“The Guard can’t handle this. There’s not enough time to wait for them, and given the specifics of the people involved, it would be…complicated. The person who bought the item is Lady Elezia Tarm—”
Jubilee sat back. “Elezia the dragon?”
“She can’t really be a dragon,” Lorzok objected.
“Nickname. She hoards treasure. Art, jewels, that kind of thing,” Saeldian said.
“If the client needs it back fast, they can’t report it to the Guard.” Jubilee picked up a wedge of cheese and considered it. “The Tarms are a powerful noble house, and reporting it would be accusing her of a crime. That’s sure to slow the gears of justice, even if she is a second daughter of a second son.”
“So this theft is more just than going through the established channels?” Lorzok asked.
“Terrible, but there it is,” Jubilee muttered. “Who’d she steal it from?”
“Purchased,” Briona corrected as Jubilee popped the bit of cheese into her mouth.
Eating. Kell remembered enough of Saeldian’s explanations on how people’s actions held more meaning than their words. Jubilee had already decided this was retrieval, not theft. Kell rubbed his forehead. “Are you suggesting that Lady Tarm was unaware the item had been stolen, let alone where it had been stolen from?”
“Correct. We’d traced the item, but we arrived too late. Now we’re on to the next attempt to retrieve it for our client.”
“Where was the spell gem stolen from?” Jubilee asked, and Briona’s smirk shifted in approval for someone asking the right question.
“A small domain of the Feywild.”
The front legs of Kell’s chair thumped as he leaned forward. “There it is.”
His hands trembled. He squeezed his knees and tried to smell burnt sugar and smoked tea, the soot of the cheery fireplace, waxedwood. But the memory of warm, sweet almost-honey, almost-pear starflowers was too vivid to be banished.
Damn it to the Hells. Briona knew too much about all of them.
Lorzok gasped. “The Feywild! We’ve been trying to find a way there for ten years. Longer for Kell, actually, he—”
Kell raised a quelling hand. “No.”
“No?” Lorzok twisted in his chair to face Kell. “This is what you always wanted! How can you—”
He had to stop this.Damn it!A chance to return to the Feywild, to go home after all these years, and he had to say no. Worse, he had to tell Lorzok no. “The owner of the stone’s probably powerful. I’d bet they are the archfey of that domain,” Kell said.
Lorzok looked puzzled. “Yes, that makes sense—oh. Oh, I see.”
“What?” Jubilee asked. “What are youoh-ing about?”
Saeldian opened their mouth, but Kell spoke over them. “Think of all the stories you’ve ever heard about the fey folk. How much do they like being deceived?”
Jubilee pursed her lips. “They don’t.”
“Right!” Lorzok exclaimed. “If the archfey discovers the deception, we’re part of the blame. We’ll be made into donkeys! Or toads! Or sent on a terrible quest. Or…”
“We’re bound to this bargain, but how are we supposed to pull it off?” Jubilee’s voice rose to an anxious pitch. Smart. This wasn’t going to be as simple as pocketing a shiny and going for a walk to drop it off. The Feywild had been Kell’s home, but only a piece of it, and that piece was gone now, eaten.
He nodded to Jubilee, approving. “Jubilee’s question is the same as my own.”
“Howis an engineering question. I didn’t hire you to follow a preplanned heist-by-numbers like any dull-witted henchman. You are resourceful,” Briona said, addressing Jubilee and Saeldian, then she turned to look at Lorzok to say, “And clever. And fey-touched,” she added, an afterthought for Kell.
Mariel spoke up, all gravel and diction. “You aren’t new meat, and Briona is paying you all to figure it out.”
Jubilee eyed Kell, looking for something that made his time in the Feywild noticeable, like goat ears or movements that leftsparkles in their wake. “You’re fey-touched? You’ve been to the Feywild?”
“I am, and I was a child there,” Kell said, “but I don’t know how they know that.”
