sleepy Lion in her mind perked up in interest. She had grown comfortable with the weight of a baton at her hip in the past years, but this awakened something in her that she had been denying to herself that she missed.

In the dark of night, she was about to climb out a lower city window in secrecy, a hidden knife at her wrist, to steal people's freedom back from their captors. Her heart fluttered, and a strange lightness took hold at the base of her skull. Rhosyn was excited.

She clamped down on the realization by scowling. "Well, we better get moving. I may be better than you at picking locks, but I am not as good at climbing down a wall from the fourth story."

"Then I'll be a gentleman, and not propose we race." Without further prelude, Ansel turned back to the window and levered himself over the sill. Rhosyn darted forward, knowing he wouldn't fall but heart rate skyrocketing, nonetheless. She leaned out into the night air just in time to watch him catch a hold of a clothesline in the back alley the window faced. He swung from it, putting the excess momentum into a somersault before landing on the ground.

It was so much like the first time they met, and Rhosyn suppressed a sigh at the realization that, just like that day, she would be following at a much slower pace. She turned and lowered herself down over the sill backwards, muscles in her arms straining as her toes scrambled for purchase on the wall. She picked her way down carefully, trying not to let the fact that Ansel was staring up at her rush her movements. Given the choice between having him enjoy a rather suggestive view of her backside from below or witnessing her falling, she would take the former. As he had so annoyingly pointed out, it was nothing he hadn't seen before.

By the time Rhosyn's boots hit the packed dirt of the alleyway, she was beginning to perspire, her shirt clinging to the small of her back and curls tightening in the humidity.

"I hope you can scale a wall faster than that," Ansel said, quietly enough that she could barely make out his words over the din of the street at the front of the building. While the middle and upper city would be quieting down at this point in the night, action in the lower city was just picking up.

"We'll need to be quick if we are to make it over the back wall to the palace between rounds of the King's Guard," Ansel worried out loud.

Rhosyn paused. She should have thought about how Ansel planned to get into the palace grounds, but she had spent her time worrying about her choice to go with him instead.

There was a way to get into the palace grounds without risking getting caught climbing the wall, though. Using it would require putting even more trust in Ansel.

They had come this far.

"Lucky for you, we don't have to scale the back wall."

Ansel raised a brow.

"Follow me." It was all the further instruction she gave him before trotting off down the alley to towards the slightly better lit main streets. As she emerged, she looked both ways, taking stock of where they were, although trying not to be too obvious in plotting out the exact location of the Foxes hideout in their mind.

"Graham Street," Ansel supplied.

When she looked at him curiously, he just shrugged.

"You were going to figure it out anyways. No point in forcing you to struggle to get your bearings at this point."

Rhosyn nodded sharply, turning left and weaving deftly through the milling crowds of dirty urchins and rowdy gamblers. She walked these streets every day on her assigned beat, but tonight, it felt different. While the residents of the lower city recognized her—even trusted her, as much as they could an officer of the Royal Police after the terrifying reign of the Inquiries—Rhosyn hadn't realized how other the navy wool and gold buttons of her uniform made her. When she patrolled, she rarely brushed shoulders with pedestrians or had to jump out of the way of an ambling cart. Everybody gave her a respectful berth.

Now though, she weaved and dodged like the Lion's runners, whom she had trained to carry messages quickly and secretly between safehouses. Nobody spared her a glance or averted their eyes, as if afraid of being accused of causing trouble.

Tonight, she was one of them. Just another citizen going about their business—perhaps legal, perhaps not.

Rhosyn quickly steered them towards the Lion's old territory. Now it was split between a few gangs, the worst of the skirmishes over the territory in the past with the fall of the Wolves. The particular building she was looking for was currently in Rattlesnake territory, but she didn't fear them anymore.

In a matter of minutes, Rhosyn led Ansel to the front of a butcher shop. She paused outside, plotting her strategy.

"Are we in need of meat for whatever your secret plan is?" Ansel asked as she considered.

"It's not what's in the store. It's what's underneath," Rhosyn explained. She headed for a gap between buildings, planning on entering through the side door. She gestured for Ansel to follow, but paused when she realized he was no longer right behind her.

