N.J. Prynne

Chapter One

Of all the outrageous wastes of money Mavery had encountered while robbing manors, a four-foot-tall painting of hellhounds topped the list. The artist had depicted the beasts’ scarlet eyes, umber fur, and barbed tails with such chilling accuracy, it took her a moment to recover from shock and notice the blue aura peeking out from behind the canvas.

To hang this painting directly across from his four-poster bed, Baron Roven had to be fearless, eccentric, or—the more likely answer—a little of both. If this were Mavery’s bedroom, she would never get a good night’s rest, despite that luxurious bed. And that was to make no mention of the real hellhounds prowling about the manor’s lower levels.

“The safe is behind that painting,” she said. “Seems to be guarded with your run-of-the-mill protective ward.”

Her partner, Neldren, crossed the master bedroom in three strides and lowered the painting to the floor, revealing the safe embedded within the wall. Mavery began to follow him, but her green eyes flicked to the two pairs of red ones, and she froze again.

“Er, Nel, could you do me a favor and turn that around?”

He obliged with a chuckle. Mavery knew she was being ridiculous; it was only a painting. Still, she couldn’t deny how her shoulders relaxed once those demonic eyes were no longer staring back.

“Remind me again why you agreed to this job, knowing we’d be dealing with demonspawn?”

“We are not dealing with demonspawn,” she said. “Fennick and Itri are. And the pay was too good to pass up, as you reminded me at least a dozen times.”

She tucked a strand of golden brown hair behind her ear as she stepped forward to examine what, to Neldren’s eyes, would appear an ordinary safe. Only Mavery could actually see the magic emanating off it. Tendrils of blue light were loosely entwined like a sweater made with thick yarn. Mavery didn’t need to break the ward completely to reach the metal beyond it.

As she spread her fingers, the tendrils pulled apart, creating a gap large enough for a hand to slip through. With a turn of her wrist, the tendrils froze in place. It was so effortless, it was almost insulting.

According to this job’s buyer, the baron wasn’t a mage, nor did he employ any. The magic must have been contracted out to a freelancing wardsmith. Mavery had occasionally dipped her toes in that line of work. Making a steady income had been difficult when her wards lasted weeks at a time, even without anchoring spells. To guarantee repeat business, she could have instead created second-rate wards like the one guarding this safe.

But no, there was more satisfaction—and money—in wardbreaking. Especially when it came to breaking the wards of mages who took little pride in their craft.

She reached through the gap and tugged the safe’s handle. It didn’t budge.

“It’s locked,” she said, looking over her shoulder. With his slate-gray skin, Neldren blended into the darkness, but Mavery glimpsed his leather boots dangling off the footboard. In the seconds it had taken her to manipulate the ward, he’d made himself comfortable on the baron’s bed.

“Paranoid bastard,” he snorted. “Magic wasn’t enough for him?”

“He was right to not put much faith in it. A child could break this ward, given enough time.”

She pushed her hands apart, stretching the gap until the ward created a thin border around the safe’s door, completely exposing it. She could very well crack the combination, too. But since the payout for this job was being split five ways, she wasn’t about to do more work than was necessary.

“All yours,” she said.

Neldren slung himself off the bed, landed on the carpet with a soft thud.

“It better not explode in my face when I open it.”

“I’m not Sensing any blasting wards. If you need me, I’ll be in the library.”

She turned to leave, but he took her by the wrist.

“Are you sure? Cracking this safe won’t take long, and it’ll be some time before we need to regroup with the others.” He placed a finger beneath her chin, tilted her head upward. “I figured, seeing as we have this bed and a couple of minutes to spare—”

“Come on, be serious.” She laughed, batting his hand away.

“Oh, but I am, Mave. Very serious.”

Even in the dim glow of their lanterns, the desire on his face couldn’t be more clear. But she still suspected he was only joking; he would never take such a risk. The only part she fully believed was that he’d only need “a couple of minutes.” Such had been the case the last time they shared a bed.

“Maybe later.”

“As you’ve said every night this week,” he grumbled, then shooed her away with a wave of his hand. “Fine, go enjoy your books.”

He turned his attention to the safe, body stiff and shoulders hunched. She didn’t need to see his face to know he was scowling, and she knew that arguing with him would be pointless.

Mavery headed down the darkened corridor and entered the library, where moonlight poured through the floor-to-ceiling windows. She touched the lantern on her hip, severing the connection between her arcana and the stone that fueled the light.

