Page 51 of The Hood and his Thief

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.

Chapter ten

If Rhosyn could say one thing for the performers of Archer’s Circus, it was that they didn’t ask unnecessary questions. She and Ansel crept into the side of the circle of tents in the early hours of the morning, the sun just peaking above the horizon and casting the towering green and white striped structures in long shadows. The straw-strewn paths were nearly empty and quiet, absent of the exaggerated darkness and flickering lamp light that lent the feel of the fantastical at night, giving the whole place a sense of liminal space.

An early riser caught sight of them as they stumbled towards a tent and rushed over.

“We’re going to need some bandages and something to wash up with. See if you can dig us up a change of clothes too,” Ansel ordered. He had the same tone that Nate did when directing Lions or the King’s Guard: with frank honesty and the insinuation that he respected his followers too much to waste their time with pleasantries. It had made people trust Nate with their lives, and now it had the same results.