He hesitated, hovering under the darkened shop's awning. His right hand gripped his opposite forearm, a gesture Rhosyn recognized as him palming a hidden weapon through his clothes, as if considering drawing it.

"You could be leading me into a trap," he pointed out.

Rhosyn stepped back towards him, propping one had on her him. "And when would I have had time to set up a trap? You've had me watched nearly every minute, day and night."

His mouth twisted ruefully. "It's turning out that you have many skills I don't know about."

"Well, telepathy is not one of them. No hidden Talents here," Rhosyn assured.

Ansel took a single step forward. "And how will a butcher shop help us get into the palace? Unless you prefer a meat cleaver to a proper dagger."

"Do you trust me?" Rhosyn asked.

"I shouldn't."

Rhosyn shook her head. "That wasn't an answer."

Ansel sighed heavily, a sound that held more meaning and feeling than a spoken answer might have. "Lead the way."

She turned back towards the door, popping the cheap lock easily. The screech of breaking metal couldn't even be heard against the din of the tavern across the street. Rhosyn said a silent apology and made a mental note to replace it for the shop owners. This was no longer a Lions' safe house, but the shop owners were former gang members.

Once inside, she navigated to the back of the shop, where meat hung from the rafters. Careful not to bump any, she located what she was looking for.

"Help me move these." Rhosyn gestured to a few salt barrels on top of her goal.

Ansel's expression was curious, but to his credit, he did as she asked without question. However, the crease between his brows smoothed into realization as Rhosyn bent to dust off a hidden handle.

"A trapdoor? You really are a woman of many secrets."

Too many.

Rhosyn ignored that thought in favor of heaving the door open, a small puff of dust following the motion, indicating that the tunnel below had not been used in quite a long time. For the most part, they were no longer used, as the Lions had been the only ones to know of their existence for many years, and their need for them had passed.

A few trusted police officers knew of their existence as well, after the raid on the Wolves several years back. However, what most officers, not even Chief Thorne, knew, was that they were aware of a small fraction of the tunnels. Only a few people had ever fully explored the labyrinthian network over the span of many years: Nate, Kristoff, and Rhosyn herself.

"This tunnel can get us into the palace?" Ansel drew Rhosyn back from memories of using chalk to mark the walls below, spending years memorizing the best routes between the Den and various safe houses.

"Yes and no," Rhosyn said as she swept a few cobwebs from the open hatch with her hand. "It will get us onto the grounds, but not inside the palace proper. The exit is in one of the outbuildings, and we can go from there."

Nate had seen to it that most of the entrances that could be used to threaten the King had been closed off, just as the entrance in his own study had been. However, he left just one, a tiny passage not even many of the Lions had ever used, just in case he ever needed to be able to smuggle the King to safety.

"It'll be dark, but I know the way," Rhosyn said, before levering herself down feet first into the passage below.

The air was cool and stale down here, the dank smell tugging at memories in the back of her mind. She let them surface, knowing they would bring with them the muscle memory necessary to navigate the maze ahead after all these years.

A light thud marked Ansel's arrival next to her, the sound of boots hitting stone echoing in the empty passage. At that, Rhosyn reached up, stretching on the tips of her toes to grab the trap door and shut it behind them. With a thunk laced with a remarkable amount of finality, it fell back into place, punching them into impenetrable darkness.

With their sense of sight nearly completely gone, sounds became louder. The even cadence of Ansel's breathing, so close next to her in the tight space, lifted the hairs on the nape of Rhosyn's neck. She was going to have to guide him.

"Here, take my hand." She reached out, fumbling in the darkness. After a moment, his hand met hers. She didn't need to interlace their fingers, but she found herself doing so anyways.

"Let's go."

Rhosyn placed the hand not holding Ansel's on the wall and set off down the passageway. At first, they walked in silence. Rhosyn tried to focus on the rasp of rough-hewn stone under her palm as she used her left hand to navigate in the darkness. However, her awareness kept slipping back to her right hand and the feeling of strong, callused fingers between her own.