In most manors, the private library was little more than a status symbol. Roven’s was no exception. His shelves were coated in a thick layer of dust; even his servants didn’t give this room much attention. A neglected library presented a perfect opportunity.

Mavery searched the bookshelves for anything that stood out. She had a personal code when it came to pilfering books. She never took anything that was signed, gilded, or looked expensive enough to draw attention. Books with cracked spines and dog-eared pages were also off-limits, as they were more likely to be missed. Her prime targets were somewhere in the middle: mass-produced, but with enough literary or scholarly merit to be worthy of her collection. And if the book was small enough to slip into her pocket, all the better.

Finding a target among Roven’s collection was more challenging than she’d expected. The top three rows were filled with exquisite leatherbound encyclopedias. She would bet her cut for this job that the baron had never read a single entry. Below those books was a shelf filled with other reference materials: legal codes, dictionaries, almanacs…

She wasn’t expecting a non-mage to own any tomes on spellcasting or arcane history, but she was hoping for at least something with a little panache. Roven didn’t seem to own so much as a book of poetry.

At last, a book on the bottom shelf caught her eye. A less discerning observer would have missed it entirely. Tucked between two large tomes on animal taxonomy was a thin clothbound book with yellowing pages: The Modern Gentleman’s Field Guide to Mushroom Foraging. It had been published fifty years ago, but its spine was pristine.

Flipping through it, she found dozens of detailed drawings of mushrooms. She wasn’t sure why this book was specifically for “the modern gentleman,” but she would have plenty of time later to discover that. She tucked the book in her pack as footsteps thundered up the main staircase. Her pulse quickened. Arcana hummed beneath her skin, waiting for her to unleash it on the approaching threat.

She was reaching for her dagger when a familiar mop of black hair passed the doorway. The youngest member of the crew, Itri, skidded to a halt. He doubled back and leaned against the doorframe, panting. Sweat glistened on his dark skin.

“Mave!” he gasped. “Oh, gods, we have to leave—now!”

“What? Why?”

“Hellhound! Coming this way!”

“You and Fennick couldn’t handle a pair of hounds?”

“Not a pair. There’s eight of ’em.” Itri shook his head. “No, nine. Fen missed the others when he was scouting the place.”

“How the hells does someone miss seven hellhounds?”

“Roven’s a breeder. Got a whole operation down in the kitchens and everything. A half-dozen pups and a bitch. Gods, was she pissed when she spotted us.”

She glanced over Itri’s shoulder and realized the boy was alone. “Where’s Fennick?”

“He distracted the bitch, told me to run for it and come find you. We only brought enough sleep tonic for two hounds, so—”

As if on cue, an otherworldly screech ripped through the manor. Mavery flinched, blood chilling and skin prickling.

Once she reclaimed her senses, she dashed out of the library with Itri on her heels. In the corridor, they narrowly avoided crashing into Neldren. From the look on his face—which was livid in every sense of the word—he’d overheard everything. He rounded on the boy, who flinched.

“Our mark is a fucking hellhound breeder? That’s a detail I should’ve known about!”

“Even the buyer didn’t know,” Itri squeaked. “Fen swore that Roven only had the two guard dogs.”

“And I swear to Fen, when we—”

The hound shrieked again. Louder, closer. Without another word, Neldren sprinted down the corridor.

“Wait!” Itri called. “What about Fen?”

“The bastard got himself into this mess, he can get himself out of it. Come on!”

Mavery and Itri exchanged glances, then ran after Neldren.

They retraced their steps from the break-in, scrambling down the corridor and up a narrow spiral staircase that led to the servants’ quarters. Three young women lay on cots, exactly where Neldren and Mavery had left them. Thanks to the sleep tonic Mavery had brewed earlier that day, they would continue sleeping soundly through the night.

One by one, Mavery and her accomplices tossed their packs through the window, then hoisted themselves out onto the roof. Mavery closed the window behind them. They tiptoed across the shingles, crouching as low as possible, lest a patrolling guard look in their direction. The hellhound’s cries had to have drawn someone’s attention. As Mavery climbed down the trellis, she tried to not think about that—or how high off the ground she currently was. Every movement made the wood rattle, and she had only the light of the first moon to illuminate the footholds. The climb down was somehow infinitely worse than the climb up.

