Page 46 of Thief of Hearts

So I told him everything I could about her and the things she’d said to me before we’d parted.

When I finished, he asked, “Why is this so important to you?”

“I—” I didn’t know how to explain it to him. I wasn’t even sure that I understood all my motivations. There was disappointment with a bit of betrayal and the sense that recently things had not been turning out the way I’d expected them to. “It just is.”

“Then the solution is easy. Get married.”

I immediately recoiled. “I don’t want to get married.”

“Why not?”

“Thracians take marriage very seriously. It is the most sacred of all our vows. And I’ve never met a man that I wanted to be tied to for the rest of my life.”

“Haven’t you?” he asked playfully.

I shook my head at his flirting. While I could see that his idea had some merit and might even work, that was a step too far for me. When I got the stone, I would ask it how to convince my mother and preface it by saying that the answer couldn’t be “marriage.”

We finished our food and Zain left to settle our bill. I watched the woman with the necklace and she still clutched the sapphire tightly.

It was shocking how easy it had been for him to take it from her. How little effort he’d had to put forth.

And knowing he could do that to me just as easily—swoop in and take my heart and walk away as if he’d done nothing wrong—worried me.

So my smile felt a little forced when he rejoined me. We walked out of the tavern and I saw that it had become completely dark. The moon was full and the stars shone brightly, making it easy for us to navigate the city streets.

He was telling me about the time he had been hired to travel across the ocean to Ellas to steal a golden elephant the same size as a small horse when the hairs on the back of my neck rose.

We were being watched.

I put my hand on him and he immediately fell silent. His face turned serious and he began to scan the area around us. He must have had the same feeling I did.

“Someone is stalking us,” I whispered.

Chapter Fifteen

Zain nodded to indicate that he already knew. He took me by the hand and led me into a shadowed alleyway, which would hide us from anyone’s view. We stayed silent as we both surveyed the buildings and the streets. No one stood on top of a roof or watched us from a window.

No inexplicable shadows that could be hiding someone.

We appeared to be completely alone.

The feeling didn’t pass, though, and I knew it was important to listen to my instincts. They were rarely ever wrong. I pulled out my long knife and Zain held a matching pair of daggers at the ready.

“We should go,” he whispered, his breath hot against the shell of my ear. “Follow me.”

I shivered and nodded.

He did not take us directly back to the barracks but went through different alleys and streets until that feeling went away.

“Who would be following us?” I asked. “The Epirian? The Lemnians?”

“Or someone completely different.”

That was true. “There’s so many people that it could be that I wouldn’t know who to assign blame to. And I most likely made a whole batch of new enemies when I won the race today.” It had been my experience that most men did not like losing to a woman in a physical competition.

“You know, they could be after me and not you,” he said.

That was something I hadn’t taken into consideration. They might be after him. I assumed one did not become the king of thieves without making a lot of enemies.