CHAPTER 16

Seven years ago

The Tarn Thoroughfare was a place of beauty and wonder, and once he’d found his way there—and a way out of their father’s home—nothing could keep Vax away. To walk around the market on the edge of Lake Ywnnlas was to be surrounded by magic. Not the magic of spells and charms or even of people, but the magic of possibility. Here, illuminated by the moons above and the lanterns that gently drifted above the crowds, wearing hooded cloaks to protect them from soft nights and prying eyes, he was like all the other young elves who sneaked into the market. He wasn’t the only one who didn’t belong here.

He dragged his sister along sometimes. They’d dashed from one vendor to the next, crossing the small canals that led away from the lake, marveling at the stalls and the items on offer, because at the Tarn Thoroughfare, every item held a promise. There were weapons so magnificently made that they had to be made for heroics, and the swords and staffs brought the twins right back to the adventures they’d played at as children. There were potions and tonics reflecting the colors of the floating lanterns above them, offering health and happiness and the most wondrous abilities, allowing one and all to experience what it must be like to fly or speak with animals. Amulets and rings in all sorts of precious metals, with meticulously cut gems that looked like stars clasped in metal.

When Vex came to the market, she loved the glimmer of jewelry, but she could never resist the lure of the bowyer’s offerings. Even though she disliked the crowded alleys and the soft elvensong that wound through the streets, she came back every once in a while to stare hungrily at the expensive bows and bracers. At the bundles of arrows and feathers for fletching in a dozen colors. Different shades of gray and brown and white, red too, and even blue. But while Syldor had given them an allowance when they started school, she couldn’t even afford the craftswoman’s most basic quivers.

Tonight Vax crested past the bowyer’s stall without a second glance. Vex had remained at home to study, to prove she could keep up in school, where the teachers were even harsher than their tutors had been. Vax had a different goal. He slipped past two elves who were admiring a mantle of sorts, though they seemed to have far more eyes for each other. He narrowly avoided a collision with a halfling who stamped out of a shop for oils and lanterns with an affronted look on her face. He let the music guide him to a weaver’s shop off the main roads, angling away from the lake.

The shop, filled with fine fabrics woven in every color imaginable, was smaller than most around here. It didn’t have the shine or sparkle of the popular stalls on the water’s edge. It didn’t have the mystique of other shops along the canals, with their colorful canopies and odd merchandise. It simply existed, with a storefront that was easy to miss and goods scattered around haphazardly. Drab colors mixed with vibrant ones. Flawed weaves as proudly on display as perfect twills. It was, Vax had come to realize, purposefully bland. The people who didn’t know what they were looking for didn’t come here. And the people who did didn’t care.

Vax didn’t care. He only ever came looking for one thing.

He pushed open the door—with some difficulty, because it also purposefully stuck—and Lathra, the owner, gave him a cursory scowl over her glasses before returning to the faintly illuminated small metal springs on her workbench. Despite her being a master weaver, Vax had never actually seen her weave. Instead she always seemed to be tinkering with small clockwork toys.

When he thought about it, he’d never seen her finish one of those to her satisfaction either.

He walked past the rows of cloth and slipped past a long, dark curtain into the back room. Before he’d fully crossed the threshold, a sharp point dug in his side below his ribs. It was immediately followed by a hard breath.

“Gods, Vax. Give me some warning next time.”

Vax laughed, some of the tension in his body melting away at the familiar voice. “You enjoy it, don’t lie.” He reached out and pushed the small dagger away before he turned and faced his assailant.

Cyriel flipped the blade into the air and let it disappear into her sleeve when she caught it. “I don’t love nearly stabbing you. I didn’t think you’d come tonight.”

Cyriel was Lathra’s fifteen-year-old apprentice, a lanky girl with brown hair, suntanned skin, and sparkling blue eyes. She was equal parts earnest and lighthearted, her care-for-nothing attitude unusual in this city of splendor. Her presence was turning into a welcome distraction from this shitty place.

“I got into another fight with my dear father,” Vax said, trying to shrug and make it seem like nothing. “I needed to make sure he wouldn’t catch me sneaking out before I came here.”

“Again?” Compassion softened Cyriel’s eyes. She sat down and patted the bench next to her. The table in front of her was covered in small piles of gold and silver and assorted curios, and it appeared she had been in the process of filling a few different pouches.

Vax sagged down and leaned against her, staring at the array of riches. “Have you been out yet?”

He could feel Cyriel nod. “Only one round.” She gestured at the table. “These are some of yesterday’s too. Still counting out the guild’s share. With Elvendawn on the horizon, purses are heavier than they usually are.”

“Fancy clothes and fancy food?” Vax asked. Syldor had kept the twins away from the midsummer celebration as much as he could, and it had never really appealed to Vax either. A holiday to celebrate the creation of the elves? He refused to entertain the thought.

“Something like that.” Cyriel laughed, and Vax leaned in closer. “So do you get more orders too? Or is all of this a front?”