The trellis held her weight, and her feet met solid ground once more. There was no time to pause and catch her breath, however. She followed Neldren and Itri across the back garden. As they wove around spindly bushes and barren patches of soil, they encountered no guards, no hounds, no Fennick.

They reached the stone fence, where the final member of their crew, Ellice, peeked through the hole she’d made earlier. Even in near-darkness, her red hair was vibrant as a lighthouse beacon. She threw a hand signal: the way forward was clear.

Itri climbed through the hole first. As Mavery and Neldren stood and waited, a hulking figure stumbled across the garden. With its broad shoulders and plodding gait, Mavery knew at once it was Fennick.

“You there! Stop!” cried a distant voice, gruff and unfamiliar.

A second figure chased after Fennick. This one was much smaller and carried a rifle. It stopped and aimed said rifle at Fennick.

“Fuck me,” Neldren groaned. He trudged toward Fennick and the guard. The breeze carried a hint of ash as Neldren raised his arms. Tendrils of darkness coiled around his limbs. He swung his arms forward and loosed those tendrils upon the guard, who began to yelp as his entire body became engulfed in shadow, but his voice cut out at once.

Mavery grimaced. She knew what the man was feeling. Or, more precisely, what he wasn’t feeling. Being caught unaware with no sense of light, no sense of anything, there was nothing left but to give into that all-consuming void. And that’s exactly what the guard did. When Neldren pulled the shadows away, the man lay unconscious on the ground, his limbs splayed at unnatural angles. It wasn’t far off from how Mavery had looked after her first attempt at a shrouding spell.

Neldren clenched his fists as Fennick shuffled closer, favoring his right leg while grasping his left side.

“Thanks, Nel. I—”

“You idiot!” Neldren barked. Fennick came to a halt. “All that racket you made, you’re lucky it was only one guard. And you better not’ve killed that hound. Anything happens to those beasts, we forfeit the payment.”

“I know, but the buyer only mentioned the guard dogs,” Fennick said through gritted teeth. “Said nothin’ about the others.”

“The others that you should’ve noticed!” Neldren shook his head. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you bungled this job on purpose.”

“C’mon, Nel. Don’t…” Fennick squeezed his eyes shut as he took a shallow, rattling breath. “Don’t be ridiculous. ‘Sides, I didn’t kill the hound. Just choked it out.”

“For your sake, you’d better hope—”

Footsteps and voices echoed from around the corner of the manor. It was difficult to discern what they were saying, or how far away they were. Not taking any chances, Neldren turned on his heel and jogged toward the fence.

“Move!” he hissed. “Before the rest of them catch up.”

His lithe figure slipped through the hole, joining Itri and Ellice on the other side. Before Mavery could follow, the sight of Fennick up close gave her pause. Dark blood saturated his shirt, oozed between his fingers. His tan face had turned pallid. His sandy hair, saturated with both blood and sweat, was plastered across his forehead.

“I’m fine,” he muttered; he’d no doubt heard Mavery’s gasp. “Just a graze, is all.”

Before she could argue with him, Neldren ordered the two of them to hurry up. Mavery tossed her pack through the hole, then pulled herself through. The hole was only three feet off the ground and just as wide, but Fennick couldn’t manage it. He winced as he tried to lift his leg, then lowered it with a shake of his head.

“Stand back,” Ellice said, pushing up her coat sleeves.

She crouched and placed her palms flat against the wall, just below the hole. The smell of saltwater filled Mavery’s lungs—a hint of summer cutting through the sharp, wintry air. Cracks appeared in the stone wall. Though Ellice was a mender, destruction magic came just as naturally to her. A chunk of wall broke free, and Neldren pushed it out of the way.

Fennick ducked as he walked sideways through the enlarged hole. His hand briefly slipped away from his abdomen, revealing a gash roughly the size and shape of a hellhound’s maw. Blood gushed, spattering the dirt at his feet. Mavery shuddered and had to glance away. She usually had an iron stomach when it came to this sort of thing, but Fennick’s wound was enough to test her limits.

Neldren and Itri replaced the slab, then groaned as they hoisted another into the original hole. As Ellice seamlessly mended the fence, Fennick swayed on his feet. Mavery rushed to his side.

“Here, lean on me,” she said.

He slung an arm around her shoulder, and her knees buckled beneath his weight.

“All right,” Neldren said. “Let’s move.”