It wasn't the soft touch of the society men Contessa had occasionally encouraged her to dance with at social events—the kind that would draw away with polite disgust as they felt the roughness of Rhosyn's own skin. Neither was it the unwelcome grab of a lower city thug that Rhosyn had no scruples responding to with a sharp knee to the groin.

Ansel's grip was firm, but not aggressive, as he let her lead the way through the pitch black in a remarkable show of trust. For a fleeting moment, Rhosyn wished she deserved that trust and wasn't going to shatter it by arresting him the moment the temporary truce she had agreed to for Paul and Olivia was over.

If she still planned to have him arrested, that was.

That thought prompted a queasy feeling to take hold beneath her ribs. Thankfully, Ansel seemed to be unnerved by the silence and distracted her from her thoughts with a question.

"So, do the Royal Police use these tunnels?"

"They have, but not this particular one," Rhosyn hedged.

"So, you know of this one because…"

"The Lions used them." She bit the words out with a bit more defiance than necessary, as she tried to stop dancing around a truth she had already admitted.

Ansel hummed noncommittally and they walked in silence for a few more minutes. Rhosyn occupied herself by drawing up the mental map of the intertwining passages in her mind, referencing it every time she had to make a choice at a fork in the path. The only words she spoke for a while were "watch your step" at the patches of uneven ground or "mind your head" when the ceiling dipped down for short stretches. Ansel exhaled through his nose in an aborted chuckle as she was forced to duck more often than him.

It wasn't until they were a few turns away from the exit Rhosyn sought when Ansel spoke again.

"Why did you join the Royal Police?"

Rhosyn's steps nearly stuttered, but she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other at an even pace. It was something that seemed obvious in her own mind, but having it asked so plainly—and by somebody who clearly saw it as a disconnect from her path—made it seem confusing. When she had told Nate and Contessa of her wishes to join the force, they had only nodded. Their understanding of what she desired went unspoken, given that they had transitioned from leaders of the most powerful street gang in London to the King's closest advisors.

Silence stretched too long, the sound of their boots scraping against the uneven floors and a quiet dripping somewhere in the distance nearly deafening. Rhosyn thought she might not answer at all when the words tumbled out of her of her own accord.

"I've always been what people needed. For years, the young Lions needed a big sister. Then, London needed protectors it could trust."

And now, I'm not so sure what is needed.

The last part echoed unspoken in her mind.

They reached the end of the corridor they were in, a tiny space opening up where both she and Ansel could crowd behind the hidden door at the rear of the servants' quarters. In the small opening, they stood so close that Rhosyn's chest brushed Ansel's as she breathed. It was still too dark to see, but the space stirred around her as they inhaled the same air. It was both painfully intimate, and blissfully anonymous, being this close but not being able to see him after what she had just admitted.

She thought Ansel might drop the subject, but instead he asked, "So who does that make you, if you've only ever tried to be what everybody else needed? Are you a gangster or a police officer?"

Rhosyn tried to swallow, but her throat stuck. "I could ask you the same thing." Her voice was hoarse but loud in the blackness. "Are you Mr. Blakely or the Hood?"

"I have a feeling we might answer that question the same."

Neither.

"Neither." Ansel echoed her answer, although she hadn't said it out loud.

Rhosyn's heart stuttered, pain lancing through her chest at knowing her enemy and captor was the one who had been able to so succinctly cut to the core of her psyche.

"Don't we have a palace to rob?" she asked, voice scratchier than she would ever like to admit.

"Of course. Heists are hardly the best time for philosophical debates about one's identity."

And like that, Ansel diffused the tension with just one quip. Air that had been sucked out of Rhosyn's lungs rushed back in as she breathed in relief. Teasing banter sat much more comfortably with her.

Turning away, Rhosyn put her ear to the wooden panel that served as a hidden door. The movement gave her a few moments of separation from Ansel, and her mind was able to latch onto the task at hand once more. It was the middle of the night, but the servants that lived in this outbuilding would work at all hours to keep the palace running smoothly.

Greeted only by silence, Rhosyn inched the door open, thanking the powers for quiet hinges. Perhaps Nate kept them oiled, just as he kept this passage open and secret.

