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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: Are You the Invention of a Delirious Dream?

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Warnings: mention of getting shot, severely doubting reality, angst

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Have fun being inside Will's brain! It's a super organized, lucid, and coherent place.

Word count: 3342 || Approx reading time: 14 mins

Are You the Invention of a Delirious Dream?

Teaser: I was so alone in there until Bree got tossed in the cell next door. Then she was gone. Now I’m alone again.

Will

Something—everything—about the bed, the house, the warmth, the food, and the lack of people threatening to kill me is unsettling. What’s-Her-Name—Colette’s sister, Colette’s goddamn sister in her enormous goddamn house that to me feels like it could be a royal goddamn palace—leads me around like I’m a lost puppy, and I let her. I think everything Hatchett said about me being a dumb fucking brainless fool is true because the thought of trying to make a single decision right now is too much. So I just let her make them all.

How much time passes, I’m not sure. I think I fell asleep, but I don’t know exactly when that happened. When I wake, I look down at my hands and they’re clean. There are bruises on my wrists, too visible now that they’re not half-hidden by dirt and blood. Too visible against soft sheets that are maybe the softest things I’ve ever felt in my life. Anyone will look at those bruises and know what made them.

I lift my gaze to the ceiling. I’m relieved to find that it’s just a ceiling, no ornate designs or carvings or whatever. If there were, if it was fancy enough to look like some sort of fucking palace I maybe saw in a painting once, I don’t know, I’m not even sure where these ideas are coming from, then I’d know none of this was fucking real and maybe I was still in jail or maybe I got shot and am actually bleeding out on the ground. Which would make sense, actually, because there’s no way this is Colette’s house and this is her family and there’s no way they’re helping us, that they’re actually being kind, and then Colette’s name isn’t her name, and then there’s Colette’s fucking sister, her sister who calls her Lettie and fuck, now that I’m thinking about it, there’s no way any of this can be real, because none of this makes any sense, so I must be dead or dying or maybe I’m still in the cell and this is all in my head. Maybe there was never a trade at all. Maybe that medic got sick of my shit after I shoved him one too many times, and all this is a bizarre hallucination from something he gave me so I’d stop fighting him. I’m still there, and none of this is real, and I’ll be there until I die, and I’ll never see Jamie again. Why isn’t Jamie here? Why would my dumb fucking brain give me a fever dream without my brother in it? I don’t get it, I don’t understand, I don’t—

“Hey, Will?”

I look away from the ceiling and the room comes back. Colette’s sister is in the doorway, inching closer.

“You look upset,” she says. “Are you hurting? Tell me what you need. I’ll get it for you.”

What I need? I don’t even know how to begin to answer.

“I forgot your name,” I say instead. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know this is rude, but I don’t have the energy to care. “I’m sorry.”

“That’s all right.” She steps a little closer. “It’s Verity.”

I glance around. The room is nice but pretty empty other than a desk, an old wardrobe, and the bed. It sinks in that Geoff isn’t in here. I mean, I knew I was alone, but I didn’t really think about it until this moment. “Geoff?”

“He went out,” she says, her voice quiet. “He’s with Lettie. And my father. They went to get…” Her voice trails off.

None of that makes any sense either. The back of my neck prickles. Is this a dream?

I was so alone in there until Bree got tossed in the cell next door. Then she was gone. Now I’m alone again with nothing but a weird goddamn hallucination to keep me company.

I stare at the window and pretend I’m on the other side of it. The whole day has passed, it seems. Night is falling.

“Um. Will?”

This strange girl is still there. For some reason.

“I’m going to bring you some food, all right? I don’t think… I don’t think we’re doing a proper meal tonight. But you must eat. Is there anything you’d like? I can see if we have it or if our cook can make some.”

If she leaves the room, she’ll disappear into the mists of this dream just like the others, just like Jamie and Bree and Colette and Geoff, there and then gone. And I’ll be completely alone again. “I’m not hungry. It’s all right.”

They say they’re sisters, but they look nothing alike. Colette is slim and tall and all sharp angles, thick dark curls that graze her back that she loves to keep free if she’s not running a job or wearing some sort of disguise. Verity is soft and tiny and round and pale, with silky yellow hair that’s pinned back away from her face. Her dress is pink and covered in roses. I’m sure it would look nice on Colette but I don’t think she’d go anywhere near it.

“Are you really sisters?” I don’t want her to disappear into the dream-graveyard. I don’t want to be alone.

She giggles. “Of course we are! Stepsisters are sisters, after all.”

Stepsisters. That makes more sense.

“Why didn’t she ever mention you?” Please tell me something real. Please be real.

Her face falls a little, but she doesn’t balk. “It’s a… Well, families aren’t always easy or peaceful, are they? Perhaps you’d better ask her.”

My heart sinks. No details, nothing specific. Not a genuine answer.

Nodding, I sigh and wonder why my dying brain has conjured her. I’ve never thought much about Colette’s life before IA. I know it used to drive Jamie mad that she didn’t talk about it, but I never really cared much. So why would I make up some random sister of hers to keep me company instead of my own family?

I must be staring at her, because there’s a bright red flush creeping up her neck into her cheeks. She takes a step back. “I think I’m going to find you some food, anyway. Are you sure there’s nothing you want?”

I shake my head. Well. Guess she wants to leave. No point in keeping her here, then. If she’s not real, she’s not real. Not much I can do about it. Can’t blame her, really. I don’t want to be stuck in my head, either.

So I let her disappear. Lie back in the pillows.

Maybe I doze off. I try not to for as long as I can manage. It’s not like I want to wake up back in jail. But I can’t help it. Eventually sleep pulls me under again.

When I open my eyes, she’s back. And I’m still in bed. Still half under a blanket, slumped but mostly upright. That ever-present ache still throbbing away in my chest.

Maybe—maybe this might be real after all?

“Why don’t you come downstairs?” she says, holding out her hand. “There’s something you should see.”

I shake my head. I don’t want to move. What if moving is what will wake me up? What if the floor crumbles and falls away beneath my feet? If the polished wood turns to grimy stone?

“Come down.” She holds out her hand, pursing her lip stubbornly when I don’t take it. After a moment, she reaches down and presses her fingers against mine. “I promise it’s worth it. Just come with me.”

You’re bossy, you know that?

I prefer persistent.

“Let’s go,” Verity says, and gently, she tugs at my arm until I get to my feet.

“Verie! Where’d you go?” Colette is back, from the sound of it, calling to her sister quietly. “Make sure when you get him, you warn him—”

I step into the room where her voice is coming from, and what I see punches me in the fucking gut.

That goddamn medic.

The pain leaching through my body—all but forgotten. I hurl myself at him, I’ll fucking tear him apart, because what, what is he doing here—

“No.” Geoff catches me by the arm. I’d struggle to get away from him on my best day; there’s no way I’m escaping his hold now. “Wait.”

“Wait for what?” He’s here, he’s one of them and he’s here, and that means—that means that I was fucking right, that this is nothing but a dream and reality is leaking in, and I don’t want it, I don’t want it to—

“Get out,” I say to Allan Armstrong Dale. “Get out of this house. Get out of my head. Whichever one it is, I don’t know, I don’t fucking care, get out, get out—”

“Shit,” I hear Colette whisper. Geoff’s grip tightens.

“Will, listen—” Armstrong and Colette speak the same words at the same time. It’s Colette who gets an extra few out. “—we brought him with us because—”

“No, you listen!” I’m not ready, I’m not, I was just lying upstairs and close to comfortable for the first time in weeks, I knew all of this might not be real, but now that I know it’s not, it hurts, it hurts so fucking much, and I’m not ready to face the cell again, and seeing him here means I have… How long? Before the dream cracks open and I’m back there? “What the fuck are you doing here? How did you even get here? And why? What did you do to me? What did you give me?”

His face contorts—he has the gall to look genuinely confused. “What are you—”

“I’ll kill you—”

Verity touches my arm, and I can’t stop myself from flinching away from her. She stares at me sadly for a moment, then pulls her hand away, nodding her head toward the door across the room. “Look.”

I follow her gaze even though I’m afraid of what I’ll see. If I walk through that door, will I wake up?

“Come on,” she says, and I hate her for being so fucking calm, although I guess that’s easy for her since she isn’t real. “Just look.”

She tucks her arm into mine, and the only reason I don’t shove her away is that I know even fake-hallucination-Colette will kick my ass if I hurt her fake-hallucination-sister. No matter how much I want to rip Armstrong’s limbs from his body. No matter how much he deserves it for being one of them.

“What was he talking about?” I can hear Geoff murmuring to the others. “Not making sense…”

“No idea, but..”

Their words don’t reach me when I realize what—no, who—Verity is leading me to see.

“Jamie?” I can barely get his name last my lips.

No. This—I was so sure—This can’t be—

“Lettie found him,” Verity says, beaming up at me. “That’s your brother, right?”

I stumble forward like a fucking newborn deer, unable to stand, hardly able to breathe. “Alive?”

“Yes, of course he’s—”

“Jamie!” He doesn’t respond, and as I spin wildly to look at Verity again, I see that Colette and Geoff have slipped into the room, too. “What’s wrong with him?”

“He’ll be fine,” Colette says, hurrying over, grabbing my hands. “Listen, all right? Look at me. Are you lis—Will. Will.”

How am I supposed to—

She squeezes my fingers just a little tighter. “Look at me. Listen. It’s all right. He’s all right.”

“He didn’t answer me,” I say. My voice cracks.

“I know. That’s because Allan gave him something for his pain and it put him to sleep, all right? He got shot after the trade, but he’s fine. He’s going to live.”

“Allan…” Even though I know Allan is Armstrong and Armstrong is that fucking medic, it still takes me a moment to realize who she means. “Shot…”

“Say it,” Colette says. “Say it with me. He’s all right. He’s going to live.”

I’m not a child, I want to say. What comes out is, “This is real?”

Colette blinks. “What?”

“This is real? You’re real?”

“Will—of course—”

“This isn’t a dream?”

“No…”

“It’s really real?”

I’ve never seen Colette burst into tears, but she does now.

“Oh, Lettie,” Verity whispers, crossing the room to throw her arms around her sister. To me, she says gently, “It’s real. I promise.”

It’s real.

This is all real.

When I look up, Allan Armstrong Dale has come in, too, and he’s inching his way across the room. Toward Jamie. Toward me.

I feel more than hear or see Geoff shift a little closer, obviously ready to grab me again if I decide to go for Armstrong’s throat. Which I still might do.

“I understand that you don’t trust me and might never trust me,” Armstrong says, raising his hands. “I promise. I’m only here to help.”

Barely audible, Geoff says to me, “Jamie’d be dead if it weren’t for him.”

The only thing I can think of to say is, “I’m not leaving this room.”

Armstrong nods, apparently unsurprised and unbothered, and Verity and Colette pull away from each other, the former mumbling something about bringing chairs. Not that it matters to me. If I have to sit up on the floor day and night, I’ll do it. My brother is here and he’s alive.

I end up falling asleep again at some point, upright with my back pressed against the couch where they laid Jamie once they brought him in. When I wake, my neck and back in as much pain as my ribs, Armstrong tries to get me to let him look me over. I tell him if he touches me, I’ll rip his whole fucking hand off, and he doesn’t waste any time scurrying out of the room.

“Will?”

Relief so fierce it hurts rushes through me.

“You’re…alive…”

Never has such an obvious fucking statement ever made me so happy in my entire life.

Jamie grunts as he turns his head toward me. God, he’s pale.

But alive. He’s alive, too.

I don’t know how to answer his question, so I say, “Why are you lying around in bed? Get your lazy ass up and do some work like the rest of us.”

He laughs for a split second before the movement makes him groan in pain again.

“You don’t know how happy I am to see your annoying, stupid face,” I say.

“The feeling is mutual.” He doesn’t say more, but takes a few long minutes to breathe.

“Is everyone here?” He takes his gaze off the ceiling and looks at me. I wish his skin didn’t look so grey, or his voice sound so strained.

“Geoff,” I start, knowing whose name he’ll want first, “Colette, Allan, me, Colette’s sister—did you fucking know she had a sister? A whole goddamn family in a nice mansion?”

“Not till yesterday, or today, or whenever the hell it was,” he mumbles. “I can’t believe she never said anything.”

“Me neither.”

“I can hear you two jackasses in there,” Colette says, poking her head through the doorway. “Did I ever pester you about your life before? Do you want me to know everything about your damn childhood? Hmm? No? Then shut the fuck up.”

From somewhere in the other room, a timid voice says, “Lettie, your language!”

Laughing at that makes my ribs ache even more, but I don’t care, because Jamie is here next to me and Colette is in front of me getting chastised by her sister who calls her—

“Yeah, Lettie,” I say, watching a deep flush rise in her cheeks, “watch your mouth.”

“Will Wardrew, I swear to god—”

Someone, either Verity or Geoff, probably, tugs her away and out of sight.

“You’re still an asshole, then,” Jamie says, his eyes closed again. He’s sweating now. “Will, I was so…”

I do not know enough words to describe everything that rises inside me when I look at my brother who is lying immobile before me, who I thought had to be dead or a figment of my imagination, who nearly died to get me back my freedom, who never gave up on me when I was sure he had and who could’ve skipped town and never come back but chose not to.

“I’m sorry,” I say. Again—not the words I meant to say. They slip out anyway.

Jamie’s eyes fly open. “For what?”

“For getting arrested. For ruining everything.”

IA is dead now; it has to be. How can it go on? Our runners are gone. Our home is gone. Hatchett knows all our names.

Hatchett. And suddenly that’s the only thing I can think of. Where is Hatchett? Is he alive? Dead? Looking for us as we speak? What if he…

“Will, don’t you dare try to apol—”

“Hatchett.” The new thought spills out before he can finish his, burning my tongue like live flames. “Is he…”

Jamie’s protestations and reassurances—as if there’s anything he can say to convince me it isn’t my fault IA is over now—die. “Alive, last I saw.”

Fuck.

“He’s never getting close to you ever again,” Jamie says. “I let—I let him go. I had to. But.” God. He sounds so pained. “But if. If I have to. I will kill him myself.”

No. If anyone is going to kill Baden Hatchett, it’s going to be me.

“She told me.” His voice is tight. “What he did. How he tricked you—”

She.

“Fuck! Bree!”

It strikes me only right fucking now that she didn’t come back with Jamie and the medic. “Where is she?”

Jamie blinks, and something cold slithers through me. He doesn’t know, either.

“Shit,” Colette says from the other room.

Her quiet cursing is immediately followed by, “I better make some tea.” Geoff’s footsteps grow distant.

“Colette, what the hell happened to her?” I’d run out of this room if I could. If it wouldn’t hurt so bad, I’d hurl myself into the other room to see the look in Colette’s eyes and hear her tell me…

God, god, what is wrong with me? I didn’t even realize until this moment that one of us was missing.

Slowly, Colette reappears. She comes into Jamie’s room fully this time instead of hovering in the doorway, and the look on her face makes the hairs stand up on my neck. No. No, if something terrible had happened to Bree, if she was recaptured, if she was dead, they’d say, they would tell me.

“When we went to bring everyone back here, no one could find her. She was gone.” From her pocket, Colette pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I don’t know where she went. She left this. It’s for you.”

She’s gone.

“Yeah. Left that and made off with my old pocket watch and a bag of coins,” Armstrong says, invisible on the other side of the wall.

I’d be laughing about how she pulled the old IA treatment on him if Colette’s words weren’t bouncing around the inside of my skull. She’s gone. She left. She’s gone. She left.

“I’m sorry,” Colette says gently, holding out the note.

I take the paper but drop it on the floor next to me. Suddenly my chest is hurting extra bad, worse than it was a few minutes ago, and my jaw aches. Feels tight. “All right. Thanks.”

She’s gone.

What do I care if she left? I don’t. I don’t care. It’s probably fucking better this way. What would I even say to her, if I were looking at her now?

Thanks for coming back for me. Thanks for finding Jamie. Thanks for not letting me die.

I really wish we could have gotten to know each other under better circumstances.

I hope you get to see the ocean.

I wish we had…

No. There’s nothing I’d say to her, actually. It’s better she ran away without saying goodbye. I’m glad.

Both Jamie and Colette are staring at me. “Will?”

“What?”

“You all right?”

“I’m fine,” I say. I’m out of jail. Jamie’s alive. Hatchett can’t find me here. I’m fine.

Everything’s fine.

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Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: Connected Far Beyond a Miracle

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: mention of jail, aftermath of traumatic events, fear of suicidal ideation/self harm (mentioned), very vague reference to a previous death wish (not explicit at all)

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✨ Feel free to navigate forward to Finale Part 1, but if you're interested, there are two bonus chapters that come between 49 and 50:

💚 Box in Your Heart (Colette and Will)

🍂 Are You Nobody, Too? (Bree and Henry)

Word count: 3562 || Approx reading time: 15 mins

Connected Far Beyond a Miracle

Teaser: “What are you doing out here?” I demand when I make my way outside. It’s freezing, the wind whistling through the bare branches and nearly skinning me alive. “Do you want someone to see you? Recognize you?”

Jamie

I nearly lose it when I look around one day and Will is nowhere to be seen, and when I ask Colette if she’s seen him, she hasn’t, and then when I ask Geoff where the fuck he is, he can’t tell me, and when I check with Colette’s giggly stepsister who always somehow seems to know what Will is up to, she doesn’t know.

“Someone please tell me he didn’t fuck off without telling anyone.” The pain in my side is actually starting to fade—some days it doesn’t even hurt at all anymore—but now that it’s more or less gone, I’ve got that familiar why-is-my-brother-like-this headache back in its usual, throbbing spot in my temple.

“He went outside.”

I blink. I didn’t even bother asking Allan. Will still avoids him like the plague.

“What do you mean, went outside?” Colette pales. “What if someone—”

“He’s by the window. In the back.”

For fuck’s sake. Doesn’t Will realize that if the wrong person spots him, he’ll have the constables crawling all over Colette’s family’s house? “Why didn’t you stop him?”

Allan is nice, and he’s good at what he does, but he doesn’t have much of a fucking backbone.

“Because I didn’t feel like getting punched in the face.”

I rest my case.

Walking is mostly easy at this point, but standing up and sitting down still send a twinge bolting through me if I do it too fast. Still. I’d rather take ten seconds of pain than see Will in chains again.

“What are you doing out here?” I demand when I make my way outside. It’s freezing, the wind whistling through the bare branches and nearly skinning me alive. “Do you want someone to see you? Recognize you?”

“It’s the back of the house, Jamie. No one’s going to see me.”

“Are you willing to take that bet?”

“Yes.”

If I didn’t think it would make him flinch away from me like I was trying to throttle him—which, to be fair, I do want to do that, some days—I’d grab his arm and drag him back into the house. “Why are you out here?”

“I’ve been inside. For…” He stops. Clenches his jaw. Glares into the stormy-grey sky. “I’m losing my mind. I needed air.”

Geoff, who followed me back here, nudges my side. His meaning is clear: Sounds like someone I know.

“Shut up,” I say to him.

Will glances at me, scowling and ready to fight.

“Not you.” I jerk my head at Geoff. “Him.”

Leaning back against the wall, crossing his arms and planting his feet like a five-year-old, Will says, “Just go back inside. I’ll be in soon.”

“You’re not even wearing a coat.”

“It’s not that cold.”

“Will, get your ass back in the house.”

“No.”

What the fuck am I supposed to do, short of dragging him back by the hair? Can’t even do that, since Colette cut it all off. “Will, please.”

“No.”

Turning to Geoff, I give him a look to say, Please help. It’s not likely he can do anything, either, but Will sometimes listens to him when he won’t listen to me. And at least Geoff can wrestle him back inside if needed.

With a shrug, though, Geoff raises his hands in the air. “No one else is around.”

Great. He’s taking Will’s side. When I look back at my brother, he still looks pissed off, but there’s a smugness to it now.

You’re acting like a child, I want to say. I hold my tongue.

“Go back inside,” he repeats. “I’m not going to do anything stupid. Or are you all still afraid to leave me alone for too long?”

Fuck. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

There was a part of me that thought that once we had Will back, everything would settle. Perhaps not exactly go back to the way it was, but at least feel closer to normal.

I could not have been more wrong.

Nothing about this has been straightforward. Me, I have pain one day and none the next. Maybe that shouldn’t be too surprising. But Will… He’s laughing and goofy one moment and ready to stab a fork through Allan’s hand an hour later. He’s fine, and then he’s lost in a forest of thoughts so murky I wonder if he will be able to find his way out of it.

Breathe, Jamie. Just breathe. In and out.

“Tell me what’s on your mind,” I say to Will when I’m calm enough to actually say something nice.

The warmth of Geoff next to me pulls away. I start counting the seconds until he reappears with a coat and scarf in hand.

“Nothing,” Will says, his eyes fixed on something in the distance. When I follow his gaze, I don’t see anything worth staring at for hours. Just the promise of snow in the clouds. A brilliant red bird flitting from branch to branch.

“You’re the worst liar I’ve ever met,” I say. “What’s wrong?”

His jaw tightens. “I wish you’d all stop reminding me of that. I know. I fucking know.”

I was not expecting that to set him off. “All right. I’m sorry. I…”

“I tried,” he says. “I tried. To lie. To protect you. To protect…her.”

My headache intensifies. I have tried so fucking hard not to say anything that would bring him back to prison. Back to those weeks of torment.

All for nothing, apparently, because I’ve gone and done exactly that. “Will, I—”

“He knew, anyway,” he says, and I’m taken aback by the anger in his voice. “Somehow he fucking knew what to look for in their old arrest records, and I’ve been trying to figure it out, but no one… No one says anything. Even you. You got arrested and you never fucking told me and he had that old record and that’s how he knew your name, and I can’t believe you never said anything, Jamie, and that happened when Ma was still alive—”

“Will—”

“—And Bree told him we were brothers, but how did he know what name to look for? He already had it by the time I gave in, when I thought he was going to kill Bree, and—and—”

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

I confessed to Geoff, and only Geoff—told him about the letter I sent, the promise I made to turn myself in if Will walked free. The promise I reneged upon once we had Hatchett to bargain with instead.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I was nineteen, young and foolish, the day I met Geoff, the day I was arrested, the day the constables got my name—the day that would all these years later fuck up everything for all of us. “For not telling you. I shouldn’t have kept it a secret.”