He and Ellice fed a little of their magic into their lanterns and held them aloft, casting globes of warm light on the forest floor. Mavery did the same to the lantern on her hip, though it only illuminated her feet.

Neldren took the lead, his black ponytail whipping behind him as he hurdled snow-dusted roots and felled trees. They were only a mile from the closest village, where they would regroup with their contact and collect their payment. The trek to Roven’s estate had taken all of twenty minutes, but Fennick’s injury now made that pace impossible. Neldren, Ellice, and Itri trudged forward, stopping every so often to let Mavery and Fennick catch up. Mavery’s bad knee sent stabbing pains up her leg, but she clenched her teeth and focused on pushing ahead. Letting Fennick use her as a crutch was enough to keep him moving, albeit slowly. But before long, even that wasn’t enough. He stopped, untangled himself from her grasp, and leaned against an oak tree.

Neldren turned to Mavery. “Can’t you heal him?”

“Even if I could, patching up a wound this severe would probably kill me.”

“I told you, I’m fine,” Fennick gasped. “Just leave me here for a minute. I’ll catch up.”

His skin was whiter than the patch of snow at his feet, his eyes were ringed with darkness. He wasn’t remotely in the realm of “fine.”

“Nonsense,” Mavery said. “You’ll get torn apart by wolves out here, if you don’t bleed out first.”

“Leave him,” Neldren said.

She blinked, mouth agape. “You can’t be serious.”

“Just look at him, Mave. He’s beyond saving.”

“If we could get him to a healer—”

“And then what? We’ll strut up to the nearest temple and hope they don’t ask too many questions? For starters: How did he get mauled by a hellhound at half-past midnight?”

“We’re not leaving him,” Mavery said. “He’s—”

“The reason we almost got caught, or did you already forget?” Neldren scowled. “He didn’t want this job in the first place. He fought me on it every step of the way, told me anything involving the Rovens wasn’t worth any amount of money.”

“So, this is how you deal with those who disagree with you? You just leave them to die?”

Mavery gestured to Fennick, who was breathing heavily, mouth hanging open. A moan and a trickle of blood were the only things that escaped it. Neldren’s eyes narrowed as he looked to Fennick, then to Mavery.

“You’re right,” he said in a low voice. “We shouldn’t leave him to die.”

Mavery began to breathe a sigh of relief, until an eerily unfamiliar look crossed Neldren’s expression. His hand inched toward his blade.

“Wait!” she cried.

A metallic tang hit her tongue as she pushed her palms outward, creating a translucent blue barrier between the two men. The scent of ash filled the air again as Neldren vanished, then reappeared on the other side of her protective ward a heartbeat later. With neither a word nor hesitation, he unsheathed his knife and swiped it across Fennick’s throat.

Fennick reached for the wound, but his fingers could find no purchase amid the gushing blood. His gaze flicked to Mavery, and she swore she could see the slightest glimmer of fear behind his eyes. He then turned to Neldren. Nostrils flaring, he flashed the crew’s leader a cold, hard glare. As the final embers of his life extinguished, Fennick’s body slid down the tree trunk and into the brambles.

A deafening silence fell across the forest.

Mavery looked to Ellice and Itri, who silently stared at Fennick’s corpse. She hoped their lack of reaction was due to disbelief, not indifference.

“Neldren!” Mavery yelled. “Why would you—”

“No point in delaying the inevitable,” he said flatly. He cleaned his blade on Fennick’s shirt, then wiped a spatter of blood from his own face.

“But—”

“Quiet down before you wake the whole province.” He sheathed his blade and continued onward. “No time for a funeral. Let’s go get paid.”

---

Chapter Two

While Mavery gazed into the depths of her tankard, the rest of the crew was in high spirits, celebrating their payout. Odd, how a bit of money could make them forget all about what had transpired not even an hour ago.

Then again, none of them were strangers to death. That was especially true for Mavery. She’d been a member of everything from well-oiled mercenary organizations, to fly-by-night crews like this current group. Over her nearly twenty-year career, she’d lost more colleagues than she could count. She’d lost count well before she’d learned to stop counting altogether.

This most recent death stung, but it wasn’t as if Mavery and Fennick had been particularly close; they’d only known each other for a month. But that had been long enough to learn how he’d once been a nobleman’s bodyguard, until his heavy drinking and gambling left him with no job—only debts and divorce papers. He’d traded his once comfortable life for one that was far less savory, where he soon fell in with Neldren.

