“Tia?” My eyes widen in horror as they drag her to the floor and throw her down. She's holding a bag full of coins that clang on the wood. One of the knights points his weapon at her, one of this magical miniature cannons.

In my third life, I saw it blasting through and ripping someone’s flesh in two. I know how deadly that thing can be.

My heart stutters for a second imagining it shooting through Tia's skull.

“Wait stop,” I yell suddenly dashing towards them and throwing my body in front of Tia. “She’s my friend.”

The man turns angry and suspicious eyes to me. “What was your friend doing attempting to rob us?”

“I’m not sure.” I turn to Tia and she shoots me an apologetic look. I'm not sure how much of it is real and how much is acting, but fear swells in the depths of her eyes. My heart is racing in my chest too, which is normal considering we're surrounded suddenly by a dozen larger men, a few of whom are pointing various blasting tools at us, and the others pointing very sharp and shiny swords.

“What is going on?” The Raven Lord demands and his voice carries with authority. The crowd of men surrounding us parts slightly as their Lord walks closer to the two of us on the floor.

I plead directly with him. “I’m sorry, sir. She’s an old friend. But...her mother is sickly and it's expensive to get a healer."

“So that's why you planned to distract us while she stole from Lord Raven?” The first man immediately accuses clear distaste in his expression.

“No,. I shake my head. “I swear I didn’t even know she would be here.”

“She’s the one who alerted us that there might be an intruder,” Raven Lord murmurs as though admonishing his Knight.

But he's still watching me as though trying to get inside my head.

I turn to Tia. “Tia, why would you do this?” I shake my head in confused devastation. “Why would go this far?"

Tears fill Tia's eyes and her voice cracks when she speaks.

“Please leave Adria out of this,” she pleads. “She didn’t know I was going to try and steal from you. She told me she would be dancing here tonight and I took advantage of that information to sneak in. I was wrong. Only punish me.”

“No.” I immediately whip my head back to the Ravens. “Forgive us, my Lord. She was desperate….I’ll share her punishment with her.”

The Raven Lord looks between the two of us like he’s not sure what to make of it. I ensure my mask doesn’t slip as his shrewd eyes attempt to take in all of us at once, assessing what to do next.

But I know he’ll not report this. A man who pitied starving Northerners wouldn’t be so quick to condemn two poor women to death.

At worst, it will be a flogging, the intensity of which I can negotiate with Tyne.

“Wow,” Pearl Raven comments from her spot on the couch. She looks just as fascinated as when Savannah and I danced. “I haven’t seen two people so eager to suffer for each other. Like that play, we saw in Hilorm, father. Are you two lovers?”

Tia makes a strangled sound and The Raven Lord sighs, clearly exasperated by the entire situation.

“Let them go,” he says, and my heart leaps in relief. For a second I wasn’t sure that my mask would hold up. I thought he would see through the ruse, and could tell we were pretending. But no.

Even though his first Knight still speaks up in protest. “But my Lord–“

“Let them go, Horde,” he says. “We don’t harm hungry children.”

Horde resists the order for a few seconds. And then reluctantly he backs away, tucking his canon.

The rest of the Knights follow his lead.

“Thank you, Sir,” Tia says, tearfully prostrating herself flat on the ground. She does a good job of it too, reaching her hands out to tentatively touch his shoes. “You won’t regret it.”

Lord Raven seems uncomfortable with her display and shifts his shoes away from her, then turns to me. I also bow my head, although don’t engage in quite the theatrics that she does.

“Thank you,” I say. “We won’t forget this kindness.”

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He doesn't answer me, instead turning to his daughter.

“I think there has been enough entertainment for today dear, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” she answers without guile. “This has been extremely entertaining.”

He smiles wryly at her. She’s watching the whole thing with bright eyes and rises to her feet, elegantly.

"I think you may return for tonight ladies," she says and I straighten and bow to her.

Savannah bows too and we chorus, "Thank you, Lady Raven."

I hear the shakiness in Savannah's voice, the surprise. She's not quite as good an actress as me and Tia, but she doesn't have to be. Her surprise is real.

She's not just shocked that everything worked out as planned, but that the Ravens let us go so easily.

Back when I was in Pangea in my first life, I didn’t hear much about the magnanimity of the Ravens. All I knew of the Ravens was that they were shrewd business men and unlike the Farrows who had magic and a long history with the Emperor, the Ravens rose quickly to prominence by amassing wealth and technology. They were a race of inventors and discoverers and they also owned manufactured quite a bit of the Empire's weaponry. That and they loved money. They were greedy and didn’t care who they did business with as long as they could earn a profit.

But no one told me that they would be this kind.

As the three of us shuffle toward the door, I hear the Raven Lord say, “Wait.”

