Jac shook her puzzle box in a way that some might name Aggressive, but the rattling of the pieces inside shuffling around, the clicking and sliding and ticking of the pieces on the outer sides of the box rearranging, did nothing to ease the pressure building in her belly. Normally a move like that from Jac would draw the focus of Belle’s big green eyes and have them reading the evidence of emotion that was certainly all over Jac’s magic. Belle would guess at a glance which gentle words would be the best tools for the job, and she’d wield them skillfully—a bolt loose here, a gear begging oil there—and next thing Jac knew there’d be hot steam pouring from her own mouth, relieving all that pressure before Jac had even noticed it.

But as it was, Belle stared blankly out the curtained window of Z’s carriage as they rattled along the roads of Ace, lost deep within her own head. Jac frowned down at the box in her hands, replaced the silver key in the keyhole, and turned it with a satisfying (but not enough) click that echoed a hundred other clicks all over the box, locking the pieces into their new places. She picked a side of the puzzle box at random, the side of sliding pieces that had to be rearranged to match whichever image was displayed in the top corner after her last shuffle, and got to work. Her fingers nimbly slid the pieces around with a steady tick-tick-tick-tick.

It was a relief that Belle sat across from her, next to Z, looking like a person once again. Her hair was finally its normal shade of pale, pale yellow, braided into a massive rope over one shoulder; her cheeks and nose were pink, proving blood flowed beneath her pale, freckled skin, so different from the walking corpse she’d been not long ago, and she wore a plain but fine powder-blue peplos—but her eyes…

They weren’t dead like they had been the whole while they were traveling to Ace, but they were far, far from the sparkling, magic-filled, wonderstruck eyes they had been in that forest. Not dead, but not really alive either.

Jac slid the last piece into place and within the box, a lock opened and a brief tune played. Before the last note had faded, Jac was working on the next side, this one covered in numbered metal buttons. She pressed each one in sequence, listening for the coinciding click, or lack thereof.

At least when they’d been traveling, Jac had a clear goal—and a clear threat in every person they met along the way. She’d been surging with magic the whole time. When Jac had been assigned to guard Belle, the contract she’d signed with Cuppedia had been amended to allow her to use as much offensive magic as she wanted in order to protect Belle, not just in service of Cuppedia. And as broken as Belle had been the past few days, walking road after road, passing a thousand strangers, she had certainly needed protecting.

But now, the threats had once again become things that Jac couldn’t swing her hammer at.

Jac hit one last button, and again a tune played. The next side she chose was a maze with a small metal ball she had to guide through it, but the sequence of checkpoints she needed to hit along the way changed with every shuffle.

In her periphery, Jac saw Z trailing his fingers up and down Belle’s arm. It brought Jac’s frown back. Belle sighed and shifted closer to Z.

It wasn’t that Jac considered Z himself a threat—he had a soft spot for Belle that made her perhaps the only person Z had ever put before himself. But he wasn’t careful enough with her in his hands—because if anyone found out she had been in his hands, if word got back to Prince Dickwad…

Z had his mother—Grand Duchess, General of the Royal Guard, one of the queen’s closest friends and advisors—to protect him. Belle only had Jac. Normally, Jac would name that about equal, but she’d just had to sign away her rights to her own fucking magic. There was no way her contract would allow her to use offensive magic against Richard, even if it was to protect Belle.

For the fourth time, Jac’s little metal ball ended up in the same dead end of the maze with the next checkpoint just on the other side of the wall. She shook the puzzle box in frustration—if she were the metal ball, she could just smash her way through the wall, to the checkpoint. She knew where she needed to get, she could see it, just a millimeter away. That maze wall was nothing. Her magic could rip right through it—except that it couldn’t.

Hands shaking with aborted magic, Jac tossed the puzzle box aside, hard enough that it bounced off the seat cushion beside her and hit the carriage wall, cutting a chunk out of the wood before clattering to the floor.

“Ay!” Z said, indignant.

Jac crossed her arms and grumped, “Sorry.”

In public, of course, Z and Belle stayed a respectful distance apart. But even when they arrived at the front doors of Ace’s mail coop with dozens of people passing by, as Z helped Belle down from his carriage he let his hand linger longer than necessary in hers, then trailed a thumb along her spine before he headed up the coop’s front steps.

Jac and Z would be having a talk after this.

There seemed to be some commotion going on in the coop—that or Ace was a busier town than Jac had realized. As she and Belle climbed the wide stone steps, they could already hear dozens of raised voices inside, and when they entered the doors, the reception room was packed.

