Page 56 of The Hood and his Thief

A particularly daring swing on Ansel’s part snapped Rhosyn from her thoughts. She gasped audibly as he swung on a different trapeze, this one dipping so low Rhosyn feared he would crash into the ground. Instead, his toes just brushed the wooden platform that served as a stage, before he rose into the air once more.

In the cavernous and nearly empty space, her squeak of fear echoed. Ansel’s head snapped up as he reached the height of his swing, and he caught her eye—although she had no clue how he could find his bearings so easily while hurtling through space.

He let go, floating as lightly as smoke on the wind before landing on one of the platforms at the top of the arena. He turned, looking down on Rhosyn from on high and smiling.

“I didn’t know I had an audience.” He raised his voice to be heard easily from such a height.

Rhosyn drifted forward, stepping up on the stage so she was nearly beneath him. “And I didn’t think you performed anymore…not acrobatics, at least.”

Ansel shrugged, and despite his usual bravado, something in the expression seemed sheepish. “I still practice sometimes, when nobody is around. It helps clear my head.”

“Hurtling through the air at breakneck speed clears your mind?” Rhosyn propped her fists on her hips.

“I’d think you of all people would understand the appeal. After all, it seemed like throwing some punches at me the other day helped you think straight.”

Rhosyn shrugged but couldn’t deny that he was right. Letting fists do the talking tapped into a part of Rhosyn she spent so much time pushing down, because that brawler wasn’t what London needed. Right now, though, maybe it was.

Instead of saying any of that, Rhosyn cocked her head in challenge. “Are you sure you don’t like perching up there because it’s the only time I have to look up to talk to you?”

“Bringing my height into it? I’ve never heard that before,” Ansel scoffed, but his tone was playful. “I’m willing to level the playing field though.”

Before Rhosyn could ask what he meant, Ansel cartwheeled, propelling himself backwards off the platform. Rhosyn clapped a hand to her mouth, seeing that his hands were nowhere near the closest trapeze. Instead, Ansel caught it with his legs, knees hanging over the bar.

Absorbing the momentum of his jump, the bar swung in a spiral around the stage, circling lower and lower around Rhosyn, making her pivot where she stood in the center of the platform. As if he had planned it perfectly—which he probably had, but Rhosyn was loathe to give him the credit—the trapeze drifted to a halt right before Rhosyn.

Still hanging from his knees, Ansel folded his arms, gaze level with Rhosyn’s eyeline. She propped her fists on her hips, glaring at his upside-down smirk, just inches from her nose.

“Show off,” she muttered.

Ansel’s smirk only grew into a grin. Then he levered off the trapeze, righting himself as he did so, to land on his feet before her.

“I guess I can’t help it. I’m—” In perfect juxtaposition to the easy confidence of his showmanship, Ansel looked to the side and pushed his now unkempt hair from his face. “I’m just happy you’re still here.”

It was Rhosyn’s turn to look down at her feet. “I am too, although I’m not sure I should be.”

Ansel’s gaze snapped up at that. “Why not?”

“I just…” Rhosyn grasped at words that seemed to allude her, her frustrations always better spoken with actions than breath. “Who am I anymore? I’m not really a Lion, but that part of me isn’t gone. I’m not really a police officer anymore either, am I?”

“You’re…” Ansel gestured at her incomprehensibly, but fervently as if it were of the upmost important that she understood his meaning. “You’re Rhosyn.”

Her frustration flared, and she thrust her hands into her hair. “Who even is that?” she demanded. “How am I supposed to know what I am when I’ve spent my whole life being whatever it was people needed most? A sister, a nursemaid, a lockpick, a thief… I became these things because that’s what Nate and Kristoff—my family—needed, and the Lions needed somebody to care for them. Then I became an officer of the Royal Police because Contessa and Nate needed somebody they could trust. Now…I fear this city needs something else, and I will become whatever it requires of me. I just wish I knew what was really me.”

The tirade poured out of her, unbidden. By the time Rhosyn finished, she was breathing heavily, as if the words had ripped free of her chest with great effort. The heat of embarrassment at such an emotional outburst began to compete with the burning of tears behind her eyes, until she met Ansel’s gaze.

His face held compassion but no pity. And deep in the pools of his emerald eyes, she found what she hadn’t even realized what she was searching for—understanding. After all, hadn’t Rhosyn known that both the Hood and Mr. Blakely were masks Ansel wore? Parts of him, but not the whole truth of the man beneath?

A breath shuddered out of her, goosebumps dancing over her skin at the thought that Ansel was looking at Rhosyn and truly seeing her and not just the role she filled. In that moment, she saw him too.

He took an intentional step, the sparse distance between them shrinking to nothing.

“I can tell you one thing you are,” Ansel said. His breath puffed across her face, warm and sweet.

Rhosyn’s eyes drifted to his lips, and for the first time since they met, Rhosyn didn’t fight the way her body pulled her to him.

“What’s that?” she prompted, nerves drawn so taut that she could barely follow the thread of the conversation but needing to know what he would say regardless.

“You’re everything I want.”