Page 20 of Thief of Hearts

“That won’t do,” he said. I understood his reaction because I had found that men did not particularly like being laughed at. “You should call me something else.”

“Thief? Liar?” I offered unhelpfully.

“My mother used a nickname for me. Zain. It is what my friends and loved ones call me.”

It suited him better. Autolycus was such an old-fashioned name. It made him sound ninety years old. “Zain,” I repeated. “That I can do without laughing.”

Then a bitter pang of jealousy entered my heart as I realized what he had just said. He’d mentioned loved ones. Did he have a woman he loved back home? Considering how he looked, he probably had a woman he loved in every city he visited. I shoved the feeling down. It was a waste of energy.

And his admission of being a thief and a liar should have dimmed my attraction to him.

It did not.

A fact he picked up on. “I’m surprised that you seem fine with my line of work. As I recall, the Thracian code outlaws this sort of thing.”

I wasn’t fine with it. But what could I do? I wouldn’t be able to stop him from stealing. The fact that he called himself the king meant that not only was he good at it, but he enjoyed it.

“Better that than what I initially thought,” I said, thinking a joke might be my best bet to break this tension I was feeling. “With that red tunic, I assumed you were a hetaera.”

When he smiled this time, I realized he had a dimple in his left cheek that I hadn’t noticed before. “I’m not a hetaera. But if I was, I’d be very, very wealthy.”

I rolled my eyes and he laughed. “You question my skills?”

“Men who need to brag about their prowess usually don’t have the goods to back it up.”

The air in the room shifted, and it suddenly crackled with heavy tension as his voice lowered. “I have all the goods, illora.”

My mouth went dry and I forced myself to focus. “What did you just call me?”

“I decided that if I have a nickname, you need one as well.” I could see that he wanted me to ask what it meant. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

He waited a moment and then went over to the lone window. He let out a high-pitched whistle, and a few moments later, I heard what sounded like nails clawing against stone.

Zain patted his chest and an animal leapt up into his waiting arms.

“What is that?” I asked, alarmed.

“My dog.”

“That is not a dog,” I told him. “My family has dogs. That . . . is some kind of large rodent.”

He put his hands over the creature’s ears. “Shh. You’ll hurt his feelings.”

“Does it have feelings?” The monstrosity looked like a mix between a plague-infested rat and a distempered wolf.

“This is Dagger.”

Another name that didn’t match. “Why would you name an animal, if ‘animal’ is the word we’ve agreed to use for that?”

“So I can call his name when I want his attention. Do you not name your animals?”

“No.”

“Not even your horse?”

“It’s a horse.”

He laughed like I had said something hilarious. His laughter was rich and warm and I might have sighed just a little at the sound. “Something to add to my list about Thracians. They don’t name their animals.”