“You didn’t trust me?”

“You were fourteen,” I say. “You were a kid. I didn’t want you getting ideas.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

I know I can’t keep the rest of it from him, that if I do, I’ll be tearing apart the already shaky foundation we’ve been trying to rebuild since we got here. “Hatchett knew what to look for because he had my initials. I sent him a message.”

Will jerks away from the wall to stand up straight. “What?”

“I said I’d turn myself in if they let you out.”

I stumble backwards into the brick, pain scraping into my back, when Will reaches out and shoves me. “What the fuck did you do that for?”

Fuck. He’s got tears in his eyes, and so do I.

“Because I didn’t want to watch you get hanged, you idiot!”

“But it’s fine for me to watch you get hanged?”

“It’s not the same. IA was my idea. It was never your responsibility.” Never Will’s sin to atone for.

His hands curl into fists, and I wonder if he’s going to hit me. Maybe he should. Maybe I deserve it.

Then Will relaxes his muscles and looks away.

“I’m so tired,” he says. “I’m so tired of being mad all the time. Of the memories. Of being sad. I don’t want to remember any of it. But then I don’t want to fucking forget it, either. And that pisses me off. It pisses me off so much. I should. I should want to forget it. Why…”

I open my mouth, but he keeps going.

“I have to just be here and stay stuck inside and keep thinking and thinking and remembering. Do you think anything happened to—to him? Do you think he can’t sleep at night? Fuck that. He just went back to work and, yeah, maybe he’s still pissed off and looking for us but he doesn’t have to deal with this shit, but I do, and it never fucking ends, does it, and I just want to not be mad for even just a few minutes, but if I forgot it all then I’d forget—”

He turns away completely, and I can only tell from the movement of his arm that he’s wiping tears from his face.

“It’s not fair,” he says, but I can’t tell if the words are really meant for me.

Geoff finally reappears, clutching my coat, and Will’s too. I pull mine on and wait for my brother to face me once more. Dimly, I’m aware of Geoff squeezing my hand before he steps away again.

“It’s all right that you’re mad,” I say. “You have every right to be.”

It’s a long time before Will responds. Eventually he turns back outwards, not exactly facing me, to lean against the wall again and stare out at the nothing that’s so captivated him. I manage to get him to shrug into his coat, but he doesn’t seem to fully recognize me or even really know what he’s doing.

“Did you know that you knew her, kind of?”

The question is sudden, and with no context, I have no idea what it even means. “What?”

“Bree. Her dad was that prick you worked for. Who kicked you all out.”

The memory sends a shiver down my spine. “Silas Cooper. I noticed they had the same name.”

“She’s the girl who ran out of the house. That was her.” Will draws a deep breath. “She remembered your name. For a little bit, I was so sure she knew who you were. She didn’t though. But when he knew your name, I thought—I thought maybe she—” He stops. Shakes his head. “She swore she didn’t.”

He seems calmer now; his breath isn’t quite so quick and ragged, and his eyes look less wild.

“It’s funny,” he says. “Well, not funny. Weird. Fucked up, maybe.”

“I can’t read your mind, Will. What are you talking about?”

He picks at his nails. Avoids my gaze. “Bree. All the ways our paths crossed. More than once. She was the girl who tried to help you when she was a kid. And I was there the day Colette found her and dropped the coin. And she was…the girl from that night.” Will speaks quickly, something like guilt flashing across his face. “The snowstorm. You remember.”

“Oh. Yeah. She told me.”

“She did?”

“Yeah.”

Another long pause, and I brace myself for another abrupt subject change that he’s going to expect me to follow. Instead, he continues, “And then she got arrested right after me. And Hatchett picked on her when he had me wh…”

Even though he doesn’t finish the sentence, I understand what he’s referring to when he says, “He made her count.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“And what about all of that?”

He swallows hard, and his face goes red—nothing, I suspect, to do with the biting wind. “Why did we keep meeting like that? And then how could she just leave without saying goodbye?”

God, the look on his face. We’ve both been heartbroken before, more than once. And I know this look.

“I almost get it,” he says. “If she’d stayed… You know, when she looked at me, she’d be reminded of him, right? Of Hatchett. Of jail. And I… I wouldn’t want that. Right? They hurt her, too. Not just me. So I get it. I guess.”

God, if we were still kids, if he were still little, I’d pull him into a hug whether he liked it or not. Now I can only stand there and watch him stumble over his words, trying so desperately to say what he means.

“Life kept bringing us together. Like we were supposed to meet. To know each other. You know? Like it meant something. But then she fucked off. She fucked off, and she didn’t even say goodbye.” He turns his head away. “I guess it didn’t mean anything. And I’m just a fucking idiot. Like I always have been.”

“You’re not an idiot, Will.”

“Yes, I am.”

Fuck it. He’s my brother. He’s hurting.

“You’re not,” I repeat. “You went through hell. Hell. And you’re here. Still here. You survived. That makes you strong as fuck. Not an idiot.”

He’s my brother and he’s hurting and for the first time, he doesn’t flinch away when I get close. Pull him into a hug. He stiffens, though, and for a moment I wonder if he’s going to bolt. But he relaxes after a few seconds. And he doesn’t run.

Still, though, he doesn’t say anything, and I fear he’s lost again. “Do you want the rest of the story?”

“Hmm?” It’s like he’s hearing my words from far away. Slowly, he tugs out of my grip, and I let him go. “Which story?”

“What happened after Geoff and I met. In…” I cringe. “In jail.”

“I know how that story ends.” He sounds so tired. “You’re in love and you’re going to live happily ever after.”

“Don’t be a smartass about it. You don’t know the whole story.” I watch his face for surprise, but there’s still distance there. “I only knew his name after that day, but nothing else. Didn’t know where to find him.”

I wandered around town for two weeks, looking for work, yes, but that wasn’t all I was searching for.

“It was by chance, I guess, kind of, that we met again. But I was trying my damnedest to find him.” I hovered around that hideous tavern almost every day, and in the end, I bumped into him down the street from our home.

“What the fuck?” I remember yelping. “What are you doing here?” For some reason, I felt hot. For some reason, I looked up and down the street, wondering if Ma or Will could see us. For some reason, even though my family was falling apart for the second time, I felt happy.

I tell my brother how we saw each other every day that summer. How, more than once, Geoff and I had to dodge Will and his friends spinning through the streets so he wouldn’t spot us and ask questions I knew I was not ready to answer.

I skip the details of the first time our hands brushed, or the first time his hand clasped mine. I do not mention the first time we kissed, or the first time I ran my fingers down the smooth dark skin of his bare chest—

“Jamie? Was there more, or what?”

Whoops. Maybe Will’s not the only one who’s a little lost.

“And then Ma got worse,” I say softly. These memories—in the deepest, darkest, murkiest ravine of that forest of the past—these are ones on which I don’t wish to linger. “And it just…stopped. We didn’t…” God, even remembering this is painful. “We didn’t see each other again. For years.”

Will is quiet, and his eyes are back on the sky, but I can tell he’s listening.

“And then one day my brother poached on someone else’s territory, picking pockets where he shouldn’t have been,” I say, and the corners of his mouth tip upward, “and this terrifying girl with curly hair and the biggest fucking guy I’ve ever seen were about to cut him to shreds—”

“Don’t be an ass,” he says. “She wasn’t going to cut me to—”

“Oh, yes I was.”

We both jump at the sound of Colette’s voice. She’s out here now, and Geoff, too. Snow, soft and white and gentle, is starting to fall. I watch the snowflakes sparkle against Geoff’s dark hair for precious moments before they melt, and he meets my eyes, smiling. How’d you end up on this story? he seems to ask.

“And wasn’t that big guy with her,” I say, “the same goddamn asshole who broke me out of jail years before?”

Geoff grins and looks away.

“If people are meant to find each other,” I tell Will, “then they just do.”

I can see him shivering, but my stubborn ass of a brother isn’t going to be the one to suggest going inside. “I’m glad you found each other,” he says.

“Me too.”

Geoff and Colette move in unison: he to stand next to me, and she to grab Will’s hands, which are starting to turn red from the cold. “So. Are you ready to come inside and get warm yet? Geoff made tea.”

“I suppose.”

“He supposes,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “Well, I suppose that Verie also baked a sponge cake and wants everyone to have a taste and shower her with praise.”

I swear I see Will’s eyes light up. Slightly—but it counts.

“Come on,” she says to him, and a sense of peace washes over me when Will finally agrees to go back inside, where it’s warm. Where it’s safe.

Geoff holds me back, gripping my arm with that firm yet gentle grasp when I try to follow.

“Just one,” he says. The snowflakes are still fat and lazy, drifting slowly like sugary fragments of stars. They cling to him now, no longer melting right away.

His kiss—god, his kiss. The sweetest and most perfect gift that, for a time, I thought I’d never enjoy again.

“I love you.” Words I don’t say enough. To him. To Will. To anyone.

“I love you, too.”

In the kitchen, Verity is fussing over her sponge cake, glancing over at Will through her lashes. Colette looks annoyed, and when Will’s not looking, I see her step on her sister’s foot.

“Stop making a fool of yourself,” she hisses. Verity just rolls her eyes.

Of course, Will doesn’t notice. He’s sunk his hand into his pocket, and his gaze is distant again. When I draw his attention, though, he comes back right away.

“You all right?”

He nods.

At that moment, Allan walks in, and I wince, certain that the peace I’ve just managed to chase down is going to be gone the second Will opens his mouth.

“So.” Will fixes Allan with his best tough stare, which wouldn’t cow any of us but makes the doctor shrink a little. I shoot a glance at Geoff, silently telling him to be ready to hold my brother back if needed. “Are you the reason they were hiding all the sharp stuff from me?”

Allan frowns. “What?”

“Did you…”

“Did I what?”

Will glances at me. “Did you tell them,” he says finally. “What I asked you to do.” So flat it’s barely a question. So quiet and ominous it makes me shiver.

Allan seems to catch Will’s meaning. “I didn’t breach your privacy in any way, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Impatiently, redness creeping into his face, Will says, “I don’t know what the fuck breach means.”

“I didn’t repeat any conversations we had while you were my patient. Because that would be unethical.”

For a moment, silence.

And then—

“Thanks.”

Allan blinks, nods, and mumbles an acknowledgement, and Will doesn’t say anything else.

“Why does everyone look so sad?” Verity asks. “Get yourselves to the table and enjoy my delicious, perfect cake.”

When the cake is gone from our plates and we’re all sipping tea, with Verity and Colette in quiet conversation, Geoff drawing soft circles on the back of my hand, and Allan reading a newspaper, I notice that Will is reading, too.

It isn’t a book or a newspaper in his hand, though, but a piece of paper, creased to all hell. Haphazard fold lines all over it. I don’t have to ask what it is.

As if he can feel my stare, he looks up. He must be able to read me as well as Geoff can, because he hesitates, then heaves a sigh and hands me the letter.

Will, it says, Thank you for saving my life, and for your forgiveness, even if I don’t know if I deserve either. Get well. Stay safe. And please, please, please be happy. I promise I will never forget you. Bree.

“She’ll be all right,” I tell him, clearing my throat and handing the letter back. “I’ve got a feeling.”

Though it seems like he wants to laugh, he doesn’t. “You’re probably right. She’s too fucking stubborn to die.”

“Language,” Verity admonishes from across the table, and Will grins at her.

With his breath tickling my ear, Geoff whispers, “He’ll be all right, too.”

Suddenly, my heart feels more full than it did before. “Promise?” I whisper back.

“Promise.”

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✨ Feel free to navigate forward to Finale Part 1, but if you're interested, there are two bonus chapters that come between 49 and 50:

💚 Box in Your Heart (Colette and Will)

🍂 Are You Nobody, Too? (Bree and Henry)

Stay close, can you feel the love between the two of us? / Let go, we can disappear inside the universe

If you look inside / Read between the lines / Everything is gradual / When you see the signs / The comets all collide / Everything is magical

We're interstellar hearts / Whenever we're together / Can't resist your gravity / It took a million miles to find you / Stars to fly through / Spark of perfect chemistry / This is our future / We're meant to find it / We will go further / 'Cause we're just interstellar hearts / In cosmic time / We shine

I don't understand the elements, the chemicals / But we both know we're connected far beyond a miracle / When you look inside / When you see the signs / Everything collides

I never knew that I could fall so hard, oh

Insterstellar Hearts - Awake or Sleeping

Next time on The Prince of Thieves:

Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

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littleperilstories · 11 months

Text

The Prince of Thieves: They Left You Wondering Just Who the Hell You Are

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: blood, aftermath/memories of traumatic events, reference to (fear of) self harm/suicidal ideation

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Word count: 2725 || Approx reading time: 11 mins

They Left You Wondering Just Who the Hell You Are

Teaser: While Will was lost in his thoughts, staring at Jamie or the sky and avoiding looking any of us in the eye, Jamie was watching him, too, and whatever he saw scared the hell out of him.

Colette

Some days, Will seems like his old self.

Having Jamie back, seeing him alive and healing, is the thing that seems to give him the most energy. A lot of the time when Will is sitting with Jamie in their room, or every time Jamie manages to take a few more steps than he did the day before, he’s smiling. Laughing.

There are other moments, though. Quieter ones. More sombre. Darker.

When night falls, when it’s just the crackling fire that warms and illuminates the sitting room, I see him look away from the flickering light like it pains him.

In silent moments, though he is sitting still, I hear him catch his breath like he’s been running.

Sometimes, he stares down at his hands like he’s never seen them before.

He gazes out the window, watching the horizon, staring into the sky, even when there’s conversation swirling and bubbling around us, like he can’t hear a thing.

Wide-eyed, he watches Jamie. Like he’s terrified that if he falters in his tireless vigil for even an instant, his brother might disappear.

Jamie knows something’s different; Geoff knows, too. For a while, at Jamie’s behest, we did our best to keep Will sequestered in the sitting room or in his room or anywhere else, away from the kitchen and everything inside it and all the macabre possibilities it presented. Because while Will was lost in his thoughts, staring at Jamie or the sky and avoiding looking any of us in the eye, Jamie was watching him, too, and whatever he saw scared the hell out of him.

None of his fears came to pass, though, and now the smiles are beginning to outnumber the empty, haunted stares.

Some days.

“Hey.” I tap Will on the shoulder. He’s sitting in my father’s chair—which is quite amusing because no one else dares to go near it, and yet Will steals it every day and Father hasn’t said a word—with a book on his lap that he clearly has no interest in even pretending to read. “Come help me.”

“With what?”

“Dinner. Come on.”

That makes him roll his eyes like a saucy twelve-year-old, and something loosens in my chest that before was too tightly wound.

“Here.” I brandish a cutting board and a bowl of potatoes, still dark and beaded with water. “I’ll peel. You cut.”

He accepts the wooden board, raising his eyebrows when I nod my head toward the knives by the window. “Oh, you’re all trusting me with sharp things now, are you?”

Shit. I freeze, unsure of how to answer. “What are you talking about?”

With a sigh, he says, “I’m not that stupid, you know. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

“You’re not stupid.” My face is hot. Of course he noticed. All he does—all we’ve been letting him do—is sit around and think and notice things. “I’m sorry.”

Will doesn’t answer, and as with every silence that stems from him these days, I wonder what thoughts are going through his head. Sometimes, it’s not so bad—still comfortable if a little strange, coming from him. This one, though, feels worrisome. “What are you thinking about?”

“Nothing.”

I shouldn’t be surprised by this answer. It stings anyway. “You’re a terrible liar, Will.”

His knife slips, hitting the cutting board, and the heavy wooden handle sends it clattering to the floor.

“Fuck!” He jumps back, the knife just missing his foot. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s just a knife,” I say, but his face tightens, and again I wonder what is happening behind his eyes, what memories are repeating in endless torment that he won’t speak out loud. “I mean… I mean, it’s fine. You’re fine. I’ll grab a clean one.”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats. “I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not.” Where is all this coming from? I bite my lip when I turn away, hoping he can’t see the worry on my face.

He shakes his head, mutters, “Thanks,” once I hand him a fresh knife, then clamps his mouth closed and starts to cut again.

I keep my eyes on the silky ribbons of potato skin piling up under my paring knife. Maybe I’ve made a mistake, bringing him in here. “Will…”

He doesn’t answer. Doesn’t glance my way.

“You can talk to us, you know.”

“What do you want to talk about?”

I hate that fucking tone, the one he uses when he wants to piss off whoever he’s talking to, and I don’t understand why he’s using it against me. I breathe in through my nose, trying to scrape up my patience. “Anything. That’s all I’m saying.”

Thud. Metal on wood. Thud. Thud. “Why didn’t you ever tell us about your family?”

I nearly nick my thumb. He’s really determined to get under my skin. He knows very well I don’t want to talk about it.

But.

I glance over at him, at his gaze that doesn’t leave the bobbing knife, up and down, up and down. For an instant, I’m under an overcast sky, watching Jamie and Bree Cooper stare down the constabulary to make a trade for his freedom. For an instant, his bruises are still fresh—deep purple and mottled grey and stark against his skin. “Because I didn’t want to.”

“Why?”

If I bite down any harder on my tongue, it’s going to bleed. “Because…” I don’t know how honest I should be—how honest I want to be, or how honest he wants me to be. “I left because of a fight with my father. He said… He did something that hurt me. A lot. No, not like that,” I say quickly, watching his face change. “Just… We had different ideas about what my life should be, and when he realized those two ideas could never be reconciled, he had something to throw right in my face. And when he did that…” I swallow the lump in my throat. “I said some awful things, too. In front of my stepmother. In front of Verie. And then I walked out the door and said I was never coming back.”

“You did come back, though.”

“I know.”

“Is all that why you never told us your real last name?”

I wince. “No. I…” God, it’s complicated. “Well, I was so pissed off. I didn’t want to use that name when I left. And then once we started IA…” I bite the inside of my cheek as I finish speaking. What would be different if Jamie had had the same foresight as me, all those years ago? If the constables hadn’t had his real name?

Silence.

When Will speaks again, the antagonizing tone is gone. “But I still don’t really get why you never even mentioned that you had a family.”

“You actually want to know? You probably won’t like it.”

He nods, still not looking at me.

“I thought…” God, it’s embarrassing now. “I was scared you three would… I don’t know. You and Jamie, your parents died, and Geoff, well, I’m not exactly sure what happened to his family, but I’m pretty sure they’re not around anymore, and I thought… I thought if you knew I had this big stupid fucking house and all this bullshit, you might… I don’t know.”

“You thought we’d be pissed about it?”

“Well, I thought maybe you’d resent me. That I had all that and…left.”

The time before he answers lasts a little longer, dragging between us. “That’s fucking stupid.”

I burst out laughing.

Despite how he still won’t meet my eye, how his hands are shaking ever so slightly, Will wears a tiny smile, too.

“Are things better now?” he asks. “Or…getting better, or…whatever?”

Are they? They must be. When I came back from Allan’s after finding Jamie there and promising to bring them somewhere safe, I was ready to do anything to get my father to send his carriage. I’d have driven it myself. Fallen to my knees and begged. Pulled out my knife and forced him to let us borrow it.

In the end, I did none of those things. I didn’t need to. He took one look at my face, listened to my request, and said yes.

“I think so,” I say, praying he’ll let the subject drop.

We move on to carrots after the potatoes. Will doesn’t complain about the work, which in itself is a wonder, because two months ago he’d have been squirming and doing anything he could to get out of preparing dinner.

“Did you see her?”

“Hmm?” The question pulls me out of my thoughts—ever-present worries about what the hell we’re going to do when winter is over and it’s time to move on.

“The day she left. Did you see her?”

Her. Who? It takes me a moment to realize he means Bree. Oh. “She was there when I first broke in. She was gone by the time I went back to get them with Geoff and my father.”

“Was she all right?” His voice is so quiet, almost timid, like I’ve never heard it before—like he’s scared to ask. Like he’s scared to know the answer.

He hasn’t mentioned her, or what was in the note she left, since I gave it to him, and to be honest, with everything else that’s been going on—being back at home and with Jamie’s recovery and worrying about everyone else every second of every day—I haven’t given her much thought, either.

“She wasn’t hurt bad after the trade,” I say carefully, though that’s something he knows because Allan mentioned the wound on her arm in conversation with Jamie once. She wasn’t hurt wouldn’t be true on its own, but She looked fucking miserable, while true, doesn’t seem like the wisest thing to say to him, right now or ever.

Only the knife on the cutting board answers, until finally he says, “That’s good.”

His knife slips again, and this time a sliver of red appears on his finger. With a hiss, he jumps back, though he manages not to drop his knife on the floor this time.

Time slows, blood seeping from the line along his skin. Will just stares at it.

“Hey.” Dropping what I’m doing, I reach for a clean towel. “Wash that. Come on. Put something on it to stop the bleeding.”

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m…”

After pulling him over to the washbasin and making him clean the cut, I press the towel against his hand. “Will. You’re fine. It’s just a cut. It happens to everyone.”

“Yeah.” He shakes his head. “Sorry. That was stupid. I’m an idiot.”

“For fuck’s sake. No, you’re not.” I grab his other hand and force him to hold the towel himself. “I almost cut myself earlier. Does that make me an idiot?”

Nothing would make me happier than if Will were to look me in the eye, smirk, and say, “Well, yeah.”

He just shakes his head and mutters, “I guess not.”

If I let him, he’ll drift away, wander off still clutching the cloth to his hand, lost in his thoughts, and I can’t help but think his thoughts are probably not the best place for him to be right now.

