Page 74 of The Hood and his Thief

Without hesitation, Ansel hauled her to her feet and they took off after him. When they reached the end of the car, he didn’t break his stride before leaping over the gap onto the next one. Rhosyn refused to falter as she followed, her mind offering her an image of how she did the same chasing the Hood over rooftops during their first encounter weeks ago.

She didn’t waver then, and she wouldn’t now.

Before they were halfway across the second car, Ansel skittered to a stop in front of her so suddenly she nearly crashed into his back. She was about to shout at him when she saw why.

The front of the train passed under a bridge, and as it did, several figures jumped off it, landing on the roof before them and cutting them off. Heavy thuds sounded behind Rhosyn, and she spun, finding at least half a dozen more adversaries there as well.

They were surrounded by Mr. Gower’s army of Talented, and all Rhosyn had was her fists and a few spare knives.

She backed up a few steps, until her shoulders hit Ansel’s. Standing back-to-back with him, she raised her fists. The thugs started closing in like a noose, and Rhosyn’s heart hammered in her chest.

“Think we can take them?” Ansel asked over her shoulder.

Despite it all, fondness tugged like a string below Rhosyn’s ribcage. If she was going to go down, then she wanted it to be fighting side by side with Ansel.

“You kidding?” she quipped back. “If I were you, I would be worried that there weren’t enough for both of us.”

“I’ll be sure to leave plenty for you,” Ansel promised. He shifted his weight against her back, ready to leap into action.

Rhosyn bared her teeth, a growl building in her throat, when a screech of horses and clatter of wheels drew her attention. An open-topped phaeton crashed along the street running parallel to the train tracks, and Rhosyn started as she recognized the man in the driver’s seat.

She hardly had time to register Benedict’s reckless driving before two figures jumped from the back of the speeding vehicle. A cloud of shadow fell over the train as wings of darkness formed around the figures, helping them sail onto the train.

Nate landed in a crouch beside her, the Beast in action. As knives sprang into his hands and he snarled, the thugs around them couldn’t help but back up a few steps.

Scarlett stepped out of the dissolving shadows, the darkness clinging to her like morning dew. Her expression was no less feral than Nate’s as black daggers of pure night formed in her hands, turning her into the dark shadow only referred to in feared whispers.

The hope that had sputtered in her chest flared again.

“Well, now there definitely aren’t enough for all of us,” Rhosyn mused dryly.

Scarlett leaped into action first, Rhosyn only a beat behind her. The satisfying thud of knuckles against flesh overtook her mind as she took on her first opponent. She struck his cheek first, before he landed a kick to her shin. The sharpness of the pain shooting up her leg honed her senses, and she threw a vicious uppercut. He crumpled like a sack of potatoes, but she spun to find her next enemy before he hit the ground.

Her gaze caught on Nate, currently warding off three enemies. Rhosyn’s vision swam as one of them seemed to waver in and out of existence, as if the light around him bent out of his way. Lightning danced at the fingers of a second, while the third loomed large enough to eat Scarlett for breakfast.

Rhosyn darted forward to come to her aid, but Nate caught her eye and shook his head.

“Follow that one!” he shouted, jerking his head towards the front of the train. “Contessa—” he shouted before he was cut off by a bolt of electricity that forced him to dodge out of the way.

Rhosyn didn’t wait to be told twice. She darted through the mayhem, following the shadow of the man who continued running towards the front of the train. She couldn’t quite make out who it was, but her gut told her it was the groom. With the Talent of persuasion pulling all of these Talented into his thrall, Hamish was sure to be the leader of this whole operation.

Rhosyn pumped her arms, feet pounding against the metal roof as she gained ground on him. Up closer to the engine as they were, the smoke grew thicker, burning her eyes and nose as she panted for breath.

She could barely make out the groom’s silhouette, forced to squint against the billowing haze and the roar of the engine in her ears. Then, he dropped down and disappeared, and Rhosyn skittered to a stop at the edge of a car.

He had gone inside the train.

Rhosyn hurried down the ladder, fear of falling far outweighed by the fear of what would happen if the groom made it to Contessa and the king before she did. She burst inside to find that the chaos in the train was nearly as dense as the pandemonium outside.

Some of Mr. Gower’s Talented army had managed to get into the cars, but the circus performers seemed to share Ansel’s fighting spirit. One armed man was cowering on his knees, arms over his head and two men pummeled him with juggling batons. Rhosyn tore her eyes away from the spectacle to search for the groom, only to find him slipping through the door at the far end of the hall, back towards where the king was.

Rhosyn pushed through the mayhem, ducking around a clown armed with a pie, which he enthusiastically smashed into the face of another of Mr. Gower’s thugs. She crashed through the car, following the groom into the next. In this one, one of the Talented assassins had been backed into a corner by a snarling lion, while the lion tamer stood next to him with folded arms in satisfaction.

She gained on the groom, but he was still half a car in front of her when he slipped through the door to the train car containing Contessa and the king. Rhosyn shoved through as fast as she could, lungs burning and heart hammering.

The door slammed open as she shouldered through it, only to find the hallway…empty.

Rhosyn froze, head whipping back and forth to locate the missing groom.