Page 24 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“Finch?”

The voice was quiet, tender, as if it had been ripped straight from her memories. Nore recoiled—she must’ve made some noise, must’ve pushed the door in the jamb or breathed too close to a sob.

Nore jumped away as if she’d been burned. Her heart pounded in her chest. He did not sound like he was just on the other side of the door—she imagined he was still restrained in some way, his freedom intrinsically tied to her mercy—but the sound of his voice tore through her as if he were just there, close enough to touch.

She did not stop to wait, did not allow herself the temptation of opening the door. Before her prisoner could speak again, Nore turned on her heel and fled.

Alone in her room, Nore paced. She kept her hands firmly clasped behind her back, her teeth clenched.

She didn’t realize she was shivering until she nearly drew blood, biting her tongue through the chattering. Wealthy merchant vessels that did frigid voyages like this always kept Pzyetan-made heat stones for the higher-ranking crew and paying travelers, which generated heat when tapped thrice without threatening to burn down the ship. Nore didn’t like to use them until she had to—they always smelled faintly sulfuric to her—so she tried to call her own magic to herself instead, calculating for a simple warming spell. It came weakly, but even that small flare was enough to warm her body.

She sat on the edge of the bed and worried her fingers over the chain she wore around her neck. Somehow, she had let Caspian get under her skin. Again. Even the knowledge that he was there, two decks below her feet, was enough to set her heart pounding.

And he hadn’t even said anything more than her name. Not since that night, in the prison.

Nore resumed her pacing, turning the key over and over in her hand. Sparrow had told her that Caspian was her prisoner. Hers and hers alone.

She leaned against the wall, fighting the pounding of a headache against her skull. It always came down to a battle of wits with her former husband, a test of endurance. All she had to do was remember who he was and what he had done—and her reward, if she returned home with her sanity intact.

I tried to set a trap for the thief, but it was not sprung. Whoever is sneaking in at night has to be either a servant in my own home (unlikely) or a ghost. I cannot imagine another, no matter how professional, would be able to sneak in and out without being seen.

Corach Mettle, lower lord of Nestria, to his brother, 1635 UCE

seven

NORE SPENT THE FOLLOWING morning in quiet study, reading a few Idistran histories she’d brought with her—and procrastinating. It was an unfamiliar feeling; usually, when she had a task, she completed it swiftly and efficiently.

But the dossier remained untouched, sitting on the trunk of Caspian’s clothes, always just in the edge of Nore’s vision. She sat cross-legged on the floor as the ship lurched beneath her, drinking water and sucking the chalky residue of a seasickness tablet from her teeth, regarding the packet of papers like a feral animal.

She liked information. It should’ve been a cathartic relief to know what Caspian had been up to all these years, yet the idea of opening the folder filled her with sick, prickly dread. The last time Nore had seen him, he’d been imprisoned for stealing artifacts from Lindan, a talented thief employed by the Maroushan emperor to act against the Lindle crown.

She had wondered over the years, of course. Their parting had been traumatic, riddled with heartbreak and spilled blood. And it appeased her, then, to think of him suffering—but then she’d wake in the middle of the night and turn in their bed, reaching for him, in the moments before her brain caught up. Her mind knew of his betrayal long before her body understood. For months, she found herself forgetting, and she’d walk up the stairs to her apartment with some news or revelation bubbling on her lips, and he was not there.

Even after his betrayal, she had not been able to just excavate the love for him she carried in her heart. The grief felt like it would never end in those early days.

If she opened that dossier, would she just be plunging herself back in all over again? If she took the key, unlocked Caspian’s door, stepped across the threshold, who would be waiting for her: the husband she loved or the man who unmade her?

He was always that man inside, she reminded herself.

Nore pulled the blankets tighter around her. Then she leaned forward and grabbed the dossier.

It was a collection of firsthand accounts and summaries, the information helpfully decoded and compiled, oddly, in Celestine’s handwriting—perhaps he was involved in too many things, his activities too widespread to allow one of her other spies to collect and compile the information for her.

Caspian mattered enough to Celestine that she assigned him a coded name after his banishment: all reports referred to him as Darinot, the Luthrite town where he was born. Celestine had decoded other aliases in brackets, probably so Nore and any other spies looking over these reports wouldn’t untangle the web of references and code names they used.

REDACTED–8.13.1631

Your lost thief was spotted. Unbelievably, he returned to [LUTHAR], possibly returned to Darinot (loc), but only remained for a short time. Not to make too much of a personal observation, but one can only hope he dies in this war and is no longer our problem.

REDACTED–2.22.1632

News in from our friends in [IDISTRA]: Darinot’s lone family member (father?) included in passenger manifest aboard ship headed to Nadira. Uncertain if Darinot was aboard as well; otherwise not spotted since original sighting.

Nore frowned, reading the correspondence again. It was probable that Caspian went back and found his family—but if his father was traveling alone, she wondered what had become of his mother and her family. The note was dated a year and a half before the Idistran war ended, so even the existence of a trade ship was an oddity. Perhaps Caspian’s father had pulled strings, Nore theorized, once reunited with his son?

Nore kept reading.

REDACTED–4.2.1633