Petre was hiding something, Ainreth knew that much from how they had been acting since coming back to the warehouse. But he had no idea what.

When he’d asked them, they’d ignored him, and instead called for a meeting, actively stopping any further chances of investigating what was up. But Ainreth supposed it was none of his business. If Petre wanted help, they could ask for it, and that was about as much as there was to it.

He, Petre, Anyri, Arem, and a few others were gathered around the large table they used for meetings and planning. Ainreth almost yearned for those days of gluing anti-war protest posters around the city.

Those days had been so much simpler, and they had happened just a while back. It was hard to believe things were going so swiftly from bad to worse, with no signs of stopping.

“The Courtiers just announced that around half of the Lys-Akkarian army is to return home,” Petre said, scowling as they did. As did Ainreth. He’d also heard about this, but he hadn’t gone to the square to hear Varilik or one of his lackies say it directly.

“No doubt to try to force people to stop protesting. This has nothing to do with stopping the war,” Anyri grumbled, everyone nodding along.

That much was obvious. If this was meant as a way to stop the war, perhaps simply keep the territory they’d already taken and stop there, surely the new announcement would have included that to appease them. But Ain hadn’t heard about anything like that being mentioned.

“We can’t fight the army with civilians,” said Tyr-Haran, sighing. “They are too well trained to defeat by ourselves. It would be a bloodbath.”

Ainreth wanted to snort. Some of their fellow soldiers truly left much to be desired. He himself wasn’t a good soldier either—all he had going for him were his powers, and that was enough.

“Not if we get the numbers that we need,” Petre said, making Ainreth frown at them.

“Am I sensing a plan, little guy?”

Petre smiled at him grimly. “I was simply thinking about that assassination attempt. The timing, the circumstances….”

Ainreth’s eyes widened. Sure, he had thought that the attack had been convenient, but he’d not thought that Varilik would go so far as to fake something like this outright. But then, why wouldn’t he? The misborn was capable of anything.

“You think it was faked?” Anyri asked, her eyes wide.

Petre shrugged. “I asked around a bit and learned that the would-be assassin is still in jail, awaiting execution. I think it might be worth it to ask him a few questions.”

Ainreth nodded, immediately on board, if only because this was an actual plan, and he had very few ideas as to what to do.

“I cannot believe the Herald would fake an assassination just to further his goals,” said Arem dubiously. “Would he truly risk the trust all of Lys-Akkaria had in him for what? Continuing the war? It doesn’t seem worth it.”

Ainreth frowned in thought. That was a good point. It truly didn’t seem worth it. Varilik had been the Herald for so long. Surely staying in power would be a better motivator than endangering that just to continue warring with Orinovo.

Unless they didn’t actually know what Varilik’s goal was. But Ainreth wasn’t going to waste time with conspiracy theories about that. It didn’t matter what Varilik’s motivations might be, after all. What mattered was protecting people, saving Lys-Akkaria from itself because clearly that was necessary now.

“Either way, it’s worth talking to the man who tried to kill him,” Ainreth said firmly, nodding to himself. “I can get inside the prison easily enough.”

“I will go with you,” Petre added. “I can make a powerful sleeping tonic. It should take care of the guards long enough for us to actually talk to the prisoner.”

Ainreth felt like Petre was saying this mostly just to keep an eye on him, so they didn’t have another incident with Ain getting captured. But if that was the case, it was fair. “Good idea, Petre.”

Ain then looked at everyone else, expecting comments. But none were given.

“I think he is to be executed tomorrow,” Petre added. “So I will go make the tonic. And we leave as soon as it’s done.”

With that they left the room, saying nothing else. Ain sighed. This had to go better than his last visit to the palace. Though the prison’s entrance wasn’t directly in the palace, he supposed. It was beneath it, though.

“For the love of the sun, do not get caught again, Ainreth,” said Arem, giving Ainreth a pointed look. Ain rolled his eyes at him.

“Hey, when you learn how to be invisible, you can go on these missions instead of me, how about that?” Ainreth snarked at him, even though he knew he deserved all the jabs Arem could come up with.