The line of those trying to send their letters and packages had devolved into an angry blob of shouted complaints and waving letters. About half the attendants behind the counter threw around profuse apologies and kept bobbing up and down with each bow; the other half returned every complaint with a snappy remark and every waved letter with an annoyed glare.

“What’s this about?” Jac called to Z and Belle over the voices bouncing around the cramped room.

“Let’s see,” Z said, adjusting the rich purple chlamys draped over his shoulders and striding into the crowd.

Initially, he was met with irritated looks as he pushed his way through, but it didn’t take long for the crowd to recognize the fine threading of his traditional clothing, the shining gold pins that held his tunic on, and the family crest that rested against his collarbone. They quickly shuffled aside, the attention of the whole room suddenly shifting to him.

The attention of the whole room, save Belle. Jac glanced at her to see Belle’s glazed eyes staring in the direction of the door that led to where the birds were housed.

Suddenly, Belle lit up and started toward the door.

“Ay!” Jac called after her, but before Jac could shove her way through the crowd, Belle had slipped through the door.

Jac didn’t know what she expected to see when she followed Belle into the coop, but it wasn’t this.

Feathers of all colors rained down and birds screamed, flapped, and dove all over the place. A few post workers with hooded cloaks splattered with bird droppings were wielding brooms, swatting and stabbing up into the artificial tree that stood in the middle of the room. Before Jac could figure out what the hell was going on, a large hawk swooped down, talons outstretched right at Belle’s face. Without taking her eyes from the tree that the workers were assaulting, Belle ducked under the hawk’s grasp and trotted toward the tree.

The hawk, unsatisfied, turned its attention to Jac.

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It was, of course, illegal to harm a messenger bird. That thought crossed Jac’s mind as the hawk gave a piercing cry and arced overhead. But her hands were still buzzing with directionless magic, and, hey—if some hawk tried to scratch Jac’s eyes out, she would not hesitate to punch a bird.

The hawk dove, and Jac jabbed, sending her magic in a wave off her fist, strong enough to knock the hawk off its path and let it know not to try that shit again, but dull enough not to actually hurt it. At least, that’s what she intended—but her practice fizzled out. No magic came off the fist that whiffed through the air. She jerked back in time to avoid taking talons directly to the face, but she did catch them on her shoulder.

An unnamed fire lit up Jac’s skin, burned the oxygen out of her lungs. Panicking, Jac swung her fists wildly, catching the hawk in the side and sending it flying into the wall. It smacked into the wood with a dull thud, feathers bursting off its splayed wings. She started toward it—but the hawk, either unconscious or possibly dead, just slid slowly to the floor. Her heart was racing, her hands trembling, and for a few moments every thought in Jac’s head that she tried to grasp just slipped through her fingers. Jac quickly put her fists away and glanced toward Belle. There was only one feeling worse than when Jac’s practice failed her, and that was when someone had seen it happen.

Not only that, but if that bird was in fact dead, Belle would not be happy.

Luckily, Belle was preoccupied. Unluckily, Belle was preoccupied with climbing into the artificial tree.

“Belle!”

“Ay, miss!” one worker shouted.

“What are you—?” another started. “That’s a nightbeast up there!”

Nightbeast?

Sure enough, dangling from a high branch by one paw, hissing and spitting and swiping at the birds that scratched and pecked at it, was a little beast about the size of a cat. It wasn’t like any monster Jac had seen before—it looked like it had been stitched together with spare parts from several different creatures. Half its feline head was covered in black fur and the other half in dark green scales. The paw it hung from could have been a bear cub’s, but the one it used to swat at its attackers would look more at home on a lizard. The beast’s mouth split its whole face in two, making it look like its lower jaw hung completely separate from the skull, a black, forked tongue darting out to taste the air.

Just as its paw slipped from the branch, Belle swung to the branch below and caught it, already speaking in the monster’s tongue. On its back in Belle’s arm, its legs tucked up on its belly, the monster stared up at Belle’s face, jaws still split and tongue lolling, with wide, bewildered eyes like a confused baby. Ignoring the shouts from the workers below, Belle made her way down through the branches until she dropped to the floor, chattering to the monster all the while. It was transfixed, or perhaps dumbfounded, by her.

“Miss, careful!”

“Poor baby,” Belle said, rubbing it under its half-fur, half-scale chin. “How hungry must a little nightbeast be to break into a busy coop in the middle of the day?”

“Hand it over, Miss, and we’ll dispose of the beast.”

