“You made it.” Abel steps from the depths of the stables like a living shadow. He wears only a black shirt, simple black trousers, and his sword belt. “Come, we should go quickly.”

  He leads me through the depths of the stables, through the normally-locked door to the city wall, and to his waiting sensible little mare. I glance around for Sebastian.

  “Your stallion is too memorable. We can’t draw the attention of familiarity. You’ll ride with me tonight.”

  With him. My entire body heats.

  He sweeps up into the saddle and extends his arm for me.

  “Are you going to blindfold me again?” It comes out breathy. I want to ask him about the kiss. Whether it meant anything to him—like it means to me.

  “Should I? Do I have anything to fear from you, Lady Aubrey?”

  “Not tonight.” I take his extended hand and he pulls me up onto a small cushioned adornment to his saddle that allows me to perch sidesaddle behind him. My thigh and side presses against his hard, hot frame and I wrap an arm around his waist.

  “Good,” he says and I can hear the humor in his tone. “Not only is there music and food to be had tonight, but we’ve a definitive plan for your cousin’s rescue.”

  I grip him tighter. The thought of Farnell douses all my warmth. “Still planned for the Summer Solstice Ball?”

  “It is, but let us begin with the revelry. Skully and Cliff won’t be back from patrols for at least a few hours.”

  Fortunately, we don’t encounter any wyverns on the way. The Disciples’ camp hums alive with music and laughter. Abel and I dismount inside a horse pen at the edge of camp.

  I give Abel’s mare an appreciative scratch under the jaw, then undo the buttons of my cloak and shrug it off. Tonight’s emerald dress isn’t risque like the ones I’ve worn to palace events. It’s the only dress I own that’s both fancy and covering—most of my dresses are either one or the other, but Clara had this one prepared in case I needed a modest dress for an event, though I doubt she ever imagined I’d wear it in a place like this. It fits tightly around the waist and is made of soft, intricate lace layers. A far cry from the poorly tailored trousers and house dresses I usually wear around Abel.

  Abel pushes the pen’s rickety gate open and glances over at me. He stills, his brows rising as his gaze slides down my body in a slow perusal. “You look… beautiful.”

  Heat warms my cheeks. The memory of our last encounter invades my mind. His lips on my mouth. His hands in my hair. His body against mine. Walking towards him feels like approaching an open flame and expecting not to get burned.

  I duck my head and angle my body to slip through the gate past him.

  He drops his arm, catching me around the waist, and jerks me flush against him.

  I suck in a breath.

  His chiseled jaw and those long, dark eyes framed by long, black lashes angle down at me. “Tell me to let you go.”

  Heat curls tight and low in my belly. My lips part, but the words won’t come.

  His other hand catches the back of my neck and his mouth descends on mine. A rush lifts me onto my toes and I run my hands up his chest, up the curve of muscles beneath the fabric of his shirt, up to his neck, to the nape of his tied-back hair and the short tendrils there.

  He groans into my mouth, as if my touch affects him like his affects mine. “I am not… usually like this,” he says against my lips.

  “Like what?” I breathe.

  He draws back, brows furrowed and eyes closed. “One to struggle to keep my hands to myself. And I have tried.” His hand fists on the hip of my dress, as if he resents the mere idea of trying to let go.

  I slid my hand from his neck to the hard angle of his jaw where the dark scruff prickles my palm. “So have I.”

  The corner of his mouth curls and, even with eyes still closed, he finds my mouth again. This time, just a rough brush of his lips before he takes a step back.

  Goosebumps spread across my skin at the sudden chill of his absence.

  He gives my hand a tug. “Come, you deserve a night of honest fun.”

  Abel leads me out of the shadows of the horse pen and towards the bonfire.

  “Aye, Abel. And Abel’s lass, too. Good Moon to you both!” Chip raises his hand and gestures us to join him beside a wooden table covered with bowls of food. He slaps a sloshing bowl of stew into my hands. “Eat, sit, you look half-starved.”

  I force a smile and close my fingers around the bowl. Food has long been a contemptuous necessity in my life, but it feels rude to refuse. “Thank you. Good Moon? For the Moon Festival?”

  “Right you are, lass, for the Moon Festival. We say Good Moon as good luck or good fortune. The Moon festival is always on the full moon closest to the solstice. It represents the hope for new tidings to come, the hope for a good harvest, and a prosperous and restful winter to come.” He shrugs.