“How dare you.” Cyriel shoved him. “We do honest work as well! Some of it, anyway.” She slipped an arm around Vax’s shoulders. “You want to go out again?”

“Still saving up for that bow,” Vax said. This is what they did most nights together. They pulled on nondescript cloaks and mingled in the busiest nooks and crannies of the Tarn Thoroughfare, picking pockets and cutting the occasional purse. It was a dangerous pastime in a city brimming with magic, but Vax had only ever been caught once: the very first time he stomped around the market, when he foolishly tried to lift a few pieces of silver from a girl a little older than he, certain she had been one of the bullies at school. Instead the girl had turned out to be a weaver’s apprentice by day and a petty thief by night.

Cyriel had grabbed Vax’s wrist, dragged him into a corner, and told him that if he wanted to attempt thievery, he should at least know some tricks of the trade. Over the next night and several nights after, they became the only lessons in this cursed city Vax had ever paid attention to, because Cyriel taught him ways to hide and be invisible, while at the same time being the first person since his sister to see him.

To Vax’s surprise, Cyriel’s apprenticeship had been an essential part of the play. Lathra grumbled at his half-elven heritage, but had looked away when Cyriel had given Vax one of her old, patched-up but comfortable coats lined with half a dozen hidden pockets. Before the two of them had left for the thoroughfare, however, Lathra had pulled Vax aside and blithely told him that while it was good for young people such as the two of them to have profitable hobbies, not to get too close. That Cyriel was meant for better things than one such as him.

“Are you sure? I don’t want you to be distracted by whatever nonsense your father tried to tell you.” Cyriel casually played with a few strands of Vax’s hair.

Vax cringed at the question. “Nothing I believe, I promise. And yes, I’m sure.”

“We could also wander. Buy hot cocoa. Find someplace to sit near the water and look at the sprites dancing on the lake,” she teased, knowing full well that both of them were too restless by half for a night like that.

Perhaps that was what had pulled them together in the first place. Difference and disquiet. Attraction, too. But the type of attraction that came without attachment. The type of friendship that came without too much trust.

Vax pushed himself to his feet. “I think Lathra would be disappointed if you left it at this.”

“Well, we can’t have that.” Cyriel leaned on the table as she followed suit. She grabbed a pair of wooden crutches and used them to steady herself. The myrtle wood was finely carved, with flowers and leaves and branches circling the crutches from top to bottom. At the very last moment, she also snatched a half-filled coin purse from the table. She reached out for a quick kiss. “Don’t think I was lying about that hot cocoa though.”

NOT HALF AN HOUR LATER, they were back in the thick of the thoroughfare, where soft music drifted along the floating lanterns and all the conversations were hushed. The elves who’d under normal circumstances looked down their nose at Vax now extended that courtesy to Cyriel. They none-too-subtly turned away from her and whispered behind their hands, while their looks were those of either pity or disgust.

Cyriel attempted to shrug it off, but Vax saw through her masked pain. “They’re assholes,” he whispered, nudging Cyriel with his shoulder.

Cyriel offered him a faint, knowing smile. “They are.”

Her twisted leg wasn’t a masquerade. One of the first lessons Cyriel had taught Vax was to recognize what people expected when they saw him. The elves’ immediate distrust and dislike over his half-elf status meant Vax had to hide that part of him or remain altogether unseen, because they’d be warier of him. The discomfort and underestimation meant Cyriel could purposefully stumble along the water’s edge and never be considered a threat. It gave them different strategies for different situations.

“Watch me,” Cyriel whispered, focusing on an older elven gentleman with long gray-and-magenta robes, golden rings on every finger, and a heavy purse hanging from his belt, who was admiring a silver raven figurine in a goldsmith’s stall.

Cyriel made her way over to the stall to stand next to the man, and instead let herself topple over. With her crutches outstretched, she collided with the man, the two of them briefly a tangle of robes and arms.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” Cyriel gushed. She tried to heave herself upright, but fumbled, while a young shopkeeper rushed around the stall to help.

“Clumsy, inept—” The gentleman’s pale face took on interesting shades of red and hints of purple, but before he could launch into a full tirade, he noticed Cyriel’s crutches and clamped his mouth shut. His nostrils flared.

“It was entirely my fault, sir, I’m so sorry.” Cyriel reached out to straighten the man’s coat, and he instinctually took a step back. “If there’s anything I can do …”

“Just leave me be,” the man snapped. He refused to meet Cyriel’s eye or acknowledge the outstretched hand of the shopkeeper, who stood helplessly at a small distance.

“Are you certain? I could make sure your coat is cleaned and seen to. I could—”

“Go!”

All necessary pleasantries out of the way, Cyriel just nodded, the very picture of a shaken teenage elf, and backed into the street. She picked up her pace when she left, as though she was too embarrassed to stay, and dragged Vax into a side alleyway the moment she could.

Vax held up his hands, and from the linings of her coat a laughing Cyriel produced a silver bracelet, two handfuls of gold coins, and a blue gem the size of a fingernail.

