Page 46 of The Hood and his Thief

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.