He’d really messed up. He’d rather have the war keep going than have people here rioting. But there was no going back now.

Arem said nothing, just scowling at Ain, which Ainreth took as him winning this argument.

“Right, anyone have anything else to say?” asked Ain, to which everyone shook their heads.

“Just be careful. They might outright kill you this time,” said Anyri, sighing.

Ainreth wanted to make a joke about not letting just anyone kill him, but now wasn’t the time. He opted to just nod at her. “I know what’s at stake. Don’t worry. I promise I won’t let myself get distracted again.”

With that he left the room as well. His back was healing well with the salve Petre had given him, but it still burned, and there would be scars. There was no avoiding that.

He needed to put on more salve now, though, before they left. And drink some of that pain numbing tonic. He couldn’t afford to make a single mistake. Not anymore.

Half an hour later, he and Petre were ready to go, both hovering for a bit in front of the door, lost in thought, though Ainreth had no idea if Petre was thinking the same worries as him.

“Are you ready?” he asked eventually, walking out onto the street. It was nice and empty, just like he liked it.

Petre gave a firm nod. “Let’s go. We don’t have much time.”

Ainreth nodded right back. “All right, you know how this goes.”

Petre snorted a bit as they took Ain’s hand. Ainreth immediately made them invisible, shutting the door behind them and walking off, up toward the palace yet again.

“I always think of these missions fondly,” Petre whispered to him, their voice surprisingly full of fondness.

“You like risking your life like this?” Ain snorted back, though he was keeping his voice quiet. There was no one around that he could see, but that didn’t mean that no one could overhear them.

“Not exactly, but…I don’t know. There is something nostalgic about us going on invisibility missions,” Petre said, sounding bashful. Even though Ainreth couldn’t see their face right now, he could just feel them looking away, so as not to show their emotion.

“Invisibility missions? Is that what we’re calling it?” Ainreth was grinning ear to ear now. This was so adorable.

Petre meanwhile huffed. “Well, what would you call it? It usually only involves us, we always go do something important, and I enjoy subterfuge.”

“Little guy,” Ainreth cooed. “You’re such a cutie.”

Petre scoffed but hugged back when Ainreth put his arms around them, still keeping up the invisibility as he did. “There will be more invisibility missions. I’ll make sure of it.”

“Good. If you die, I will kill you,” Petre said firmly, making Ainreth laugh so hard he had to put a hand over his mouth.

“Of course, of course. I’m never going to die, though,” Ainreth whispered, sniggering. “I will annoy you forever.”

“Good, you’d better,” Petre muttered. “Dumb bratrishko.”

Ainreth gasped, so shocked that he dropped the invisibility for a moment. “Bratrishko?”

He felt his eyes sting with tears as he hugged Petre tighter, overcome with emotion. Petre had called him brother, but in Orinovan. Somehow it felt even more special now.

“Yeah,” Petre said, chuckling a little. They even sniffled. “That is what you are. An idiot. And…moy bratrishka.”

Ainreth felt a few tears flow down his cheeks, sniffling as he hugs Petre a bit tighter before letting go. “I love you, little sibling.”

“I love you too,” Petre said, smiling at Ainreth. “Now make us invisible again before someone sees us.”

“Oh, right.” Ainreth laughed a bit, shaky because of the crying as he once again bends light away from them to be invisible, taking Petre’s hand. “Okay, now let’s go talk to this assassin man.”

+++++++++

Getting inside the prison turned out to be more difficult than expected, mostly because more of those blighted pollen spraying plants were stationed here, all around the place.

And there were more plants than that around as well, though Ainreth was staying away from all of them. He did not need to find out what those did.

He cursed under his breath when he walked around one of the plant pots, only to have the blueish plant in it shoot out a tendril to wrap around his ankle.

Ain quickly pulled away from it before anyone could see the plant hanging onto nothing. It wasn’t difficult to do so—it was still just some vegetation—but if someone had been around he would have been spotted for sure.