They stepped out into a quiet corridor. It, too, was dark, but the blackness was less thick than it had been in the passage. From one end of the hallway came the dim silver light of the moon, seeping in around a doorframe.

Rhosyn gestured towards the exit and led the way on soft feet. In a matter of moments, they emerged into the soft evening air of the palace grounds. The main building towered in the distance, a fortress of stone that would not be easily penetrated. As they crept through the shadows, towards the high stone walls, she frowned at it.

Guards would be stationed at all the doors, as well as rounding the gardens at regular intervals. She would have to shimmy open the lock of one of the windows quickly. Unfortunately, the palace would not have the cheap locks that were easily persuaded to give way with correctly applied leverage. It would be a challenge to break it quickly enough to avoid notice. At least once they were inside the offices, Rhosyn wouldn't have to worry about the patrols of the ground interrupting her work on the safe.

They reached the shadow of the walls and Rhosyn crept towards the nearest window, keeping to the side in case somebody was up working late. She bent to the lock and cursed quietly under her breath.

Ansel leaned over his shoulder, close enough that his heat seeped through his clothes onto his breath tickled her neck. "What's wrong?"

"This is going to take a while to finesse. Breaking it would make too much noise." Rhosyn explained, pulling the lock picks from her boot.

Ansel huffed. "We don't have a while. Guards round every five minutes."

Her stomach turned to stone. Who knew how long it had already been? "Then I better get started."

Ansel rested a hand on her forearm, halting her. "Look."

Rhosyn tracked where he pointed with her gaze. Several floors up was a window, swung wide open as if in invitation. She shook her head. The palace walls would not be rough hewn with uneven mortar—not easily climbed.

"I can get you up," Ansel assured.

Before she could ask how, Ansel darted away across the lawn to a blossoming tree. Rhosyn hissed, suppressing the urge to shout at him for being stupid and drawing attention. He started up the tree, and frustrated as she was, Rhosyn's eyebrows shot up at the speed with which he reached the upper branches.

The tree was well pruned by the castle gardeners, leaving no low hanging boughs for him to use as handholds, but Ansel didn't seem to need them. He scurried upwards with the swiftness of a squirrel that spent all its life among the trees.

As he reached the branches level with the open window, he stepped onto one. Rhosyn's mouth opened, but she kept herself from shouting. Still, her heart froze in her chest as he picked his way along the branch. It was too thin and too far from the open window. He couldn't possibly make it.

But Ansel didn't seem to be informed about the laws of gravity. He ran along the branch as if it were a tightrope, not even attempting to use his hands to balance himself on adjacent limbs. As the branch got thinner, he only gained speed. Just as the branch began to dip dangerously under his weight, he leaped.

The tiniest squeak of fear escaped Rhosyn's still open mouth. He soared, stretching out towards the window sill, the distance impossibly far. Before he could plummet to the ground, bones crunching against the well-groomed grass, Ansel's earlier words echoed in her mind.

I am rarely a victim of gravity.

Ansel caught the windowsill by just the tips of his fingers, but stopping his fall still seemed effortless. His feet hit the stone wall below the open window and pushed back instantly, launching him through the open window.

The whole thing had taken a matter of seconds.

The only issue was that it left Rhosyn crouched on the ground, and the guards would be coming by any minute. She certainly wouldn't be replicating his stunt—not without breaking her neck.

Her heart hammered. After she had put her trust in him, had Ansel betrayed her, leaving her to get arrested for treason? Because that was what she was doing. Committing treason against the King who had ended all her friends' suffering.

Rhosyn was jerked away from the panic clawing at her throat by a knock on her head. Her chin jerked up to see a rope, dangling from the open window Ansel had just entered.

A gust of breath escaped her lips, which were quirked by a surprised smile. She grabbed at the rope, hauling herself up. She might not be the acrobat Ansel was, but she could scale a rope easily enough. She wrapped the end around her foot, using it as a step to pull herself up towards Ansel.

Just as she crested half the distance between the ground and her entrance point, a dull crunching from below drew Rhosyn's attention. Panic gripped her chest anew, squeezing her heart in an iron grasp as she fumbled, trying to climb faster.