  “Good Moon to you, too, then.” I follow Chip to one of the logs surrounding the bonfire and sit next to him.

  Abel sits on my other side.

  Chip slurps a spoonful. “Not exactly your grade of grub, but Penni over there does a damn fine job.” He jerks his head towards a curvaceous woman across the fire from us. The woman notices Chip’s nod in her direction and gives him a little wave before returning to her prior conversation and easy sway to the music.

  I make myself eat a spoonful of the stew. It’s surprisingly decent. A bit woody, but rich and smokey. Not palace-level delicacy. More like something I’d have eaten with Father back when it’d just been the two of us, eating with the servant staff. “I like it very much, thank you.”

  “What do you think of our humble camp?” Chip says. “You didn’t get much look at it, last you were here, I gather. Bit less sophisticated than you’re used to, I’ll bet.”

  “It’s… almost peaceful here. I like that. But I’ve always liked the forest.”

  There aren’t a ton of people. Most I recognize from my last visit, though I haven’t met them. A half dozen arc around the opposite side of the bonfire. Though a few cast curious glances, they don’t stare. Do they not notice the gold at my temple, or do they not care? Either way, their indifference eases a tension in my shoulders I hadn’t even realized I held.

  “You like the forest, do you? Wouldn’t have figured a lady l like yourself having much experience with woods.”

  A smile. “As a child, I often played in the forests by the palace. And after, my cousin and I spent as much time as we could in the woods around my father’s estate.”

  “Huh. No wonder he likes you,” Chip says, spooning another mouthful. “Same cousin you’re wanting us to be saving?”

  “That’s the one.” I lose the last shreds of my appetite. Poor Farnell is probably starving somewhere dark and cold while I sit here eating and smiling and fantasizing about kissing Abel again. I close my eyes. If only I’d not begged him to stay. If only I’d encouraged him to run when he had the chance. I might be sitting with him right now. “Did you once serve in the army with my father? Is that how you joined this?”

  “Me?” Chip coughed a little. “Skies, no, I was just a peasant like most the others. Got caught up in the anger of it all, so I took off for the forests looking for a place to channel the rage, you know?”

  I couldn’t imagine Chip full of rage. I’d never seen him anything but smiling and amicable.

  “Nothin’ exciting,” he went on. “Just got sick of it all. Lost my sister to that Helberg Lord—he fancied her and you know how that goes. Ma fell to sadness after that. A peasant who won’t work ain’t much use, you know? So.” He shrugged, as if he were discussing nothing out of the ordinary at all. And perhaps it isn’t out of the ordinary for them. “Nothing like what happened to Skully.”

  I can’t resist asking. “What happened to Skully?”

  Chip tipped the last of his bowl into his mouth. “Well, I’m not sure how she was caught up in the first place, but the Vales bought her when she was just a lass. Younger than you, I think. Kept her a long while. You never heard how the former Vale Founder died? The current Lord Vale’s brother? Well, one day she’d had enough, got herself a knife from the kitchen, nothing more than a little steak knife, stabbed him over a hundred times and managed to escape. How? You’d have to ask her. She doesn’t talk about it. Abel and Will found her mad-headed in the woods a few days after, nearly starved to death.”

  Whatever I expected, I hadn’t expected that. Rage and disgust burns in my gut. Will I ever stop being surprised at the horrors the Founder Lords and their heirs are capable of? I recall the way Heir Vale watched that pretty servant walk by, the way he’d offered Taron his private selection. Had Skully been part of his ‘private selection’ once?

  Abel stares at his interlaced hands, head bowed, as if remembering.

  “Aye,” Chip says brightly, “and look at her now! Believe me when I say she could do us all the same if she wanted.” He laughs, then glances sidelong at me, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes dance playfully, as if he’d not just told me the most sickening story I’ve ever heard. “Aye, you’re a lass! Care to dance?”

  I try to smile back at him, to push my mortification down deep within me to fume over another day. “I only know court dances, I’m afraid.”

  “Ha!” Chip booms. He takes my bowl, sets it aside, and drags me towards the fire and the throng of people swaying to the music.

  I glance over my shoulder at Abel, who finally cracks a smile again. Though he makes no move to rescue me. Instead, he leans back on braced arms and watches.