Sundering Varilik. That was why he had so many kinds of plants around, wasn’t it? Just to weaponize them. Ainreth had to shake his head at it.

He and Petre were getting close to the dungeons, though. They just needed to walk down a corridor and a flight of stairs, and they would be where the cells were.

Petre was behind him, a necessary move as they couldn’t safely get around the plant pots while walking next to each other. Ainreth was managing to keep them invisible, though, as long as they held hands so Ain always knew where Petre was.

They’d managed to avoid all the guards for now, but now they were quickly approaching the door leading down to the dungeons, which was guarded by a bored-looking woman sitting at a desk by it. There would be no avoiding using that tonic that Petre had made on her.

Petre didn’t need to be told, taking the lead then and pulling Ain along toward her, whispering to Ainreth’s ear as he walked past him.

“Don’t breathe it in.”

Ainreth nodded even though he knew Petre couldn’t see him right now. Not breathing in the sleeping tonic seemed like a good idea, yes.

Petre moved their hands, reaching into their satchel where they had the tonic in a spraying bottle. It was quite difficult to keep Petre invisible through this all because Ainreth had to partly assume where they were and what they were doing. The light bouncing off their form only helped him so much.

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But he managed to hold it together long enough for Petre to spray the sleeping tonic in the guard’s face.

Unsurprisingly, the woman jumped up and automatically tried to wipe her face, making an alarmed, then confused noise as she looked around. But within a few seconds, she was sitting down again, looking drowsy, her eyes closing as she lowered her head onto her folded arms on the desk.

Ainreth blinked. Somehow he hadn’t expected this to be so effective.

“That was fast,” he whispered to Petre.

“It’s very, very strong. If I made the tonic just a bit stronger than that, it would put people into a coma,” they muttered back as they walked to the door and tried to open it, only to find it locked.

Since no one else was around to see them, Ainreth stopped the invisibility for a moment, searching the guard for a key instead. He quickly found a whole ring of keys.

One of these was probably for the cell of the assassin, too. Great.

Ainreth gave the keys to Petre who quickly tried all of them on the door. Naturally, the last available one was the right one. Ainreth would complain about that, but he resisted the urge when Petre swung the door open. They needed to focus.

Taking their hand again, Ainreth once more made them invisible before starting to lead Petre down the stone steps leading into the dungeons.

Ain had wanted to do this slowly and carefully, but unfortunately the noise of the door swinging open seemed to have alerted another guard who was now walking toward them, frowning in confusion at the from his point of view empty corridor.

Ainreth barely managed to drag Petre to the side in time as the guard walked past them. Ainreth lost control of the invisibility then, as well, from the sheer shock of it, but since the guard had his back turned to them now, Ainreth got enough time to fix his error.

“I need to knock him out too,” Petre said, rushing forward before Ainreth could stop them.

He froze, watching Petre as they walked up to the man currently trying to wake his fellow guard from her slumber and sprayed him in the face with the tonic.

“What in the sun—” the man cried, but before he could even finish the sentence, his eyes started to close and he fell to his knees, then rolled onto his back on the floor, knocked out as well.

“Nice work, little guy,” Ainreth said, so proud of them. “We need to get going. Before someone finds them.”

Of course they could waste time trying to hide the sleeping guards, but it would be much easier for them to slip in and out as fast as possible, before someone could see.

Petre nodded, immediately rushing back down the stairs to Ainreth, taking his hand. Ainreth then made them invisible once more, even though there might not have been another guard in the vicinity for all they knew.

Once they reached the end of the stairs they turned right into the stone corridor that followed, and on each side of it were cells, at least twenty altogether.

Ainreth knew this because he’d been stuck here for a night and there was nothing to do, so he’d looked around a lot.

The cells were walled off, so the only thing a person within one could see was the corridor itself, and the cell opposite them.

Ainreth would have loved to be obnoxious and tried to stick his head between the bars of the cell door while he’d been imprisoned here, but he’d gotten chained to the wall immediately, so he’d been stuck in place.

