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Chapter 1
It is not easy being a thief-taker’s sister. For one thing, you are always surrounded by men, yet they are all terrified to court you. For another, you are always expected to take care of your brother. Because as brilliant, cunning, and skillful as he is, he will forget to eat on time, to change his clothing, hell, even to bathe regularly!
And finally, everything is a danger to you. You are not allowed to go out without supervision; you are not allowed to so much as sneeze without approval, because if you do, you will end up in peril. Or at least that’s how a thief-taker thinks.
But the most frustrating part about being a thief-taker’s sister is that he is, undoubtedly, always right.
Eloise Gunning
Eloise flipped the leather journal closed and looked around her cell. Most people wouldn’t call the room she was in a cell, exactly. It was a spacious bedchamber, a lot bigger than the one she had at home. There was a huge four-poster bed with a soft mattress and silk sheets. The plush Turkish carpets adorned the floor, and a rich mahogany vanity table stood by the window with a beautiful vintage box overflowing with expensive jewelry.
No, most people would certainly not call it a cell, and under different circumstances, Eloise wouldn’t either. Except there were two bandits, her gaolers, stationed outside the tall doors.
She was considered a guest here—Hades, the master of this place, had told her that earlier—as long as she didn’t try to run away.
A guest!Eloise scoffed. She walked toward the windows and looked out. At least a three-story drop and a thorny bush lay below, which would easily stifle any of her attempts to run away.
And all of this could have been avoided if she had just listened to her brother.
Eloise had lived with her brother, Ford Gunning, for as long as she could remember. Their parents had died a long time ago, and Ford was forced to become both a loving mother and a stern but fair father to Eloise at a young age. He was the one who educated her; he was the one who bought her clothes and put food on the table. He was also the one to protect her from all the obstacles in life.
The weight of this enormous responsibility was probably what led him to become a thief-taker. And his chosen profession just made him more paranoid about Eloise’s safety and, as a result, more controlling.
He kept her under lock and key, close to his side. He determined her schedule and had even selected a groom! Her entire life was pre-arranged without her input.
And Eloise had stayed the course. She had followed her brother’s orders and had done everything that was expected of her. She had never complained—at least not aloud—and had not even thought of rebelling.
Very well, that last one was a lie. She’d had a nagging thought of rebellion, slowly building in her mind for years. The idea of acting of her own free will without having to answer to her brother was entirely too enticing.
She usually squashed the thought and went on with her business, because her brother needed her. And where would she go if she did rebel? There wasn’t much room for misbehavior for a common woman. But once her betrothal had been finalized and the time to change one cage for another came all too close, she could not take it any longer.
And just when she needed it most, the opportunity presented itself. A friend of hers invited her out for a night in the pleasure gardens. Eloise knew Ford would not allow her to go without him, and as much as she loved her brother, she wasn’t looking forward to being monitored during an exciting evening out. She wanted independence, even if just a little.
Even if just for one night.
So she had sneaked out of her bedroom window to meet her friend in a tiny act of rebellion, and this act had cost her freedom.
As soon as Eloise had hit the ground, instead of seeing her friend, she’d come face to face with a gorgeous, angel-faced gentleman with wheat-blond hair and sparkling green eyes. Eloise had gaped at him, startled, blinking stupidly and not completely realizing where she had landed. The man before her was like a magical prince from a fairytale.
The next thing she knew, her head was covered with a burlap sack, and she was being carried away by a pair of strong hands. And a moment later, she was bound and gagged, sitting in the dark carriage, opposite a terrifying beast.
Hades—or at least that was what everyone called him—was a tall, dark man with a scarred face and icy cold eyes. Not that she could see his eyes in the carriage, as the sack remained over her head for the entirety of the journey, but she remembered his eyes from the long-ago day when she’d met him for the first time. What did he want from her?
He didn’t speak during the ride; he just took her to his mansion, turning her fairytale into a nightmare.
Now, stuck in the beautiful spacious room, which was meant to become her prison for the next few days, she sat at the desk, writing in a journal that wasn’t her own. The journal and the quill lay on the vanity table when she was brought here, along with a pencil and a sketchpad.
How considerate.
She couldn’t sketch, so there wasn’t much else to do here but write, pace the floor, or die of boredom.
She tried to come up with a plan of escape, but it wasn’t an easy feat since she didn’t know what the rest of the mansion looked like or how many guards were inside.
She wished she knew what Hades wanted from her. And it sounded quite simple, didn’t it? Ask the man what he wants, give it to him, and be set free. Only the infuriating man had not spoken a word to her on the carriage ride that took her from her home to his mansion. Nor did he speak when they reached her prison cell. He wasn’t a man of many words, Eloise noticed. She just wished he would tell her something valuable.
Why capture her and then demand nothing?
Eloise looked at the clock on the mantel in frustration. She had been stewing here for three hours! She was hungry, tired, and angry. If she were a guest here, wasn’t she to be fed?