We all stop. My spine snaps straight and I try not to shake.

Have we been caught?

I turn around first. “Yes, sir?”

He bends to pick up the coin bag that Tia dropped on the floor. His bag of coins. There are also papers she was carrying that littered the hallway as they dragged her out.

“Why did you take these?" He gestures to the papers.

Tia turns and ducks her head in shame. “I thought perhaps….someone told me that they occasionally use paper currency in the South. I thought perhaps that was it.”

He sighs. “It wasn’t.” He tosses the bag of coins to her and she catches it in mid-air, with fluid agility.

“Will that be enough for your mother?” he asks.

“Um...” Tia shoots me a look of confusion and near panic. I almost laugh.

This was not how we imagined it would play out at all when we concocted the mother story. We thought it would simply give Tia a sympathetic excuse for what she did, but we never thought that Raven Lord would sympathize to this extent.

And Tia clearly doesn't know what to do about it.

It’s amusing because she was completely in her role when she thought she would be killed. But his kindness has disarmed her.

“There’s about ten pieces of gold in there,” Lord Farrow continues. “It should be good enough for any half-decent healer.”

“Thank you, sir,” she murmurs but the shock is still there in her voice. "I will never forget this kindness."

He nods and Pearl waves from behind him. “I’ll see you later Adria. You need to teach me some of those dance moves.”

I nod to her too.

Soon, we leave the Raven abode descending the staircase and walking out onto the grass in a daze.

We walk through the castle gates in silence and down the cobbled walkway.

Only when we're on the grassland to Wolf's cottage, where the wind won't carry our voices do we allow ourselves to voice the inner turmoil we're feeling.

“Wow.” Savannah is the first to speak up.

“Tell me about it,” Tia murmurs. “I’ve never felt so guilty for something in my life.” She eyes the bag of gold in her hands, her eyes still holding a suspicious sheen. “Ten pieces of gold…he just gave that to me like it was nothing.”

“Yes.” The kindness still stuns me. And the guilt is now rolling like a wave, reminding me that I couldn’t even meet Pearl's eyes when I left. We stole from them and yet they have been nothing but kind to us. Even worse, we did it for a King who would probably much rather have our heads on a stake.

I guess Paisley is right.

We really must be stupid.

No. You’re not doing this for King Drogo, remember? You’re doing this for the greater good. Remember that.

There's that voice again. I suppose it decided to come back.

“Should we split it?” Tia asks the two of us.

I shake my head. “No. I have no need for it.”

“Neither do I,” Savannah says. “Besides, you deserve it more than the two of us. You performed the most dangerous part of the job.”

"True," I concur. Tia had to scale the wall, with only Jace as her look out, and get into the Raven Lord's study, knowing that there may be traps waiting for her. Even more, we branded her as a thief. If we didn’t manage to convince Lord Raven to forgive her, she would have been punished, perhaps imprisoned.

Although I planned that, if it got to it, we would use a 'vision' to negotiate Tia's freedom from the King. And of course, Jace was standing by to extract her if need be.

But luckily, Lord Farrow was sympathetic. Just like I knew he would be.

"That did not feel good at all," Sav murmurs.

“No,” Tia says and then we hear someone running up behind us. Jace.

He likely spotted us leaving but didn’t come after us immediately, so as not to alert the guards.

We wait for him to reach us.

“Did it work?” he asks, antsily rolling his shoulders.

Tia nods, palming the sack as though she can’t quite believe it. “Better than expected actually.”

He glances at the coin bag and then frowns at us. “Then why do you guys look so morose?”

“We’ll explain it later,” Savannah says, but then I'm no longer listening to their conversation as something comes into focus. A figure in the distance, growing larger and larger. Wolf.

He's wearing a displeased expression as he walks up to us.

“What are you doing here?” I ask as he approaches us.

“He was keeping me company, just in case I needed help,” Jace asks. “Or in case you guys needed extraction. He also taught me a cool way to hide in the shadows.

“Shouldn’t you be helping your team?” Savannah asks Wolf wryly, the same question I was going to ask but Wolf ignores her. His eyes are on me.

”This was a risky plan,” he says.

I nod. “It was. But it worked.”

“You should have forfeited,” he says.

“The King made it clear that wasn't a viable option,” I whisper, just noticing how bright his eyes are in the night.

“You should have done it anyway,” he says. “I would have dealt with the King.”

“You almost make it sound like you were going to kill him,” Jace says with a chuckle. Wolf doesn't laugh. His eyes don't give any indication that he's joking and my breath catches in my throat at what he just revealed.

It sounds like he would kill the king for me.

But he can't do that, at least not now.

The King needs to stay alive for the some time yet.

But Wolf's gaze tells me he doesn't care.