Belle’s head snapped up and a pressure rolled off of her, magic formless and raw, beyond the restraints of practice. Her dark eyes locked onto the worker who had spoken.

She said, “You will not.”

The worker took a step back. “Now, miss—”

Jac felt a hand on her back just before Z swept by her, his nobility on full display.

“Pardon us,” Z spoke to the attendants, coming to a stop next to Belle. “We’ll take the little troublemaker off your hands.”

Belle beamed up at Z, but Jac’s stomach flipped—they could not take this monster with them. It was one thing for Belle to play around with monsters like Julius who could take care of themselves and knew to stay out of trouble (and out of the castle), but there was no way Belle could care for a baby monster. Not without someone in Broken Earth finding out and killing the thing. And after what had happened with Clarix…

It would break her.

“I—” The workers could only gape.

Z produced a letter from within the folds of his tunic and said brightly, “I’ll trade you for this letter, and ask that you name it Urgent.”

One of the workers took the letter and examined the address written on it. Their eyes bugged. “To the queen?!”

“Like I said.” Z smiled. “Urgent.”

By the time they left the coop, not only had Z managed to get the workers to take his letter and send it off before they served anyone else, he’d also convinced them to help patch up Jac’s shoulder and find Belle a thick, woven blanket to wrap the monster in. And Jac suspected he’d even stolen the bit of jerky he suddenly had, which he gave to Belle so she could feed it to the monster, now swaddled in her arms like a newborn. The monster was so grateful for the food that it allowed this. For now.

“What a sweet little kitten,” Belle crooned.

The monster sneezed violently, spraying Belle with monster snot and bits of jerky. Belle mock-sneezed back.

The horses attached to Z’s carriage tossed their heads and trotted in place on anxious hooves as Belle neared, but Z just helped Belle and her new child up into the carriage and stepped back to let Jac enter after her.

Jac just swung the carriage door shut and said, “I’ve got some words for you.”

“Uh-oh.” His tone was amused, his hazel eyes sparkling.

Jac grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him around behind the carriage—not that Belle was paying them the slightest bit of attention anyway. Jac rounded on Z, who waited patiently with that smug fucking smirk on his face. Yet again Jac had to remind herself that Z didn’t actually look like this—the tall frame and lean body, the angelic curls and full, dusty-rose lips. Now, she didn’t know what Z actually looked like, she didn’t even know if it worked like that; maybe he had no true form, no face that was his own. She just had to remember that the man giving her bedroom eyes right now probably wasn’t actually this beautiful.

Keep it together, Jac.

“You remember which words I gave you, last I saw you?” Jac asked, firm.

His hazel eyes flicked down to her lips. “I remember something else you gave me, last I saw you.”

A jolt ran through her body at the memory. Keep it together. “You swore.” Jac lowered her voice, “That you’d be more careful what you do with your hands around her.”

“Haven’t I been?”

“Three times.” Jac held up three fingers. “Three times just since we left Quiet House that you laid unnecessary hands on her with others around to watch.”

“Three?” Z frowned, stroking his chin. “That can’t weigh true.”

“Three at least.”

“You must be counting when my attendant is around—You can’t name him Others, he’s loyal.”

Jac scoffed. “Lord Z Vigore talking about loyalty?”

There was that little glint in his eyes, the one that only dimmed when Belle was around. It was something beyond mischievous, but Jac couldn’t find the word that quite fit it. He said, “I can’t name anyone more loyal.”

“Sure,” Jac said. “To himself.”

The wicked grin came out in full. “Who else?”

“Then consider,” Jac said, lifting one hand and letting it rest on the handle of her hammer. “That if you get her in trouble, perhaps your mother can shield you from Richard’s wrath. But no one could shield you from mine.”

Those hazel eyes swept over her, taking in the threatening stance, but the smirk never faded from his lips, nor that glint from his eyes. “Aside from Cuppedia, of course.”

He said it so casually, but that look told Jac he knew exactly what he was doing. The single chink in her armor, and he knew right where it was. Had he seen what happened inside that coop?

She gripped her hammer, and it took everything in her not to swing it right at his face. But she kept calm, cocked her head, and shot her own smile back at him.

“Protecting Belle is well within my contract,” she said. “Cuppedia’s the one that wrote it in there. But even if it wasn’t…”

Jac turned, prepared to leave him with that final thought, but he called her back in a tender tone. Just like that, the glint was gone and his beautiful face was serious.

“You know I don’t want her hurt, Jac,” he said, and gave her a nod. “I’m grateful for the reminder.”

“Happy to help, asshole.”