It was only a few seconds before Brela was back in control. She nodded at Elias, unwrapping her legs as he lowered her to the ground. Farrah’s grin had dropped the closer she walked to them, her eyes darting to the window and the scrapes that had been dug into the windowsill.
“Hellthorn.” It was less of a question and more of surprise. She looked back to Brela, anger and determination in her blue gaze. “We’ll get the artifact back.”
“And then I’ll rip Gerrart’s grimy hands off his body for stealing it,” Elias growled in response.
At least Farrah and Elias knew what this meant to her. Brela tried to cool her tone as she wove around Elias and headed for the door.
“Not if I do it first.” She couldn’t fight the snarl that escaped as anger swelled, so she tried to speak over it. “I’ll check the office while you guys check all the rooms. The Prince might have something in his rooms, or at least a hefty purse. We’re taking as much as we can carry tonight.”
“Don’t forget the second floor safe,” Farrah called after her.
Brela snorted in response, not because she would never forget about the safe but because Farrah was so good at her job that she had actually discovered the hiding space.
She could hear the smile in Farrah’s voice, even with her back turned. “How many are we at?”
“Four,” Elias replied.
“Already?”
Brela flipped an obscene gesture behind her before she walked out of the library.
“I’m counting that as five!” Elias shouted after her.
If only he could hear her thoughts, he’d know there were at least a dozen more curses threatening to escape her lips.
* * *
Brela went straightto the safe on the second floor, not even bothering with Lord Gerrart’s other hiding spaces. She knew this would be where he kept the artifact, along with his most expensive jewels. He might not flaunt his stolen Veil treasures by displaying them, but his gallivanting was just as much a slap in the face. She almost spat on the floor at his disrespect for her people, but stealing back her history tonight would be payback enough. Hells, if she got the chance one day, she’d use the treasure and kill him with it, even if it was just a silk scarf.
She’d make sure he saw the dead-purple light in her eyes just before the life left his own so he’d know who killed him, just like she’d done to dozens of others who had stolen pieces of Valisea.
She ran her hand over the balcony railing as she walked past the shelves of books. Farrah had broken into this hidden safe before, but she was smart enough to not draw suspicion that he had been robbed. She tookjustenoughwhere Gerrart would assume the missing jewels or coins were simply an accounting oversight. It was a brilliant tactic, one they had employed on numerous occasions when it was just one of them on a job, but now they had three hands for stealing. They weren’t trying to be subtle.
Today, Brela would empty that safe of all the riches, and she’d do it in style. She’d play off that man’s fears, just like Elias had done to the window in the library. They would send a message.
She drew her dagger and shoved it into the bookshelf to her left, dragging it along the wood as she stalked toward the safe. As much as it pained her to ruin the books—such beautiful stories and histories—she dug her other blade into the spines with a vicious snarl. The rip of leather and paper sent an evil shiver through her spine as she imagined her blades digging into not just Gerrart’s skin, but the flesh of every man who had supported the hunt of her people, the enslavement of Valisea and the Veil Worshippers, and the torture and horrors worse than death that were inflicted on her brothers and sisters.
Those men and women who wore pieces of the Veil as jewelry and honored the shadow god’s monument had protected her; given her a home and saved her from the soldiers of Anfroy who were hunting an innocentchild. A child who had gotten too close to the Veil wall and somehow gotten a broken shard of it embedded in her skin. If those soldiers had learned that the shard infected her with shadow-cursed magic, they wouldn’t have given up searching until the entire kingdom had burned.
That wasn’t the only scar she suffered that night—a night she couldn’t even remember except for the stories that her adopted family had told her.
If her hands hadn’t been busy guiding the blades along the bookshelf, she would have reached for the scar behind her left ear; the scar that marked her as a girl that should have died, just like the shard on her chest would result in her death now.
She wouldn’t be able to feel the scar anyway, her hair braided and tangled to hide the burn mark left from the hilt of a sword laced with hellthorn. It helped that Elias had come across gold rings and cuffs blessed with protective sun magic, and he had made sure they were weaved tight into her white-blonde hair along with Farrah’s subtle healing moon magic. No one would think twice about seeing them in her hair—if they could even get close enough without her killing them—and they would never suspect that someone shadow-cursed would willingly wear sun magic jewelry when it should have burned her as much as hellthorn.
Then again, nothing about her shadow curse was normal.
Brela found the hollowed books that hid the safe in the same spot Farrah had found it three months ago. Stupid man didn’t even bother moving the safe on a regular basis—he deserved to get robbed.
Tucking the dagger back into her belt, she flipped the hollowed books behind her with the smaller blade, nearly gagging as overwhelming pine and pepper burned her eyes.
“Shit,” she hissed.
Six,if Elias was here to count.
What had Gerrart stolen that he needed fresh hellthorn to keep it hidden? At least her mask filtered out the strongest odor of the hellthorn poison, but it wouldn’t be long before the fresh plant knocked her to her knees.
If her mind hadn’t been so occupied on revenge, she would have been smarter about approaching the safe. Four hells, she should have suspected it after the window had been marked with the poison.