“Stay here for a few minutes,” I say, keeping my voice light. “Hold that till it stops bleeding and I’ll help you wrap it up. I can finish the rest of the chopping. It’s not much.”

“Thanks, Sp…” Realizing what he’s saying halfway through the word, he stops, and then I get what I’m looking for—a laugh. Short and a little dark, but a chuckle nonetheless. “Thanks, Colette.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I say, turning back to the cutting board. Racking my brain for a topic that will distract him, I settle on, “Why don’t I teach you how to play chess tonight?”

His answer is immediate. “Ugh. No.”

That’s a bit of a surprise. I thought he’d want a bit of levity. A bit of fun. “Really? Why not?”

“I don’t need to learn chess,” he mutters. “It’s just another boring thing to do ins—”

He stops.

When I look up from the cutting board, he’s clenched his jaw. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Will. What?”

Fussing with the towel against his finger, he starts, “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but…”

“But…” I echo, hoping it’ll prompt him to say more. When he hesitates, I add, “You can tell me. I promise I won’t think you’re ungrateful.”

“I just… I…” Will sighs. “I’ve been inside. For… For so long.”

Of course.

Weeks stuck in the dark as a prisoner. Now, weeks stuck here, no longer a prisoner—but not far from it.

“I’m sorry, Will.” The last of the carrots swim in front of me. “I know it must be hard. Really fucking hard.”

“Yeah.” He blows out a long breath. “And I get it. I… I get it. Jamie can’t go anywhere. He—They—They’re probably still looking for me. Us. And now it’s winter and moving around is twice as hard. And we’re lucky to be here at all, and I know that. I know that. But still…”

He quietens, and I know I won’t get much more out of him.

I wait for my vision to clear before I dip my hands in some clean water and turn to him. “Let’s see how that finger’s looking.”

Gingerly, I check on the state of his cut. It already seems to be finished bleeding. “Beautiful.” This hyperbolic accolade makes him snort.

“Here’s a different idea,” I say when it’s bandaged properly. “Want me to cut your hair?”

This, he considers, which is a good thing, because that moppy head is a complete mess.

“Come on,” I say, elbowing him in the side. “You look like a shaggy dog.”

“Yeah,” he says, reaching up to tug at his hair, which is brushing his shoulders now. “Guess you probably should. It’s pretty bad, isn’t it?”

“You can say that again.”

I don’t say the next thing that comes to mind, which is that my silly sister is probably going to mourn the loss of his hair—I’ve caught her gazing at him quite openly when she obviously thought no one was paying attention—and I’m probably going to have to make sure she doesn’t do anything unseemly like steal any of it to squirrel away in a locket somewhere. Even though I’ve already told her more than once that pining after the mess of a man in front of me is a ridiculous idea.

“Whatever you’re thinking about,” I warned her the first time I caught her watching him with stars in her eyes, “stop it, now.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she sniffed.

I rolled my eyes and hoped she’d listen.

The second time, I smacked her on her arm and said, “What are you doing? You’re courting disaster. Look at him. He’s a disaster.”

“I know,” she said, her cheeks bright red.

It was only yesterday that I had to say, “Verie, you’re being an idiot. If Father knew you were pining after him, of all people, he’d kick all of us out of here faster than you could blink.”

She just sighed and didn’t bother to deny or argue.

My sister, a naïve fool, falling in love with my friend, an oblivious fool. In fact, the only good thing about this whole stupid scenario is that he’s so fucking oblivious, he hasn’t noticed Verity practically tripping over herself to sit next to him and making excuses to be close to him at every turn.

As if she can sense that I’m thinking about her, Verie herself skips into the kitchen, rosy-cheeked and smiling. “This looks fun! What’s going on here?”

“Chopping vegetables,” I say, rolling my eyes before shooting her a warning look. “Yes. It’s been thrilling.”

She throws back a split-second glare of, You’re so annoying, Lettie before she notices that Will’s hand has a new bandage. “What happened?”

“Kitchen brawl,” says Will solemnly. “But you should see the other guy.”

The look of utter confusion on Verie’s face is priceless. When Will jerks his head toward the pile of chopped carrots, she nearly tumbles over with giggles.

“You’re both ridiculous,” I say. But I, too, am smiling. And the best part: So is Will.

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Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

[Banner ID: A narrow horizontal, rectangular banner featuring a barred archway. The bars and the stone walls evoke the feeling of a dungeon or prison. There are burning candles on either side of the archway. The title of the story, The Prince of Thieves, appears in white text in the centre of the image. The author's username, abbreviated to LPS from littleperilstories, appears in the bottom right corner in partially transparent text. End ID.]

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littleperilstories · 11 months

Text

The Prince of Thieves: Finale III - The Window

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: okay there are a few angsty moments but come on it's the last part it's fine

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Word count: 2547 || Approx reading time: 10ish mins

Part 3: The Window

Teaser: She’s not how I expected to find her—though, honestly, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess I’m probably not how she expected me to be, either.

Will

Well, as far as reunions go, I can’t say this is the one I was hoping for. Or, in fact, expecting.

Bree Cooper gives a shrill, gasping scream and throws herself away from me, her knife plummeting to the ground. Sitting up, I rescue it from the snow, tossing it into the air and watching it spin. After I catch it in my hand again, I hold the knife out for her to take.

“Why the fuck were you sneaking up on me?” she demands, snatching it back. She must be cold. Her cheeks have gone a brilliant shade of red.

“I thought it was you,” I say. Just barely glimpsing her face as walked didn’t quite give me the confidence to know for certain it was her. “I was trying to catch up so I could see your face and make sure. You know. Before I said hello.”

Her voice is still a little gaspy, as if she can’t quite catch her breath. “You scared the hell out of me!”

“Didn’t seem that scared.” I rub the back of my head where it smacked into the frozen ground. “That was a nice move.”

“God, Will!” She closes her eyes. “I could have killed you.”

I can’t help it. I raise my eyebrows, trying not to laugh and hoping she won’t be hurt. “You think?”

Her eyes snap open just in time to catch the look on my face. “It’s not funny.”

“It’s a little funny.”

She stares at me, and I wish I could know what she’s thinking. So much has changed since the last time we laid eyes on each other.

If I dwell here for too long, I’ll see the cuts on her skin. I’ll hear her muffled screams and sobs. I’ll see her running away to find my brother—the last I saw of her before she vanished.

I’ll feel every moment of loneliness the last year brought, every question, every why? that plagued my sleeping and waking hours.

Not a good idea to dwell.

She’s not how I expected to find her—though, honestly, I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess I’m probably not how she expected me to be, either.

“What are you doing here?”

It strikes me as she asks her question that we’re both still on the ground, literally freezing our asses off in the snow. I get to my feet, wincing as a harsh wind sweeps through the trees. When she starts to do the same, I reach down to help her up.

She hesitates, then presses her gloved hand into mine, letting me pull her upright.

“I needed to go for a walk,” I say, rubbing the sore spot on my head again. She managed to knock my wool hat off. It’s dusted with snow now, but I pull it back on anyway because my ears are stinging from the cold. “The inn we’re staying at’s pretty nice, but it’s noisy. And stuffy. Someone’s kid woke me before the sun was even up.”

“No, I mean…” She sighs, wraps her arms around herself, clutching her elbows. “Here. In town. What are you doing here?”

For a few seconds, I just stare. “Really? That’s what you want to talk about? You want to know the reason we’re in this town? There’s nothing else you want to—”

“Never mind.” Bree turns, and before I know it, she’s moving—walking away from me. Just barely, I hear her whisper, “I knew this was a fucking mistake.”

“Where are you going?” God, this is falling apart fast. Maybe she’s right, maybe this was a mistake. “Just—just—”

If I move fast, if I run, I could catch up, grab her hand, make her look at me, make her tell me why she—

I can’t make my feet follow.

“Just leave me alone,” I hear her say. She doesn’t turn around to face me as she speaks so her voice is hard to catch, drifting away in the wind.

For a moment, I’m ready to. Why should I follow her? Chase her and demand answers she clearly doesn’t want to give? Answers she maybe doesn’t even have? Why should I care?

No.

I lost her and now I’ve found her and she’s here and what if I never see her again, for real? What if this is the last chance? What if destiny is throwing me one last fateful meeting—you wanted this, you stupid bastard, now don’t fuck it up—and there will never be another after today?

You wanted this, Will Wardrew, and you’re a fool if you expected it to be easy.

“I’m following you!” I yell after her. Just in case she decides to pull her knife on me again.

“Why?”

“Because I want to!”

“Why?”

“Because I want to see you! And talk to you!”

Stupid me, I thought that last thing might actually get her to turn around. She just speeds up.

God, I’m an idiot.

I recognize the inn where we’re renting rooms as we get closer—then have to stop and gape as Bree Cooper suddenly kicks into a run and bolts right into it.

“What the fuck?” I don’t mean to shout it out loud, but that’s what happens. A few as scandalized-looking passersby shoot me dirty looks, which I ignore.

“Will?” It’s Colette who speaks, because of course she just happens to be right here, her arms full of whatever she picked up in the market, but it’s Jamie, because of course he’s here, who’s glaring at me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” I look away so I don’t have to see the mix of annoyance and concern on their faces—Here we go, Will’s having one of these days again.

Tilting my gaze upward, I glimpse movement above—movement in one of the windows. A face at the glass. Pale and startled before it vanishes and a white curtain takes its place.

I’m doing it before I’m even really thinking—limbs moving too fast and too recklessly, or at least that’s what I can gather from the furious yells from below.

“What the fuck are you doing? Get down!”

No.

It hurts a bit, more than it would have hurt to do the same thing a year and a half ago, but I manage to swing myself onto the pitiful balcony outside Bree Cooper’s window.

“Get down from there, you idiot! Do you want someone to summon the police?”

They’re right, they’re absolutely right. I should get down, apologize, help Colette in her frantic insistence to strangers on the street that I’m not some sort of depraved predator breaking through some girl’s window. Yeah. I should jump back down.

I rap my knuckles against the glass.

When Bree appears, she looks mad, but I’m expecting that. “Can you let me in?” I ask. “It’s cold out here.”

“For fuck’s sake! What the hell did you do?”

“I climbed up here.”

“God, Will! Why?”

“Saw you at the window and it seemed easier to climb than take the stairs and figure out which room was yours.”

With a groan, she pulls me inside, but she loses her balance and we both spill onto the floor with a thud.

“Oh,” I say, still able to hear Colette anxiously trying to save my ass outside, “can you maybe just yell down there that I’m not some pervert here to attack you or whatever?”

“No,” she says. “I am not drawing attention to the fact that I just let you into my room through the window. Get out.” She jumps to her feet and darts for the door. “You’re not supposed to be in here. You’re not allowedin here.”

“Says who?”

“Says my landlady and boss, and I’d like to keep my job, so if you please—”

“Wait,” I say. “Just wait. Please.”

Her hand is on the doorknob. Shaking. But not twisting. “What do you want, Will?”

Every question I’ve had for her in the past year gutters and dies in my throat, coming out only as, “I want to know if you’re all right.”

“I’m fine.” Her voice quivers. “Now can you please leave before I get in trouble?”

“Will that make you happy, if I leave?”

Bree nods.

With a sigh, I head for the door, and she opens it for me. The moment I cross the threshold, though, I turn again. “Now give me a real answer. Are you all right?”

Her look of sadness morphs into one of shock, then into a glare, as she realizes I’ve left my hand against the doorframe.

“Please don’t break my fingers,” I say. If she wants to slam the door in my face, she’s either going to have to wrestle me away from it or close it on my hand.

“For fuck’s sake,” she whispers. “You’re so annoying.”

“You’re not the first person to ever tell me that.”

Bree laughs—actually laughs, and it is one of irritation, no doubt, but it’s real. “Why are you doing this?”

“I spent over a year wondering if you were dead.”

“I’m not.”

“Why’d you run off like that, Br—”

“It’s Lucy,” she says quickly, her face flushing. “Call me Lucy.”

Good god, a whole life she’s built in a year. A new name, a new job, a new home— “Why’d you leave?”

She closes her eyes, all traces of amusement gone. “Why do you think?”

“You could have stayed. With us. With…”

Bree is already shaking her head. “Did you really want me around? That reminder?”

Yes, is what I want to say. “I was worried.”

“I’m…” She swallows hard. “I’m sorry. I felt like it was the right thing to do. After…everything.”

“The right thing? Don’t let Allan hear you say that,” I say, and her face goes red again. “He knows you robbed—”

“Don’t let me hear who say what?”

Shit. There he is. On the narrow stairs and drawing closer, from the sound of it. “Nothing! Go away.”

“Is he up there?” Fuck. Jamie sounds pissed. Really pissed. “Tell him if he fucking moves, I’m going to kill him.”

Bree presses a hand to her mouth, and now she’s laughing again. No, there are tears on her cheeks—no, it’s both. She’s crying and laughing at once. “I think you might actually be the one in trouble.”

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Jamie keeps his voice down as he appears on the landing of the stairwell, probably trying not to disturb any of the other guests but failing miserably. “What the fuck were you thinking? Were you thinking? Why—”

At the sight of Bree Cooper, and of me blocking her doorway with my arm, he freezes. “Oh, for god’s sake.”

My brother stares, silent and astonished, as if he can’t comprehend what he’s seeing.

“What? Is it him? What’s he doing?” Colette’s voice floats up from one of the lower steps. “Is he all r—”

“Yes. It all fucking makes sense. Go back downstairs. It’s… I’ll tell you in a minute.” To me, managing to still look mad while also looking kind of like he wants to laugh, he says, “We are going to talk about that shit you just pulled. You’re lucky Colette can sweet-talk anyone.”

“Fuck off, Jamie,” I say as he disappears, and he actually does bark out a laugh.

Bree starts to giggle, too, letting go of the door and sliding to the ground, one hand pressed to her head. “This is… This is all so ridiculous.”

“I found you. Again. Again,” I say. “I’m not just…”

I’m not just letting you disappear this time doesn’t seem like something I can say, or should say, so I let the words break off.

I, too, lower down so we’re both sitting on the floor—Bree inside her room, me in the hall. It’s going to be irritating for someone who wants to get past, but right now, I don’t care. “I was worried.” It isn’t until the words are out that I realize I’ve already said them. “Really…worried.”

Nervously, she twists her fingers. “I know. I’m sorry. I truly am.”

“You were all right?” I ask. I know I’m repeating myself yet again, but I need to know. To know for sure. “After… You know, after everything?”

She takes her time in answering. “I suppose. After some time. It wasn’t easy.”

“You must’ve been lonely.”

“I’ve always been lonely.”

Fuck. Fuck.

“Were you?” she asks softly. “Were you all right? After?”

That is not an easy question to answer.

She’s still twisting her hands together, and it’s starting to make me anxious, too. I hold out my hand instead, hoping she’ll take it. To my surprise, she does.

“Not really,” I say.

Her head tilts to the side, and the unruly braid of her hair slides off her shoulder and behind her back. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault I tried to kill Allan at least twice.”

“Allan,” she murmurs. “He’s still with you.” I nod. “So, you didn’t succeed in killing him.”

“No. Not yet, anyway.”

That gets another laugh out of her. Once it fades, she asks, “You got my letter, though, right?”

“Yeah.” I don’t tell her I still have it. “It didn’t make me feel any better.”

She bites her lip, and her eyes get this sheen in them that wasn’t there before. “I’m sorry. I thought it might… I don’t know, I thought it might help somehow.”

“I would’ve rather just talked to you.”

She shakes her head. “Do you really mean that, Will?”

“Yeah. I do.” There’s a lump in my throat now. “Because I never thanked you. For running back. For—for Jamie. For saving him. I owe you. I owe you for that.”

For a few moments, only the faint sounds of the dining room downstairs answer me.

No laughter now—just tears. Silent, heavy, sorrowful tears, streaking down her face.

When she tries to tug her hand away to wipe her eyes, I grip a little tighter. Reach out my free hand to wipe her tears. Like I’ve done before.

“Don’t, Will.” Her voice is a whisper as she leans away. “Please.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t take it. I can’t.”

I don’t know what that means, but I pull my one hand back and let go with the other. She scrubs her face with her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles.

“Don’t be sorry.”

The tiniest smile pulls at her lips, and she changes the subject. “Are you staying for long?”

Something about the topic switch, the mundanity of this question, makes my stomach sink a little. “I don’t know. Might go somewhere new in the spring. Probably a bit snowy now to go anywhere far. You?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. It’s all right here. I guess.”

An old woman opens her door and totters out into the hall. She must be at least a hundred and fifty; there’s no way she’s going to be able to step around or over me.

Sighing, I scooch closer to Bree’s door until there’s enough room for her to pass, and I realize only once the woman’s halfway down the stairs that Bree didn’t move, and our bodies are pressed against one another’s.

Ending A: it ends with a kiss

Ending B: it ends with a promise

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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: Finale II - The Woods

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: being followed, fear of attack/getting jumped

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Word count: 1612 || Approx reading time: 7 mins

Part 2: The Woods

Teaser: Goodness, I truly was a fool to think that the past would never catch up to me. Perhaps deep down, I knew that at some point, some part of my old life would leak into this one—the meeting of Bree and Lucy.

Bree

Sleeping is impossible, and when I rise in the morning, I’m more tired than when I fell into bed. Victoria is still dead to the world, but she won’t be for long. It’s my day off, but not hers, and perhaps any minute now she’ll be up, too, and then I might have to face her questions. I managed to avoid them last night by pretending to be fast asleep when she came up to bed. If she catches me now, though, I won’t be able to escape her interrogation.

And I do not want to talk.

Goodness, I truly was a fool to think that the past would never catch up to me. Perhaps deep down, I knew that at some point, some part of my old life would leak into this one—the meeting of Bree and Lucy.

It just feels so soon.

I know it’s not, not really. It’s been over a year now since I left the city. Long enough that the bitterness of that day, of slipping away in the late-autumn freeze, has faded. I’ve almost managed to forget how piercing the wind felt as I wended through the streets looking for a shawl or a blanket to swipe from somewhere. It’s a distant memory, how frightened I was that someone would look at the fading-but-visible marks on my face and start asking uncomfortable questions. A long, long year since I caught one of the last trains out of town before the snow came, my ticket purchased with stolen money.

Money I took from a man who was eating in this very inn last night.

Fuck.

I throw myself into my whites, making sure to pull on an extra pair of stockings to ward against the cold, then hunt for my heaviest dress, a dark blue woollen one. It’s pretty, but it is the warmth of the wool that I’m after, because I can’t stay in here. Here, where Victoria can ask too many questions; here, where the inner circle of IA and the doctor who betrayed the constabulary might be sleeping as we speak.

And I need to think.

They didn’t see me. Of that, I’m mostly confident. None of them were even looking my way when I fled the room. I’m safe. Surely, I’m safe.

My hands are shaking when I grab my coat and yank it over my arms. I drop my heavy grey shawl twice before I manage to tie it around my shoulders.

Air—that’s all I need. Clean, fresh, biting air. It will wake me up and clear my head and perhaps quieten some of the panicked thoughts that simply will not stop screaming through my mind.

“And where do you think you’re going?”

Son of a bitch.

Stella, the inn’s owner and my boss, is already downstairs, sitting in her favourite spot by the window with her hands wrapped around a hot cider. I can hear Celeste, her friend who helps her with the inn who everyone knows is her lover, rustling around in the kitchen, singing softly to herself. “In vain you tell your parting lover / You wish fair winds may waft him over…”

“Thought you were sick,” Stella says, narrowing her eyes. Her hair is more grey than gold at this point, and sometimes Victoria and I have noticed that she looks a bit like a prune with all her wrinkles, but her mind is sharper than that of possibly anyone else I’ve ever met. She’s going to want answers about why I disappeared during the dinner rush last night, and I don't think she’ll be very gentle in her words at all if she’s not satisfied with the ones I give.

“Alas! what winds can happy prove / That bear me far from what I love?”

I draw a long breath and try to look pathetic. “I… I am. Yes. I am sick. I’m going to see the doctor.”

“You want me to send for him now?” She narrows her eyes. “Fetch him here? Shouldn’t go walking about in the cold if you’re ill.”

“Alas! what dangers on the main / Can equal those that I sustain / From slighted vows and cold disdain?”

“No—No, that’s all right,” I say, trying to not stammer too much, which is hard when her piercing gaze is boring right into me. “I’m feeling a bit better, but I think perhaps I should just…”

Stella looks me up and down with undisguised suspicion. “You better not be in a delicate condition there, little miss Lucy, or you’ll have to go somewhere else.”

“A… A delicate condition?” She stares into my very soul until I finally realize what she means, and when I do, my face burns hot as coals. “No! No, it isn’t that. It can’t be. I promise.”

“I hope for your sake, Lucy,” Stella says, “that you’re telling the truth. Being unmarried but working hard is one thing. Being unmarried and—”

My voice is nothing more than a squeak. “I’m not—”

A clatter interrupts my frantic insisting. “Now, Stella.” It’s Celeste calling, still invisible, from the kitchen, clearly eavesdropping now that she’s done singing. “Leave the poor girl alone and let her get on.”

Bless Celeste and her gentle heart. She’s the less terrifying of the two of them.

“Thank you,” I mumble, heading for the door. “I’ll be back later.”

The cold air, instead of being painful as it sometimes is in the dead of winter, soothes the burning in my cheeks. A delicate condition, indeed. All Victoria and I do is work. When does she think, exactly, I’ve had the time to get myself into a delicate condition?

That was a conversation I never expected to have with my employer, and I pray I will never have it ever again.

Dawn breaks smoothly and sweetly over the town. I clamber through the snow to the top of the hill, panting a little when I get there but feeling glad I made the climb. By some stroke of luck, I get there just in time to enjoy the sunrise, relishing how it spreads a warm glow over the town’s roofs, turrets, and gables. The dawn promises it will be beautiful today, with a sky clear and blue, a welcome gift after the stormy gloom of yesterday. The morning rays are a balm—somewhat—to my nervous, restless mind.

