Savannah blinks at the both of us and then crosses her arms peering in suspicion.

"I just heard my name mentioned in a very confusing context," she says. "Care to explain?"

"I–" The words get stuck in my throat. Oh, God. I've made multiple huge mistakes but very few are quite this mortifying.

This is not how I wanted this to go.

I can't answer Savannah. I would rather the floor open up and swallow me than explain that I'm actively kissing the man who's supposed to be hers. It's like I'm everything they accused me of, but worse.

I can't say it, but Wolf has no such reservations.

"She says that she had a vision about you and me being mates," Wolf says in the silence, very matter-of-factly.

I turn to give him an incredulous, wide-eyed stare. Oh so now, he chooses to be communicative?

"Oh," Savannah says, her lips pursing slightly and her eyes flaring open in surprise. Then she shrugs sort of casually and runs her hand through her hair.

Now I'm the one frowning in confusion.

Oh? That's all she can say? Why did she only show mil surprise? What does 'Oh' even mean? Does it mean she has feelings for him or not? Does she not want me to leave him alone? Tell me something, Savannah!

But Savannah simply studies her fingernails in thought.

Ugh, they deserve each other. They're both going to drive me insane with their lack of communication.

Even stranger, she instantly changes the subject. "I'm glad you're okay," she tells me smiling.

"Thank you." I'm still confused. "Um...we got more time for the mission."

"I know. Wolf told me in not so many words before he took off. Didn't even wait for me to follow him. I guess he wanted to see you before got here."

Now why does that make me feel guilty?

Unfortunately, I don't have time to explore it because a brief knock on the door announces Jace and Tia's presence.

Tia smiles as she walks to me. "I'm so glad you're not dead."

"Me too," I say. She doesn't look like she would like a hug so we stand there for a second and then give each other short nods. "Okay, team. So I have a plan for how we're going to infiltrate the Raven's abode."

"How?"

I take a deep breath and then explain my meeting with the Lady Pearl Raven and my plan for getting our hands on the information.

“Dancing?” Jace says when I'm done, frowning in doubt. “I don’t know about that. I’m not much of a dancer.”

“You won’t be dancing,” I tell him as I glance at the others. "Only the women will be dancing, because it makes us seem like less of a threat. You and Paisley, if he ever decides to participate that is, will be outside keeping watch. You're also to survey the area for the next few days and get yourself familiar with the guard shift changes. You'll need to cause a well-timed distraction which we will discuss later. But actual infiltration will be performed by women only.”

“That doesn't seem fair.” Tia furrows her eyebrows but I smile secretively. I can't lie I'm very pleased with myself for thinking of this plan on the fly. The King put us on a majority female team to make us a weakness, but I found a way to make it our strength. “Tia, do you have any experience dancing?”

“A little," she responds cagedly. "I'm flexible but I'm better at climbing and sneaking into places."

“Savannah dances too,” I respond and Sav shoots me an odd look

Shoot, I forgot I wasn't supposed to know that.

It's one of the first things we discussed after she and Wolf captured me. It's why she taught me Mazai because, according to her, it's a fighting style dancers pick up quite easily.

I give Savannah an apologetic look for revealing it but she only shrugs.

"Let me guess," she says wryly. "You saw it in a vision?"

No. But we dance together several times in the future.

"Something like that," I respond. "You, me, and Tia are going to form a dancing troupe. We just need to learn a choreography that can amaze a small crowd.”

“Ok, but I don’t understand how and why you’re leaving the boys out of it,” Jace says. “We can learn a few steps too.”

I opened my mouth to answer but then the door is thrown open interrupting the conversation. We turn in unison to find a large man standing there. Slung over his shoulder is a cursing Paisley who is also slamming fists into the giant's back.

"I told you to let go of me you oaf!" he's saying.

"What on earth?" Jace murmurs but Savannah seems pleased with herself.

"That's for me." She walks to them while glancing over her shoulder to wink at us. "I paid one of Wolf's mercenary friends to get Paisley and deliver him to our doorstep immediately."

We both stare at the three of them in shock, while Tia murmurs, "Wolf has friends?"

