“No,” I said flatly, staring the man down.

“No?” The man held me with a death glare, but I remained unflinching.

Really. He is sorely mistaken if he thinks that’s all it will take to get me to budge.

“You heard what I said. No.”

“Bah.” The man angrily shook his head at me. “You’re just a girl. Your family should have set someone with actual experience at the helm of Akadia.”

It was my turn to stare at the man with barely contained hostility.

Remember who you are.

Easing the tension from my face, I gave the man an overly sweet smile, my annoyance hidden behind years of training.

“Baron Marcus, might I remind you that while you may believe yourself the center of the world, as far as my… clientele go, you are little more than a single man. While I understand your urge to attempt to retrieve information regarding your political rivals, there is little I can do for you. That information has been insured, and unless you have the coin to leverage against their insured information, I cannot help you.”

“How much?”

“Excuse me?”

“I said, how much will it cost me?”

I glanced up briefly, mentally tabulating as I calculated the price.

“Eight Nizeium.”

The man paled, but I saw him reach toward a poach next to his side.

“A piece.”

The baron blanched, staring at me with his mouth agape.

“What?” I chuckled, enjoying his expression. “Did you believe that the price would be so low? Baron Carsize, Baron Dehlm, and Baroness Aia already approached me some time back, ensuring my lips were sealed.”

“I, uh-”

I smiled pleasantly as the man eventually fumbled with an excuse, trying to salvage his pride as to why he had suddenly decided to back out of trying to purchase my services. Grumbling something about his ‘forgotten appointment,’ the man quickly left my office, scurrying away with his metaphorical tail between his legs.

Hah. Make him think twice about annoying me.

In reality, only Baroness Aia had come to me looking to purchase an insurance regarding her information, which I had turned down. Lesser nobility such as they would often feel the need to attempt to leverage information, be it their own or their rival’s, to gain ground within the royal courts. My family, our modus operandi, dictated that we were only as loyal as the coin given to us. It was an open secret amongst those who used our services that we would turn on them as quickly as we aided them. Still, our services were simply too valuable to not be utilized.

The only reason I’d turned down Baroness Aia was that she had already been insured as part of a faction package, bought out by none other than Viceroy Alexandria. It wasn’t uncommon for high-ranking nobility, such as the Viceroys or even the crown itself, to purchase blanket insurance for those who remained within their camp of influence, even if they had little information of note. Baroness Aia’s only major noteworthy point was that she was currently in an affair, meeting a low-born woman behind her husband’s back. I would have sold such information to Baron Marcus for only a single nizeium, but the blanket insurance had led to an eight-fold increase in price. In truth, it would have only harmed Baroness Aia temporarily. Still, I didn’t wish to offend Viceroy Alexandria by selling out even the tiny, little secrets of her retinue for such a pathetic price.

As for Carsize and Dehlm, if Marcus hadn’t been such an ass, perhaps I would have also offered their information up for a reasonable price.

I sighed, reaching for my ‘cup of tea,’ which, in reality, contained a hot morning brandy. It was a northern specialty I’d enjoyed ever since I’d had my first sip of it during my teenage years within Theronhold.

Oh, how the years pass.

I was only thirteen when my elder brother offered it to me, likely attempting to prank me and expecting some sort of disdained reaction.

Instead, I’d drained the draught like water, enjoying it far more than I likely should have.

The memory fondly replayed through my mind, which I allowed for several more seconds before dispatching it.

Simpler times.

It was back when my siblings hadn’t treated me as a pariah, as if I’d upstaged them through some calculated plan that I’d hatched since the moment I was cut out from my mother’s womb.

Bah. It wouldn’t take that much thinking to outmaneuver them in the first place.

They weren’t stupid, far from it, but they weren’t original. They’d dutifully learned everything they could from my father, but that was all they’d learned. As if repeating only the methods of the past would always be the correct and only answer.

I was just cleverer.

I recalled the day, clear as a bright morning rain. Sitting at home, bored out of my mind, I noticed my father suddenly appearing from his office, an expression on his face I’d never seen before. Shortly after, our home became a hive of activity as advisors and our spies began to report in. Someone of incredible importance had appeared, and everyone was looking to contact him.

From listening in, they often ignored my existence as the youngest of the children; it was assumed I would never amount to more than a simple hand of either of my elder siblings, that I learned of a traveling pair. While it was the man they were interested in, I realized that the more accessible point of access was likely the younger of the two, a boy not much more youthful than myself if the reports were to be believed.

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Taking another swig of my drink, my throat warmed as I leaned back, thinking of the first time I saw Rook.

I was out searching for leads and hints of the whereabouts after it was reported that the man had been spotted without the boy by his side. After hiking for over three hours, my feet were sore, and I decided to relax in one of my family’s bathhouses. As I walked in, I noticed a boy arguing with Hotch, the ‘owner’ of the bathhouse. Feet still hurting, I was already annoyed when I overheard their heated debate. From what I could gather, the boy had forgotten his money, or if he even had any, and simply wanted to take a bath. The two were clearly on the verge of violence, and not wishing to have to deal with bloodletting in one of our establishments, only three days since the last instance, I intervened.

“Just let him take a damned bath, Hotch,” I growled.

Hotch deflated the moment he saw me, well aware of who I was.

“And you-!” I whirled around, jabbing a finger into the newcomer’s chest, a boy of sixteen or so years old. “What sort of idiot goes around without any sort of money.”

Exchanging only a few more words, I dragged the boy into the changing rooms. Disrobing quickly, for I didn’t feel like exchanging further words, not when my feet ached as they did; I only paused when I heard the boy speak up, nervous energy to his words.

