490 years later....

Chapter 1A:

“I don’t like this.” I muttered, as Frenkie and I waited in the dark alleyway.

The alley was dirty and neglected, its cobblestone path worn and weathered by the passage of time. Dilapidated buildings loomed to our sides as their walls were marred by peeling paint. And the smells? Don’t even get me started – it was as if every person in the kingdom, including the king, had made this alley their pissing spot.

All in all, not an unusual scenery for the royal capital’s outer districts.

Outside the unpleasant odors, I could sense a subtle change wafting through the air, a scent of dampness that clung to the breeze. If my days living on the streets had taught me anything, is to recognize when a rain was approaching. And boy, was it coming. The first rain of the winter was always the toughest and coldest one. This, together with my growing anxiety over our planned heist, had made my skin crawl with goosebumps.

Frenkie ignored me and flipped a coin in the air for gods-know-what-time, the metallic clink piercing the alley once more.

“You know what’s weird?” he asked as he caught the coin.

“What?” I asked back, slightly annoyed that he ignored me.

“When I flip a coin, it has a fifty percent chance of landing with the number’s side up and fifty percent chance of landing with the king’s side up, right?”

I scanned him for a short minute, wondering if it was just his usual jesting.

He was crouching beside me, with his left arm wrapped around his legs, while the right one was holding a coin – a single silver penny. His ginger hair was collected in a short tail on the right side of his head, almost like a single pigtail, while his young, freckled face was focused on the coin in his hand. He was wearing a knitted sweater which was way too big for his size, evident by the length of its sleeves.

I couldn’t believe he looked this calm when we were about to rob the king himself tonight.

“Do you really think that now is the time for this?” I asked, somewhat scoldingly.

He ignored my worries again and proceeded to word his thoughts. “But how is that after I flipped the coin a hundred times, it landed with the number’s side up sixty-four times? Weird, huh?”

Realizing I wouldn’t be able to stop his rambling, I decided to take the bait. We were waiting for Elandor and Joven anyway.

“It doesn’t work like this.” I began explaining. “First of, you need to throw it way more than a hundred times to have both outcomes split evenly. And secondly, the fifty-fifty odds only apply to a quote on quote - fair coin. I’m pretty sure that the engraving of the king’s image on the back side takes away less silver than the engraving of the number on the front side, making it slightly heavier than the other.”

Frenkie rubbed his chin and looked deep in thought. He scanned the coin’s sides with great attention, as if trying to confirm my words.

“Is that so?” he mumbled.

“It is.” I replied simply.

A warm smile spread across his face. “You’re pretty smart, you know that, Luca?” he said with a tinge of excitement in his voice.

Was he joking? His entire personality was always so aloof and carefree that I could never tell when he was serious.

“Thanks, I guess.” I replied, unsure of how to feel about the compliment.

“No, like really.” He insisted. “I think you could become a teacher or something.”

I raised an eyebrow at him. “A teacher? Me?”

“Yes, you!” he exclaimed. “You sure have a knack for it. Like how last week you explained some of your lock picking techniques to Ren and Will. You were so patient and informative that I couldn’t help but listen in as well.”

“What do you even know about teachers, Frenkie?” I raised the first question that popped into my mind. “You never even been to a school.”

Frenkie smiled. “Yeah, but if I did, I would want my teachers to be more like you, and less like…Joven.”

His face cringed a bit when he pronounced Joven’s name.

“C’mon,” I said. “Joven is not that bad.”

Frenkie raised a questioning eyebrow at me, tilting his head slightly, as if judging my comment.

“Well, he is strict, but he is also a highly respected professional.” I quickly added in my defense.

“Highly respected, my ass.” Frenkie blurted out immediately. “Elandor is respected. Joven is more like…feared.”

I mulled over his words. Joven was the type of guy who would quickly get angry if you messed up, but I always assumed it was because he was stuck with the most annoying tasks in our crew. While Elandor, our infamous leader, was the charismatic and playful type, his second in command, Joven, had to work twice as hard to keep our plans in check.

