They instantly argued back, talking over each other.
“Enough, you three!” Frieda clapped her hands once. “By the Four, you all still act like a pack of wolf pups. Listen before you howl.”
The siblings faded to grumpy silence.
“Why you two?” I asked Aiden. “If they find your prisoner scars and that you covered them with tattoos?—”
“We’re already lost if it comes to that,” Aiden interrupted gently. “But we know the layout as no one else does.”
I shook my head stubbornly. “You really think you can just walk in? That they won’t question you? Let me go. I could pose as a messenger or a servant. Someone no one would notice.”
“They notice everyone,” Nikella said, speaking for the first time. “It took me over a year to communicate with Aiden in that prison. My messengers—water carriers from the town—kept dying due to discovery or the dangers of the mine.” She and Jek shared an intense glance across the room. I supposed he understood more than most what she went through during that time, as I’d heard he helped her.
“And besides, we won’t look like ourselves,” Maz added, nudging Aiden with his elbow. “Show them.”
A muscle in Aiden’s jaw twitched, but he slowly reached behind him and pulled out a bulging sack.
He dumped out a wad of familiar black cloth, glittering sunstone weapons and armor, and with a decisiveclunk,two black metal Wolf masks.
Sigrid recoiled as if they were on fire, her one blue eye flaring with hatred.
Yarina picked up a sunstone cuff. “I can’t believe you stole this shit after you forced me to return mine.” She tossed it back on the pile.
Maz smirked. “It was Aiden’s idea.”
I quirked an eyebrow at Aiden. “Who’s the dirty little thief now? You’ve used this trick before.”
A glint of humor appeared in his eyes. “Let’s hope it works better this time.”
It gods-damned better. Last time he’d stolen a Shadow-Wolf uniform and infiltrated a dangerous place, he’d wound up captured in the Den.
Now I realized how lucky it was that Renwell had put me in that cell with him. If he hadn’t, Aiden would’ve been tortured and executed, or perhaps even sent to the one place I knew he still feared—the mine.
I wanted to ask him if he’d considered this carefully. If being back in the mine would be too difficult for him.
But those were questions to ask in private.
Instead, Ruru voiced a possibility I didn’t want to think about. “What should we do if you don’t come back out?”
Tension cloaked the room like a burial shroud.
“That won’t happen,” Aiden said firmly, but I noticed the way his knuckles whitened as he clenched a Wolf mask. “This will be the perfect disguise. No one questions Shadow-Wolves.”
“What if there are no Shadow-Wolves?” I asked. “Ruru said they’re crawling Aquinon day and night. Why not disguise yourself as a soldier?”
“The longer we can hide our faces, the better,” Aiden replied. “And even if it’s just soldiers living in Calimber, they’re at least used to seeing Wolves venture in and out with prisoners and weapon shipments.”
“I still think I should be a Wolf,” Yarina announced.
“As should I,” Sigrid said quickly.
“Yes, that way, if we get discovered, at least we’ll be with our imprisoned brothers and sisters and can stir up a rebellion from the inside, and Rellmira won’t lose its true prince... king... whatever,” she added, gesturing to Aiden.
He scowled at her. “They won’t lose me. They don’t even know they have me. And there’s a much better chance of the infiltrators getting out of the mine if they know where they’re going.”
“And if they’re men,” Maz pointed out.
Immediately, Sigrid and Yarina raised a ruckus, and he held up his hands. “Fucking Four, I didn’t make the gods-damned rules! Bring it up with the bastard who’s in charge of hiring!”
