Osric crouched on the frost-slicked roof tiles, ignoring the sting of cold seeping through his leather armor. Below, Olka’s market district pulsed with afternoon commerce—merchants shouting prices, customers haggling, children weaving between stalls with sticky fingers. The wound on his cheek had crusted over, a reminder of both Akuma’s morning antics and the shadow drake’s cws. Every breath still sent needles of pain through his ribs, but he’d endured worse.

  He twisted the silver ring on his finger, a habit that surfaced whenever his thoughts turned to his mother. Eight years gone today. The ring caught the pale winter sunlight, fshing like a bevrodraach’s scale.

  Would you have wanted me to take this job, Mother? Or would you have told me to let the creature fly free?

  Akuma’s boots scraped against the tiles as he settled beside Osric. “Three taverns, four pawnshops, and not a single whisper about our thief,” he muttered, breath clouding in the chill air. “Though that pawnbroker on Tanner’s Row looked ready to piss himself when I mentioned the Guild.”

  “He always does,” Osric replied, eyes scanning the crowd. “These people have lived their entire lives evading the Guild’s notice. They’re not going to start talking now.”

  Akuma pulled a fsk from his belt, took a swig, and offered it to Osric, who declined with a shake of his head. Below them, a patrol of the king’s bck-eyed Moons marched through the market, their silver breastptes gleaming. Merchants quieted as they passed, eyes downcast. Fear clung to them like a stench.

  “The Captain seemed to think this job was special,” Akuma said, tucking the fsk away. “Specially made for you. Any idea why?”

  Osric’s jaw tightened. The Captain knew too much—about his mother, about what lurked beneath his skin, secrets that could get him killed in King Hazen’s Elspeth. “Maybe he just appreciates my charming personality.”

  Akuma snorted. “Right. And maybe I’ll marry a princess.” He stretched, joints popping. “So what’s our next move? Split up, cover more ground?”

  Osric’s gaze caught on something—a flicker of movement in an alley across the square. A hooded figure slipped between shadows with the practiced grace of someone who lived in them. “That one,” he said, nodding toward the alley. “Moving too carefully.”

  “Could be anyone,” Akuma said, but he was already reaching for his short sword.

  “You follow her from the ground,” Osric decided, rising into a crouch. “I’ll track from above. Don’t engage unless you’re certain.”

  Akuma grinned, the scar across his lip twisting. “And if I am certain?”

  “Signal me first. This isn’t a bar brawl—we need information before anything else.”

  With a mock salute, Akuma swung down from the roof, using a merchant’s awning to break his fall before melting into the crowd. Osric watched him go, that uneasy feeling returning to his gut. He’d worked with Akuma long enough to know that “don’t engage” sometimes transted to “engage spectacurly” in his friend’s mind.

  Osric moved across the rooftops with silent efficiency, jumping gaps between buildings with practiced ease. The wound in his side protested, but he pushed the pain away, focusing on tracking the hooded figure below. She—he was almost certain it was a woman now, from her small stature—kept to the edges of the square, avoiding the Moons’ patrol with practiced ease.

  As she turned down a narrow side street lined with dipidated apartments, something small and silvery peeked out from her cloak—a fsh so brief Osric might have missed it if he hadn’t been looking for exactly that. His heart quickened.

  The bevrodraach.

  His mother’s stories flooded back—creatures of ancient wisdom, cousins to the sky. Beings that could heal with a touch or freeze entire worlds with a breath. Dangerous, she’d warned, but not in the way kings and soldiers understood danger.

  “They see things that no one else sees, Osric,” she’d said one night as she stroked his hair. “That’s what makes them so frightening to men in power. That’s what makes any creature frightening, my child. The unusual.”

  The hooded figure quickened her pace, ducking into another alley. Osric moved to follow, but froze as he spotted Akuma closing in from the opposite direction, hand already on his sword hilt. Too eager, too soon.

  “Curse it,” Osric muttered. He needed to get ahead of both of them.

  He sprinted across the rooftop, leapt to the next building, and swung down onto a rusted iron balcony. The metal groaned beneath his weight but held. From this position, he could cut through the abandoned tannery and stop the woman before Akuma reached her.

  As he dropped to street level, the stench of old leather and decay filled his nostrils. The tannery had been closed for years, but the smell lingered, embedded in the very stones. Perfect for masking his approach.