It isn’t long before my thoughts shove past my sorry attempt to be present in this beautiful winter morning.

He’s here. They’re here.

Up on the hilltop, alone, I can look back on yesterday evening with some small sliver of distance. With no one else around, just me and my memories and my thoughts, I can clasp onto the strange, wiggly feeling that kept me up all night.

Astonishment I felt, yes, but that isn’t what had me tossing and turning.

Terror—that too, but again, it is not terror I’ve captured up here where no one else can see what is surely plain on my face.

No, it’s something else entirely—remarkable, unfamiliar, unbearable, and freakish, let loose after a year of being heaped in a corner gathering dust.

Happiness.

Joy.

They’re here—he’s here—and he’s all right.

He is safe and alive.

I feel a tug on that thread, beckoning me to follow that feeling, coaxing me, telling me to caress that gossamer string so it can show me what thoughts await me at the other end. I do not obey. I’m not ready to face down those thoughts, those feelings.

I don’t think I am, anyway.

Am I?

How long I stand in the snow, it’s difficult to tell, but when my toes begin to go numb, I know it’s time to get moving again. A little regretfully, I say goodbye to the glistening sun that bounces off the town below, then make my way down the hillside again.

I wind my way through the woods, walking slowly and humming Celeste’s song in a feeble attempt to occupy my mind. The closer I get to town, however, the louder my worries grow. What if Will and the others are still there? What if they’re staying at Stella’s inn—my inn? What if the next time we cross paths, I can’t get away from them? What will I say if that happens? Do I want that to happen?

Do I want to see him face to face?

I don’t.

I do.

Would he want to see me?

I…

So deafening are the worries in my head that I notice too late that there are footsteps behind me, crunching through the snow.

Growing faster. Heading right toward me.

Someone’s chasing me.

For a moment, I’m frozen with fear.

Fuck this. I’ve been here before. I have been frightened and helpless. Powerless against stronger arms held against me—my father, that man in the alley, Hatchett, Michaelson. I have been powerless against the fucking world, but I will not be again.

I am not the same girl from that alley, nor the girl I was a year ago.

I spin and leap for my attacker before he can get his hands on me, the element of surprise acting as my other weapon as I sweep my foot against his legs and knock him to the goddamn ground, my blade pressed against his throat.

“If you fucking lay a finger on me, you fucking pervert—”

“Whoa,” Will Wardrew says, his eyes wide. He has the gall to look impressed instead of scared, even though he’s the one flat on the ground with a knife at his neck. “Hey, Bree. Where in hell did you learn to do that?”

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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: Finale I - The Inn

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: uhhh...baby spit-up?, vague mention of someone dying?

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✨ Did you come here from Chapter 49? There are two bonus chapters that come between 49 and 50:

💚 Box in Your Heart (Colette and Will)

🍂 Are You Nobody, Too? (Bree and Henry)

Word count: 1590 || Approx reading time: 7 mins

If you normally read on Ao3, the whole dang Chapter 50 (in all its obscene-word-count glory) will go up on Thursday like usual. If you wanna read it in its three parts, keep an eye on Tumblr.

If you normally read on Tumblr but would rather read the whole freakin thing in one fell swoop, Thursday is your day. :)

Part 1: The Inn

Teaser: The innkeepers called her Lucy, and they certainly had no reason to suspect that it might not be her name at all.

The well-travelled road that connected the harbour towns to the inland ones was dotted with villages, and in these villages, one could always find a place to spend the night. Even in the throes of winter, when the winds howled most violently and the snows sometimes blocked the road entirely, inns and taverns were chock-full, brimming with customers, spilling from the seams with road-worn travellers and familiar locals seeking food, wine, and the company of others.

In one such inn, nestled in a cozy town that had been built up perfectly midway between the city and the great lake to which so many tourists flocked in the summer, as a deep snow fell beyond the steamy glass windows, a girl was working. She was bone-weary most days, and just a bit shabbier than the other inn girl, but she smiled at her patrons nonetheless. It was a winning smile, coy when it needed to be, shy sometimes, wide and beaming at others. The innkeeper, a widow who split her managerial duties with a dear friend who shared her lodgings on the top floor, had never seen any reason to suspect that there was anything strange about the girl. They didn’t mind that she was often quiet; in fact, they rather preferred it. They’d noticed her slap away a few too-bold gentlemen a few times in the months since she’d come to them looking for a job, but that hadn’t caused any trouble so far, and as they figured, many a young woman would do the same if a handsy customer forgot himself when he was a bit too deep in his cups.

The innkeepers called her Lucy, and they certainly had no reason to suspect that it might not be her name at all.

On this night, as the dinner rush roared to life, raucous and frenzied, keeping the girls running without a moment’s rest, as the innkeeper and her dear friend barked orders and roasted chicken and boiled potatoes and kept watchful eyes over the dining room, and as the snow that had been falling steadily throughout the day finally began to wane in its onslaught against the frozen earth, the girl whose name was not Lucy was run ragged. The table in the corner demanded more beer; the family by the window had an infant who had just spit up onto the floor, and while she thought the child to be a charming little thing, he had just increased her workload significantly, for she did not know where there was even a clean towel to be found; and a little boy had just darted gleefully in front of her as he raced around the room, very nearly causing her to spill a glass of wine down the front of her dress.

The girl, whose name was not Lucy but Breanna, and who preferred to be called Bree when she wasn’t telling people to call her Lucy, gave herself a single moment to feel proud that she had managed not to soak herself in blood-red wine before she hurried to the customer who awaited the drink, an old man who appeared to her eyes to be well on his way to one hundred.

The old man thanked her quietly as he accepted the wine, slipping an extra coin into her palm before she scurried away to help the family by the window. The girl whose name he did not remember most days reminded him of his daughter who had died many years ago. He liked to see her smile. Sometimes, however, he thought that she looked sad, when she was behind the bar, facing away from the innkeeper and the woman who was not her wife, when the room was quieter and less hectic, when she seemed to believe no one was looking. The old man never asked the girl if she held anguish in her heart. He merely hoped it was his failing eyes and the poor light from the fire and the lamps that made her look so sorrowful.

So intent was the girl no one called Bree on finding a clean towel—desperate to avoid using her own apron to assist the harried-looking mother with her child—that she did not notice a shadow pass by the window, heralding the arrival of yet another group of guests.

“I’ll find you something,” she promised the mother, who nodded gratefully while the child flung his arms into the air and caught his father on the chin with his fist.

“Check the crate below the stairs!” Calling a suggestion of where she might find a towel, the other inn girl gave Bree’s hand a squeeze as they passed each other, the other arm wholly occupied as she carried a steaming bowl of soup to the boy who had nearly spilled the old man’s wine mere minutes before. It was his second bowl of soup; he had knocked the first one to the floor in a fit of excitement over a story his older sister was telling, and while the innkeeper had initially insisted that the family must pay full price for the second bowl, she’d capitulated when the boy had fixed her with a wide green gaze and given her a gap-toothed grin, and she and the sister had agreed that half-price would do instead.

Bree unlatched the stair-cupboard door, found the crate in question, and rummaged around until she found a stack of ratty but mostly clean cloth. Murmuring a few words of exhausted gratitude coloured with near-silent expletives, she scrambled back to her feet. She took only a moment to appreciate the delightful solitude and relative quiet of the cupboard before she hurried back out into the chaos. The mother accepted the towel gratefully, just in time, as her young son repeated his unsavoury activity from earlier, this time across her shoulder.

Ducking her head to hide an expression that was equal parts amusement and disgust, Bree wiped away the offending substance with her shoe, pinching the soiled towel with two fingers as she hurried to the back to dispose of it.

The other girl, who asked others to call her Victoria and who had no reason to do otherwise as she was indeed named Victoria, smiled broadly and welcomed the group who stumbled in from outside. She bit back a sigh—a group of five, they were, and she was already anticipating the headache it would be to squeeze them in somewhere—but she consoled herself that they were young and pleasant-looking and four of the five were rather handsome fellows who might leave a few extra coins upon the table if she beamed and winked and giggled just so. How striking, she thought, was the melting snow against the coppery-brown hair of two who might have been brothers and the dark beards of the pale, fidgety man and the astoundingly tall one behind him.

Victoria let her gaze rove around the room, searching for a place to seat them but also for her colleague, intending to whisper conspiratorially the next time they brushed elbows, “Have you seen those fine gentlemen who just came in?”

Bree was, in fact, right then returning from the back room, her hands now clean, still dripping water onto the floor. As she noticed the group that had just entered, her footsteps faltered and came to an abrupt stop. Her eyes grew wide; her cheeks grew wan. The old man drinking wine heard her cry out softly in surprise.

Victoria did not hear it, but she gaped in confusion as her friend staggered backwards, face now ghostly white, and then vanished back through the door through which she’d just entered.

“What is wrong with that girl?” the innkeeper demanded. Nothing escaped her eyes or ears. “Where does she think she’s going?”

“I—I think she must be quite ill,” stammered Victoria, unsure of how to answer. “Shall I check on her?”

“No. If she’s ill, we don’t want her anywhere near the guests. You’ll just have to move a little quicker till it calms down in here. Now chop-chop. I’ll come help you when I can.”

Sighing loudly and this time not even attempting to hide it, Victoria hurried across the room to bring the new group to their table.

The young man who had just entered, whose hair did not know if it was red or brown, whose face was sprinkled with freckles and whose body was sprinkled with scars, whose hands were busy brushing the last dregs of snow from his coat, felt a shiver run down his spine. Suddenly, though he did not know from where this feeling struck him, he was quite certain something had happened that he should have seen but had been too distracted to notice. When he looked around the room, however, he saw nothing but merry travellers and piping hot plates of food and frothy pints of beer and the smile of the bargirl who approached to direct them to their table.

At the back of the inn, clothed in nothing but her dress and apron, the girl whose secret was suddenly in great peril clung to the wooden doorway, gasping in the frigid night air, tears freezing to crystals of ice upon her lashes. For she knew that group who had just come in for a meal, knew their faces and their names and their past. This was not what frightened her.

Breanna Cooper knew that group, and worst of all, she knew they knew her, too.

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✨ Did you come here from Chapter 49? There are two bonus chapters that come between 49 and 50:

💚 Box in Your Heart (Colette and Will)

🍂 Are You Nobody, Too? (Bree and Henry)

Next time on The Prince of Thieves:

Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

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littleperilstories · 11 months

Text

The Prince of Thieves: I Think I Need a Sunrise, I'm Tired of the Sunset

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Angst, self-doubt

If you want even MORE angst for this chapter, consider playing Playlist Roulette for some emo vibes:

[possible spoilers] Song 1 / Song 2 / Song 3 / Song 4 / Song 5

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Word count: 1739 || Approx reading time: 7 mins

I Think I Need a Sunrise, I'm Tired of the Sunset

Teaser: Out there, leaking through those gaps in the curtain, is the sun, the world, the life I thought I might never get to see. A life I’m only just lucky enough to be facing now. I want to be thrilled, I want to feel safe, I want to be grateful. One thought, however, beats me black and blue from the inside.

Bree

When Spider—no, her name is Colette, what a beautiful name—disappears, I leave Jamie to talk with Allan, who is skittish now about a million different things. About making the musket wound worse; about the constables coming after him, too; about the fact that he inadvertently joined a gang in his act of betrayal against Bulwell, Hatchett, Michaelson, and the rest; and probably about more stealthy intruders sneaking in through his window to threaten him with a knife.

I suppose I can’t blame him.

Silently, I leave them to argue about whether Jamie should take whatever tincture Allan gave him earlier, something to dull his senses and ease his pain. Jamie is staunchly trying to refuse it, insisting he doesn’t want to be unconscious or out of it when he and Will are reunited. So far, he is winning that dispute, but Allan seems confident he will prevail in the end—once Jamie actually tries to move and fully understands what it feels like to pull on the musket wound. I hope Allan does get his way, because every time I look at Jamie, I cringe, remembering what I said and wondering why I decided to say it, and every time he looks at me, I can’t imagine his thoughts are very charitable.

Trying to forget for a just a few moments how exhausted—and embarrassed—I am, I curl up by the front window, relishing the sliver of light that peeks through Allan’s drawn curtains. The rain, it seems, has stopped now, and some tenacious streak of sunlight has managed to break through the earlier clouds. The gentle light is comforting, but not enough to calm me. To caln the frantic fluttering of my heart and the churning of my stomach and the boiling in my chest at the thought of what comes next.

Reunited. Altogether. Off to Colette’s family home, to the others, to Will.

The curtains are old, tattered at the bottom and moth-eaten throughout. The longer I sit there, trying to even my breath, I find more ragged holes letting in the fading light. I count them—One. Two. Three. On and on.

Out there, leaking through those gaps in the curtain, is the sun, the world, the life I thought I might never get to see. A life I’m only just lucky enough to be facing now. I want to be thrilled, I want to feel safe, I want to be grateful. One thought, however, beats me black and blue from the inside.

I don’t belong here.

It’s true, isn’t it? When Jamie, Colette, Geoff, and I were united with the common goal of getting Will out of prison, our alliance made perfect sense. Their family was torn apart, and I was able—I wanted—to help in reuniting them.

Now, in a few short hours—if that—their family will be stitched back together; perhaps the threads are a little frayed, perhaps some repairing needs to be done, but they’ll be whole again.

They don’t need me anymore, and more than that, why would they want me? I am the one who just tried to pick a fight with a wounded man, hours after he almost died, over something that didn’t even have to do with me. I am the one who brought Hatchett right to that cabin in the woods and nearly ruined things for everyone. I am the one who gave Hatchett the bit of information he needed to see through Will’s lies.

Jamie needed me to get Will, then Will needed me to get Jamie, and now Colette will bring them together, and perhaps it’s best for everyone that my presence is no longer needed at all.

Of course, I heard what she said—that Allan and I should both go as well. Never mind that it was an afterthought, something blurted out after she barely even looked at me. It’s more than that. Something about the very idea threatens to splinter me into pieces.

Throwing myself upon the mercy of these strangers—the thought makes my skin crawl. For so long I just had myself; I didn’t need to rely on the charity of others. If I go with Colette, though, I will owe her for her kindness, when I’ve only just repaid Will and Jamie for saving me. I’m not sure I want another debt hanging over my head.

It’s mostly that single prickling thought, though: there’s no real reason for me to stay. Whether I’m here or not, their lives will heal. Go back to the way they were before Will was caught. For them, each new day will dawn kinder and gentler and happier than the one before, until the darkness of our time in prison is nothing more than a tragic memory.

To know that I was only ever a side character in the story of these brothers, to accept that Baden Hatchett’s words are once again true—You aren’t important to them, either—threatens to leave a hole in my heart.

—

Not long after my father died, a few days at most, when he was cold and buried and finally, finally, out of my life, a man named Baden returned to keep his word—a promise that had been made long ago, when things were different. When my family still had money. When I was still a respectable girl. He looked at me with distaste, but at the time, at least, he was willing to hold himself to the agreement he’d made.

“We’ll wed next week,” he said. “You will come with me.”

Next week? I had just escaped from under Father’s thumb; now here was Baden Hatchett, ready to crush me beneath his.

“I’d rather wait,” I said. “It’s too fast. Too early. I…”

He scoffed. “That isn’t for you to decide.”

“What do you mean, it’s not for me to decide? How—”

Even now, I can still hear some of what he said in answer. How dare you argue with me? Don’t you know your place? You think you have any say in this? You know I’m doing you a favour, right? You understand that? You’re the one who needs me. I don’t need you.

Only once did he touch me after my father’s death—just a hand wrapped around my arm as he ordered me out of the shabby apartment where Father had died and into his home. That grip, the first shackle he ever locked me into—it was a message, a reminder that I was his and would remain so until I was dead. Later, upon my skin, I found bruises in the shape of fingerprints, purple and throbbing.

It was nothing less than hatred that fuelled every step that night when I crept from the house, never to return. I slid along the floor in stocking feet, terrified of every floorboard and how it creaked, the bolt and how it scraped, my breath and how it gasped loud enough to fill the air, my heart and how it pounded in my chest, threatening to shake his home to rubble.

Perhaps it was luck, perhaps fate, perhaps a goddamn miracle. He heard nothing. He slept through my escape, and I made it outside. It was out of spite as much as precaution that I left the front door wide open, an invitation for moths and spiders and rats, for some other unfortunate creature to invade his house and take my place as some spineless, obedient thing that he could squash beneath his boot.

Today, however…

It isn’t hate, I think, that fuels this escape. In fact, it is perhaps something quite the opposite.

James Wardrew falls asleep while he waits, senses dulled and pain softened in the wake of the doctor’s victory, and Allan Armstrong Dale busies himself with choosing which possessions he wishes to bring into his new life as an outlaw—as he now wryly calls himself. While they are both distracted, I pinch a pen and some paper from Allan’s desk. He’s got an odd assortment of things strewn across its disorderly surface: coins and sheets of music and buttons and other bits, too, that might be of some value, at least. Surely things he will not miss.

My cruel, wicked imagination whispers things to ink onto the page. I should free these sentiments today, it murmurs, so I can live my life without the stinging regret of things unsaid. If I immortalize my thoughts on this page, if I say what’s in my heart, Will Wardrew might look back at them and remember me without disgust or hurt or betrayal. At the very least, maybe he will remember me with a sense of peace.

Maybe he will remember me as I will remember him.

It whispers to me that I should tell him he was the only thing that made my prison cell bearable. Tell him, it murmurs, how you fear Hatchett will never give up. Tell him that you don’t want another constable to lay hands on him ever again.

Tell him, it hisses. That I don’t want him to have to look at my face and remember every moment of suffering he went through with me. Because of me.

That I wish him health and happiness.

Tell him how you get a peculiar feeling at the thought of never seeing him again. Tell him that it makes leaving so much harder. Tell him that strange feeling is why you must leave. Tell him this is for the best.

In the end, I write very little.

In the end, it is mostly an empty page.

Goodbye, I think, but I cannot say the word out loud. Jamie still sleeps. Allan is fussing with his medicines. Will…

Will, I can only hope, is all right.

Goodbye, and thank you, and I’m sorry.

The wind is bitter when I slip out the door. I will have to find a few more clothes from somewhere if I am to survive the cold. No matter. I’ve done this before. I can do it again.

Into the wintry dusk. Into streets full of constables, of strangers who would turn me in, perhaps go running straight to Hatchett if they knew. Into a new life, a new town, a new name. Into a second chance.

I’m on my own, but that is nothing to fear. It means that this life—this new life—is mine. And mine alone.

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Here's the full list of songs, whose lyrics range from "vaguely match the vibe" to "nauseatingly on the nose." Enjoy!

Boston / I Will Remember You / Dare You to Move / On My Own / Bleed / Tongue Tied / Gotta Go My Own Way

Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: Every Man Must Choose His Way

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Gunshot wound, stitches, angst

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Word count: 3189 || Approx reading time: 13 mins

Every Man Must Choose His Way

Teaser: At my gasp—pain is ripping through my entire goddamn abdomen—Bree Cooper jerks awake in the chair where she was dozing. For a moment, I do not know where I am or why everything hurts or what happened that led up to this moment.

Jamie

When Will and I were kids, things were easy and soft, even when they weren’t. He was always pissing someone off, and yet miraculously he always seemed to worm his way out of things, and sometimes he even managed to get what he wanted. Including the time he came home with the dog.

“You can’t keep it,” I remember telling him. “Joe will kill you.” I liked to think of myself as the man of the house back then, when Dad was away building the new railroad along the stretch of coast that would eventually become his tomb. And I knew our landlord Joe wouldn’t be happy if we suddenly had a dog yelping into the deep hours of the night.

That was how it always was: Will did something silly, and I tried to talk him out of it.

He turned his ridiculous eyes to me with a mournful expression that so perfectly matched the puppy he was clutching in his arms that suddenly I forgot all the reasons we couldn’t keep a dog.

Just as I can still hear my time-misted voice, so stern and childish at once, telling him to take it back where he found it, I can still see, too, the look on his face when I went back on my refusal. “Fine,” I said, “but that mutt is yours. You need to take care of it.”

“She’s not a mutt,” he insisted. “She’s perfect.”

She was—which was less than true about the next puppy he brought home a few days later.

“Don’t even think about it!” I had no idea where he was even finding those beasts, and I never found out.

“Jamie, look at her!”

Some cursed compulsion had me stretching out my hand to stroke the dog’s silky ears. She took one look at me, sank her little puppy teeth into my thumb, and we were inseparable for years.

If Will was chaos, his pup was calm. If I was reason, then my dog was pure bedlam.

“I’ll never understand why you chose that one,” Ma said. It was a few months before she died. Her eyes were still clear, body failing but her mind still with us. I think I was nursing a new scratch along my arm, cursing and swearing while the damn creature sat on her haunches looking at me with a look of innocence on her deceptive goddamn little face.

“Neither do I,” I grumbled, pressing a mass of cotton to my arm to soak up the blood. But I knew—and Ma did, too—that if anything had happened to her, I would have fallen apart.

Ma blinked and smiled and puckered her lips at my little mutt as if to kiss her. The dog growled back.

When I open my eyes, Ma is gone, and so are the dogs. So is Will.

At my gasp—pain is ripping through my entire goddamn abdomen—Bree Cooper jerks awake in the chair where she was dozing. For a moment, I do not know where I am or why everything hurts or what happened that led up to this moment.

Fuck.

“How are you…” Bree’s words trail off when I try to shift. “Wait. Wait for Allan. Don’t pull on the—”

The wound.

God, I took a fucking musket ball in my side.

Allan. I can dimly conjure his image, though he doesn’t seem to be in the room now. Earlier, I woke up with rain pelting me in the face, and he was there, soaked through and perfectly calm, giving Bree Cooper quiet instructions as if he’d been born to patch up torn flesh in the mud.