The quiet noise shaped into footsteps, at least two guards by the sounds of it, about to round the corner at any moment. She wouldn't be inside by the time they did, leaving her open to their watchful eyes.

In her hands the rope jerked. All of a sudden, she was rising faster, the rope being hauled in even as she climbed. Ansel was pulling her up.

She scrambled, heat stinging her palms as her skin chafed against the rope. Her toes banged against the wall as she shoved upwards.

The footsteps were nearly beneath her when Rhosyn's shoulder crested the windowsill, and she pitched forward. The momentum of her climb combined with Ansel's pulling was enough to carry her through the empty frame. With a bone-rattling thud, she tumbled head over heels into the palace. The sound of the wind being knocked out of lungs didn't only come from her, but from the firm chest she landed on.

Ansel lay on the ground, Rhosyn sprawled across his torso. They both froze, ears pricked for signs of their detection, from both inside and outside the palace. The only noise was their own ragging breathing, close enough to be sharing the same air.

When no shouting of intruders began, Rhosyn slumped forward with relief. Her forehead landed on Ansel's collarbone. A sigh rustled her hair, and one of Ansel's arms came up, a hand resting between her shoulder blades. His thumb rubbed the smallest of circles there.

Rhosyn's skin prickled with overwhelming awareness, adrenaline still rushing through her at the near miss. Now that the immediate threat had passed, all that shivering anticipation turned towards the hammering of Ansel's heart, beating a tattoo through his clothes, so insistent she could feel it. Her own heart responded in kind.

His body was warm and solid beneath hers, and her thighs squeezed where they bracketed his narrow hips. At the motion, his abs tensed beneath hers. Rhosyn shivered at all the power and agility packed into Ansel's compact body. He had to be incredibly strong to pull her up like he did.

Ansel's hand rubbed more insistently at her back, and the movement focused the strange heat running through her body, forcing her to move. She rolled sideways, hitting the floor next to him inelegantly, but effectively separating them.

"Thank you," she murmured at the ceiling.

"It's the least I can do, considering you have to do the hard part later."

Rhosyn scrubbed at her forehead. "We should get moving. The quicker we get this over with, the less chance we get caught."

And the quicker we can go back to being on opposite sides.

She pushed to her feet and took stock of their surroundings.

The space was tight, the walls taken up by racks of worn-looking weapons and ammunition. It must be a supply room for the King's Guard, and a stack of miscellaneous supplies near the window explained how Ansel had been able to find a rope so fast. The musty smell of worn uniforms also gave Rhosyn a hint as to why the window had been left open.

"The safe is on the first floor," Ansel whispered.

Listening carefully every step of the way, they cracked open the door and exited into the hallway, once they assured themselves nobody was coming. Rhosyn didn't know the architecture of the palace perfectly, but it wasn't difficult to find stairs, as this section of the palace was a basic grid of offices and halls, stacked on top of each other.

Once they reached the ground floor, Ansel stepped around her, leading the way to the safe. It was in an office near Contessa's, but not in hers. Rhosyn was grateful not to be stealing from her friend directly, even if it still panged of betrayal in her heart.

The room Ansel led her to was nondescript, aside from the imposing safe in the corner. A standard desk and chair took up most of the space, and a large fireplace along one wall lay empty, no need for its heat in the warmth of late spring. Rhosyn approached the safe appraisingly. A brief tap to the side confirmed that the blackened metal was inches thick. The special devices some used to cut into vaults, or the acids that ate through sheets of metal, wouldn't do much good against walls this thick. Thankfully, Rhosyn was not a demolitions expert. She was a proper thief.

"Keep watch," she instructed Ansel over her shoulder, bending to her boot and picking out the tools she appraised would be the most useful.

"Don't want me stealing your secrets?" he whispered, although he had already turned towards the door.

"As if you could," she murmured under her breath, her mind already more on the task before her than the conversation.

The small door bore the crown jewel of locks for a lock pick: a Chubb lock. It wouldn't be able to be raked open, all the pins simply knocked into place. It would take finesse and subtle patience.

With that, Rhosyn got to work. She carefully selected each instrument in turn, inserting them delicately into the lock and feeling carefully for the pins' movement with a hand laid on the cool metal.