Fennick’s story was one Mavery had heard dozens of times. Though the details differed, they all led to the same place. Very few people chose this life. More often than not, it was the only viable path after they’d burned every bridge.

Despite his shortcomings, Fennick had deserved a better death. Would Mavery face a similar fate? Had she been the one bleeding out in the woods, she couldn’t say for certain whether Neldren would have acted any differently. And now he sat beside her, drinking and laughing with Ellice, as though he hadn’t killed his own crewmate. Even Itri was now three tankards deep and plunking out a tune on the taproom’s poorly tuned piano.

Mavery, taking a page from their book, tried to focus on the wad of potins in her pack. This had been her biggest payout in over a year, and her first job in weeks. Now that practically everyone in Osperland was carrying a pistol in their back pocket, there was little need for mercenaries’ protection these days. After months of attempting to strike out on her own as a mage for hire, only to come up short, Mavery had had no choice but to fall back in with Neldren.

Though his accomplices changed faster than the seasons, Neldren had always been consistent when it came to finding work—and getting paid decently for it. Now that the payout had been split four ways instead of five, Mavery had over five hundred potins to her name. It wasn’t a life-changing sum, but for the first time in ages, she didn’t need to pinch every copper until the next job came along. She could begin thinking in broader terms.

She sipped from her tankard and winced at the sour, watery ale. It was no surprise that this low-end establishment would serve low-end drinks. This place appeared to be made of driftwood and held together with dust. The handful of other patrons were what you’d expect to see in a backwater village’s public house at nearly two in the morning: passed out in their cups, or well on their way to it.

The only thing that stood out was the painting behind the bar. It was a crude rendition of a wizard with a long white beard and blue robes, raising his staff against an eldritch horde of black wings, red eyes, and countless fangs. A plaque hung beneath the painting:

Seringoth’s Rest—Est. 1012

Named in honor of the Wizard Seringoth the First, who cleansed Burnslee Village of demons in 534

Mavery held back a scoff. Perhaps wizards had been more heroic five centuries ago, but she doubted it. Saving villages was the type of work your average wizard would contract out; they would never risk damaging their precious spellcasting fingers. They preferred keeping to their towers, crafting spells and writing books. Stashed away in Mavery’s pack were pages from some of those books—all that remained of her far-too-brief wizarding education.

Now that was something she hadn’t thought about in some time.

She wasn’t foolish enough to entertain the idea of completing her studies, much less becoming a wizard. She’d dropped out of university nearly twenty years ago, which meant she would have to start over anew, and she was too old for that. Though mages often lived for a century or more, she assumed these past two decades had shortened her lifespan by just as many years—likely more. But with the payout from this job, maybe she could scratch the itch, take a class or two…

“Mave? Are you still with us?”

She blinked as she came to her senses, starting with Neldren’s voice, followed by a slight pressure against her upper back, a taste of blood, a sharp pain along her thumb. Another blink, and she realized Neldren had draped his arm around her while she’d been gnawing on a hangnail.

“Where’d you drift off to?”

She wiped her bloody thumb on the hem of her shirt, then shrugged off his arm without making it too obvious she wanted to put some space between them. She still couldn’t reconcile the man next to her with the man from earlier that night, with the man she’d known off-and-on for eighteen years. Neldren was many things—a smooth-talker, a thief, a charlatan—but he’d never been a killer. He’d promised her that from the night they first met.

“Nowhere,” she muttered, but Neldren’s cocked eyebrow was proof that he didn’t believe her. “I’m just a little tired, is all. I think I’ll call it an early night.”

“Oh, but we’re just getting started!” Itri said, slurring his words. At some point during Mavery’s musings, he’d abandoned the piano and returned to the table. Now, only snoring filled the taproom, and the innkeeper looked all the happier for it.

“Go easy on her,” Ellice said. “The thrill of a good score lasts a lot longer for you than it does for us older folks.”

It took all of Mavery’s resolve not to roll her eyes. Older folks. Ellice was twenty-four—only five years older than Itri. Her red hair didn’t have a streak of gray, her fair skin not a single blemish. Mavery doubted the girl started her mornings with her joints protesting as she rolled out of her bunk. What did she know about being old?

Mavery would be thirty-seven in a few days. Maybe she already was. The days tended to blend together when you spent your life hopping from one town to the next, sleeping in a different inn every night. Regardless, she had well over a decade on both of them. And for someone in this line of work, she was practically near retirement age—though the typical “retirement plan” was death.