“Will,” I manage. God, I sound rough. “Is he… Did he…” I remember gasping at her in the mud, feeling the sickening mix of icy rain and blood gushing hot against my skin. He got out. “He did get away, right?”

Bree nods. “With Geoff.”

“Hurt?” She shakes her head. “Both of them?”

“They were both all right, I think.”

Although it seems like she’s about to say something, she cuts herself off when someone else enters—the mysterious Allan, I suppose.

“Hello.” He pauses next to me, and I realize I’m sprawled not on a bed but on a table. “I’m pleased to see you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Like I got shot? Instead of answering, I say, “I don’t know you.”

“I’m Allan. I’m the med—” He stops. “I’m a doctor. I’ve done my best to patch up that wound in your side.”

“Where the hell did you come from?” Bree and Allan exchange a glance that appears almost wary, and I wonder what the fuck I missed while I was bleeding and unconscious. When no one responds, I ask, “Why are you helping us?”

Again, that long pause.

“I just got out of training,” says Allan, and I’ll take it, even though that doesn’t answer the question. “Wrote my exam a few weeks ago. Took the first job I was offered—for the constabulary.” The moment he sees me trying to jerk upright, he presses a hand to my shoulder. It’s embarrassing how little pressure it takes to push me back down. “I do not work for them anymore.”

“I don’t understand.” Pressure is building in my chest, panic, fuck, it’s getting harder to breathe.

“I’ve seen how they… What they’re like behind closed doors.” He glances at Bree and her cuts. “I cannot respect them. I certainly can’t work for them.”

Slogging through everything he’s said, I ask, “You met Will?”

“Briefly, yes.”

“Was he hurt bad?”

“Not as badly as before they hired me, from what I understand.” At this, Bree turns her head away. The only one who knows just how bad it was before.

“How do I know we can trust you?” I don’t think I’ll be able to take it if he says, You don’t.

He absently reaches into what I assume is a bag somewhere behind my head, rummaging quietly within. “I tried…” He clears his throat, as if he isn’t sure how to go on. “I tried. To help your brother with what I could. He wouldn’t let me get too close.”

I think of Will on his knees, held down by the constables, looking at me with hollow terror in his eyes.

“And I don’t blame him.” Allan shudders. “He looked at me with such…” The thought ends abruptly, and he stops fiddling with whatever is in his bag. “I saw the way the constables treated him and everyone else in there. I don’t blame him for not trusting me.”

Somewhere in the distance, I can hear other voices, footsteps, the clattering of pots and pans, the scraping of chairs. Must be some sort of boardinghouse where he lives. A regular house, out in the real world, not the one we made for ourselves through IA, just people going about their lives, unbothered by constables and the back-breaking terror of living on the edge every single day. What would be different if I had worked harder to catch that kind of future in my hands rather than grasping the one I did? How would Will’s life have turned out? Who would he—we—be instead?

“I think he might’ve tried to bite me if he got the chance.” The corners of Allan’s mouth twitch, so I can tell he’s trying to be funny, and I know I should be pissed off at the joke. But I’m so tired, and everything hurts like hell, and if I’m being honest, he’s probably right. Grudgingly, I mutter as much out loud.

“I’m sorry for leaving you on the table like this.” Allan gestures to my less-than-comfortable bedding. “I didn’t want to risk moving you. You lost a lot of blood with all the moving around earlier.”

“I don’t care.” Hell, does he think I haven’t slept on a hard floor before? It’s not much different. “Is it bad?”

He tips his head from side to side, as if he’s deciding how to answer. “The musket ball wasn’t lodged in there, but still—it’s worse than that,” he says, nodding towards Bree, and for the first time I notice the bandage around her upper arm. “I’ll need to watch carefully for infection. Black powder is… Well, it can be nasty.”

“It didn’t hurt when I fell.” I frown as I try to remember. “Not really.”

“Well, it will if it becomes infected.” Allan peers down at the bandages on my side. “I’d prefer not to disturb those just yet. How is your pain now?”

“Unpleasant.”

That gets tight smiles out of both of him and Bree. “I mean, how strong is your pain at the moment?”

“Unpleasantly strong.”

Nodding, sighing softly, Allan steps back and glances around the room. “Would you prefer to stay where you are, or try to shift to the bed?”

I don’t have to waste much energy on that question; the thought of moving anywhere is nauseating. “I’ll stay.”

A memory drifts to mind—Will sprawled on a table just like I am now, bandages around his abdomen, too. “Gonna have a scar to match Will’s.”

Bree murmurs, “I think I saw that scar. What happened?”

“He jumped into a fight about two years ago.” Thinking of it still makes my insides shrivel. “Being chivalrous. Helping some girl. In a fucking snowstorm, no less.”

Helping some girl he didn’t know. Unbidden, the image of him during the trade invades my thoughts again. For all his faults, when he wants to, Will can be selfless. He’s good. Yet they made him suffer… Again and again, they hurt him…

So lost in this spiral, I miss the look on Bree’s face until Allan prods her gently, “What’s the matter?”

“A—A fight?” She looks stricken. “What happened? How’d he—”

“Stabbed. Don’t know much else.” I don’t know why she cares so much about something that happened years ago. “He was always cagey on the details.”

She’s got her hand pressed to her mouth. I take another few moments to realize she’s holding back tears. “I didn’t know he was hurt so badly that night.”

“Why would you have kn…” I stop, realizing what she’s saying. For fuck’s sake, the universe is cruel—it likes to play tricks—but this is too much. “It was you?”

My memory of that night: whipping wind and a stolen kiss. Colette’s tangled skirts and Will’s bloody shirt. Terror we might never find him, and spilled-over anger when we finally did.

Even though Will told us why he got a knife in his gut that night, I never thought much about the other character in the story, the one I never saw.

“I didn’t know,” she says, slightly frantic, “I really didn’t, I never would have just walked away if I had known—”

Allan is glancing between us, brows furrowed. “I can see we’re getting distressed here,” he interrupts, “although I’m not entirely sure why. I’m going to go to the kitchen and heat some water. Make some tea. Get some broth going.” To me, he says, “No getting up.” To her, the command is, “Don’t let him get up, and no more upsetting stories, if you please.”

I’m certain this bluntness will make her cry for real, but Bree laughs hollowly. “No promises.”

“Hmm. I mean it.” He disappears.

After a moment, Bree says, “He’s an…interesting fellow.” She’s completely abandoned the previous thread of conversation, per Allan’s instructions, but her voice still quivers.

I watch the doorway through which he vanished. “Do you think we should be trusting him like this?” It’s a question I’d normally ask Colette. But Colette isn’t here.

Bree waits a moment to answer. “He sent the constables in the wrong direction. Pointed them away from where you fell. Do you remember?” I shake my head. “And he helped you anyway even after I tried to throw a rock at his head.”

The laugh this draws out of me sends a wave of fire through my side. “Tried?”

“I missed.” She points toward the bandage on her arm.

The lure of sleep is dangling over me, trying to pull me into its warm embrace—alluring in its promise to dull the pain at least for a while. The prospect of tea, however, is enticing, even if it won’t be as good as Geoff’s. “Maybe it’s a good thing you did.”

She nods.

Silence falls between us. Sleep pulls a little harder on my mind, and her gaze is far away, thoughts apparently completely elsewhere. But there’s something I need to say before I fall asleep.

“You…” My voice draws back her attention. “You came back for me.”

She doesn’t meet my gaze.

“Thank you,” I say, “for—for running back. I think you might have—”

“I did it for Will,” she says, cutting me off. “He… He would have run back himself. If Geoff had let him.” She blinks rapidly, and I know she’s holding back tears. “After everything, he would have run back anyway. For you.”

I close my eyes against her gaze, where I see the simmering anger I know I deserve. Will was arrested in my place, was tortured trying to protect me, and only didn’t throw himself back into the arms of constables because Bree risked it for him instead.

“I’m sorry,” I say. She, too, suffered. “I—”

“And I know what you did,” she says, every word rushed, as if she can’t stop them now from spilling out, “sending that message. To the constables. Trying to trade yourself for Will.” When I open my eyes, I catch the last moment of her wiping a tear from her cheek. “And that…. That was… It was courageous. And selfless. But then—but lying to everyone about it—and then guilting everyone else about lying to you.” Her cheeks turn red. “That wasn’t.”

Shit.

“So…” I barely know her, and I shouldn’t care what she thinks, and yet… “I didn’t do it for you. It was for him.”

I want to say something, but when I open my mouth, I realize I have nothing to say.

“I didn’t say anything. You tell them yourself.” She still won’t look at me. “So you better not fucking die. Because if you do, it’ll kill Will, too.” She turns away.

“Thank you, anyway,” I say again, not know how else to respond. I think it comes out in a stutter. “For saving my life.”

“I didn’t.” Her fingers flutter against the bandage on her arm. The sleeve of her shirt—my old shirt—is cut just above the cotton, a faint line of rusty brown staining the fraying threads. “He did.”

Heavy silence hits again, and I let it crush me.

I’m about to drift off into what will surely be nightmares when there’s a crash and a yelp from the other room.

“What the—” Allan’s voice bursts into more of a choke.

Someone else is in there with him.

Fuck.

Bree leaps to her feet, paling. Where did they come from? The front door is in this room, which means they got into the kitchen through the—

“I have some questions,” a familiar voice says, “and you’re going to answer them for me. Now.”

I don’t need anything more to know who’s in there, or what the hell she’s doing.

“Colette! Put the knife down!” At my words, Bree’s face goes from stricken to astonished. “I’m in here!”

“Jamie?”

A scuffling sound—a sharp intake of air—footsteps—and then Colette torrents in.

“Oh, god.” She’s here, alive, she’s all right, gripping my hands tightly enough to hurt. “I was so scared you were dead.”

“Well, you know,” I say, so relieved I’d be laughing if I didn’t think it would split my side right open. “Almost.”

Allan hovers in the doorway to the kitchen, one hand pressed against the side of his neck. “You all have very interesting ways of getting to know people. Violent. Perhaps unnecessarily so.”

Colette glares at him, the daggers in her eyes sharper than the one in her hand. “Allan Armstrong Dale, huh?”

Coughing in a way that sounds suspiciously like it’s covering a laugh, Bree takes over the explanation, which I’m grateful for.

“If you’re a turncoat,” Colette says once she’s heard the story, glancing around Allan’s apartment, “coming back here probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Won’t they come looking for you?”

With a gulp, he says, “I didn’t think of that.” Pacing around a little, Allan goes on, “Maybe they think I’m dead?” After a few moments, we realize he’s musing, mumbling to himself more than us. “Well… I suppose I wasn’t supposed to be there, so perhaps not…”

“Jamie,” Colette says, talking over his muttering, “you can’t stay here. Will is going to lose his mind if he doesn’t know you’re all right.”

I wince. “How is he?”

Her fingers squeeze mine again. “As fine as can be, but I’m scared he’ll go looking for you and end up getting arrested again.”

Just like Bree said.

The very thought of moving is a torment, but I have no choice. “All right. Where did you go?”

She hesitates—actually stumbles over her words. “We’re—Well—” She takes a deep breath. “They’re with my family.”

Hearing that is like taking another musket ball. “What?”

“I left them with my family.”

“You have a family?”

“Obviously I—”

“You have a family who’s still alive?”

Huffing a sigh, she drops my hands. “Yes. And I don’t feel like talking about it because—”

“In six years, you never said a damn thing!”

“Um, can I interrupt?”

We both swing our heads to look at Allan, who is done talking to himself and reapproaching warily. “Might I suggest that it’s hardly the time to be having this argument?” He points to me. “You’re going to exhaust yourself even more and I’d really prefer not to redo your stitches if I don’t have to.”

“Fine. It doesn’t matter, anyway.” Colette folds her arms. “He can’t stay here.” Glaring at him, she adds, “He’s coming with us.”

“No.” For the first time, Allan’s voice turns harsh. “Are you mad? Look at him. He needs rest.”

“Then I’ll…” Colette bites her lip. “I’ll send a carriage.”

A rich family who’s still alive, apparently.

With a sigh, she says to Bree and Allan, “It’ll be crowded, I suppose, but it’s best if you come along, too. Unless you have somewhere safe to go.”

Allan frowns as if he isn’t sure.

“May as well,” Colette says, impatience colouring her voice. “If you’re in it, you’re in it. One of us now.”

“I wouldn’t go that f—”

Ignoring him again, Colette says, “Don’t you dare die, Jamie. Will and Geoff are waiting for you.”

Mostly through the conversation, Bree has been silent. Now she glances at me with sharpness—and sadness—in her eyes. “He won’t.”

With a tight smile, Colette presses a kiss against the top of my head, a rare and unexpected show of affection. “Good. Now take your rest. I’ll be back for you. Soon.”

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Tagging: @starlit-hopes-and-dreams, @gala1981, @kixngiggles, @whither-wander-whump 💕

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littleperilstories · 1 year

Text

The Prince of Thieves: Bent But Never Broken

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Fear/discomfort, aftermath of injuries (cutting, whipping), nonsexual nudity in an uncomfortable setting (I really did not know how to describe this one), [dried] blood, kidnapping, angst

Listen. We can't just have fluff. We gotta have a bath and caring words and sweet treats but with weird dread in the air at the same time. 🙃

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Word count: 2743 || Approx reading time: 11 mins

Bent But Never Broken

Teaser: She glances to the side, and when I follow her gaze, I am reminded in one fell blow of the last piece of last night’s puzzle that I forgot. The reason my sleep was plagued by dark dreams. The reason we’re whispering.

Bree

I wake with a jerk.

For a moment, I cannot remember where I am or how I got here. All I know is that I am somewhere different: there’s a scratchy rug beneath me, rough-hewn beams above, dim light creeping through paper-thin curtains.

My body fucking hurts.

I sit up, awash in the memories of the previous day's horrors—and then I remember being saved by none other than Will Wardrew’s brother and his friend. It’s once I rise, propping myself slowly up on unsteady arms, that I see her.

Spider.

I gasp, startled at the sight. It is the most of her I have ever seen. With nothing covering her face or obscuring her features, I can, for the first time, see her fully: solemn brown eyes, thick curls that frame her face and cascade over her back and shoulders—and a deeply unhappy expression pulling her lips downward.

“Hello.” She holds out her hand. “Or, rather, hello again.”

“Spider,” I whisper. There is something comforting in her presence, which perhaps makes little sense since the first time we met, she held a knife against my skin, and most of our subsequent conversations amounted to little more than here’s the job, now go and do it. I press my hand into hers.

“I hope it’s all right,” she says, “but they told me your name is Bree.”

Is it all right? It’s one of the more all right things in my life right now. I nod. “Your name’s…” I think back, trying to remember. “It’s not Marianne, is it?”

She tilts her head to the side, brow crinkling. “No.”

The memories from before I fell asleep are misty. Was Spider here before? I don’t think so. I remember James Wardrew and his friend glaring at me like they thought I was about to set fire to their cabin. Like I was about to murder them. I remember bursting into tears like a child.

“You’re all right,” she says, apparently detecting some kind of distress in my face. “No one here will hurt you.”

She glances to the side, and when I follow her gaze, I am reminded in one fell blow of the last piece of last night’s puzzle that I forgot.

The reason my sleep was plagued by dark dreams.

The reason we’re whispering.

With a whimper I’m embarrassed by but cannot suppress, I inch backward, even though Baden Hatchett—brought into the cabin so he wouldn’t freeze to death in the shed—is bound tightly and, indeed, cannot hurt me. Not right now.

“Don’t worry about him,” she says. “He’s, uh…” She swallows, and I can see fury simmering beneath her words. “He’s not a threat to anyone at the moment.”

Still…

Last night, he was trying to kill me, and I don’t think it was a bluff.

“How are you feeling?” Spider looks me over with a discerning gaze, some of her anger dimming. “They said you nearly fainted?”

Heat floods my cheeks. Halfway through the real conversation we had—when I explained who I was and how I wound up banging on their door in the middle of the night, when they were no longer glaring at me like they were about to kill me—the room began to tilt and spin. Only then did it sink in just how much had happened since the last time I ate anything substantial or got any truly restful sleep.

That last night, lying on the floor clutching Will Wardrew’s hand when we both still believed he was to be sent to his death the next morning, I slept…but not well.

“Can I come closer?” Spider is looking at me like I’m some kind of wounded animal, and while I fucking hate it, I also wonder if that’s what I am right about now. “I’m sorry to say it, but you look rough.”

My face burns again, and this time the sensation is accompanied by the memory of a knife slicing into my skin. I nod.

“Do you… Do you want to tell me what happened?” She scoots a little closer and holds out her hand again, not for a shake this time, but to inspect my skin. I wince when her fingers brush the bruising around my wrist.

I couldn’t say it to James and his friend last night—couldn’t say, He cut me open and made me think I was going to die. Then he ripped open my clothes and...

I shake my head.

“All right,” she says, her voice quiet. “He…” She nods toward the tall man—so tall I didn’t believe he was human when I first saw him in the dark. “…made tea. I’m going to go get us some. And if I get some water heating, would you like to wash? You’re...”

Even though I know I’m ten different kinds of disgusting right now, it’s still mortifying to hear it out loud.

“Sorry,” I mumble, ducking my chin. “Y—”

“You don’t need to be sorry.” She stands and brushes dust from her legs. “I hope it’ll help you feel at least a little better.”

How did I get so lucky? To end up here, of all places, amongst these people who are actually being kind?

Even though I do not deserve it.

They know. They must all be thinking it—Fox’s brother—no, damn it, Will’s brother—James—Jamie—especially: You left him behind.

It does not matter if it’s his accusing eyes or my guilt that says it. It’s still true.

I keep my eyes closed and try not to do anything except breathe while Spider fetches the tea. Don’t move. Don’t think. Don’t cry. Don’t remember.

Impossible.

The tall one’s tea is warm and soothing, and though it does little to calm the turmoil in my mind, it settles my stomach and warms my fingers, which are still freezing despite the fact that I fell asleep by the hearth. I watch in silence as Spider hangs a kettle from a hook over the fire and adds another small log to the flames.

“Here.” When she notices my cup is almost empty, she produces a neatly wrapped parcel. Inside is a myriad of foodstuffs, some things I don’t think I’ve seen in years, not since my parents were alive.

“Where did you get this?” I ask, a little awed.

“I have my sources,” she says, breaking a fruit tart in two. The tantalizing scent of sugar and berries drifts upwards. “Better take something now, because once they get their hands on this, it’ll be gone.”

Indeed, the tall one at least is peering over here with interest, no doubt eyeing the sweets in her napkin. James, however, doesn’t even seem to hear a word she says.

I take the other half of the fruit tart and almost burst into tears at the taste of sweetness on my tongue.

I don’t quite register what is required for me to wash my admittedly disgusting body until the water is steaming and Spider is pouring it into a cracked washbasin.

“Wait,” I say, staring at it in horror. “With—with them in here?”

She frowns as if it had not occurred to her at all that undressing with two strange men—and one fucking hostile one, though he is at least blindfolded—in the same room might be a problem.

“What, them?” she repeats. She—she looks like she almost wants to laugh. “They won’t care. They’re not even going to notice.”

And it seems to be true—James has barely looked this way since Spider and I started talking.

The tall one, however, overhearing Spider’s last comment, glances at my face and then at the steaming basin. Staring for a few moments, he then silently approaches Will’s brother and tugs him to his feet.

James doesn’t even argue, just follows the other one outside before their coats are even fully on.

“Sorry,” Spider says with a quiet chuckle, “I forget others don’t know them the way I do. You don’t, uh, have to worry about those two.”

That’s lovely, but it doesn’t solve the Baden Hatchett problem.

“He can’t see you,” she says gently, seeming to discern what I’m worried about. “I promise.”

He’s barely moved since they brought him inside, but he doesn’t seem to be hurt other than from the dregs of his fight with the tall one—bruises and what looks like a split lip. He certainly hasn’t been unconscious this whole time. Which means he is staying still and quiet on purpose.

I understand why they brought him inside, but his very presence makes me itch.

“Forget him,” she says. “You can’t stay as you are.”

I wonder how diabolically awful I must look to her eyes.

The answer comes rather quickly: she squeaks and claps a hand to her mouth when I pull off Gysborne’s jacket.

“I’m sorry,” she says breathlessly, wiping the horror from her face. “I didn’t… I’m sorry. I just wasn’t expecting…”

When I look down, I realize how much blood soaked into the grey prison dress. How the ripped-open back sends the sleeves falling limply down my arms.

To give an answer feels impossible. “I’m sorry” doesn’t seem quite right, and I can’t speak anyway because suddenly the sensation of this filthy, red-stained, memory-infested piece of cotton against my skin is the worst thing I have ever felt in my life, and I need to get it off. Now.

My hands are shaking uncontrollably as I tear it from my body.

When Spider sees my back, she doesn’t squeak, but I don’t miss her soft intake of breath.

“Should I just call you Spider, then?” I’m so tired. I don’t want to talk about my back.

She turns to glance at Hatchett. “Does he know me?”

“I’m not sure.” After the first pass of the sopping cloth against my skin, the water drips murky and grey—and tinged with red. “Will gave him a different name. Marianne—that’s why…”

She nods. “Perhaps Spider is best.” She sighs, her face sadder now than it already was, anxiously passing a hand over her forehead. “Though they…might know anyway. Something. Maybe.”

She falls quiet then, lost in her own thoughts, letting me scrub my skin until the contents of the washbasin are too dark to see, at which point she switches them out for fresh water. I don’t even know when she set about heating more.

“Would you like me to do your back?” Her voice is soft and unassuming, but not fearful. Not pitying. With my lip beginning to quiver in a most humiliating manner, I nod, unable to form words.