Her mind blocked out Ansel's presence, for the first time in hours forgetting the potential consequences of her actions. Where "patient" had never been a word Rhosyn would use to describe herself, she somehow managed it with the puzzle of a difficult lock before her. She had once asked Nate if it might be a Talent, but he told her he sensed no air of the supernatural around her. So, she practiced and practiced until the only person with a better knack for espionage was Contessa herself.

In the near trance that Rhosyn fell into when picking a lock, blind to all but the subtle changes in resistance under her fingers, she wasn't sure if it was five minutes or fifty before the last pin slid into place and her tools twisted easily in the keyhole.

The door fell open, revealing a thick sheaf of papers. At the sound of shuffling, Ansel left his post at the door, barely cracked to allow him to peer into the hallway.

"Are they there?" he whispered over her shoulder.

She quickly leafed through them, hissing when she gave herself a papercut in her haste.

"These look like sponsorship contracts to me," she said. Although not familiar with fancy legal documents, Rhosyn caught the words "Talented", "pardon", and "owed service" among the text. "What are the names on the documents we need?"

She bit her tongue around the word we, but Ansel answered before she could correct herself.

"Just take the whole stack."

"Have you ever robbed anybody before?" Rhosyn asked incredulously. "The less you take, the longer it takes people to realize something is missing—and the colder your trail will be when they try to find you."

"Well, you couldn't find me, so obviously my way works."

He grabbed for the papers in her hands, but she twisted away quickly, and his fingers closed around thin air. She narrowed her eyes at the concentrated jumble of words, seeking to find where the names of the Talented to be pardoned and employed were.

She located the names at the bottom of the page.

Name: Thomas Pemberton

Talent: Combustion

"Explosions?" Rhosyn mouthed in confusion. She couldn't fathom what service that might do to a fine family of the upper city, although maybe they didn't mean to use it at all and instead to have him be a footman. She spied Mr. Gower's signature at the bottom of the page.

Ansel peered over her shoulder, breathing down her neck impatiently. "We don't have much time."

Rhosyn ignored him in favor of flipping to the next page, also signed by Mr. Gower.

Name: Theo Hamilton

Talent: Walking through walls

Another odd Talent to pursue for a sponsorship, when there were others who could cook a perfect pie every time without a recipe. The third page was just as confusing.

Talent: Control over lightning

"Look at these Talents." She shoved the stack of papers into Ansel's hands. "And they're all for Mr. Gower."

Ansel flipped through pages, his eyebrows raising as he shuffled through faster and faster. There were dozens of documents.

"Doesn't it seem like…" she started.

"He's building an army," Ansel finished grimly. "Looking at the crimes these pardons are for, many of these are not just petty thieves, but violent criminals—murderers and rapists."

"What on earth for?" Rhosyn asked.

Ansel shook his head, and his expression was stony as her stomach felt. This, combined with the odd state of all Mr. Gower's servants, came together to paint an incomplete but sinister picture.

The silence stretched as they both considered.

That's when she heard it.

Distracted as they had been by their discovery, neither of them had noticed the growing sound of footsteps in the hallway.

Ansel's gaze snapped up, meeting hers with wide, urgent eyes.

Let's go, he mouthed silently.

Rhosyn grabbed the contracts from him and shoved them unceremoniously into the front of her jacket.

They turned toward the door, but by the time they reached it, it was too late. The footsteps were nearly right outside the door, their escape cut off. Rhosyn held her breath, lungs burning as she tried to control her hammering heart, as if it might be heard by whoever patrolled the halls at this time of night.

Right as the stomp of boots on stone—likely signaling a guard—reached its loudest, the steps stuttered. Then paused. Rhosyn's heart stopped. Where every door in the hallway they had entered through had been closed, the door to the room they occupied was ajar from Ansel's watch.

Rhosyn whipped her head back and forth. The room had no window, leaving no escape. Their only two options were to hide, or to fight their way out. For possibly the first time in her life, Rhosyn chose to hide.