The barbarian nods to Wolf who nods back. Savannah tosses a coin and he catches it mid-air, before shifting Paisley's weight onto her shoulder.

Savannah carries a now quietly seething Paisley to us, showing surprising strength in that she doesn't even struggle a little as she does it.

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“Now we have more helping hands," she says.

"We don't need him,” Jace says in a sore tone.

"He’s part of this team too. There’s no reason why he gets to sit on his ass while we do all the work.”

"Let me go." Paisley bites out, and she smiles sweetly at him in return.

“With pleasure.” She lets her hands drop, and shrugs him off her shoulder. He lands on the floor with a thump.

"Oof!" He glares at her. Jace shakes his head in disgust.

"How did he make it this far?"

"By being smart," Paisley says and dusts himself off, as he gets to his feet. He does it obsessively like she has a disease. But Savannah as usual didn’t seem to take any offense to it, as she turns to the rest of the group.

“I don’t know how much help he’s going to be,” Tia points out. “Adria just announced that this was going to be a woman-led expedition.”

“You know he’s pretty dainty,” Jace mentions. “I’m sure if we put him in a dress, we could pass him off as a woman.”

Paisley sends him an irritated look to which Jace smiles evilly.

“You and Jace can keep watch," I tell Paisley who glares at me too. "Also do you think you can get any tools from your father? Tools that would make this heist easier.” Paisley's father is a Chief who works with General Roku in commanding the military. If anyone should have some high-grade weapons it will be him.

“Oh sure,” Paisley, but his tone dripping with sarcasm. “ I could just drop over and ask him to hand me war equipment for a little school exercise.”

“This isn’t just an exercise,” Jace said. “If we’re caught, we could be executed.’

“Precisely. Which is probably why we shouldn’t be doing this in the first place.”

“Not all of us can afford to sit out these tasks,” Savannah says. “There are repercussions, remember? And it’s not like we all have rich Chiefs for fathers who will get us out of trouble.”

Something dark sparks out of his eyes in Savannah’s direction and then a cruel smile curls his lips. “It’s funny that you think that anything you do in this game matters. Like they’re just going to make you an Elite Soldier just because you pass some asinine tests when the truth is that all of you are everything the king despises,” he says. “You’re playing his game, letting him use you to carry out his dirty deeds, on the off chance that he allows you to bleed for this forsaken nation. I don't know if that's insanity or stupidity. Probably both."

I’m a little surprised. It’s the most vicious- and most honest- nonsarcastic thing I’ve ever heard Paisley say. And he does admittedly have a point, but Jace stands his ground.

“Oh we know the King is an ass,” Jace says and I jerk a little because it's too risky for him to reveal that to Paisley. It's near treason and could him flogged if Paisley reports it. But Jace doesn't seem to care. “Does it ever occur to you that we’re not doing this for him?”

“Then what are you doing it for?” Paisley challenges. “Honor? Your family?”

“You wouldn’t know anything about any of that.” Jace shoots back. “About sacrificing your life for something greater than you.”

“You're right. That doesn't mean anything to me. Truthfully I don’t care much about my life. It's meaningless. And yours is meaningless too. You'll still be a halfbreed nobody at the end of this. And you're wasting what pathetically little time you have left, doing stupid things like this.”

“Then why not just kill yourself then?” Jace takes a challenging step closer. “If all of life is so meaningless to you anyway, then just take yourself out."

“Jace–” I caution. He's taking this way too far.

But Paisley's answer is even startling.

“I already tried that," he hisses heatedly. “But unfortunately I have extraordinary luck of being hard to kill."

With that statement stunning us all into silence, he pivots and walks right out of the cottage again, leaving us staring at his back.

It takes us all a minute to talk again.

“Well, that was intense," Tia says, eyeing Jace who looks like he's pissed but also confused.

“Yeah,” Savannah says. “It’s fine. We don’t need him anyway.” She still seems annoyed and so does Jace as he takes a seat at the dining table. But he snaps himself out of it and turns to me.

“So? What else are we going to do in the days leading up to the performance?"