It is difficult not to cry out when the cloth brushes my back. It’s not so bad, I tell myself. I’ve felt this way before. I’ve worn these welts before. They are pink, raised, hideous things that fade into bruises with time. At least they don’t bleed. Not like the wounds left by a long whip with many tails. Not like Will’s.

She steps away to find some extra clothes, and I wait, shivering, arms wrapped around my knees, until she returns. “It’s going to be too big. I stole the shirt from, uh…W… From Jamie.” Looking uncertain, she passes me a blue skirt and a brown shirt with weathered wooden buttons. “But perhaps it’ll be better if it’s slightly loose.”

I wish there were some trousers, but I don’t want to seem ungrateful. And perhaps she’s right to have grabbed a skirt. The men’s pants aren’t going to fit me.

I’m fighting back a giggle at the thought of what I’d look like wearing a pair of the tall one’s trousers when the two of them come back inside, hair mussed from the wind and cheeks pink from the cold.

Spider wanders over to the two of them, mumbling something I can’t hear, and then flashes a sweet smile, pulling James’s green scarf from around his neck.

“Here,” she says, turning back to me, ignoring the frown of confusion on his face. “You can wear this, if you want. If you’re…cold.”

If you’re cold, is what she says. If you want to cover the bruises and cuts, is what she means.

When I thank her, my voice trembles.

“I’d give you one of my shawls,” she says quietly. “But I… I left most of it behind. And…” I can hear it—there’s something she’s not saying. But she doesn’t elaborate. “How’s your back? Is that shirt all right?”

“What’s wrong with her back?” Will’s brother glances over at me as if he’s expecting me to hunch over like an old woman. There’s flat curiosity in his voice, no concern. Something almost like annoyance.

Under her breath, just loud enough for me to catch, Spider mutters, “What the fuck, Jamie?”

The truth comes out before I’ve really thought it through, because the question and how he asked it pissed me off, and I want to wound him back, fucking make him regret asking in that tone, make him regret asking like the answer doesn’t matter. “Belt.”

It works. His eyes widen, his mouth gapes, and a look of Now I wish I hadn’t asked flashes across his face. “A what?” When I repeat myself, his face reddens a little, and his glance flicks to Baden Hatchett.

“Him?” The tall one jerks his head toward Hatchett.

My stomach twists, and I shake my head. “He wasn’t the one doing it, no.” Not physically, anyway. Just giving the orders.

James’s gaze falls on something behind me, and I realize it’s the prison dress in all its crimson-soaked glory.

“What happens behind those walls?” The quiet, broken horror in his voice is enough to make me wish I hadn’t said a word. But it’s too late now.

“He knew how to wreck me from the beginning,” I say, and suddenly I’m speaking to Baden Hatchett, not about him. Voice getting louder. Making sure he can hear through the cotton in his ears. “You knew the belt would bring back memories, didn’t you? How—how much it would hurt. You knew how to ruin both of us. Didn’t you? You knew it would kill me to count the strokes that day. You knew if you put us next to one another, we’d talk. Get—get—get to know each other. So that when you decided it was time…”

My eyes are burning, but no tears dampen my cheeks. Perhaps they’ve all completely dried up.

Spider is staring at me in horror. “That was you? That day? The one he pulled out of line?”

The tall man’s head snaps up. I nod.

“I didn’t know,” she says, “I didn’t realize—” She stops, the blood draining from her face. I follow her gaze to James’s face.

He, too, has gone white. “You knew?”

Spider takes a step back. “You knew?”

Neither to them nor to me, but clear as a bell, the tall one says, “Shit.”

James turns to him. “Not you too, Geoff.” His voice cracks with a sense of betrayal I do not understand. That is not what catches my attention, though.

Write that other name now. Marks. Geoffrey Marks.

The way Will flinched when Hatchett said his surname… How he gave himself away… This must be that man. The last member of the IA inner circle I didn’t know about. Now I have a face to put to the name.

“You two are keeping secrets from me now?”

Too much is happening inside my mind, too much happening outside of it. Will’s brother looks—hurt. Aghast.

“You kept that from—” He catches himself and pauses, seeming to realize he’s no longer whispering. When he speaks again, he lowers his voice. “What the fuck? Why? How could y—”

He stops again, takes a breath, and disappears out the door, slamming the door behind him.

Spider sighs. “Well. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” The words are flippant, but her voice quivers. “You want me to chase him, or…”

“I’ll go. Stay with her.” Without a moment of hesitation, Geoff follows James back out into the cold.

“I don’t understand what just happened.” Glancing around nervously, I watch the curtains sway from the wind and the slamming door. “I…”

With a sad smile that is not comforting at all, Spider says, “It has nothing to do with you. It’s all right.”

When I look over at Hatchett, he has still barely shifted in his bonds. Still hasn’t said a word. But a feeling of icy dread washes over me, because I swear it looks like he is smiling.

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littleperilstories · 1 year

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The Prince of Thieves: Life Is Made Up of Meetings and Partings

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Physical injury, man assaulting a woman, man intimidating a woman, angst, kidnapping

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Word count: 2305 || Approx reading time: 10 mins

Life Is Made Up of Meetings and Partings

Teaser: Don’t, I want to say. Don’t go. Stay with me. I haven’t seen or heard any kind of response since sending my note to Constable Hatchett into the prison, but I’m well aware that every night I spend with Geoff could be the last. I don’t want anything to interrupt our time together until the thing interrupts our time together.

Jamie

We are startled awake by the sound of screaming.

“Please, please, someone, help me!”

Not just screaming—shrieking. And banging. Banging on the door. (Well, not ours, exactly, but the door of the cabin we’re borrowing. Semantics.) Geoff is upright and alert in an instant, eyes wide and muscles rigid. I can read the alarm on his face even in the dark.

Don’t, I want to say. Don’t go. Stay with me. I haven’t seen or heard any kind of response since sending my note to Constable Hatchett, but I’m well aware that every night I spend with Geoff could be the last. I don’t want anything to interrupt our time together until the thing interrupts our time together.

I keep the sleepy, selfish plea to myself. Someone is screaming. Someone is scared. Someone needs help.

Geoff beats me to getting dressed, flinging his nearest shirt and trousers on and not bothering with any of the buttons, but I’m not far behind. Now that I’m awake, I can register the sound with a little more lucidity as another cry rips through the air—a girl, from the sound of it. Shrill. Terrified.

“Please, anyone, pl—”

Her words scramble into a shriek and then fall silent.

Geoff’s eyes spark, and he is out the door before I can even remind him not to let his trousers fall down, and more importantly, not to die.

I make it out into the frigid night, lit only by dim moonlight struggling to leak through fast-moving clouds, in time to see Geoff tackle the girl’s assailant to the ground. The sight would make me chuckle if it weren’t so entirely fucked up.

The girl crawls backwards, away from the fight, heading right toward me though she obviously doesn’t realize it. As Geoff knocks the other bastard out cold, I pull the girl to her feet.

Her screaming turns ear-splitting.

I clap my hand over her mouth, which is absolutely the wrong thing to do right now, but if she doesn’t shut the fuck up, the entire constabulary is going to come running in all the way from town just to find out what the hell is wrong with her.

“Hey!” I try to plead with her as she tries to thrash out of my grip. When teeth graze my skin, I yank my hand away. “Listen! I’m not gonna—”

She aims a kick toward a particularly sensitive region of my body, and if I want to protect it, I have no goddamn choice but to let her go.

“Don’t touch me!”

“I’m not—” I start to defend myself, but there’s no point; she’s already running. Or rather, I realize, squinting through the dark, she’s stumbling, more like.

Barefoot. Fucking barefoot.

I’m about to yell for Geoff’s help, but he’s already on it, and he sweeps in, catching her easily.

“Please stop screaming!” I beg. She has no chance of escaping Geoff’s hold—no one does—and she seems to realize it, because she’s still shrieking. “For fuck’s sake! Listen! No one’s going to hurt you!”

Oh my god, I would love to stop yelling at her, but I don’t know how else she’s going to fucking hear anything I say.

“He’s out,” Geoff says to her. My eyes are drawn to his bloody knuckles. Come morning, they will be bruised and scabbed to all hell. “Can’t hurt you.”

Her cry gutters and fades.

“I swear,” I say, holding up my hands, hoping she can discern the movement in the dark. “We swear. You’re safe.”

Geoff releases her arms, and she begins to gasp, pressing her hands to her mouth, unable to stifle shuddering sobs.

Fuck. I don’t know how to deal with this. Where is Colette when I need her?

“Come inside.” Geoff points toward the cabin. “It’s warmer.” He, too, must have noticed her bare feet and strange, too-big coat.

I step back into the cabin and head for the nearest lamp. My hands are shaking when I try to light it. Where the hell did she come from and what the hell is going on?

The fire, I think tiredly, will need some fuel and quite a lot of stoking to bring it back to life. I doubt she’ll want to be in here with us in the cold and dark.

She. A girl. Some strange girl.

God fucking damn it, this is the last goddamn thing I needed.

“You’re all right,” Geoff says, leading her inside. “I’ll deal with him.”

“Is he d…”

I don’t have to look. I can tell he’s shaking his head in response. A few moments later, he’s gone again—back outside to deal with whoever was trying to kill her.

The lamp sizzles slightly and flares to life at last, throwing a yellow glow across the room, and when it illuminates the girl we’ve pulled in from the cold, I freeze.

Her face—it’s bruised and covered in cuts. Like someone took a knife to it, carving into her skin slice by slice.

The girl looks back at me, and she claps a hand to her mouth.

“What?” I glance around in alarm. What could she possibly be distraught over now? All I can tell is that her eyes are fixed squarely on my face.

“It can’t be,” she chokes, new tears streaming down her cheeks.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. Am I supposed to know how to handle this, or what that’s supposed to mean?

“You look just like him,” she says, and then she’s swaying on her feet. I’m too slow to catch that she’s about to fall, and her knees hit the floor.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers, burying her face in her hands. “I’m sorry, I—”

I have absolutely no idea what the girl is going through right now, or what she went through before to leave her looking like this, but I am confident I am not going to be able to help her with it.

Still, I inch closer, not sure how quickly I should approach, or if I should at all. “I’m going to get the fire going, all right? You can warm up. I’ll find you something to eat. All… All right?” I can’t think of anything else to say.

All I get in answer is a heaving sob.

Geoff pokes his head inside, giving me a look that can only be interpreted as, What the hell did you do?

“Nothing,” I mouth from the fire.

He sighs, reaches in to grab something, and disappears again.

I should ask him what he’s doing with the unconscious fucker outside, but I have enough to deal with in here at the moment. Once the kindling and what’s left of the old log have caught flame again, I lay a fresh one to keep the fire going and turn back to the girl.

She’s watching me with wide eyes—less frightened now, but full of something different I can’t place.

What is it you need? is on the tip of my tongue, but she speaks first.

“You’re him.”

Cold dread settles over my entire body at the ominous implication of these words. “What?”

“You’re him,” she repeats. I wonder—hope—if perhaps she is drunk, or severely exhausted, or perhaps got hit in the head when that man was attacking her.

“I’m who?”

“J—”

The very first sound in my name sends me stumbling backwards. What the fuck? How could she possibly know my name?

“James,” she repeats. “Aren’t you?”

I can’t answer over the roaring in my ears.

“You’re Will’s brother.” Her face crumples. “You look…”

You look just like him, she said.

Now that the room is brighter, the firelight throws her strange coat into sharp relief, and I realize why it looks so odd on her. A man’s jacket, not meant for warmth, but part of a uniform.

A uniform.

“How do you know him?” My breath is fighting to get out of my chest. She said his name, his real name. Not Fox. “How—”

The door slams as Geoff returns and closes the door against the chilly night, blissfully unaware of the mess we’re in for about a breath before he notices the look on my face. Immediately, he tenses and turns to scrutinize her.

Surely seeing the suspicion in both of us, she flinches, and I brace myself for more tears and more screaming.

Instead, she rolls up her sleeve and flashes her forearm. For a second, my eyes are drawn to the wicked bruising around her wrist, obviously left behind by too-tight shackles. Then I see what she’s really displaying: the IA sigil. The tree, the roots, and the ring stare up at us from her skin.

An unspoken promise that she means us no harm. That she’s one of us.

A girl, one of our runners, bruised and beaten and maybe even tortured, wearing an obviously stolen uniform, who knows my name and Will’s when she absolutely should not.

“Who are you?” I ask. My legs feel wobbly, but I force myself to step toward her even though all I want to do is collapse. “Where did you come from? How could you possibly—”

“I’m Bree,” she whispers. “I was in…” She swallows hard. “I was in jail. I ran, and I made it out.”

Geoff whistles softly, either because he’s impressed or disbelieving, but he doesn’t say which.

“You were in jail,” I repeat. “You escaped.”

With trembling hands, she tugs the sleeve of her stolen jacket back down so it falls to her fingertips. “It was supposed to be both of us.” Her voice cracks. “He was supposed to make it out, too.”

Noise is rushing in my ears, too loud for me to comprehend much. When Geoff speaks, it’s as if he’s calling to her from a great distance. I can barely hear or understand.

“Who is he?”

“Will—”

“That man.”

New fear crosses her face; I’m still lost in an orbit of panic. Her lips move, but I don’t hear what name she gives.

Geoff does, though. “What?”

I blink. Force myself to return fully. Force myself to wade through the flood of questions I desperately need to ask this girl. “Who?”

“Baden Hatchett.”

For a moment, silence.

I cross the room to grab Geoff’s arm. “What did we do with him?”

“Tied him up and left him in the shed.”

“Fucking fuck,” I whisper.

We’ve attacked and kidnapped the fucking constable himself.

“Who else is out there?” I try to ignore the growing aches in my head and chest. “There’s no way the others aren’t looking for him.”

“He was alone.”

The very idea is so ludicrous, I can only laugh. There’s no way Constable Baden Hatchett would possibly run into the woods chasing some girl all by himself. “No.” I exchange a glance with Geoff, and he looks just as unconvinced. “That can’t be right. There’s no way he came without backup.”

“I’m serious!” Panic sizzles in her gaze, and she backs up even more. “I swear! Do you really think I could fucking run from the whole lot of them?”

It strikes me then—she’s afraid. Not of the bastard outside, but of me. Of whatever she thinks I’ll do to her if I don’t believe what she says.

What am I doing?

What have I become? Someone who torments a terrified and injured girl after looking her in the eye and promising not to hurt her? Someone who lets anger, bitterness, and regret dictate his decisions instead of logic or reason? Someone who is cruel? Suspicious? Intimidating? Irrational?

Whatever she wants to say collapses into silent, shaking sobs.

I draw a long breath, and she lifts her head to glare at both of us, as if to say, I fucking dare you to even try to touch me. I raise my hands in surrender. “I believe you.”

Her glistening eyes flick to Geoff, and though he still doesn’t say anything, he puts up his hands, too.

She slides downwards, one hand still dragging against the wall, until she reaches the floor again.

“I made a deal to save your stupid brother’s life,” she whispers. Her knuckles turn white as her hands curl into fists. “To save his dumb ass from dying, and it was for fucking nothing. We were supposed to escape together. Together. And he stopped running.”

When the silence hits in the wake of her words, it hurts.

“I did not,” she says, her voice tremulous, “lead Hatchett here on purpose. I didn’t—I didn’t know you were—” She brandishes her arm again. “IA saved my life. Will saved my life. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t—”

I don’t know where to fucking start with everything that has just happened and everything she just said. Half of it doesn’t even make much sense. But I have to say something.

“It’s all right.” It’s not, but maybe if I say it aloud, it’ll become a little bit true. “We’ll—We believe you. You’re safe here. And we’ll figure something out.”

Once again, I look to Geoff. He’s got his mask of calm on, hiding what I can tell is probably a boatload of dread. He nods, like he approves of what I said, like maybe he believes it, even if I don’t.

I draw a long breath, waiting for my heart to stop racing.

She was with Will. He saved her life. He gave up—or lost—his chance to escape. Constable Baden Hatchett himself chased her alone into the woods. Now he’s tied up in the rickety shed meant for hunters’ carcasses.

And I am in so much more trouble than I was before.

Geoff rubs his face, heaves a sigh, then heads toward the fire. Even before he speaks, I know exactly what he’s going to say.

“Well. Guess I’ll make some tea.”

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littleperilstories · 11 months

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The Prince of Thieves: I Never Thought We'd Be Here Again

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: death mention, angst, family estrangement

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Word count: 3007 || Approx reading time: 11 mins

I Never Thought We'd Be Here Again

Teaser: “Will!” I go to fling my arms around him, only to stop short. He flinches away from me, like I’m trying to hurt him…like I’m trying to kill him. Inside me, something shudders and cracks.

Colette

Will is unrecognizable—skin and bone, battered and bruised, pale and silent—when I find him and Geoff.

When I find only him and Geoff. No Jamie, no Bree Cooper.

What the fuck?

God, what if they’re dead? I stopped that meaty, nasty-faced constable from shooting Jamie in the head, but I had to dash not long after.

What if they both got shot?

One look at Will and Geoff tells me that they’re thinking the same thing, and neither of them is taking it well. Geoff, at least, is composed, but he is the palest I have ever seen him. His hands are trembling.

Geoff’s hands are trembling.

“Will!” I go to fling my arms around him, only to stop short.

He flinches away from me, like I’m trying to hurt him…like I’m trying to kill him. Inside me, something shudders and cracks.

They’re both on the ground, resting. Will doesn’t say anything, just looks away from me, just holds his head in his hands. I look to Geoff, mouthing my question. How is he?

Shaking his head, Geoff presses a hand against the side of his chest, miming a grimace of pain. Hurt here somewhere, he silently replies.

And Jamie?

Geoff opens his mouth to keep up our noiseless conversation when Will’s head shoots up. “Fucking stop it, both of you.”

If I weren’t fighting the surge of panic that is threatening to send me into a fit of tears, I’d laugh. “Stop what?”

“I can tell you’re talking to each other. Just fucking say it out loud.”

My shard of amusement disintegrates as quickly as it struck. His voice is not the same as I remember.

“Where’s Jamie?” I ask, trying to keep my voice even. It’s a struggle.

“He stayed behind to give that fucker back.” Geoff’s voice is tight. “It looked like he ran, but…”

A freezing wind hisses around us, bringing with it the sharp chill of late autumn rain. “But you’re not sure?”

Geoff shakes his head. “He wasn’t there anymore when I looked back. That girl ran to find him. Haven’t seen either of them.” He takes a long breath and shoves his hand into his coat pockets.

“She what?” After she fucking ran away from me, out into the thick of things—she went out, and then went back?

Geoff just nods. Maybe he’s about to say more, but Will interrupts.

“We have to look for them,” he whispers.

Of course we do. Of course we fucking do. I can’t say that, though. We have to look for Jamie and Bree, but we can’t. Will can’t. Not if he’s hurt, and certainly not since every one of those blue-coated motherfuckers will recognize his face with a single glance. “We have to get somewhere safe.”

Geoff’s eyes close. He knows I’m right, and he won’t argue. The pain he’s in, though—not the same as whatever’s wrong with Will—is carved into every inch of his being. Deep grooves up and down his skin, invisible and yet just as present as Will and me.

“Home,” Will says, “maybe he went there—”

“It’s trashed,” I say, before he gets his hopes up. It kills me, it kills me, to see his face fall. “They found it. Tore it apart.”

Will drops his head again, hiding his face, and he chokes back a sob.

We have to get to safety, yes, but…the last place Will felt safe—maybe the last place any of us felt truly safe—is gone.

“Jamie won’t know where to look for us,” Will says. He’s looking up again, and his eyes are vaguely fixed in my direction, but his gaze is unfocused. Dizzy. Maybe he’s not as present as I thought. Maybe he’s not really here at all.

He’ll find us, I want to say, but I don’t dare. I don’t know if it’s true. Jamie had his own plan of where to go, and I have mine, but we didn’t share them with one another.

Just in case.

The answer—the only option—the only place I can think of to go—is already unfurled in my mind, but I don’t want it. Even though I knew this was a possibility and dreaded it, I’m still not ready.

“Town’s gonna be crawling.” Geoff, too, sounds distant, but closer to earth than Will. “Where we—”

“What if he’s hurt?” Will clambers to his feet, the movement sudden, and in an instant, Geoff and I are both on alert, because this is Will, and Will might bolt, and if he does, he’ll end up right back where he was if he’s not careful. “We have to—”

He’s about to sprint off—there’s a moment of tensing muscles, leaning forward, heaving in a breath.

Grunting in pain, he stops, one hand moving up to press against his ribcage.

Shit. Geoff wasn’t kidding.

“I have a place we can go.”

Despite my dread, despite my secret hope that another choice would present itself, the words are out of my mouth the moment I see Will reach for his side with that awful grimace on his face. We have nowhere else, and I can’t let him stay in pain—out here—in the cold—in the rain—with constables out looking for him—

Geoff meets my gaze. The grief I find there is almost too much to bear.

“Come on.” I hold out my hands, palms up and shaking. Geoff is the first to clasp his fingers into mine.

Will stares at my hand, but he doesn’t seem to see it.

“We’ll find out what happened,” I say, and even though I’m screaming on the inside, my voice somehow obeys my command to stay gentle. “But we can’t stay here.”

The enormous white shirt is slicked against Will’s skin from the rain. It drags in sodden folds over his battered form, limp and surely uncomfortable, as he finally meets my gaze. As he slowly lifts his arm. As he reaches over to take my hand.

“Where?” he croaks.

I swallow the painful lump in my throat. “My family’s house.”

Geoff freezes, and Will’s glassy eyes widen. “What?”

“My family’s house.” God, I’ve dreaded this day for so long, and standing in the pouring rain with an injured Will, a silently distraught Geoff, and the other two missing and maybe dead is not helping. Will is staring at me in confusion, his thought plain as day on his face: You have a family?

“Won’t that…” Geoff pauses. Whatever he wants to say, it seems to pain him. “Won’t that put them in danger, too?”

