Osric’s crimson and black tail swishes slowly, thoughtfully. His ears prick forward.
“Thinking about a snack?” Daromir asks.
A low, rumbly voice answers inside Daromir’s head:I’m listening. They have much to say.
Surprised, Daromir controls the chill that instinctively jumps to his fingers. “What are they saying?”
Osric doesn’t even twitch his ear in acknowledgement.
Feeling rather insulted, Daromir glances back to check on Vana and the others, just as Vana fastens a bracelet around Naoko’s wrist. Daromir’s fingertips chill again. There’s no danger. He just doesn’t like how close Naoko is to Vana.
He doesn’t like that Vana’s slight smile seems genuine.
It’s not that Daromir doesn’t want Vana to have friends. It’s just a question of safety. Any bloodguard would worry about his ward like this.
On the counter beside the rats sits another cage—this one smaller, with air vents in the glass. The only thing in the cage is a bare, potted branch, and an iridescent object hanging from the branch.
A broken, empty cocoon.
Daromir’s jealousy falls away, unimportant now. He isn’t an entomologist, and he doesn’t know what different moth and butterfly cocoons look like. But he can’t help thinking of the scorpion moth meant for Vana.
Rats scamper cheerfully between their mansion levels. Osric’s tail swishes slowly. Daromir considers whether he trusts himself to memorize the cocoon’s appearance to look up later.
He decides he doesn’t. “Hey, Osric,” Daromir says quietly. “Could you do me a favor?”
Nary a whisker twitches in response.
“I need a distraction,” Daromir continues anyway. “Thirty seconds of everyone’s eyes on something else. I’ll owe you a favor, within reason. I’m good for my word.”
Osric’s ears finally flick towards him. Then the great crimson fellcat shrugs to his feet in one fluid movement. He pads across the room, winding around shelves, to return to the group at the counter.
“Hello, Osric,” Naoko says.
Osric ignores her, rocks back on his haunches, then leaps onto the marble counter. Rings and bracelets scatter everywhere, and Radovan yelps in horror. “Please, you can’t be—this isn’t—please get down!”
As Naoko joins Radovan in exhorting Osric, Daromir bites back a laugh and turns to his task. He slides his sleeve over his right hand and carefully unlatches the cage. The door swings open silently. Holding his breath, Daromir pulls the cocoon from the branch. He doesn’t breathe again until the small object is safely in his coat pocket.
He closes the cage door with only the lavender rats to bear witness. By the time Osric deigns to jump down from the counter, Daromir is on the other side of the room entirely.
***
“What were you doing in the lab?” Vana asks as soon as they’re alone in their parlor.
Daromir pulls on a pair of leather gloves “I found an empty cage with a broken cocoon.”
Vana catches his meaning. “The moth.”
“Maybe. I’d like to be certain.” Daromir empties his coat pocket onto the table. The cocoon tumbles out, bent but intact.
Vana’s breath hisses between his teeth.
“It’s empty,” Daromir reassures him, taking off to find a bottle to seal it in. “Now we can have someone test what kind of moth or butterfly this belongs to.”
Vana just stares at him. “I told you to behave yourself, and you stole one of Radovan’s experiments?”
“I didn’t knock over a stool or jump on the counter, did I?” Daromir shrugs. “It was a risk, but if Radovan sent the scorpion moth, we have to know.”
Vana paces away. “What if it isn’t a scorpion moth? What if it’s something else? He’ll realize it’s missing, and he knows we were there.”