“Uhh, thanks.” He offered. I glanced over my shoulder, observing the boy, his eyes glued to the ground.

Strange. I remembered thinking that there weren’t many who were so… shy about a simple changing room. Annoyance softening slightly, I answered back.

“I just couldn’t watch that any longer,” I spoke, if not perhaps for the reasons he would have expected.

“You were watching?”

“I could hear it all from outside.” This wasn’t actually true, but it was easier to lead the boy to believe I acted as a good-meaning bystander rather than from a place of my own selfish annoyance.

“Oh.”

No longer interested in conversing, least of all in a changing room, I slipped out, heading toward the woman’s bath.

It was only after laying in the bath and relaxing for some time that I felt my eyes widen, as it occurred to me that the boy who I’d just encountered seemed to share an awful lot of physical similarities with the reported traveling companion my family was scrambling over each other to meet with.

Realizing what had to be done, I quickly exited the bath, changing my clothes before I sat in ambush outside.

“And the rest is history.” I snorted; Rook’s face in his youth burned into my memory next to his current visage. I’d helped them out and, in doing so, finally found the key I needed to make headway against my relative lack of years that the rest of my family had.

“And look at me now.” I spread my arms wide, still leaning back in my surprisingly comfy chair; I’d picked out one that I could sit in for hours if I had to without later regretting it.

Rook had, in some ways, changed a lot. He no longer had the babyface of his teenage years, and he was taller than I now, if not by much; I was rather tall by most women’s standards. Still, in other ways, he had barely changed. He was still painfully ignorant at times of the world’s ways, a sheltered upbringing as a child in a remote village. Then, during his years as an adventurer he had paid little attention to things that weren’t trying to bite his face off.

But he was learning. Even now, he continued to stonewall me for the most part when I asked probing questions about the details of his job and the children he taught.

I felt a flush of both annoyance and pride. Annoyance because those kids were a treasure trove of information I could use; children were so often loose-lipped. Rook’s lack of care for the internal politics of their families left me aghast at times; such a valuable resource, wasted.

But then, there was the pride in Rook for understanding enough of the world now to know better than to so freely trust me. It was almost like a game of back-and-forth between us. He rarely let things slip, but I would grin like a surprised child when he did. Most of the time, the slips were exceptionally minor, motes of information that meant nothing to me save for the entertaining rush of mentally adding a point to my scoreboard.

A score, which only I kept.

He would be as quick as the rest of us with a few more years of experience dealing with our likes.

And then…

“Then what?” I whispered aloud.

I frowned lightly, turning my train of thought over, knowing what I’d been absentmindedly thinking.

Wait until he has enough experience, experience enough to wade into the depths of political maneuvering so that he could safely be introduced to my family?

It was a bizarre thought. I’d given such little time to thoughts as frivolous as those before, and I still rarely did. Kids, a family, none of those seemed very interesting to me, but then it wasn’t that which I cared about.

What do you care about?

My goal was to achieve heights my family had never seen before, but that was a different type of care.

And Rook? Where does he land in all of that?

I frowned again, the tips of my ears warming for a moment.

Rook was… Rook was Rook. When he was younger, I’d flirted lightly with him to get what I wanted from him more than anything, but I hadn’t been able to deny he was cute.

Older as he was now, it would be a lie to say he wasn’t quite an eye-catching specimen. It was almost as if he had been sculpted, not purely for physical attractiveness, but in the image of optimization. He was tall but not lanky, muscular without being so bulky that he was weighed down. Kind, but rarely a pushover.

But more than any of that, he was interesting. Not just the events of his life but his character and person intrigued me. Whenever I was near him, it was as if I could barely resist the urge to pluck the thoughts right from his mind, wanting to understand him.

What does that even mean?

Was it love? From everything I heard, love was this romantic thing: rainbows, roses, and goodness.

But I wasn’t some pure maiden. I was ambitious, manipulative, and even cruel, if not outright. At least the result of my choices could logically be classified as cruel for the repercussions they had at times.

Bah.

Thumping my fist hard on my desk, I grabbed my cup and drained the rest of my morning brandy in one go, swiping at my lips as I dried the droplets that hadn’t entirely made it through.

“Too much thinking for things of irrelevance.”

Rook was Rook, and I was who I was. Whatever would come to pass would come to pass. He was exciting, and I cared for him; there was no getting around that, so for the time, I would simply enjoy the ride, wherever it may lead.

Anyway…

My frown returned, but for different reasons.

Opening my desk, I withdrew the documents I’d been sifting over, logistic reports of the movement of goods and people through the different regions, trying to locate a pattern, to find something.

But there was nothing. Absolutely nothing out of the norm. It could not have been more mundane.

And yet I thought back to Rook’s expression as we lay in the grass, the unease on his face.

“What if it didn’t work?”

His words drifted through my mind like an ominous warning.

Something was amiss, yet I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Or rather, there was nothing to make heads or tails of. Only his expression and my sixth sense kept me sifting through reports, trying to find something unordinary.

But it wasn’t there. Nothing out of the norm, no movement of troops that should have set off alarms or movement of goods that would typically prelude unrest and times of turmoil.

So what is it?

I scratched my chin before shouting.

“Therrill?”

“Yes, my lady?” Therrill appeared like a phantom, his presence always hidden but nearby. My secret dagger if a meeting ever turned too far south.

“Do me a favor; bring me another cup, would you?”

“May I ask why?”

“Because.” I smiled wide, baring my teeth in a wolfish grin. “I’m going to be here for a while.”

Whatever it is, I’ll find it.