Page 48 of The Hood and his Thief

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.