"Well, I'm going to go back to the Raven girl. Befriend her." And also make sure she doesn't know anything about our Elite Soldier training. She probably doesn't but I fear that she's more aware than she appears.

But she also doesn't seem all that deceitful. On the contrary, she lacks the natural urge to keep things to herself so if she knows something, she'll likely drop a hint eventually.

"While I'm at it, I'll also try to figure out their security technology and how it works."

"You can't be too obvious or they'll catch on," Tia says.

I nod. "I won't be. Jace, you focus on what I asked you to focus on, secretively monitoring Castle patrol. You'll be doing it on your own, so you'll need to be very careful and quick."

"No worries, Adria," he says. "I'm extremely good at being a distraction." He waggles his eyebrows at Tia who rolls her eyes smiling.

"Besides," he says. "I learned a thing or two about Black Castle while plotting to sneak in to break you and Wolf out."

Wolf frowns at Jace who winks at him too. "No need to thank me. You can always count on me to have your back."

Wolf shakes his head and looks away.

"I appreciate it, Jace," I say wryly and the rest of the afternoon is spent building on our plan, plugging in holes and refining it. The whole time, my stomach is churning because I know that despite how confident I sound I’ve never led a mission with this many moving parts before. A mission that will end in disaster if we die.

And even with that, I have another secret that I'm not telling the rest of my teammates.

Because while all this is going on, I’ll be conducting a mission of my own.

***

I’m on the tips of my toes when the door opens and closes.

I pirouette to find Wolf at the doorway, holding a sack of apples. His eyebrows slant over his eyes and when they do, my heart skips a beat.

We're alone.

Neither of us has talked about what I told him. His fate with Savannah. It’s like we’ve both put it on pause until this is all over.

Whenever it's over. Hopefully it'll be soon.

It will be very risky for me emotionally if this drags on for too long.

I know he’s not mine. But every day it’s getting easier and easier to believe he is.

“What are you doing?” he asks.

“Dancing,” I respond. “Or at least trying to...” It seems that months – years in actuality – of not practicing has made me quite rusty. I need to recover enough of my poise to convince the Ravens that I do this often. I'll also need to show Sav the routine tomorrow but I'm still crafting it. It has to be complex enough to be distracting and entertaining, while obvious enough for even beginners to master.

It also has to be something that plays to our strengths and doesn't cause injury.

Luckily, Seir healed my feet while I was in the infirmary, so pain isn't a limitation. Just general awkwardness caused by overly developed muscles.

Wolf slowly lowers his sack and descends into a seat. He doesn't say much but the curiosity and heat in his eyes tell me what his lips don’t.

He wants to watch.

I swallow, desire rivuleting through me and pooling at my belly. I’m aware of his gaze, at every point of my skin, wrapping around me such that I feel ensnared by it.

But I also feel freed by it.

Slowly I began to let my body move closing my eyes and feeling the familiar rhythm. I forget about a routine and sway, refusing to think too much. Just do what feels natural. I lift one leg high above my head, stretching it until I feel my muscles pull taut. Then I bend my back into a semi-circle, twirling and dropping my hands to the floor so I can lift both legs and walk in the air, mimicking the flow of a rippling wave.

I flip back to my feet and turn and bend. I contort into inhuman shapes, trying to maintain a grace I've long forgotten.

When I open my eyes Wolf is gripping his thighs. His expression is pulled taut with desire.

I soar to him because I can’t help myself. I sway and pivot, watching his expression as I dance. Then I perch at the end of his lap, extending my leg upwards again, meeting his eyes as I do.

A rumbling sound echoes out of him.

He's purring.

But purring is too mild a word. This sound is not like the soft gentle hiss of a cat, but rather, it's a guttural sound from deep within. He’s doing it with his eyes shut and his hands gripping his thighs. He breathes deeply as though inhaling me.

As though he can't help himself either.

I somehow manage to pull myself away, rising and lifting my hands into the air to finish the dance.

Then I ask breathlessly, "What do you think?"

His eyes are stormy orbs when they open.

"More practice needed," he growls. "Again.".