She dove under the desk in the middle of the room. Ansel seemed to have a similar thought process. He darted towards the fireplace, ducking inside and reaching up into the chimney. Rhosyn grimaced as he disappeared, remembering a harrowing story of Scarlett's involving climbing through a chimney.

Ansel's toes disappeared behind the mantle just as a quiet squeak signaled the door opening.

Rhosyn counted every heavy step of boots against flagstones as the guard walked into the room. Some instinct told her to squeeze her eyes shut, as if that might make her invisible. Instead, she forced herself to keep them open, tracking the movement of his shadow as he strode across the room. Her knees brushed against her chin as she shoved herself as tightly as possible into the corner of the desk, trying to conceal every inch of herself in the shadows there.

The footsteps paused, and Rhosyn imagined the guard swinging his gaze back and forth like a lamp in the night. She thanked luck she had closed the safe after removing the papers, habit kicking in to always leave everything as she found it.

After long, breathless seconds, the guard's shadow retreated towards the door, seemingly satisfied that it had only been left open by accident. Just as his silhouette moved out of her line of sight, it happened.

A quiet sneeze from the fireplace.

Now Rhosyn did squeeze her eyes shut in despair. A metallic shink marked a weapon being drawn, and the guard's feet rounded the desk as he marched towards the open hearth. If he turned around and looked down, he would spot Rhosyn there, but his attention was on the fireplace, leaving his back turned to her.

He bent down to look in the hearth and Rhosyn's mind raced. With him distracted by Ansel, the route between her and the door was clear. She could make a break for it—leave Ansel to be discovered while she escaped. She could run straight to Chief Thorne and put an end to this whole thing.

The guard angled his sword ready to stab up the chimney to where Ansel hid, and Rhosyn knew that wasn't an option.

With a strangled shout, Rhosyn sprang from her hiding spot. Nate would have rolled his eyes, telling her a battle cry defeated the point of a surprise attack, but it served its purpose in bringing the guard up short before he could stab Ansel. She landed on his back, forearms coming around his throat.

He grunted at the impact, swinging his sword wildly as he tried to slash her over his shoulders. Before he could, Ansel tumbled from the chimney, so covered in soot that he looked like nothing more than a shadow. His roll from his hiding spot carried him seamlessly to his feet and he kicked the weapon from their assailant's hand.

It clattered to the ground, but the guard stayed intent on dislodging Rhosyn. She pressed down on his windpipe, trying to squeeze consciousness from him. His fingers grappled at her wrists, and her biceps screamed as she fought to keep him from pulling her loose.

With a muffled roar, he turned and lunged back, slamming Rhosyn into wall. Her skull cracked against stone, white spots dancing across her vision, but still she held tight. More often than not, brawls were won by the ability to take a hit, and Rhosyn was the best brawler of them all.

She would outlast this guard, who was not a scrappy boxer, but a polished fighter, much less threatening without his weapon in hand. Rhosyn gritted her teeth as she squeezed even tighter, and his struggles began to weaken.

His knees hit the ground with a thud, and Rhosyn landed on her feet, still keeping her arms around his neck. As he lost consciousness, she lowered him to the ground, not letting his head hit the stone as she released the pressure on his neck. By the time his face lolled back to an angle where he could have seen her, his eyes were closed. He had never seen her face.

Ansel stood frozen at the guard's feet. He and Rhosyn panted as they stared at each other. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, expression unreadable under the layer of soot on his face.

Before he could speak, distant noises drifted down the hallway. The commotion of the brief fight would not have gone unnoticed.

"Run," Rhosyn ordered.

Ansel didn't need to be told twice, and together they sprinted from the room. Their footsteps echoed as they pounded down the hall, but it hardly mattered now. The time for stealth had passed and now their priority was speed.

A few doors down on their left, moonlight streamed in through a window leaving a silvery splash on the ground.

"Here!" Ansel panted.

That was all the warning she got before he veered off, covering his head with his arms as he crashed through the glass. Rhosyn followed suit, rolling as she hit the grass outside and thankful that they were on the first floor. She sprang to her feet, grateful for the lack of injury from the fall, only to be proven wrong by a stabbing pain in her calf.