  He moved through the shadowed interior, stepping over broken equipment and rotted hides. Through a cracked window, he caught sight of the hooded figure approaching—alone, shoulders tense, one hand hidden within her cloak where the bevrodraach must be concealed.

  Osric pressed himself against the wall beside the door, listening to the soft crunch of her boots on the frozen ground outside. A second set of footsteps, heavier and less cautious, told him Akuma was closing in.

  He had seconds to decide. The Guild or his mother’s memory. The mission or his morals.

  The footsteps stopped just outside the door. Osric held his breath, hand hovering over the hilt of his sword, not yet decided which way it would swing.

  The woman moved suddenly, pivoting on her heel and darting down an adjacent alley—directly away from Akuma’s approach. Smart. She’d sensed the pursuit. Osric slipped through the tannery’s side exit, moving to intercept her path.

  The alley ahead narrowed between two brick walls slick with ice. Perfect. He quickened his pace, keeping to the shadows, timing his steps to match the rhythm of the market noise that echoed from the main street.

  As he rounded the corner, the hooded figure smmed directly into him. The impact sent a fresh wave of pain through his ribs, but he kept his bance even as she staggered backward.

  “Watch it, won’t you?” she hissed, one hand rubbing her nose as she gred up at him. Her hood had slipped just enough for him to glimpse raven-bck hair and a face marked by a web of burn scars across one cheek.

  Osric’s trained eyes caught everything in that moment—the defensive posture, the knife concealed at her belt, the slight bulge in her cloak where something small moved. But what held his attention were her sea blue eyes: mesmerizing, unafraid, and haunted in a way that reminded him of his own reflection.

  He chuckled, making a show of removing his hood to reveal his white hair and the scabbed gash on his cheek. “Do you make a habit out of being so abrasive?”

  Something flickered across her face—recognition? Fear? She was already moving to slip past him. “Good day,” she muttered, her tone making it clear it was anything but.

  “Actually,” Osric called after her, calcuting his next move carefully, “someone asked me to stop and question anyone I deem suspicious. There was a robbery this afternoon at the Olka Spectacur.”

  She froze mid-step, and Osric caught the almost imperceptible tensing of her shoulders. When she turned back to face him, her expression was carefully neutral. “A robbery, you say?”

  “Yes, a robbery.” Osric moved with deliberate ease, positioning himself between her and the exit to the alley. With one smooth motion, he reached out and flicked her hood back completely. “And I am deeming you suspicious.”

  Under the gray winter light, her face was a study in contradictions—young but hardened, beautiful but marred, defiant yet wary. Her eyes darted past him, calcuting escape routes. One hand drifted toward her knife.

  Inside her cloak, something shifted—a flick of a scaled tail.

  Osric felt a tug of something so deep it almost made him step back. This close, he could sense the bevrodraach’s presence. Not just see it, but feel it, like the pain between his shoulder bdes that his mother had warned him about. A distant kinship he couldn’t expin.

  “Guild assassin,” she said ftly, eyeing the silver ring on his finger. “Didn’t realize I was important enough to warrant the Phantom Guild’s attention. Fttered, really.”

  Akuma would be closing in soon. Osric had perhaps a minute to make his choice.

  The woman’s hand had settled on her knife now, but she hadn’t drawn it—a precaution, not a threat. She wasn’t a killer. A thief, certainly, but not someone who took lives without necessity.

  “That creature,” Osric kept his voice low, his words for her alone. “Do you have any idea what the king will do to it?”

  Confusion crossed her face, quickly masked by suspicion. “The king? I don’t know anything about that.” She shifted her weight. “Besides, why would a Jure care?”

  Osric twisted the ring on his finger, feeling the quiet hum of its power respond to his touch.

  “Because some of us remember when creatures like that flew freely over Elspeth,” he replied, the words his mother had whispered to him as a child now passing his own lips. “Before the previous king decided anything more than ordinary was a threat to his throne.”

  In the distance, Akuma’s whistle—their signal. He was approaching from the market side.

  Osric stepped closer, dropping his voice even lower. “You have a choice, thief. You can come with me right now, or you can face whatever the king’s men have waiting for anyone caught helping magical creatures escape. And trust me, it’s not a quick death.”

  Her eyes narrowed, knife still half-drawn. “Why should I trust you?”

  Osric was wondering the same thing. Why was he risking everything—his position, his cover, his life—for this woman and a creature from his mother’s stories?

  “Because today’s a day for honoring the dead,” he said finally. “And because whatever else I am, I’m not my father’s son.”