  I shoot him a glare, then allow Chip to pull me around to face him.

  He shakes me by the shoulders. “Relax, lassy, no one here cares a bit about your dancing.”

  I try to relax. Really.

  Chip dwarfs me with his wide frame, but his hands are gentle, if not a bit rudimentary, as he tries to help me move to the beat of this foreign jaunty music. He does his own shuffle, spins around, and spreads his arms wide—apparently for my viewing pleasure.

  I laugh and try to mimic him, though my movements are stiff and clumsy. Still, it earns me a booming laugh.

  He takes my hand and twirls me around as he bounces from foot to foot to the music’s playful thrum and twang.

  I struggle for several songs. Chip’s laughter is so contagious I find myself laughing at myself right along with him.

  Then the music slows to a gentler, softer tune and we slow.

  A familiar hand lands on Chip’s tall shoulder and Abel appears beside us. “Sorry, friend, I’m afraid it’s about time I took my turn.”

  A little spark ignites in my chest.

  Chip bows dramatically and offers my hand to Abel with a wink. “All yours, boss.”

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  Abel takes me up in his arms. His warmth seeps into me, calming and comforting.

  I inhale that sweet scent unique to him, pine and horses and masculinity. “And what about you, Abel? What made you follow my father here?”

  He draws me close and I lay my cheek against his firm chest, his shirt slightly damp with sweat and the forest’s humidity. He clears his throat, softly rumbling his chest, and when he speaks it’s low and rough. “That’s a long story. One better suited for a more somber day.”

  Another day his secrecy might’ve bothered me, but tonight I’m too immersed in the music and the warmth radiating from Abel’s body. Too involved in the way his arms hold me against him, how I can feel each of his fingers upon my back. The way that warmth pools somewhere deep in my core.

  The song draws to a close and the musicians announce they’re breaking to eat, but Abel remains with one arm slung low around my back, the other splayed across my hip.

  His brow furrows as he drags his fingers slowly up my waist, over my sleeved shoulder, to the high collar of my dress. His gaze meets mine, almost as if he’s silently asking my permission, as his rough, calloused fingertips dance up the tender flesh of my neck, slipping over gold and raw skin like. Almost as if my markings don’t matter to him at all.

  “Abel,” a voice shouts from somewhere nearby.

  Abel jerks back.

  Skully stands at the far end of the clearing with Chip, peering around with a scowl. The furrow deepens as she catches sight of us. She shakes her head. “With her, of course. Come, I need you to talk some sense into this buffoon.”

  I blush, but Abel just flashes an easy smile and guides me along with a hand at my elbow.

  “And what sense is that? Not yours, I hope,” Abel says.

  “Ha!” Skully rolls her eyes. “I’m the only one here with any sense at all.”

  Chip smirks. “And we all prefer it that way.”

  “Get in here, you idiots.” Skully yanks aside the flap to a large tent—the same one I first met her in—and ducks inside.

  Abel’s eyebrows bounce once before he guides me inside after her.

  Only Red sits cross-legged on the table at the center of the tent, picking at her thumbnail with a small throwing knife. Chip nudges her with his elbow as he takes a seat and slaps his mug on the table.

  To my surprise, water—rather than beer—sloshes and trickles over the rim.

  Red flashes Chip a smirk, then catches sight of me and her brows pinch into a glare.

  “Good Moon to you, Red,” I say, bowing my head and narrowly stopping myself from my habitual curtsy, as I doubt Red would appreciate the formality.

  “Good Moon? Ha! What do you care anyway, noble?” She chucks her throwing knife and it thunks into one of the tent’s support poles.

  I flinch.

  “I don’t have time for a pissing contest.” Skully glares between me and Red. “Abel, come tell Chip he’s got to wait until the caravan gets to this point here.” She taps her finger on a spot on a map spread across the table. “It’s the only place that makes sense. You’ve got the—”

  “It’s not the only place that makes sense,” Chip drawls and swishes Skully’s hand away, seemingly oblivious to her narrowing eyes and the flare of her nostrils. “Look here, Abel. This spot is much closer to us. It’ll save us an hour’s travel time, down and back. Besides, that supply caravan will have gotten over the hills by then. They’ll be thinking they’re home free. It’ll be easy pickings. Besides, we did the last one nearly in the same place as Skully’s mark.”