She looked down to see a shard of glass as long as her finger sticking out of the bulge of muscle there. There was no time to process the sight, as Ansel grabbed her forearm and started dragging her towards the palace outbuildings. Her thoughts turned to nothing more than a loud buzzing as her body took over, lurching her forward in stumbling, running steps beside him.

Thankfully, Ansel remembered where the passage entrance was, guiding them while Rhosyn focused on keeping moving. Shouting behind them in the distance signaled that the whole palace had been alerted to their incursion, but it was too late.

They stumbled into the servants' quarters and dove into the secret tunnel, shutting the hidden panel behind them just as the noise caused doors in the corridor to swing open in curiosity. Still, Ansel didn't stop urging Rhosyn forward.

She didn't know how far she made it, stumbling in the dark, before she tripped, tipping forward into Ansel's back. He broke her fall with a grunt, twisting and maneuvering her arm over his shoulders.

"We need to get you help," he said, hoarse voice echoing in the relative quiet. It seemed strange, given that Rhosyn's ears seemed to be ringing, pulsating in time with the hammering of her heart from lingering adrenaline.

"It's not anything I can't patch up myself," Rhosyn assured. Now that they slowed down, giving her a moment to take stock of her injuries, she knew she was right. She probably could even walk on her own if she had a moment to catch her breath, but for some reason, she was loathe to lean away from Ansel's supportive warmth. Maybe it was that the solidity of his muscles shifting under her arm grounded her after the pell-mell sprint of their escape.

Either way, she just needed to remove the glass and clean the cut. She had patched up worse scrapes on young Lions who had tumbled down the stairs or gotten in ill-advised scraps over the years.

Ansel shook his head, the movement making his hair brush Rhosyn's forearm where it draped over his neck. The touch was surprisingly soft and ticklish after the harshness of their encounter.

"It's still too far from the tunnel entrance to the Foxes' safehouse for you to limp. We'd draw attention, and that's not wise considering the guards will know within minutes that the palace was broken into."

Rhosyn grimaced. Ansel was right. Nate himself was probably already dispatching riders to the Royal Police stations throughout the city, putting the city on high alert. A man covered in soot helping a woman with glass in her leg limp down the street would draw attention, even in the mixed company of the lower city.

"Are there any exits closer to our safehouse?" Ansel asked.

Rhosyn shook her head. There was one close to her own house, but she was loathe to put the couple she rented from in the middle of things, after they had pursued a life away from crime. There was another option though.

"One path… It leads down out of the old sewer at the edge of the city. It comes out—"

"Near the circus." Ansel followed her train of thought. "It won't be hard to hide there."

"It was built to conceal people after all," Rhosyn observed dryly.

"And to do so in the best possible hiding place: in plain sight." Ansel's tone was proud.

It coaxed a chuckle out of Rhosyn, the sound chasing away some of the lingering tension from her chest. The further she limped from the palace, the more she believed they had gotten away with it, the sponsorship documents still safely tucked into the front of her shirt. With a jerk of her chin, Rhosyn directed them onto the path that would lead to the circus, and they slowly made their way through the tunnel.

However, the increasing clarity seeping through her brain gave her more of a chance to inspect her actions. She had chosen to stay and help Ansel even when she had a chance to leave the whole thing behind—to scurry back to her normal life as a police officer and try to forget this brief lapse back into crime. Yet, a string anchored beneath her ribs had yanked her forward, leaping to Ansel's rescue before she could fully consider the alternatives.

"Thank you." Ansel's voice broke the silence. Apparently, his mind had wandered down the same path.

"Yeah, well, I wouldn't have had to do anything if you hadn't sneezed," she quipped.

Ansel huffed. "It's not my fault the chimney was filthy and the ash got in my nose. It seemed like that place has never seen a chimney sweep."

"I'll remember to submit a complaint to the housekeeper when I get a chance."

Ansel chuckled, and a brief silence fell before he spoke again. "You could have run, though."

"I know." Rhosyn admitted. "Guess I just don't know how to walk away from a fight."

And that was the truth. She had never walked away from a fight that needed to be fought, even if it came back to bite her later. She hoped helping Ansel wouldn't end up being one of those occasions.