Page 83 of The Thief and the Traitor Bride

The moment she slipped into a crouch, the thief whirled on Nore.

She gasped, stumbling back—Nore had been trained in spycraft but never in fighting. She only had the time for one thought—Celestine was right—before she was aware that she was suddenly fighting for her life.

This wasn’t just a defense; it was an assault. Before Nore could even raise her knife, the thief had kicked her feet out from under her with a grace she didn’t understand. She took a blow to her jaw that knocked her neck back and fell back to the floor—and she was stunned at the pain of the thief’s violence. She kicked out with all her force, connecting with the thief’s stomach, satisfied at the pained grunt, but that was not enough. Nore scrambled up to her elbows just in time to see the thief coming for her.

They weren’t looking to incapacitate her, she realized as fear thickened in her throat. They were looking to kill.

Nore rolled, just barely missing the knife they aimed; but it was a miscalculation after all. The thief stomped down on Nore’s wrist and her hand opened, dropping her own weapon. The bones of her wrist crunched under their boot; Nore’s head fogged with pain. In a clever move she did not follow, they dropped to their knee on her arm—she moved but not enough to miss the blow entirely as the thief’s blade sank into her side.

It was a shockingly intimate way to die, she thought in a fractured half second—the thief’s skin hot on hers, their hand grazing the side of her breast as the blade bit between her ribs.

The knife sank in. It was impossible to tell if it was deadly, but if this strike wasn’t, the next one would be—and Nore was overcome. She sucked in a breath as she realized—

Cas. She would never see Cas again. She was going to die here, and he would never understand what had happened to her. She had left no notes, no explanations, no apologies.

I’m sorry, she thought in that final second. I’m sorry, Cas.

Nore screamed, losing her grip on the enchantment. She felt the fuzziness around her fade as her features jumped into sharp relief.

“Nore?”

Nore looked up, her thoughts indistinct with pain. It seemed to radiate from all over: from her wrist, which was definitely broken; from her side, where he’d cut the space between two ribs. She felt her blood pulsing, soaking the fabric of her dress. She was losing a lot of it, fast, so much that it was shocking.

The thief’s enchantment slipped. He pressed a hand to her side, trying to staunch the bleeding. Nore could only gape—because he was familiar to her. Because he was beloved.

“Caspian?” she asked, forcing her lips to form his name.

She could barely think, her thoughts cloudy—she heard him as he ran a calculation for healing, for life, his hand pressed firmly to her wound. It was a familiarity, that sometimes in moments of stress, he had to speak the calculation for magic out loud instead of running it through his head. Something he’d taught her to do, even, when she was overwhelmed. She gasped, the pain doubling as the calculation took root—then fading as it worked on her wound.

He was swearing, dragging her up into his arms. Nore could barely think as he kept her in his arms and vaulted back through the window, then made his way down the trellis to the ground. Nore nearly threw up from the pain.

Even with the pain in her ribs ebbing, the threat of death fading, she could not make sense of this.

“Wait.” She forced herself to think through the fog. Nore grabbed the trellis, pulling away from him, forcing herself upright. She was woozy with pain, but she needed to—she needed to know. She pressed her hand to her side, feeling the slippery heat of her own blood as she swayed unsteadily. Even with his magic working through her veins, she was still badly hurt.

There was only one explanation.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, giving him the benefit of the doubt.

“Let me get you home,” Cas pleaded.

She blinked at him, uncomprehending. “You’re the thief,” she said.

He laughed, the sound hard and terrible. “Nore—I could ask you the same. Why were you sneaking around?” He shook his head. “You’re hurt. Just let me—”

She staggered back, hitting the brick wall. It was so cold, and she hadn’t taken her coat. The bricks scraped against the silk of her dress, the bare skin of her shoulder blades. “How long, Caspian?” she snarled. “Who are you working for?” She thought of the whispers on their nights out—and yet, she had never listened to the rumors of uprising and imagined, in any world, that Caspian would play a part in them. “Is it Marous?”

He stepped back like she’d slapped him. “I could ask you the same,” he said, his voice suddenly hard and cold as iron. “You—what are you? A spy?”

Nore held her tongue. Even now, even when the layers of her life were crumbling, she could not answer him. Could not let those worlds collide.

He didn’t press her. It probably had something to do with the caution on his face when his gaze flicked back down to her hand, red with blood, more still seeping through her fingers. “You’re bleeding. Let me do something—”

Nore shook her head. She kept a hand on the wall as she stalked off into the night, Cas trailing behind her. “Nore!” he half shouted. He reached out, snagging her dress; he let go as soon as she stumbled, hissing in pain. “Please,” he said, a touch lower, desperate. “Let me get you home. Clearly, there’s some sort of misunderstanding here we need to figure out.”

Nore shook her head. She was so nauseous, in so much pain, but the pieces were coming together hazily. There was no misunderstanding: Caspian was a thief, working against the interests of Lindan.

She pressed a bloody hand to her forehead. “I didn’t even know,” she said, her voice breaking, “that you were so skilled with magic.”