Either way, I wouldn’t call Joven fearsome. He was just the responsible adult in our small crew of thieves. And considering everyone except Elandor and him was still just a teenager, it made perfect sense.

“Do you fear Joven?” I asked out of curiosity.

He looked thoughtful. “Not like fear fear, you know. More like fear of getting scolded for being lazy, or daydreaming, or just breathing in his general direction.”

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I chuckled. “Yeah…I can see that.”

“And to answer your earlier question: I do think that now is the time for this. Why wouldn’t it be?” He said after a short pause. “You’re too tense. Nothing is going to go wrong. We have Elandor.”

His words sent a shiver down my spine, reminding me that we were robbing the king tonight.

Our crew, ‘The Blood Moon Foxes’, was a small thieving group that operated in Willox, the capital of the Morthrygan kingdom. The group only consisted of six members, and our heists were usually small-scale and of our own design and planning, including the target itself. This was in stark contrast to larger thieving groups, which some would call guilds even though they were illegal, like the ‘Shadows’ or ‘Cloak of Night’, who were mostly hired by third parties to complete high paying jobs.

Our riskiest job was two months ago, and in comparison to what was planned for today, it was laughably easy. We stole from Evan Folter, the Head Judge of the kingdom. Well, it wasn’t actually us who did the stealing. Elandor was the one to infiltrate the Head Judge’s mansion, while the rest of us only helped with some prep work and lookout duty.

It went smoothly, and Elandor once again cemented his reputation in our eyes as the best thief we’d ever seen. I don’t know what he stole exactly, as he didn’t tell, but the mere thought of stealing from someone of that status was already inconceivable to me. Even the big thieving guilds wouldn’t accept these kind of jobs unless they knew they had their most capable members available, so for Elandor to do it mostly on his own was a terrifying feat.

It seemed like no matter what opinions you held, what fears drove your heart, when Elandor spoke, he would always convince you he was right and get you on board. Was he using magic on us? I always wondered about that. I’d never heard of minerals that could influence someone to act against their own will, but I’ve never ventured farther than the hill just outside Willox’s northern gates, so what do I know?

“I think we might be pushing it too far this time.” I said nervously. “And besides, he never takes us with him if he thinks the target is too dangerous. And yet this time we’re robbing the king and - ”

He cut me off with a chuckle. “Doesn’t that ease your worries, though?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.

He sighed, a playful grin spreading across his face. “Relax. It’s Elandor we’re talking about. You know how good of a thief he is. You’ve also seen how skilled he is as a fighter and a mage. He always finds a way to make things work - whether it’s stealing from Tucker, the potato merchant from south Willox, or robbing the Head Judge. If he’s decided we can join him, then it means he’s ready for whatever the king has to throw at us. Have faith in him.”

I exhaled deeply and noticed my right hand was trembling a bit, signaling I wasn’t convinced quite yet.

“I have faith in Elandor.“ I said. “It’s just that…even he has his limits, right? What if stealing from the king is the limit?”

Frenkie dismissed the idea with a hand gesture and a smile that made my worries ease up a little.

“Please, Luca.” He said. “You don’t know him as long as I do. Elandor has no limits.”

It was true. At least the first part of it. I have only been part of the crew for the past three years.

I grew up as an orphan, surviving day after day in the harsh reality that was my life. Life on the streets was hard and I had to learn all the delicate intricacies needed to survive. Understanding when to blend in and stay invisible, and when to take risks and steal in order to stay fed. At some point, pickpocketing became a second nature to me. Morality didn’t mean much when the most important thing was staying alive. Survival was all that mattered in a world where nobody cared about you. A truth etched into the very fabric of my existence.

I was fifteen when I pickpocketed Elandor on a busy street in the early afternoon. He chased me for half the city till he caught me. When he did, I was ready for a beating – the usual outcome of a failed pickpocketing attempt, but instead he was so impressed, he offered me to join his crew.