  I lean in to Abel and whisper, “Is this part of the plan to rescue Farnell?”

  Abel shakes his head, and his devilish smile grows. “No, just freeing a noble caravan of some supplies. Sorry, Skully, it’s Chip’s run. He can do it wherever he wants.”

  “Oh, what, and get himself killed?” Skully throws her hands into the air. “I don’t know why I even bother to try to keep your pathetic hide alive anymore, Chip.”

  Chip laughs.

  Clifford comes into the tent, carrying his own bowl of stew, and settles in a chair around the table.

  “Finally, you show up,” Skully grumbles, but her glance in Clifford’s direction holds a decidedly gentler air to it.

  Clifford waves me closer. He sets the bowl down and smooths a roll of parchment onto the table. It’s a diagram of the palace. “Are you familiar with maps?”

  I nod and lean over the map. It’s of the main floor of the palace with surprising detail. Someone’s drawn on top of it with a graphite stick the approximate location of the pits and marked where they suspect the alternate exit is located. None if it is quite right, at least from my memory. I touch the lines and imagine Farnell toiling away in there somewhere, suffering.

  “Does this look accurate to you?” Clifford asks.

  I close my eyes and think back on that day. “The staircase is longer than you’ve drawn and…” I slide my finger across the map and try to explain how the twists and turns had been.

  Abel hands me a graphite stick. I slide into a chair and roughly sketch out the changes, adding as much detail as I can remember.

  When I finish, I sit back and look it over. “So, what is the plan?”

  Clifford raises his gaze to Abel.

  Abel draws a deep breath and taps on the exterior door to the Pits. “The plan is for us to take the Pits from this door. We’ll go inside and hopefully clear a path for escape back the way we came. But, very likely, we’ll have to escape this way.” He taps the door inside the palace, next to the conservatory and now in its proper location, thanks to me. “We’re afforded far more exits once we make it through this door.”

  I nodded. I took one of those many exits myself.

  “We’ll find your cousin and as many of ours as we can. We hope to free at least some into the palace to cause a diversion and make it more difficult for the guards to close in on us. However, risks of casualties are high.” Abel sits back in his chair and tents his fingers.

  “Why the night of the Summer Solstice Ball? Why that night? The palace will be packed. Extra guards, extra precautions.” I don’t want to think about people dying for me, for Farnell. I try to tell myself it isn’t just Farnell in there, but so many other lives robbed of their freedom. Parents of children like the boy we rescued.

  Abel’s hand settles heavily on my knee over my skirts. “And liquor and lots of noise. Lots of busybodies where they shouldn’t be.”

  A distinct, twisting, sinking sensation claws at my insides. Abel’s eyes watch me, dare me to ask the question I don’t want the answer to. “And me? You need my help?”

  His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “I need you in the Ballroom, with your eyes and ears on the High Guard and the Prince. If the High Guard leaves the ballroom floor, we have a big problem.”

  I swallow. “One man? You can’t possibly be more afraid of him than double the guards?”

  “Every guard worth his weight in armor will be on that ballroom floor, trying to nab themselves a pretty noble bride. It’ll be the young, the old, and the stupid on patrol, bitter and distracted. I’ll take a hundred of them over the High Guard.”

  My brows shoot up. I’ve seen the High Guard, I understand how ruthless he is, but a hundred guards?

  Abel’s expression grows serious. “Rahiid Venon has never lost. Never. And I’ve fought him.” Abel’s eyes lost focus, as if he were remembering. “It was… in another life. He let me live. But I can assure you, he is inhumanly talented. Crossing him is a death sentence.”

  “Then how can I possibly help?” I clench my fists against the weight of responsibility settling over my shoulders. Not the future of Father’s estate this time, it’s human lives. Abel’s life.

  “The High Guard goes wherever Prince Emory goes in public, especially given that last assassination attempt at the Vale’s. Lucky for us, Prince Emory isn’t the brightest. Your job is to keep the Prince in the ballroom. Throw a fit, pass out, make a distraction if you have to, but keep him in the ballroom.”

  I blink at him. I’ve no power over the Prince. He’s the Prince. I open my mouth to argue, but Abel’s steady, serious gaze stops me. I know that expression. Decided determination. It reminds me of the price I’d let my best friend pay for me. “I’ll do whatever it takes.”