Page 87 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

“Wear a warmer coat, then,” the woman said, nodding to Nore, clearly aware that she was freezing. “We’ll be here for a while.”

Nore felt the thrill of victory in her veins: it was not a refusal.

She turned toward the sea and the altar. As Nore left, she couldn’t help but glance over her shoulder at the figure, a void of black against the gray sky and winter sea. She had all the makings of a phantom herself, Nore thought; she shivered and turned back to the wood, and town and people beyond, and quickened her pace.

She met Terlo in a café near Maerin’s main square. To her surprise, Gail was there—so, clearly, he had no qualms about being seen with Terlo, even if he clearly didn’t look pleased when Nore joined them. Or perhaps he hadn’t thought far enough ahead, per usual.

“Nice coat,” Nore said to Terlo as she tipped into the chair they held out for her. It was a nice coat: bright, sky blue, with a deep blue-and-purple design stitched at the cuffs and collar. It would’ve been conspicuous, but Nore noted that most of the diners wore brightly colored garb, like they could collectively dispel the gray of the Isle if they only tried hard enough. “Is it common to wear such bright colors?”

“For the festival, yes,” Terlo said. “To represent the joy of peace.”

“Right.” Nore looked down at her own garb. She wore a smart dress today, black wool, and her heavy gray coat. The only bright thing about her was her hair, falling in loose red waves. “I suppose I should work on fitting in, then.”

“Where’s your husband?” Terlo asked. “I do find him to be a singular delight.” Nore snorted into her coffee. She could think of a few ways to describe Caspian, but “singular delight” was not among them.

“He went to the Viper’s morning training.” She took a sip of coffee, black, and grimaced at the taste. Years of getting used to the bitterness, and mere weeks of Caspian had ruined her. Nore set the cup aside. “He is, perhaps, out of practice.”

Don’t even speak to me, Caspian had said when she’d arrived back in their room to find him in the bath, shivering in the ice he’d had it filled with.

All of the fight had gone out of her. Not the bonding experience you were looking for? she’d asked. He had retaliated by throwing ice chips at her head until she left him alone.

As she’d come down the road, after speaking to the spectre of a woman, she’d reconsidered her stance: perhaps Caspian was casting a net, in his own way. And he was right, as much as it aggrieved her to say it. She had her own ways of operating, but she was not a thief. If he had hidden his true nature from even her for years, perhaps he did know what he was doing when it came to deception.

You’re a liar, too, Finch.

Nore sighed, looking down at her coffee. She should’ve killed him when she had the chance, before she could start thinking of him with any version of kindness. The very idea of trusting him still made her a bit sick.

“What did you discover yesterday?” she asked, eager to change the subject.

Terlo’s eyes sparked with excitement, even as Gail leaned away, a muscle ticking in his jaw. Nore didn’t know Gail well, yet she could read that he was displeased by Caspian’s absence. Nore wondered how much Gail actually knew about their relationship.

“It’s very interesting, actually. Borry, you missed this part—”

“Oh?” Nore said.

“I was busy,” Gail said. He met Nore’s gaze with an open, honest expression. Too honest.

“Should you be lingering here?” Nore asked, doing her best to keep her tone guileless. “I thought you didn’t want to be associated with us.”

Gail frowned at her. “It’s just breakfast. It’s not as if there is official paperwork to follow the meal, explicitly linking us together.”

Good to know, then: he was just thick. Just breakfast was not an excuse when they could be seen by any member of his delegation or any other. Nore had brought down entire rebellions based on odd pairings noted sharing meals.

If Gail didn’t know to be careful, that was not her business nor her problem.

“But back to the artifact,” Terlo said, clearly not picking up any strangeness from Gail. “The lore of Locke, the origin of it—it is inextricably tied to the idea of resurrection.” What followed was an hour-long history lesson on Isle lore, which was (thankfully) broken up once by the arrival of breakfast and then by the arrival of Caspian, who gave no indication that he’d been in any pain at all, ever, and certainly not in a bathtub full of ice only an hour before.

Nore let her hand graze his under the table. Are you okay?

His little finger linked with hers—she felt the unyielding metal press of a ring on it and realized she didn’t even know what jewelry he wore now.

I’m fine, the gesture seemed to say. But for all she knew, it could mean, My leg is broken and I will never recover.

Or it meant, You tried to kill me this morning and now you are being nice. Why?

Nore pulled her hand back. Caspian took her mug as Terlo talked, inconspicuous, and mixed sugar and cream in. Perhaps it was just to anger her—she grimaced as she raised the coffee to her mouth—but she could not pretend she didn’t prefer the sweetness of it now.

“At which point,” Terlo said, halfway through a diatribe Nore had only been half paying attention to, “the goddess of the sea also became the goddess of death, and the woman—”