At first, I refused.

I survived on my own for so long that I was not going to trust anyone else. I did not need anyone else to survive.

But Elandor had his way with words. He always knew what to say and how to say it, regardless of the situation. Slowly but surely, he managed to gain my trust and even my respect, until I eventually moved into their base house and officially joined the team.

And now, here I was. Following him even when his plans seemed way beyond our level of expertise.

Frenkie, on the other hand, had known Elandor for a really long time. He was an ex-lover’s little brother, or something of the sort. He was already nineteen, a year older than me, and yet he was still chasing after Elandor like a starstruck fan. Not sure what happened to his sister though, but I assumed it wasn’t something pleasant.

The rest of the group included the twins – Will and Ren, who joined half a year before me, and Joven, Elandor’s professional partner, who seemed to have known Elandor for at least as long as Frenkie did.

I rubbed my forehead, my heart still filled with worries. “I hope you’re right.”

“Here,” he touched my arm. “let’s compare Elandor to this coin.”

Comparing Elandor to a coin? This is going to be good.

“Let’s say the number’s side is Elandor succeeding, and the king’s side is Elandor failing.” He continued. “If, like you said earlier, we flipped it many times, more than a hundred, we would have fifty percent fails and fifty percent successes, right?”

I nodded. “That’s right.”

“Wrong.” He corrected me. “Since we’re talking about Elandor here, he would just snap the coin from mid-air, put it in his pocket, and go buy something with it, ‘cause that just the way he is.”

I chuckled at this imaginary scenario. I respected Elandor heavily, but it seemed like Frenkie, and especially Will, truly idolized him. It wasn’t surprising that they did though. He had that rare aura around him.

“You still seem worried.” Frenkie said, and I realized that my face wore a tense expression as I bit my lower lip.

“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t.” I admitted.

Frenkie smiled. “Then let’s flip this coin and whatever it lands on will be the outcome of our heist tonight.”

I was never superstitious, but I still felt like I had to stop him from flipping that coin, fearing the worst. It was stupid, I know. As if the outcome of a random coinflip would have any effect on the outcome of our heist…

Either way, it was too late to stop him as he flipped the coin as soon as he finished his words.

The clink of metal filled the air again as my anticipation grew.

He caught the coin with his right hand and covered it with his left, but before he could reveal the result, we heard the sound of rushing steps coming our way. It was Joven.

He was a short man in his thirties, carrying a commanding presence despite his height. His bald head gleamed under the alley’s lantern's light. A personal preference, as he would often tell us, but we all knew he was just balding and decided to trim everything in order to keep appearances. A thin, ungroomed moustache sat prominently on his face, framing a set of lips that never curved into a smile, not even after a successful job. His eyes were sharp and piercing, lacking any hint of sentimentality, while his wardrobe was contradictory - tailored clothes that didn’t exactly go hand-in-hand with his thieving occupation.

“Are you two ready?” he asked, his tone serious, tinged with what I thought was a bit of concern. Or maybe I just wanted to believe that I wasn't the only one who had a terrible gut feeling about all this.

I nodded hesitantly.

“Did Elandor steal the key from the Head Guard?” Frenkie asked grinning, fully knowing the answer to his question.

“He did.” Joven’s expression didn’t change, as if it was expected of Elandor to succeed.

Frenkie looked at me as he stood up. “See? I told you normal rules don’t apply to Elandor.”

He began walking in Joven’s direction as I followed behind.

Not sure why, but Frenkie’s coin flip bothered me immensely. Perhaps I was looking for some reassurance that we would manage to succeed once more. Even if it was extremely superstitious of me.

“Hey Frenkie, which side did the coin land on?” I asked as I walked behind him.

He turned around and said something that sent an eerie shiver down my spine. “Oh? Yeah. It landed with the king’s side up, but you said it yourself – this coin isn’t fair, so it doesn’t really matter.”