To think he could have potentially talked to the assassin while here. But he’d not even seen him when he’d been brought here, nor when he’d gotten dragged off to be whipped.

Ainreth looked from one cell to the next as they passed them, frowning at the faces he saw. The prison was certainly less empty than when he’d been here. But that made sense. With all the rioting, there had been a lot of arresting.

For a second Ain considered letting these people go, but then decided against it. Not only would freeing everyone cause more chaos, but most of the people also here deserved to be here from what Ainreth had heard.

The man who had orchestrated the whole idea to whip Mhalyn had mysteriously disappeared—somehow Ainreth suspected Fennrin had done that—and Ainreth would not be looking for him. He just hoped he wasn’t in this prison. He didn’t want to talk to him ever again.

Ainreth kept leading Petre along, taking in all the angry and miserable people here. He knew what the assassin looked like from having been present for the assassination attempt, but it had been a while so it took a lot of concentration.

But finally, once they were about halfway through the corridor, Ainreth saw him. The man was sitting in the corner of his cell, glaring at the floor, his wrists shackled and bound to the wall, though the chains he had been given were long enough to keep his hands in his lap.

“Hey,” Ainreth said to him, giving up the invisibility for himself. If anyone believed the prisoners that he was here, it would have been obvious either way. No one could be invisible except for him, so there was nothing to hide.

He would keep Petre invisible though. He didn’t want anyone knowing they were involved.

“What in the sundering sun?” the assassin cried out in a remarkably Lys-Akkarian accent, startling as he got up. There were other shocked cries around Ain from the other prisoners, but he ignored them.

“Yeah, the sun indeed,” Ainreth said, snorting. “We need to talk. Quickly, if possible.”

The man got up hesitantly, walking as close to the cell door as he could with the chains, frowning at Ain. “What do you want?”

Ainreth snorted. He loved the unfriendly tone. As if this person had anything better to do than hear him out.

“I hear that maybe your assassination attempt wasn’t as genuine as it seemed,” Ainreth said, deciding to just directly say it. They really didn’t have time.

“It wasn’t!” the man immediately confirmed, nodding quickly. Ain didn’t doubt that if he could, he’d be clinging onto the bars. “The Herald paid me to pretend to try to kill him.”

Despite already having suspected as much, Ainreth grimaced. He couldn’t believe Varilik had actually done this, just to convince people that the war was a good, necessary thing.

Of course, this would-be assassin could be lying because he sensed that perhaps he could save his own life.

“Do you have any proof?” Ain asked, scowling at the man. He wouldn’t be attempting any jail breaks without that.

The man nodded again, more desperate. “Yes, I have letters. With Varilik’s signature and seal. I’m sure he tried to destroy them, but I hid them after betraying me. The guards wouldn’t find them.”

“Betraying you?” Ainreth hummed. “So I assume this wasn’t meant to be the deal.”

The assassin gritted his teeth. “He said I would get a lot of money that I could retire on in the Lys-Akkarian countryside.”

“And instead he decided to get rid of the paper trail, so to speak,” Ain added sarcastically. “Shocking.”

The man glared at him. “You came here to get proof Varilik is a liar, didn’t you? Free me and I’ll show you the letters.”

Ainreth hesitated. Doing this would no doubt cause a chain reaction. But did they really have a choice? Petre used this moment to get involved, whispering into Ain’s ear.

“If you do this, Varilik will use it to prove that you’re a traitor, or something to that effect.”

Ainreth nodded. He knew that very well. Given that he’d attacked Varilik earlier, the misborn would no doubt connect him breaking the assassin out as Ainreth working with Orinovo. But if they got proof that the Herald was lying….

“If you’re lying I’ll burn you to death,” Ain told the assassin flatly. He didn’t have time or energy to be nice anymore.

The man swallowed, clearly unnerved by this, but he nodded again. “I’m not lying. Please! I can help you prove Varilik is manipulating people.”

Ainreth sighed. He knew this would come to bite him. But he did believe the man. He’d seen a lot of desperate lying, and this was just desperate pleading.