I wrench my hand away from his. “Fuck, Geoff! Do you think I’m stupid?” Anger explodes out of me, so much anger that I’ve been trying to keep reined in for weeks now. No, fucking years. “Do you really think—”

“If they found the townhouse, they found the lease!” he snaps back. “And then we’ll be right back in the same—”

“Good god, you idiot, you think I put my real name on that thing?”

Geoff jerks back, and I know I’ve hurt him. Because I’ve always been Colette Haris to him, long before I was Spider, and he probably never stopped to think about who I was when I was born. Maybe he assumed I was honest with him from the start.

“They won’t find my family,” I say, trying to keep my voice calm, “because the lease says Colette Haris, and Colette Haris doesn’t exist, so they can’t track her anywhere.”

Geoff and Will are silent.

“My last name is Meunier,” I say quietly. I wonder if they can hear me over the sound of the rain. “My family lives in town, and that’s where we’re going. No one’s going to find us there.” As long as my father and stepmother don’t throw us out on sight. I don’t voice that particular concern. “So get your asses moving.” I swallow hard. “Ready?”

It’s too much to hope for a real answer from Will, I think. He’s staring at me like I’m a stranger, and his meek confusion, the lack of the rage that was in his gaze only a few minutes ago, hurts my heart.

“Ready.” Geoff holds out his hand this time, and I take it. Squeeze. We’re in this together. All of us. Always have been.

No matter what happens…always will.

Instead of scaling the wall to Verie’s room, I stand on the grass and hurl stones at her windowpane. Several minutes pass before she opens up.

“What are you doing?” She’s hard to hear—mumbling sleepily and obviously trying to keep her voice low. It occurs to me how early it still is in the day. Even though it feels like a lifetime has passed since we left the hunting cabin this morning.

“What the fuck is going on?” I hear Geoff mutter from somewhere behind me. There’s impatience in his voice, an emotion he doesn’t usually let slip out, endlessly stoic as he is. I ignore him.

She rubs her eyes, hair dripping gracefully over her shoulder as she leans further out the window. “Lettie, why are you…”

“I need to come inside.”

“So come up,” she mumbles, yawning. “You know how to—”

“No. Through the door. Let me in.”

That wakes her up. Verie’s jaw drops, and her mussed golden curls bounce as she draws back, stunned. “Lettie, do you mean it?”

“Quickly,” I say. “Please.” Inhaling sharply, trying not to think about how much what I’m about to say will sting, I grind out, “I need help.”

At these words, these words she surely never expected to hear from me, she goes still as stone. “What’s going…” Her voice fades, and then she nods. “I’ll be right down.”

I’m shaking when I cross the threshold of my old home—because it’s been so long since I’ve been here, in the doorway, in the foyer, yes, but also because Geoff and Will are following me inside.

Verie gapes at both of them, eyes like blue china cups, drinking in the sight of them with fear and awe and confusion. Geoff is almost twice her size.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

Her gaze drifts up to Geoff’s face, astonishment fading to worry. Slowly, it shifts to Will, and it darkens to unbridled horror. When I follow along, I see the way his hand is braced against the wall like he’s going to crumble to the floor at any moment, the way his eyes remain downcast, meeting no one else’s.

“I don’t understand,” Verity whispers, and the old fear strikes me hard. Perhaps this is the time she’ll finally say no and tell me to get out for real.

To leave and never come back.

“I don’t have anywhere else.” I can’t remember if I’ve already said this; my mind is too muddled. “We… We have nowhere. Our home is gone.”

She blinks, giving a little gasp as if something I’ve said has cut her deeply, but she only glances at me for an instant. She can’t, it seems, wrench her attention away from Will—watching the tear that streaks down his bruised cheek and drips from his chin.

“What happened to you?”

For the first time, Will looks up from the floor. His fingers twitch, turning white as he presses more strongly against the wall.

“Verity, darling, what’s all the—”

My stepmother, Justine, breezes into the foyer, her lilting voice light and a touch bemused, until she spots the four of us and her words collapse into nothingness.

“Colette?”

I take a step backwards, my heart pounding.

“Colette, is it really you?”

When I open my mouth, nothing comes out.

“Mother…” Verity hasn’t moved. “Lettie needs our help.”

I can see it on my stepmother’s face, the war unfolding there: Colette’s returned at long last against How dare Colette return after all this time?

Will’s hand slips, and he lurches sideways, bracing himself now with his shoulder, and a new wave of pain washes over his face.

“You’re hurt, aren’t you?” I watch in disbelief as my little sister turns away from her mother, turns her very back on her, and reaches for Will’s hand. He doesn’t acknowledge her. “It’s going to be all right. No one’s going to hurt you here.”

“Verity…” Justine looks over us, taking in my thinly veiled panic and Geoff’s sorrowful face and the beat-up mess that is Will—then looks back at me. “What if…”

She’s going to tell us to go. I just know it. Get them out. Before your father walks in.

Verity’s still staring at Will, but my stepmother won’t take her eyes off me.

“I’ll heat some water.”

A gasp—no, a sob—spills out of me, shrill and brimming with the breath I had been holding, brimming with relief, brimming with astonishment that neither of them intend to turn us away.

“What’s your name?” Verity gently pulls Will away from the wall.

His eyes flick to me, so scared, so confused, so uncertain. Almost like he’s asking for permission: Should I give my name? I nod. If we’re trusting my family, may as well trust them fully. “Will.”

“Will, I’m Verie. You’re safe here, all right?” She tugs him further into the house, and I realize that if I don’t follow them, they will disappear. They’ll disappear—Will’s going to be out of sight again—and I won’t need to panic about where they are or what’s happening where I can’t see.

We’re safe.

“You don’t have to tell me what happened to you, okay, Will? But we’re going to help you. Don’t be frightened. Sit here, just for a…”

Her soft voice fades, soothing and calm and mature as a voice could be, and I realize that in the six years I’ve been gone, my sister changed—grew up—more than I believed possible.

Geoff pauses before he follows them. “Lettie?”

“Don’t even fucking start.” He’s supposed to be upset over the mess we’re in, or showering me in gratitude for saving all our asses, not making fun of me. “Let’s go ins—”

In the doorway, eyes solemn and shining with tears, looms a figure I truly believed I’d never behold again.

“Fath…”

I can’t even finish the word.

Somewhere, as if from a great distance, as if from across an ocean, I hear Verity say evenly, only a touch of apprehension in her voice, “Father, wait. Let me explain first.”

To Geoff, I blurt, “I’ll go back out. No one knows my face. I’ll look for Jamie. Be back soon.”

I don’t wait for him to argue. I just bolt out the door.

A coward—I’m such a goddamn coward. Again and again the word beats against the inside of my skull, cruel in its persistence. Too cowardly to get close to Will, to wrap my arms around him and tell him things will be all right—I let Verie, who met him mere minutes ago, do that. Too cowardly to speak a word to Justine—I simply stood there and stared. Too cowardly to even look my father in the eye.

I ran, leaving Geoff—Geoff of all people—to face him on his own.

Good god, what am I doing?

Too late to turn back now. Too fucking late for a lot of things.

The woods are quiet when I arrive back at the treeline. The smell of sulphur has faded, but the sense of dread has not. It cloaks the ground like moss, creeps along the earth, makes me shudder.

Please don’t be dead, Jamie.

The eeriness of the damp, misty woods, the stillness, the silence… They weigh on me like stones. Every step sinks my feet into the soft ground, and I can’t help but think of how many footsteps I am leaving behind in my wake.

I stumble over something soft and slippery—a jacket, abandoned and soggy from the rain.

The jacket, I realize, of someone who works for the constabulary. It isn’t blue, but the design is one I’ve seen very recently. My throat constricts.

Up ahead: a dark mound, too small to be a body. I have to bite back a sob when I stumble forward and see what it is: just more material, but that doesn’t mean it’s good news.

That shawl—the one I gave to Bree Cooper—soaked and dark with blood. Whose blood? Hers? Jamie’s? A constable’s?

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Something happened—something bad—

Instinct, panic, desperation, whatever it might be, has me rifling through the jacket’s pockets. Something. There has to be something in here that will give me a clue as to what happened that made Bree drop my crimson-stained shawl in the mud. Anything.

Anything.

My fingers collide with a folded stack of papers, drenched but just stiff enough to pull out and unfold.

Work papers for one of the prison staff, a medic, to get him in and out of the gates with ease. Left behind to turn to mush in the rain. I squint at the running black ink, only just able to make out the name.

Allan Armstrong Dale.

On the back, his address and next of kin. Other useless information I do not need.

But his address.

Perhaps this man is dead; perhaps that’s why his uniform is here and not on his miserable fucking body.

But perhaps he lives.

Perhaps he saw what happened.

I can’t go home to my family, to Will and Geoff, without news of Jamie.

I will find this Allan Armstrong Dale, see if he survived the altercation that happened here. If he did, if he is at his home recovering while Jamie bleeds out or lies cold or wallows in chains like Will did for so long, I will find out. And if he refuses to tell me what I want to know, I will wait patiently until he does—wait patiently for him to speak, with my blade pressed against his throat.

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littleperilstories · 1 year

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The Prince of Thieves: I'm Not Lost, This Fate Was Mine to Choose

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Mention of jail/police, mention of firearms, mention of death, angst

Historically (for a while), the term 'guns' meant artillery and not 'small' firearms like muskets etc. but I used 'guns' in here bc 'small arms' sounds very stilted in dialogue to a modern ear ok byyyeee

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Word count: 1872 || Approx reading time: 8 mins

I'm Not Lost, This Fate Was Mine to Choose

Teaser: “I still can’t believe this is happening.” It’s foolish to speak when the rest of the world is still so quiet; my voice carries through the morning air. Worry twists my gut so ferociously, though, I have to say something to take my mind off it. If I don’t, I might burst.

Bree

Dawn comes too soon, creeping up on us with stealthy, nimble footsteps. One moment, I am curled near the hearth, James Wardrew’s coat thrown over me like a blanket; the next, I’m shambling across the floor and blinking sleep from my eyes, blearily following the smell of just-brewed tea, nursing a deepening sense of horror as I remember exactly why we’re up so early and where we’re going.

And then we’re shivering in the early morning air, skulking through town the long way, two groups approaching the meeting point from different angles—me and Spider together, James and Geoff dragging Hatchett through the woods.

“I still can’t believe this is happening.” It’s foolish to speak when the rest of the world is still so quiet; my voice carries through the morning air. Worry twists my gut so ferociously, though, I have to say something to take my mind off it. If I don’t, I might burst.

I glance up at Spider, waiting for her to shush or glare me into silence, but she simply nods and, after a moment, speaks too. “I hate this.”

Although she and James have found an odd, tenuous peace between the two of them, they’re still tense. Uncomfortable, sharp with each other. I don’t know either of them very well, but I can tell it hurts both of them to be so at odds. She’s been stiff and quiet since the moment it came out that she was there when Will was flogged, which seems to be the source of their conflict, as far as I can tell. Stiff, quiet, and guilty.

You shouldn’t feel so bad. The words have been on the tip of my tongue so many times. Aren’t secrets sometimes for the best? Don’t we all keep them sometimes to avoid hurting others more than necessary?

More than that, though, it’s fucking rich of James Wardrew to be guilting her so heartily about hiding things, because he’s been doing the exact same thing to everyone else.

You got my message, then.

It was impossible to tell from what I overheard what was contained in the message James sent to Hatchett, but I gleaned enough from their muttered conversation: James promised something in an effort to negotiate Will’s release.

A message—a note. The signature was what gave Hatchett the information to start puzzling together Will’s name and identity—all because of me, when I told him, like a goddamn idiot, that if he had the name of one brother, he could find the name of the other.

All Will had to do was say a single word—his surname—that matched a name in Hatchett’s notes, and the game was over.

Despite being on Spider’s case about being secretive, James is keeping it hidden that he sent that letter at all.

I wanted to say something—to him, to Spider, to Geoff.

I’m a coward, though.

Instead, when James stepped outside once he was done talking to Hatchett, and I scrambled away from the door to look as if I were just approaching—and hadn’t had my ear pressed against the wood mere moments before—I said, “I wasn’t throwing myself at anyone.”

Good god, the look he gave me. He didn’t even seem to remember that You were throwing yourself at him like the slut you are was what Hatchett said to send me soaring across the room to slap him across his horrid face.

“Well…that’s good, I suppose?” he said, scratching behind his ear, appearing to gather his patience from a well that was running dry.

I cringe now at the memory. Anything else would have been better than saying that.

Most of all, however, I wish I’d been brave enough to tell him, You don’t get to be mad at her when you’re keeping an even bigger secret from everyone else.

But I held my tongue—once a coward, forever a coward. Hiding from confrontation. Hiding from the truth.

Awaiting a sign that it’s time to move, Spider and I sit in shadow. Tall, luxurious manors loom over us, the lavish structures brimming with silence and, for me, memories of a childhood in a place not much different.

So far, there have been no constables patrolling this area, but no doubt they’re around somewhere.

“I wish…” Her voice trails off, and when she glances at me, I can see what she’s thinking: Perhaps you’re not the right person to talk to about this.

I pull my “borrowed” shawl closer around me—Spider found one somewhere, and though I’ve no idea where it came from, I can guess it wasn’t originally hers—hoping the hurt doesn’t show on my face. I’ve ended up in yet another place where I don’t belong, where I’m not truly wanted. “Wish he wouldn’t go face them himself?”

She nods, her mouth pressed into a grim line. “He’s being a fucking idiot. Reckless. Acting like…”

My throat aches. I know how to finish this sentence for her. “Like Will.”

She agrees, drawing in a long, angry breath.

“They might see his face,” I say. “Or catch him. Arrest him, too.”

“I told him that.”

“They could kill him.”

“I told him that.”

I gulp at the next thought that slips out, one we’ve been dancing around for the last day but have been powerless to do anything about. “What if they have…guns?”

In the prison, where every altercation was at close range, the constables favoured their batons. Now, in the dread-soaked minutes before a meeting that’s as likely to turn into a bloodbath as not, I think of the cracks that broke through the darkness the night I escaped, the salty tang of gunpowder in the air. The machines of death that they could wield today if they wanted. If they really wanted to make sure none of us escaped with our lives.

“It’s likely.”

I shudder. “He doesn’t care?”

Spider takes a long moment to respond. When she does, her voice cracks. “He cares.”

He cares about saving his brother.

But for god’s sake, he can’t die. Seeing him—that was the only thing Will wanted, the only thing he truly cared about. I know that now. If James doesn’t make it out today…

Flicking a dead beetle that’s somehow stuck to her shoe into the dirt, Spider says, “He just keeps saying there’s no one else.”

Somewhere down the street, voices swell. Constables? The early morning bickering of a family? Servants in these enormous, wealthy households making plans for the day, risen so early to perform the jobs for which they are paid mere pennies?

“No one else, what?”

A cold breeze ruffles her dark curls, rustles the layers of her skirt. “No one else who can be the one to meet the constables and make the trade.”

When did they even have this conversation? The hunting cabin is so small, surely I’d have heard it, unless I was asleep. Doesn’t the inner circle ever rest? “That’s bullshit.”

Her mouth twitches. “Mmm hmm. But I think, mostly, he wants to be the one Will sees when the trade goes down.” She falters. Quietens. “And he doesn’t want to risk anyone else getting grabbed or killed.”

He was playing the hero again, you know.

“They’re exactly the same,” I say.

With a sad smile, as if she can tell who I mean even though I didn’t clarify, she says, “I suppose, in some ways, they are.”

I glance away from her, turning my head so I can brush a finger against my eyes. Too many times I’ve burst into tears in front of her and James and Geoff, these last few days. I won’t do it again now.

There’s no one else. The words go around and around my head: persistent, irritating, unyielding. No one else.

If James goes in for the trade, assuming they don’t just shoot him right away, he risks destroying everything he’s worked so hard for—destroying all the good IA has done, possibly forever.

What, again, of his mysterious message? What was in it? What if, when James gets there, the constabulary tries to hold him to whatever he said?

And if he gets arrested or shot or beaten to death…

There’s no one else.

But of course there is. Someone whose face the constables already know.

Someone who has nothing to lose, who has had nothing to lose for a very long time.

When the sun is creeping up the horizon, painting a swath of light across the sky, there’s noise and movement in the distance. Wheels. A terse command or two. And then footsteps—that of heavy, iron-studded boots.

They’re here.

Before James or anyone else can step out from the woods, I slip from my hiding place and walk directly into Junior Constable Michaelson’s line of sight.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Spider’s voice fades as I hurry away from her. I pretend not to notice; I don’t need to hear anything else. This is a terrible idea, I know.

But if it keeps James out of the line of fire long enough to set Will free…

Michaelson stares at me for a long moment, his face purpling. “This must be some ridiculous joke.”

“No.” I want to say something smart, something rude and irreverent, something Will would say. My mind has gone blank.

This man—he cut open my skin and watched me bleed.

He held a knife to my throat.

He whipped me until my back was covered in welts and bruises.

Michaelson’s lip curls, the expression far too Hatchett-like for my comfort. “Well. This is how it goes, then. The little viper returns. Came back for more, did you?”

“Where’s Will?” I do not trust myself to keep conversation with this man. All it took the other day for me to lose control and slap Baden Hatchett across his wicked face was a single word.

I cannot afford to lose my wits today.

“Where’s the constable?”

“You’ll see him soon enough.” I feel naked under his glare, just as I did the first time I stood in his leering gaze. Such a short time ago, and yet it feels like a lifetime.

I am not the same girl as I was that day.

“You’ll see him,” I repeat. There is no need to fear this man, I tell myself. He will not touch me until Hatchett is safe—and Hatchett won’t walk free until Will is out of their clutches. “Not yet. Not until you give back Will.”

I do not need to be afraid, because I have nothing left outside of this moment, this aching body, these clothes I wear that are not even mine. Hatchett knows it, he told me so, and I, too, know he’s right. No family and no friends beyond this family I am now trying so desperately to protect. No one who will miss my wretched, worthless, insignificant life.

If I die today, I’m leaving behind nothing except the deeds I did while living.

So I must make sure those deeds are the right ones, until the end. I must make sure—if I die today—my last act is saving IA. Saving James.

Saving Will.

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littleperilstories · 1 year

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The Prince of Thieves: The Diamond in the Rough

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03! | Playlist | Story Intro

Warnings: Jail, terminal illness

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Word count: 2900 || Approx reading time: 12 mins

The Diamond in the Rough

Teaser: His mother was going to kill him. He could already hear the tirade that was certainly coming his way. “How could you, Jamie? How could you resort to stealing? We’re not those kind of people. What kind of example are you setting for your brother?”

Jamie, 7 years ago

This was bad.

This was really, really bad.

Jamie glanced around at the holding cell. There weren’t many people in it, but they all looked menacing. All of them were bigger than he was.

He found a spot against the wall, as far as he could manage from the others. Who knew why they’d been arrested? Maybe they’d been caught stealing, like him. Or maybe they’d gone and killed someone. How was he to know? They wouldn’t really put him in with the murderers, would they? They’d just busted him picking pockets outside the opera house, nothing harmful, not hurting anyone. They wouldn’t, right?

Within a few minutes, one of the men got called out—someone had vouched for his innocence, he was free to go, take care not to get mixed up in a bar fight in the future, because he was damned lucky, wasn’t he, and maybe next time fortune wouldn’t smile quite so sweetly on him, hmm?

The man smirked at Jamie and his cell mates before he stepped out to freedom and vanished.

“Fucker,” one of the others muttered. “Everyone knows it's always him that starts shit. Gets away with it every time.”

Lucky bastard, Jamie thought. He could have used some of that luck right about then.

His mother was going to kill him.

He could already hear the tirade that was certainly coming his way. How could you, Jamie? How could you resort to stealing? We’re not those kind of people. What kind of example are you setting for your brother?

A little brother who was almost certainly getting up to far worse things—well, perhaps not quite as bad as being arrested, but almost—when no one was around to tell him not to.

Whether or not he got to enjoy this red-hot scolding from his mother depended on two things: one, whether the constables let him off with a warning, and two, whether Ma actually had the energy to lay into him once he was back home.

What would your dad say if he were alive to see this? That one would sting the most.

Perhaps she’d glance around, see if Will was nearby, and remind him with a tremor in her voice, I won’t be around much longer, Jamie. It’ll be up to you to take care of Will. And you can’t do that from jail.

God, maybe it was just best for him to crack his head against the wall and knock himself out, because nothing was going to stem the flow of thoughts anytime soon.

“Kid, will you cut it out?” The older man growled in annoyance, and Jamie realized he was bouncing the foot of his tented leg frantically up and down. The stale air in this place and the worry in his gut was turning him into Will, a tornado of a fourteen-year-old who could never sit still.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, stretching his legs out in front of him and sitting on his hands. Don’t move, don’t draw attention, and maybe this will all be over soon.

The old fellow was next to get called out, but his news was less heartening.

“Sorry, Alfred,” one of the constables said, tugging him out of the cell. “Gonna be here a while, I’d say.”

“What the hell for, huh?”

“You broke Constable Bulwell’s nose, you jackass! What do you think it’s for?”

Jamie listened as the conversation drifted further down the corridor, his heart thundering in his chest. Was he going to be next? What more was there for him to do? They’d already taken his name and statement, and the statement of the asshole lawyer who’d caught him. What, exactly, was the penalty for first-time pickpockets?

Well, he thought wryly, first time getting caught as a pickpocket.

He didn’t notice the tall man—who’d been sitting still as a mountain and silent as a ghost in the corner—get up until he was at the door.

What the hell?

The man was younger, Jamie realized now that he was closer, than he had looked from afar. With his head tilted to the side and his shoulders hunched slightly forward, he slid something slim into the lock.

Holy shit, Jamie thought. He’s trying to open the door.