“I know what’s going on here,” Neldren said. He leaned in, and Mavery fought the urge to lean away from him. “You’re still upset about Fen. Look, I did what I had to do, and at least he didn’t suffer.”

She scoffed. It hadn’t appeared that way to her.

“He was slowing us down,” Neldren continued. “But if we’d left him alive, like he wanted, what do you think would’ve happened once Roven’s guards found him? At best, they would’ve tortured the bastard to death. Worst, he would’ve ratted us out and led them straight to us. You can’t deny I made the pragmatic choice.”

A man was dead, and Neldren wanted to discuss pragmatism. Mavery was in no mood to argue with him. She pushed back her chair and stood up.

“Good night,” she said. “Enjoy the rest of your celebrations.”

***

She lay on her bunk, gazing at the ceiling. The inn’s thin walls did little to drown out the crew’s lively chatter from downstairs. Without her around, their spirits had lifted again. In the far corner of the room, a stranger snored loudly. Mavery lowered herself over the edge of her bunk and dropped to the floor.

She hadn’t changed out of her travel clothes, so packing up her belongings took very little time. As she laced up her boots, a shadow crossed over her. She looked up to see Neldren leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed, his figure limned by the light from the hallway.

Even in shadow, she could still make out the features that had made her nineteen-year-old self fall for him so hard and fast. As a native of Nilandor, he had slate-colored skin, tar-black hair, and subtly pointed ears. He stood over a head taller than Mavery, who was already a taller-than-average woman. Nilandorens aged slowly, thanks to their elven ancestry. Though Neldren was in his mid-forties, Mavery looked more his age than he did: her golden brown hair was streaked with gray, her beige skin was weatherworn, her green eyes were framed with fine lines.

Their scars seemed to be all they had in common anymore. Mavery bore a slash spanning the bridge of her slightly crooked nose, along with dozens of marks elsewhere on her body. Neldren sported gashes across his bottom lip and left eyebrow. His goatee hid a jagged lesion on his chin, a souvenir from his own run-in with demonspawn years ago. No amount of magical blood could prevent scars. Not when you lived the kind of life they did.

She had loved him once, and for this past month, she had thought she could learn to love him again. But tonight’s events had quelled those already tenuous feelings.

“Where are you going?” he demanded.

“I can’t sleep. I thought I’d step outside and clear my—”

“Don’t bullshit me, Mave. You’re leaving.”

“And? As you’ve said countless times, you’re not running a guild, we can leave whenever we like.”

“So, after barely a month, you’ve decided you’ve had enough?” His furrowed brow darkened his gaze. “What is it this time?”

She sighed. “What happened with Fennick—”

“I told you, he was a dead man either—”

“Let me finish. Please.” She forced her trembling hands into white-knuckled fists. And then she forced herself to ask the question that had lingered deep within her mind, the one she’d been too afraid to ask downstairs. “That wasn’t the first time you killed someone, was it?”

Neldren remained silent.

“Answer me, Nel.”

He hung his head. “No, it wasn’t.”

Mavery released a held breath. She’d already known the answer, though that didn’t make the truth any less painful. She shouldered her pack and began to move forward. Neldren stepped in front of the doorway, blocking it with his body.

“Look,” he said, holding out his palms, “I only killed when it was absolutely necessary.”

Mavery laughed coldly. “And that’s the difference between you and me. I would never think it was necessary.” She lowered her eyes. “So would the Neldren I knew a year ago.”

“A lot has changed since then. You would know, had you bothered to stick around for any of it.”

That was a low blow, even for him. But instead of enraging her, his words only made her all the more exhausted.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she said.

“Do what?”

“All of this.” She gestured vaguely at the dim room. “Roaming from village to village, never knowing what tomorrow will bring, never having a place to call my own. Yes, we had a good score tonight, but that money won’t last forever. And then what? I’m not getting any younger, and so—”

“You think you’re getting old? What does that make me?”

She scoffed. “Oh, please. You’ll live another century at least.”

“Not in this line of work.”

“See? You’ve just proved my point! If there’s little hope for you, then there’s even less for me. And everything that happened tonight proves I’m not cut out for this life anymore.”

“Then what’ll you do instead?”