“Fine,” Ainreth said, pulling together all the concentration he had to keep Petre invisible, his fingers tapping against their wrist, while with his other hand summoning enough light to concentrate it enough to make a ray capable of melting metal.

Ainreth moved his hand to aim the ray of light against the hinges of the cell door, making the man behind it jump back. The metal nearly immediately heated up to an angry red, starting to drip a moment later.

Ainreth made an even slice through on hinge, then the other, grabbing the door when it started to fall forward to him. He pushed it aside, taking a few deep breaths as he focused on still keeping Petre invisible. He wouldn’t let anyone see them.

“Hold still,” Ain told the man, cutting through the chains with his light, almost snorting at the terror in the assassin’s eyes. He must have never seen a lightweaver’s power with his own eyes.

“All right, now get going. And hold the chains. I don’t need you giving us away with every step,” Ainreth told him, stepping aside so he could actually get out of the cell.

The man listened, shuffling out of the cell with his eyes wide, clutching the remains of his chains close. Ainreth grabbed his wrist, ignoring the begging of everyone around them to let them go, too.

“Don’t make a noise,” Ainreth grumbled to the assassin before making them both invisible. Keeping himself, Petre, and the former prisoner invisible was a strain, but Ainreth could handle it. He would have to.

As it was, even over the cries of the prisoners around them, he could hear a pair of armored boots stomping, getting closer. They needed to go.

Petre took the lead that time, which made sense because Ainreth was now in the middle. They walked with determination, and Ainreth followed, dragging the assassin behind him, just focusing on maintaining their invisibility.

They squeezed against the wall as suddenly two guards rushed past them, oblivious to their presence. Petre apparently recovered much faster than Ainreth because they were pulling on his arm nearly immediately, and once again Ain followed, just wanting to get out of here.

And after sneaking past another guard who was investigating her sleeping compatriots, trying to wake them up, and stumbling around more plants, Ainreth, Petre, and the assassin got outside and out of the way just as more guards along with Fennrin marched inside the prison.

Ainreth let out a breath of relief. That could have been very, very bad. Ainreth was probably the only person who could fight Fenn and win, but that didn’t he wanted to do it.

Now a bit less tense they walked away, venturing as far away from the palace as Ainreth could manage to hold the invisibility for, finally hiding in an empty alley.

Ainreth took a few deep breaths, plopping himself down onto one of the crates that were stacked up against a wall.

“Sun, that’s exhausting,” he said, still breathing hard. He was shaking from the strain, but he couldn’t be too mad at himself for not managing to keep them invisible for longer. It had worked, and it was good enough.

“Where is your proof?” Petre asked the man they’d just rescued in a rather demanding tone. Ain continued catching his breath, more than happy to let Petre take charge here.

“A few streets behind my house. There is a small park. I buried the letters in a chest under an oak tree,” he explained, cringing. As if expected either Petre or Ainreth to kill him after all the trouble of getting him here.

Ainreth narrowed his eyes, studying the man, and unable but to feel annoyed and angry. But not for the right reasons.

Ain should be angry because this person had helped Varilik lie to the entirety of Lys-Akkaria, to spread hate to anyone of Orinovan descent, and all just for some money. And instead Ainreth was upset because the man had his hair in a ponytail, very much like Fennrin’s.

Ain didn’t like it at all.

“Great, then you’ll be leading us to your hiding place now, then,” Ainreth said, getting up.

“Are you sure you don’t want to recover a bit more?” Petre asked him, making Ain shake his head.

“Don’t worry about me. As long as we stay out of sight, I don’t have to make us invisible for long periods of time.” Ainreth then turned back to the assassin. “What’s your name, anyway?”

“Keryn Kelski,” the man replied, making Ainreth blink and then rub his eyes.

“You’re Orinovan? Seriously?”

The man didn’t get to respond because much to Ain’s own shock, Petre walked up to Kelski and punched him in the face.

