Everyone reacted like that. Kell gave Jubilee a reassuring smile. “I don’t remember it, if that’s what you’re worried about. I was a baby—”
“Three days old,” Saeldian said, just as he did.
Kell glared at them. “My family chose each other. That’s who I lost.”
Jubilee looked like she didn’t know what to think about that, but she put her hand on Saeldian’s shoulder without breaking her stare at Kell. “Easy promise to make. I accept. We’re a team—and when the job’s done, we’ll be well off seeing the back of you.”
Saeldian sighed. “I accept. We’re a team, and when the job’s done, we are done.”
Briona tilted her head inquisitively and pointed her gaze at Lorzok. “Well?”
Oh Hells. Lorzok.
Kell was so busy being angry that the chance to go home to the Feywild depended on trusting Saeldian that he had forgotten the important thing about fey bargains. You could get your heart’s desire, but only at a cost. Working with Saeldian was the last thing he wanted, but he’d started bargaining a way to do it without a moment’s hesitation. But Lorzok didn’t lie, didn’t cheat, didn’t steal, and he’d have to do all of that to help Kell find a way home. He’d been wrong about the price being trusting Saeldian not to betray him again. The price was Lorzok compromising his principles to help a friend, and he would never be the same again.
“I’ll take the job,” Kell said. “But leave Lorzok out of it.”
“You’ll need him.”
“I won’t ask him to—”
“I accept,” Lorzok interrupted. “We’re stealing the gem to return it. We’re a team, and when the job is done, enough will be put right to forgive what has been done wrong.”
Outside the dining room, the hum of conversation hushed as Lorzok’s promise rose in the air.
“I can’t let you do it.”
“You can’t let me do anything. I decide what I do. And you need to go home again, and you need to do this…robbery?”
“Heist,” Jubilee murmured.
Kell ignored her. “We can find some other way.”
“Heist,” Lorzok said. He nodded at Jubilee in thanks. “That’s not what I mean. I mean that you need to do this heist.”
“What? Why?”
“Because sometimes, the only way to be free of your past is to return to it.”
Kell didn’t need to return—not to thieving, and not to Saeldian. But Kell could stop a thunderstorm before he could stop Lorzok once he decided on the right thing to do.
Once, Kell had been the price for a heart’s desire. Maybe his mother or father had felt the same weight in their heart when they had set Kell down in the mushroom ring and turned to go back home. When they faced what they had paid for, did they want to take him back?
There was one difference this time. When Kell returned to the Feywild, his friend would be by his side.
He bumped Lorzok’s shoulder with his own. “Thank you.”
He turned to Briona, who watched the whole thing with a smug smile. “I accept. You’ve got yourself a team. When do we hit the first target?”
Chapter Three
Plan Faster
Wherein We Learn Neither Saeldian nor Kell Handles Surprises with Aplomb
Saeldian and Kell, back when the two of them had been the Silver Cat of Baldur’s Gate, had once fleeced a con artist who had been selling bogus cargo shares for a sailing ship. He was touching people on their turf, and the marks had bragged enough that someone was going to figure out there were more investors than holds if Saeldian and Kell didn’t act fast. Baldur’s Gate on high alert for scoundrels would mean moving, and by then they’d built a comfortable living from eight years of careful work.
Taking Rodanthe Highsail down had been easy exactly because he had thought that knowing the scam meant he couldn’t be fooled by one. They fed him gossip about a ship at bargain prices after planting the best battered journals and letters the two of them could forge inside the captain’s quarters. Put together, the documents told the tale of how three partners had found more treasure than they could store in the cargo hold after sailing a dangerous strait on the coast of the Great Sea.