It appeared to be slow, painful going—finicky work with more than one false victory. Jamie watched sweat bead on the man’s brow as he worked silently, uttering not a single word or even a grunt of frustration with each failure.

By the time the lock released the satisfying click that said, I’m open, Jamie was sweating, too.

The man hesitated, or perhaps rested, before he even attempted to open the door. His dark eyes swept up and down the hall, checking for any constables on patrol.

He’s actually going to try. Jamie couldn’t disguise his awe. He’s going to run.

Only the distant noises of voices, footsteps, and jangling keys broke the quiet, and after a few minutes of breathless stillness, the man creaked open the door.

As he slipped into the corridor, he paused, his eyes fixed on Jamie, eyebrows raised as if to say, Well? You coming, or what?

“What? M…me?”

Immediately, Jamie regretted opening his mouth and saying the words that came out. There was no one else left.

The man sighed. Jamie scrambled to his feet.

It was rather unnerving, how light the man’s footsteps were, and how well he seemed to know his way around the snaking corridors.

Without warning, he flung out his arm, grabbed Jamie, and yanked him back around the corner they’d just come from.

Jamie held his breath, his heart hammering again. Or was that the heart of this stranger, the man who was setting him free from jail despite not knowing a single thing about him? The warmth from his body curled around them both, comforting and terrifying at once.

Someone scurried by, carrying on straight, and the man tugged him onward again.

They emerged into glaring sunlight. Jamie blinked the brightness from his eyes, relishing the sting.

“Why’d you let me out?” He had to ask now, because he could tell, he felt certain of it, the man was poised to run and disappear, and if he didn’t ask now, surely he would never find out.

“You looked pretty pathetic.” The man tilted his head to the side, looking at Jamie as if sizing him up for a fight. But he stood relaxed, every sizeable muscle at ease, apparently unperturbed that they had just given the constabulary the slip.

“I’ve never been…caught before.” Jamie bit down on his tongue. Why was he still talking?

The man jerked his head as if to say, Follow, and began to hurry away. Jamie forced his feet to move before the tall figure vanished into the city’s winding streets.

Shudders coursed through his body as he contemplated just how lucky he was that they’d stuck him in the little jail, the one that was really only meant for holding freshly-caught thieves and brawlers before letting them go or shipping them off to the real prison at the edge of town. This man might have been good at picking locks, but could he have picked his way out of there?

He stopped dead when he realized the man was about to lead him into what looked very much like a tavern—a seedy one, at that.

The man raised his eyebrows again, saying nothing, but Jamie could read the expression clear as day regardless: What, you think you’re too good for this place?

Gulping and hoping no one would notice how nervous he was, Jamie followed him inside.

Someone called a greeting across the tavern floor. “Geoff! He made it out, boys! Yet again!” The man—Geoff—raised his hand in silent acknowledgement, the smallest of smiles on his lips.

Jamie wondered what kind of strange, upside-down world he had wandered into.

The air was thick, damp and smoky at once, rife with laughter and the guttural shouts of drunken men. Jamie’s neck prickled with the sense that he was being looked at, that the men around him could sense that he didn’t belong there, didn’t truly want to be there, had only set foot inside a tavern a handful of times before, and only when he was looking for work.

“Stop gawking,” Geoff said, pulling out a chair from an empty table and then swinging around to the other side to sit down. “No wonder you got busted.”

Jamie chose to be glad that he’d somehow managed to pull a whole seven words at a time from Geoff, the longest string so far, instead of focusing on the insult that hid within them. “Sorry.”

“Stop saying sorry.”

Jamie got the feeling he was supposed to sit in silence as Geoff was clearly intending to do, but he couldn’t stop his nervous tongue from moving. “I, uh, I get why you let me escape with you and I’d like to thank you, but I don’t have any—”

“It’s fine.” With only the tiniest dismissive wave, Geoff reached down, tugged off his boot, and pulled a few coins from inside it.

“Disgusting,” Jamie said before he could stop himself, “yet impressive.”

Geoff’s mouth twitched. “Them blue-coated jackasses got all yours?”

Nodding, Jamie admitted, a little embarrassed, that they had.

Without another word, Geoff stood up and sidled through the crowded room to flag down the barman, and it wasn’t until he was already halfway back that Jamie even considered that he had no idea what he was about to drink. Or eat. Or which of those things he was about to be doing.

“Some advice.” Geoff sat down, and his long limbs straddled the line of comically crushed into a space that was too small for him and artfully curled around him like the bastardization of an old painting. Jamie could feel one of Geoff’s legs stretched out under the table, brushing against his own. “Get better.”

Jamie blinked. “At what?”

Holding up one finger, Geoff said, “Picking pockets. Don’t get busted.” He put up a second. “That face.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Anyone knows you’re green, looking at your face.” Geoff crossed his arms. Jamie felt his face heating up as he dark stare across the table burned into him. “Easy target.”

“I—”

“Gonna get your ass kicked.”

Well. What was there to say to that? “You think I couldn’t handle myself in a fight?”

It was only as he finished speaking that Jamie realized he was biting his lip and twisting his hands in his lap.

He started to laugh, and to his surprise, Geoff did, too.

“Constables gonna have your name forever now,” Geoff warned as some pungent and disgusting-looking drink was delivered to their table. “You lie about it?” Jamie shook his head, and Geoff shrugged. “Be extra careful for a while. And don’t go back to wherever you got busted today.”

I don’t need your help, seemed like something Jamie was supposed to say in this situation, but it wasn’t true, was it?

“Why are you helping me?” he asked instead, unable to keep suspicion from leaking into his voice.

Geoff shrugged. “Told you. Looked too pathetic.”

In spite of everything, Jamie found himself laughing again.

So… Am I ever going to see you again?

He’d been embarrassed the moment the words slipped out, of course. The words still repeated in his mind, like a musician practicing their scales until they were perfect, except instead of getting less embarrassed, Jamie found himself getting hotter and more annoyed. Why did I say that?

Geoff had just looked at him and said, “Dunno. You want to?”

And then he’d fucking walked away.

When he got home, Jamie still hadn’t shaken the feeling that he’d fallen into someone else’s life for a few hours—and that he wasn’t sure which life he preferred.

“I’m home!” It wasn’t necessary to shout—the place was small enough that scuttling mice and fluttering moths could be heard from anywhere in the apartment. If the neighbours weren’t making too much noise, anyway.

“Jamie. Shut the fuck up.”

Will was curled on the floor with the dogs. The apartment was too small to keep them, but Will had threatened to run away if Jamie and their mother even thought about setting them loose or giving them away. He glared up at his older brother.

“Excuse me?”

This, this was how Jamie knew Will wasn’t going to school most days. Doubtless, the other children threw around foul language, but Will used it a little too liberally to just be hearing it occasionally on the way to and from the schoolhouse.

“Ma’s sleeping. You’re gonna wake her.”

Jamie only just managed to hide his sigh of relief—if she were awake, she’d take one look at his face and know something had happened while he was out—before glancing out the tiny window framed by a flimsy lace curtain and warped from the long years. The sun was only just setting now. It was difficult to believe everything from today—getting grabbed by that lawyer, being taken away by the constables, and inexplicably ending up drinking in a tavern with a very tall stranger who was also a piss-poor conversationalist—had somehow fit into only a few hours.

When he looked back at Will, who had shifted onto his back and wrestled his pup onto his chest for a cuddle, there was new suspicion in his brother's face.

“Did you get punched?”

“What? No.” Jamie almost pressed a hand to his face, but he caught himself at the last moment. He’d nearly forgotten how pissed off that lawyer had been.

“Looks like you got punched. You get into a fight?” Will’s eyes lit up, and he sat upright quite suddenly, still clutching the dog. “Did you join a gang? Can I join?”

“Will!” Jamie realized he was speaking too loudly, almost shouting, and glanced nervously at the sleeping figure in the corner of the room. “Don’t be a moron. Of course I didn’t join a gang.”

Will sighed and laid back down. Unimpressed with the constant jostling, the dog leapt off his chest and scurried away, eliciting a breathy grunt and then a laugh. “You’re so boring.”

“And you’re,” Jamie said, “going to be in big shit if I find out you weren’t at school today.”

“How come you’re allowed to swear but I’m not?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“I was.”

“What did you learn about?”

Will groaned and rolled himself onto his stomach, immediately caught. “Jamie, school is pointless. I should be looking for a job. Like you.”

Jamie’s stomach contracted at the thought. It was lucky in some regards that jobs were scarce. He wasn’t sure what made him more nervous—the thought of Will hurting himself in one of the factories in town, one of the places who might actually hire him, or Will getting his ass handed to him because some foreman didn’t like his attitude. “When you’re older.”

He didn’t dare ask where Will had gone while he wasn’t in the schoolhouse.

“I could help with the money,” Will said, his voice a little smaller than it had been a few moments before.

“William Wardrew,” said a gentle voice from the corner, “no one in their right mind would trust you with their money.”

Jamie stifled a laugh as their mother rose slowly from her prone position and propped herself up against the headboard.

“That’s not very nice!” Jamie tensed when Will got to his feet and hurtled across the room to the bed, but he needn’t have worried. His brother curbed his gait just in time, and when he perched on the end of the bed, the movement was soft. “I thought if you didn’t have anything nice to say, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”

“Ooh. It can be taught,” Jamie teased, and Will made a face.

“Watch out, big brother, or I’ll be the one punching you in the face.”

“Will!” Even though the movement obviously taxed her, Ma didn’t hold back in landing a none-too-gentle smack against the back of his head. “Apologize. You’re not the kind of boy who says things like that.”

Her words were for Will, but she shot Jamie a look that said, And you’re not the kind of boy who gets into fights, so you and I are going to have a conversation once your brother is asleep.

Jamie once again fought the urge to rub the sore spot on his jaw. Will’s eternal distractibility—he was already twittering away about something else—had saved him this time, but Ma would ask questions. And Jamie couldn’t tell her the truth.

Neither of them could know.

Crossing the room and mentally taking note of the dishes Will had conveniently forgotten to collect before he washed up, Jamie smiled and joined his family, settling on the floor next to the bed. Will wouldn’t be in bed for hours yet, which meant he had time to come up with a story. A story that made sure neither his mother nor his brother ever knew he’d been to jail, met a handsome stranger there, and made it back out again.

As he listened to his mother and brother chattering away, Jamie couldn’t help but feel like he’d been caught in more ways than one.

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littleperilstories · 1 year

Text

The Prince of Thieves: Nothing But a Foolish Child

Mood Boards | Chapter Titles | Also on A03!

Warnings: Mention of jail/prison, mention of death/execution, anxiety- and- fear- and- desperation-fuelled bad decisions 🙃

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Word count: 2254 || Approx reading time: 9 mins

Nothing But a Foolish Child

Teaser: Will would find this whole scene hilarious. “Really? That’s what you’re planning? Could you make it any more dramatic?” I can imagine the way he’d mime me pulling back the bowstring and imitate the sound of an arrow whooshing through the air.

Jamie

I’m only glad that I’m alone when I hear what happened to Will.

It’s old news by the time it reaches me—communicated lazily in bored, impatient mutters, punctuated mostly with smirks and eye rolls. Snatches of gossip drift past me on the wind as I steal through the market, keeping my head down: Were you there that day? Did you hear him scream? Anything else exciting happen lately?

At first, it all means nothing. People gossip all the time; they’ll watch anything if it brings a smidgeon of entertainment to the mundanity of their lives and talk about anything if it brings them enough attention.

Do you think he’ll be the next to hang?

It’s that question, asked between two merchants walking past a butcher shop, that makes me realize I should have been listening more intently.

I gather by the time I leave that my brother is—or was a few days ago—alive.

It’s a good thing that Geoff is staying at the cabin today.

One, he’d surely be upset to hear what they did to Will.

Two, I can hardly breathe, and he’s seen me break down enough times over the past weeks.

I can’t lose control in front of him again. He’ll worry, probably, if I don’t return soon, but I can’t go back to him, not like this.

It’s difficult to tell how much time passes before the shaking stops, before the pain in my chest subsides, before I can appear anything close tocalm.

What do I do now? Should I tell Geoff?

Whether to tell Colette isn’t a problem. Couldn’t tell her if I wanted to. No idea where she’s gone.

But Geoff is here.

He has a soft spot for Will, like everyone does who knows him well, but maybe a little more than most. I’m not sure what it is, because they couldn’t be more different. Geoff thinks Will is funny, for sure. Maybe, though, he sees something in my brother he can’t quite understand or reproduce himself—that loud courage, the frenetic energy and chaos, the downright obnoxiousness. So different from the quiet concentration, the gentleness hiding beneath Geoff’s hulking figure. The calm and surety that drew me to him from the beginning.

What would he say if he knew?

Sure bled a lot. Voices of cruel strangers echo in my head. Yeah, saw him fall. Damn, I’m sad I missed it.

My feet carry me to the one place I know I shouldn’t go. Colette would absolutely murder me if she knew. It’s one thing for her to swan around town, pretending to be a different person at every turn, flirting or eavesdropping to steal bits of news, sneaking around with her quick fingers and light footfalls. She’s more or less uncatchable.

You look like him, she’d remind me sternly. Or maybe she’d go for, You’re the one they’re looking for. Either way, she’d conclude with, It’s too dangerous, Alpha.

I stand outside the prison’s stone walls. Against all odds, I’ve never been on the inside of these bars and stones—but I would give anything to be the one behind them now.

I peer through the gate, trying to imagine the scene as it was a few days ago. Why wasn’t I here? If I had been, what would I have done? What could I have done? Anything? Nothing?

I’d do anything to find you. I promised Will that once, didn’t I? I’m a fucking liar.

I don’t know what to do. What I can do.

Everything is crashing down on me, crushing me, smothering me, forcing every ounce of air from my lungs and I’m not sure I’ll be able to catch my breath. It was supposed to be me. It was only a coincidence, a stroke of hell-sent misfortune that sent Will in my place to what should have been nothing more than a fucking conversation. It’s me the constables want, not him, not really. IA was my idea. It’s my responsibility.

It was supposed to be me.

It was supposed to be me, but it’s Will.

Will is alive, but he’s suffering.

Will is alive.

They wanted me, but they got Will. And Will is still alive.

The thought repeats, an agonizing chorus, messy and disorganized, confused and stuttering. Will is alive, but he might not be soon.

Will is there, alive.

But they want me.

I’d do anything to find you.

Promise?

Promise.

Geoff was the one who taught me to shoot. Where, exactly, he picked up his astonishing and unnerving myriad of unrelated but useful skills, I’m not sure. Not that it matters—I’m grateful no matter where he learned to stitch wounds, shoot a bow, cook decently, pick locks, navigate everywhere he goes like he’s been there before, and do everything else he can do.

This particular skill, I don’t use often—I think Geoff used to hunt more for food, but we haven’t needed to since IA, since we’ve actually had money. Mostly, it was a nice excuse in the early days to sneak off into the woods together. He was a good teacher, patient if a little terse, and having him stand next to or behind me—laying his hands on my arms or shoulders to coax me into the right position—never quite lost its thrill.

If he knew what I was doing, he would be furious, but he isn’t going to find out.

Will would find this whole scene hilarious. “Really? That’s what you’re planning? Could you make it any more dramatic?” I can imagine the way he’d mime me pulling back the bowstring and imitate the sound of an arrow whooshing through the air.

He’d find it funny, that is, if he were here. If I weren’t doing this for him. To get him out.

Geoff may have been a good teacher, but my skills aren’t quite strong enough to hit a target from this distance, especially with twilight falling quickly. Fortunately, I’m not trying to hit a target. I just need to get a message from out here to in there.

I’d love to just send an arrow straight through one of their fucking windows, but I have no idea whose office is where. And this message is for one person in particular: Constable Baden Hatchett.

Shift change is usually quick, no pomp, no fuss. One of the higher-ups stalks past the new guard shortly after…to make sure everything’s in order, or that the bastards are standing up straight, or that their shoes are shiny enough, or whatever it is you’re supposed to care about when you wear the constabulary uniform.

And when Hatchett walks by…

It’s hard to wait, of course, but I remain still, curled in the fork of a tree towering a healthy distance from the prison walls. Nobody, not even Colette, could make the jump from here into the jail yard. I’m not trying to get inside, though.

String secures a single note tightly to the arrow shaft. It’s going to fuck up the balance, I guess, but such is the risk. As long as it gets close enough to Hatchett for him to notice, I don’t care if it’s an impressive shot.

Darkness gathers ever faster, and I know the shift change will be soon. This time of year, when the sun sets early, they switch just before the light disappears completely. Then, I will simply need to wait for Hatchett to make his rounds.

What few birds remain through the autumn grow quiet, only occasional chirps and calls breaking through the gloom. Though I try to concentrate on other things, my heart is racing.

Me and Geoff’s bow, we are the same—strung tightly enough to hurt.

Maybe I’m making a mistake. In fact, I probably am. In our family, it’s not usually me making the severe errors in judgment. That’s Will’s territory, and I’m usually the one cleaning up his mess.

But tonight it’s my turn.

Noise cuts through the air: calls and laughter, relatively quiet and deceptively innocent, as the guards perform their switches.

The countdown begins.

When the man appears, the one I’m waiting for, my vision goes white for an instant. Pure, blind rage.

He arrested my brother.

He hurt my brother.

I’ve never seen his face up close, but I suppose I will soon enough.

Two things nearly stay my hand. My inner circle, of course, but mostly Geoff—how angry he will be if Hatchett accepts my terms. The other, weaker and yet still powerful and sharp in my chest, is worry for a different group. If I am dead, will IA continue without me? If it doesn’t—and I wouldn’t blame the others if they decided to disband entirely—what will become of all the people we’ve helped over the years? Will others rise to take our place, or will they be too fearful once they learn of my fate? Will the days of stealing from the rich and giving care packages to those in need be done for good?

Undeterred by these worries, I touch the arrowhead to my lips, an unconscious wish of good luck, a wordless command to fly straight and true. These are my last moments to change my mind. Once I fire, I am shackled by a promise.

And once I make a promise, I am honour-bound to keep it.

It’s unwise to stay still and try to read his face from this distance; I must rely on my imagination to fill in what I cannot discern. I hope his expression is startled, perhaps slightly fearful, but intrigued, as he reads my message and what I offer in exchange for Will’s freedom.

Geoff is pissed off when I return. “Where were you?”

“I needed to walk.”

I stashed the bow and quiver before I came inside, and by some stroke of good luck, he hasn’t noticed it’s gone. It’s dark enough in the old cabin that I’m probably safe until morning, when I can sneak it back inside to its home in the corner.

“Thought you were done with that, Wolf.”

The hurt in his voice slices into me. “I know.” I don’t want to fight. Tonight, of all nights, I don’t want to become mired in a conflict I might never get to resolve. Or say something I might die regretting. “I’m sorry.”

He’s looking at me with worry and even suspicion. Something—I have to say something. “I think Will’s alive.”

I still don’t know if bringing it up is the right choice, but it’s too late now. I don’t want to tell him about the flogging—don’t want to put those pictures in his head. But I need to give him some kind of reason for my twilight wandering.

He blinks. Blanches, even. “Why d’you think that?”

“No executions since that first one.” I swallow. I hate keeping things from him.

Silence. Uncomfortable. Sickly.

“He must be so scared,” I say. I see Geoff’s mouth open like he’s about to speak, too, but I keep going. “I would be, if I—if it—” Fuck, fuck, I’m going to lose control again. “He’s alone in there. He probably thinks—thinks that—”

He thinks I’ve given up on him.

“And you know what he’s like.” A headache blooms and attacks immediately, wasting no time with any slowly intensifying nonsense. Instant. Violent. “He runs his mouth, he doesn’t think, he’s a complete asshole on a good day. When he’s upset…”

Sure bled a lot. Yeah, saw him fall.

“I don’t know if I can do it, Geoff.” Any more and I will tell him what I’ve done. I bite my tongue. The coppery tang of blood fills my mouth. “I can’t watch him die.”

His anger fades. “You don’t have to. No one would…”

The implication, filthy and shameful: he’d understand if I didn’t go. If I weren’t present for my brother’s unfair, unjust, untimely execution.

You don’t have to, he says. With any luck, I won’t have to. “Don’t say that, Geoff. You know I couldn’t…”

I let the unsaid words hang between us.

Geoff pulls me toward our meagre pile of blankets. There’s no bed in here—it’s set up as a resting spot for hunters, usually groups who just camp on the floor with bedrolls. “Wolf.”

Tonight, I flinch at the name. It’s wrong. It’s cursed.

“Just…” My next words might be the ones to give me away. “Can you just…” I can’t stop myself. “Geoff. Please.”

He knows. He always does. How is it that, no matter where or when, he always knows what I need? What everyone else needs? “Jamie.”

Finally.

“You would actually go, right?” I’m trying so hard not to lose it. “I can’t leave Will, I can’t, not really.” Leaving the house was one thing. Leaving town is another. “But if it was me, or if something happened, you would go.”

It isn’t a question. It cannot be a question.

“It’s different for me and him,” I say. “He’s my brother, my family, I have to—I have to at least be here. But Geoff, promise, fucking promise me you’d leave and never come back.”

Geoff wraps his arms around me, presses his face against my neck, the unkempt, wiry hairs of his beard digging into my skin, a sublime sort of torment, innocent yet lethal. “Jamie.”

His grip tightens, and mine does, too.

“You are my family.”

And I’m done, I’m wrecked. Again. After weeks of teetering on the edge and feeling helpless… Now I’ve finally done something and Geoff said my name and IA is all he has and I am all he has and—

I’m going to abandon him.

Geoff was once a secret I couldn’t tell a single soul—not just the way he made me feel, that day and every day since, but the twist of fate that brought us together that even Will doesn’t know about.

Now he is the one I am keeping secrets from.

Constable Hatchett,

If you want IA, then you want me. If the man you arrested goes free, unharmed, I will turn myself in, and Iustitia aecum will be no more.

Your move.

J. W.

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