Ainreth blinked, staring at them while Kelski cried out and jerked away, holding his face, the chains hanging from his wrists clinking.

“How dare you help Varilik oppress people like us just for some coin?!” Petre yelled at Kelski. The man just opened his mouth a few times, but he always ended up closing it, clearly having nothing to say.

Ainreth walked up to Petre to pat their shoulder. “It’s okay, little guy. We’ll fix it.”

Petre huffed, nodding firmly, not taking his eyes off Kelski for one second. “If you are lying, I will kill you myself.”

Ainreth shivered a bit from the harshness of their tone. He wasn’t used to Petre being this angry or ruthless. But he understood why they were feeling like this, given the circumstances.

Ainreth burned off the padlocks on Kelski’s shackles without a comment, the chains dropping to the ground. Like this the man wouldn’t make extra noise.

Ain did enjoy the man’s flinch just a little. Perhaps he’d been expecting Ainreth to burn him. But Ainreth had no interest in doing that. Yet.

“Okay, let’s go.”

They walked for what felt like at least two hours. But maybe Ainreth’s sense of time was just messed up from constantly having to look over his shoulder. Guards were everywhere, but his invisibility made bypassing their search parties fairly easy, even though he was very, very exhausted by the time they reached Kelski’s house.

Or at least what was left of it.

“They burned it down?” Kelski cried. Ainreth couldn’t say that he was too surprised by that.

Varilik’s people probably couldn’t have found the incriminating papers, so the best way to make sure nothing was left was setting the place on fire.

“It’s a good thing you put the evidence somewhere else, huh?”

Kelski wanted to protest, clearly upset over the pile of ash, stone, and burned wooden pillars that were left of his house, but Ainreth pushed him to keep going. They needed to get the evidence and get out of here.

Ainreth only paused for a moment when they walked around the ruined house, finding a shovel stabbed into the ground behind it, and many, many holes. So clearly Varilik’s people were clever enough to think of this as well.

But they had found nothing. Good, Ainreth thought as he grabbed the shovel. They would need it.

They had to hide behind a nearby house as a group of guards walked past, yelling orders, but finally, they made it to the park that Kelski had mentioned, which turned out to be just a couple of trees with a bench and some blooming flowers around the place.

Someone was sitting there, feeding crows, so Ainreth grabbed Petre and Kelski to make them invisible, putting the shovel under his arm.

This turned out to be very difficult since the shovel was fairly heavy, but he managed for long enough to reach the one oak tree here. Thankfully it was in the back, out of sight.

“Dig,” he told Kelski quietly so as not to rouse suspicion, throwing him the shovel.

“I’m hardly in a position to dig. They barely fed me for days,” Kelski argued, but also kept his voice down.

Ainreth glared at him. “And I got whipped. I think we both know who’s doing worse on this front.”

Kelski sighed but started digging anyway, despite his grumbling, working on the grassless patch in front of the tree. Ainreth was impressed by how well Kelski had disguised the place, but rain had probably helped smoothen the soil out.

“This will take forever,” Petre said with a huff. Before Ain could ask them if they had a better idea, they were raising their hand clenched into a fist.

And just like that the ground where Kelski had been digging started to come apart, revealing a small, wooden chest.

“New skill?” Ainreth asked, not really having seen Petre do anything like this before.

“No, I just do not usually have much of a reason to use mycelia to clear away dirt for me,” they responded.

Ainreth nodded, pretending hard that he understood what the word mycelia meant, before walking to the chest and pulling it out.

Petre sealed the hole up again while Ain burned the lock off the chest, opening it, only to be met with several envelopes. They didn’t bear the Court wax seal, but Ainreth couldn’t say he was surprised by that.

He grabbed one, opening it and pulling out the letter within. As he opened it, he only skimmed it to read it quickly, but it was enough.

There it was, proof that the assassination was faked. And as Ainreth turned the letter around to see the rest of it, he swallowed when he saw Varilik’s signature at the bottom.

This was about as clear a proof as they could have hoped for. This was worth the risk. Finally, they were getting somewhere.