She shrugged. “Maybe I could return to my studies, or—”

“Gods, not this again.” He shook his head, laughing incredulously. “You think living in dusty libraries, surrounded by ink-stained blowhards, is going to make you happy? Even Ellice couldn’t hack it, and she’s…”

Mavery crossed her arms as she waited for him to finish that thought. Like Mavery, Ellice had once attended wizarding university. Unlike Mavery, the brat had squandered the opportunity by failing out during her first term. Ellice’s family had banished her for it, but that didn’t erase all the years she’d lived in privilege, attending the finest boarding schools, wanting for nothing.

“She’s what, Nel? Cultured? Well-bred?”

“All I’m saying is, don’t throw away everything just to go chasing old dreams. We’ve become a good team again.”

“Good for you, you mean. In all the years we’ve run together, never once have you asked me what jobs I would like to take.”

“Then let me ask you now, Mave. What do you want to do?”

She hesitated. All that came to mind was the bundle of textbook pages stashed in her pack. Beyond that, her ideas were all abstract.

“I… I don’t—”

“And now you’ve just proved my point. You never know what you want, which is why those decisions always fall on me.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine, go fuck off with the wizards, be my guest. But we’ll see how long that lasts before you change your mind again.”

“I don’t need your permission to leave.”

“Then leave!”

“Yes, leave, so I can get some godsdamned sleep!” snapped a voice from the darkness.

“This is none of your business,” Neldren snapped back.

“You made it my business the moment you decided to have your lovers’ spat next to my bunk!”

As Neldren and the old man bickered, Mavery seized the opportunity. She shouldered past Neldren, who didn’t move from the doorway but also didn’t prevent her from leaving. No doubt their heated argument had traveled downstairs. She took the back exit to avoid receiving Ellice and Itri’s questions, too—assuming they would even care. From what Mavery had seen tonight, Neldren was molding his newest protégés in his own image.

It was still a few hours until sunrise, so Burnslee was dark and quiet. Only the light of the second moon and the glow from the windows of Seringoth’s Rest illuminated the village; it lacked even a single lamppost.

Mavery turned onto the main road and followed it out of the village. She had no goal in mind, other than to put as much distance between herself and Neldren as possible. Flurries danced in the bitter breeze, and snowmelt soaked through her worn boots. But her coat remained unbuttoned. The residual anger from her argument had left her arcana flaring in her veins; that alone was enough to warm her.

After walking for a few minutes, she came to where the building-lined roads gave way to open fields. The River Merimar was just over the horizon. From there, she could hitch a ride on a boat and make her way…somewhere. So long as she wouldn’t have to cross paths with Neldren again, her destination didn’t matter.

A few paces later, the ash-tinged scent of shadow magic made her stop in her tracks, but she did not turn around.

“Of course you followed me,” she sighed. “Thought you could change my mind?”

The scent faded as Neldren dismissed his shadows.

“No.” His voice lacked even a hint of emotion. “I realized you left with something that belongs to me—to the crew.”

She turned to him with a hard stare. He could control the shadows as though they were an extension of himself, but she had a more varied arsenal of magic at her disposal.

“You’re talking about my cut from the job.”

“It stopped being your cut the second you decided to leave.”

“Oh, piss off.”

As she turned away, he reached a hand inside his coat and whipped it out again with a flash of silver. She threw up her left hand, summoning a ward, while her right hand reached for her dagger. She sensed in quick succession a metallic taste, a small explosion, a white-hot pain deep in her gut. She looked down to see a dark red spot blooming on her shirt. She gripped her stomach, and her fingers became slick with blood.

Neldren had stabbed her.

No. She’d summoned her ward before he’d struck; a mere blade couldn’t pass through her magic that easily. This pain was deeper, more agonizing, than a stab wound.

Neldren had shot her.

Her eyesight blurred. She blinked, and the pistol in his hand came into focus. She could almost forgive him for stabbing her, but shooting her was an even greater betrayal. In her delirium, the only thing she could focus on was the weapon that had made their line of work all but obsolete.

“You…have…a gun?”

Speaking those four short words pushed her pain over the edge. Her legs gave out. Her bad knee screamed in agony as she fell forward, landing on her stomach, but the pain from her gut promptly drowned it out. As she began to fade out of consciousness, she heard Neldren rummage through her pack.

“Bastard.”

She wasn’t certain if she managed to speak the word, or only think it. One thing was for certain: if she needed a sign that she was due for a career change, she doubted she’d ever get one clearer than this.