“You could’ve had everything off him with how angry he was,” Vax noted. He turned the gem this way and that, letting it catch the lanternlight. His sister would love it.

“Then he would’ve known for certain it was me. Small gains. He’ll likely think he lost something and never think twice about colliding with me.” Cyriel grinned and produced a velvet pouch.

Vax poured her winnings into it. “My turn.” He pulled his dark-brown hood high over his head, letting the shadows obscure his face. He loosened his shoulders and ignored Cyriel’s warm laughter.

“You look like some kind of predator on the prowl when you do that.”

He stuck his tongue out. “Hush, you.”

“Tell me I’m wrong.”

His only response was to flip her off before he dashed away.

Finding the right target was a game. Vax didn’t take their petty thievery too seriously, because it was only meant to be fun, not survival. But on nights like tonight, when his father’s good-for-nothing comments stuck in his head, he needed his own ways to prove his worth and leave his mark on the city. With all its indelible structure, it deserved a little chaos.

Following a winding road that crossed up and over one of the canals, he spotted two elven women walking together, both of them holding steaming cups. They were whispering and laughing, entirely oblivious to the world around them.

Vax scanned the bustling street for the best approach. A group of children ran from stall to stall, all of them whispering reverently. A woman with slate-gray hair and ancient blue eyes tried on a tall hat. A father proudly showed his young son a gleaming shield engraved with symbols along the edge.

Vax’s throat constricted. He pulled his attention away and tried to figure out where all the bustle came together. Once he felt certain, he put his head down and angled his approach so he would pass the women by at the same time as the children and as narrowly as possible. He hummed a discordant tune, kept walking, and when the moment came, he reached out and brushed the nearest coat pocket.

His fingers wrapped around a small pouch, and he slipped it into his sleeve before anyone could notice.

Toward the next stall.

And the next.

Those first few moments were crucial. They’d either notice, or—

“Hey!” The voice was loud amidst the song and murmurs. “Stop him!”

Vax tensed. Briefly, he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He could just—run, do what Cyriel taught him. Get away from the busy streets as soon as possible. He dashed past the woman with the hat, who yelped loudly, and scattered the children like a flock of birds. He cut corners and zigzagged around other elves. He kept tugging his hood low over his eyes, out of fear that the garment would fall back and make him far too recognizable.

He stumbled through one street and the next. He didn’t hear any footsteps rushing behind him, but he wasn’t about to chance being safe and letting anyone get the jump on him.

He cut into a narrow alley, jumped up high to find purchase on a wall, and heaved himself up on it and onto the nearest roof.

The light from the floating lanterns didn’t extend beyond the rooftops, so the whole world around him fell back in darkness. He paused. Everything was moonlit shadows and starry skies, a spiral-shaped constellation far above him. The different shades of night offered a treacherous path to safety.

But at least he was alone.

Far below, whispered alarms echoed through the street, and with regret he took the pouch from his sleeve. “Don’t hold on to anything that can be traced,” Cyriel had advised.

He lobbed the pouch over the wall he’d climbed and called himself ten times a fool before he began to make his way over the rooftops, until the quiet of the night sky wrapped around him, his stride lengthened, and his worry fell away. And briefly, it felt like he could fly.

AT THE LAKEFRONT, CYRIEL SAT on a wooden bench, her crutches by her side and two cups of hot cocoa next to her. She didn’t look up when Vax plopped down on the bench, but instead kept her eyes on the star sprites dancing on the lake. She took one of the cups and quietly held it out.

Vax’s stomach dropped. Was she angry? Disappointed? She’d been correct in her earlier observations. Vax had been distracted.

He realized the cocoa Cyriel was holding slushed back and forth, and when he looked up she was laughing silently.

“Gods, Vax, you should’ve seen their faces. You should’ve seen your face.”

Vax snatched the cocoa from her. “Fine. You were right. You told me so.”

The amusement pummeled the same bruise his father’s words left. Worthless. Good-for-nothing. He would rather die than believe his father’s cruel assessments, but that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt.

Then Cyriel put her cocoa to the side. She reached out and wrapped her hand around Vax’s. With her free hand, she pushed a strand of hair out of his face, the movement so soft and tender it sent chills up his spine. “You got rid of whatever you stole, right?”

Vax nodded, tight-lipped.

“Good. It’s not about never getting caught. It’s about what you do when you are. You did good.” She smirked. “And at least the Verdant Lord’s daughter will have a new tale to tell when she comes home.”

With that, the last bit of Vax’s resistance and pressure melted away, though he fought hard to keep his face passive. “The Verdant Lord as in … commander of the city’s guard? His daughter?”

Cyriel’s grin was as bright as the spirits dancing on the water. “The very same. You know the intention is to avoid the guard, right?”

Vax snorted. “Oh, fuck right off.”

Cyriel pulled him close and Vax’s cup tumbled from his grasp. He could still taste the cocoa on the girl’s lips. Nights like these reminded him there were pockets of the city that his father didn’t control, where the rules weren’t made to be followed, where he could survive. At least until he could go home.