  The woman stared at him, calcution and distrust warring in her eyes. Somewhere in the market, a bell tolled the hour. Time was running out.

  “Listen, I don’t know what you mean by that, and to be honest, I don’t really care. I don’t need your help,” she said, her voice low but firm. “And I don’t trust Guild assassins, no matter how poetic they sound.” She fully drew her knife, her hand tightening on the hilt. “Step aside, Jure.”

  Akuma’s second whistle cut through the air—closer now. Osric could almost feel the seconds ticking away.

  “You’re making a mistake,” he said, frustration edging into his voice. “The king’s men are searching every district. The Moons have doubled their patrols. And if that thing is truly what I think it is—”

  “It’s my mistake to make,” she interrupted. “Now move, or I’ll make you.”

  The determination in her eyes told him she meant it. This woman—whoever she was—had risked her everything to free the bevrodraach. She wasn’t about to hand it over to a stranger with a Guild ring, regardless of his intentions.

  Osric could overpower her—he knew seventeen ways to disarm her without drawing his own bde. But then what? Drag her and the creature to safety against her will? The very thought felt wrong, like a betrayal of everything his mother would have wanted.

  “Fine,” he said, stepping aside just enough to create a narrow path past him. “But take this.” He slipped the ring from his finger and held it out to her. “If you change your mind—or when you’re cornered with nowhere left to run—find the tavern called The Broken Bow on the eastern edge of the city. Show this to the barkeep.”

  She eyed the piece of jewelry suspiciously. “Why would you give me this?”

  “Insurance,” Osric replied. “So I know you’ll keep that creature alive until I can find you again.”

  A faint rumble of ughter came from deep within her chest. “Keep it alive? I wouldn’t have rescued it if I wanted it dead.” She set her hands on her hips. “I don’t need your silly ring.”

  “Just take it.” He pressed the ring into her palm and closed her fingers around it. “And run. Now. My partner is less understanding than I am.”

  For a moment, she looked like she might argue further, but then the sound of boots on cobblestones echoed from the alley entrance. Her eyes darted past him, then back to his face. With a quick nod, she pocketed the ring and slipped past him, disappearing down the narrow passage behind the tannery.

  Osric exhaled slowly, feeling strangely lighter and heavier all at once. The ring had been his only protection—the one thing that identified him as a formidable assassin and kept him safe from the king’s men. Without it, he was exposed. Vulnerable.

  And yet, for the first time in eight years, he felt like he was truly honoring his mother’s memory.

  “Ric!” Akuma’s voice came from behind him. “Did you find something?”

  Osric turned to face his partner. Even after growing up together, Akuma’s presence still commanded attention. Tall and powerfully built, he moved with a predatory grace that belied his size. His straight bck hair swept down his neck, framing features that most would describe as beautiful rather than handsome—high cheekbones and full lips that contrasted with the intensity of his expression.

  “Lost her,” Osric lied smoothly, stepping forward to block Akuma’s view of the passage behind the tannery. “She ducked through here. Must have heard us coming.”

  Akuma’s nostrils fred slightly, and Osric tensed. The bck markings that curved down both sides of Akuma’s face—what most assumed were tattoos but Osric knew to be curse marks—seemed to darken as his frustration grew. They stood out starkly against his skin, thicker at his chin and curving upward like devil horns toward his temples.

  “You sure it was our thief?” Akuma asked, his gaze lingering on the shadows.

  “Small woman, hooded, moving suspiciously,” Osric shrugged, instinctively moving to hide his ring-less hand. “Could have been anyone, I suppose.”

  Akuma’s golden eyes narrowed on Osric’s motion, and for a heart-stopping moment, Osric thought he’d noticed the missing ring. Instead, Akuma rolled his shoulders, the subtle motion Osric recognized as him wrangling the monster within. The bck markings on his face seemed to pulse once, then settled.

  “The Captain won’t be happy,” Akuma said, his voice returning to its normal timbre. “First day on a royal commission, and we’ve already lost the target.”

  “We’ll find her,” Osric replied, already pnning his next moves as he casually tucked his hands into his belt. “The city’s on lock down. She can’t have gone far.”

  As they headed back toward the market, Osric cast one st look over his shoulder at the alley where the woman had disappeared. The ring was a risk—one he couldn’t fully expin even to himself. But something about her, about the creature she protected, had struck a chord deep within him.

  His mother had always said that some choices were made by the heart before the mind could understand why. As a boy, he’d thought it nonsense.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.