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The thief had the audacity to smirk.
The fucking audacity.
Paladin Hollander had him by the collar, had his back flat against the stone column, Hollander's longsword angled across his throat. The noise of the ceremony continued somewhere behind them, strings and silk and champagne, oblivious. The thief had one exit and it was through Hollander.
"Comfortable?" Hollander said. He tried hard to tow the line between confident and smug. He wasn't doing a good job of it.
"You always this handsy with people, or just me?" the thief said. Ilya Rozanov. His name, Hollander had learned in the last six months past, was Rozanov. Rogue. Fence. Part of the Æmberhand Collective, which was a terribly fucking pompous name for a group of pickpockets.
Everyone should have aspirations, Hollander supposed. And Rozanov was a rather nice family name. For a family of thieves.
"Drop it," Hollander commanded, with that low, disciplined growl that he had practiced when he was alone in his chamber, before remembering his training:
Say nothing. Do not give bandits the opportunity to beguile you with empty promises wrapped around a loaded spell.
He'd made that mistake before, let some mage-thief pull him into a mindless back-and-forth before—FLASH!—a spell had found him dazed, three steps behind the retreating bandit before he'd realized what happened.
That wouldn't happen again. Not tonight.
So Hollander snapped his mouth closed and pushed the longsword deeper in the rogue's exposed throat. The flatedge. Hollander wasn't a monster. He pressed the edge of his blade harder against the column of Rozanov’s throat. A warning. But the rogue didn't flinch. Instead, he tilted his head back, the dark, messy curls of his hair catching the light, and offered his capture a slow, lazy smirk that made the paladin's grip on his sword relax.
Up close, Hollander noticed the way Ilya’s chest—no, not Ilya's chest. Rozanov's chest—heaved with exertion, his pulse thudding rhythmically against the steel of the sword. He noticed the slight gold flecks in the thief’s sharp, defiant eyes. Most of all, he noticed Ilya’s lips—no, not Ilya's lips. Rozanov's lips!—full, parted, curved into what looked more like a dare than a surrender, and so very wet.
The Paladin felt a traitorous urge to drop the sword entirely, to grab Ilya by that ridiculous leather collar and smother that smirk with his own mouth and drown the villain into submission. He wanted to ruin the thief’s composure the way Ilya—Rozanov, dammit!—was currently ruining his sense of duty.
Focus, Hollander, he scolded himself. The jewel. The Princess. The Vow.
Hollander shifted his tone, even as his trousers shifted, tightening against the chain-linked shirt front designed for subtle protection in formal gatherings. "You’re a long way from the gutter, Rozanov."
At that moment, with Ilya smirking back at him, Hollander hated how formal—pompous, really—he sounded. A shield, this was, against his own desire.
"You’re lucky that I—and not the High Inquisitor—caught you."
Instead of feigning innocence or begging for mercy, Ilya let out a breath. His smirk widened, revealing a glimpse of teeth, all accounted for save the one in the back Shane knew he'd loosened in their last scuffle in the mud of Low Market.
"I didn't know you cared, Hollander—"
By the gods, that mouth. The way Ilya's lips rounded the vowels.
"Paladin Hollander," he corrected.
"It is almost touching, actually. You look very pretty when you are being authoritative. Very... stiff."
Fuck. Could the thief feel his cock pressed against him? Hollander took a step back, but leaned harder against the sword at Ilya's throat.
Around them, guards lifted two other members of Ilya's faction mates. Guests began carefully peeling themselves from the floor. Glass shards and splintered wood littered the floor, remnants of a failed robbery attempt.
But... something felt off, wrong, as though the rogue wanted to be caught?
Paladin Hollander had been watching the Gilded Ceremony for two hours along with his guardmates. Plate armor exchanged for something more appropriate to the occasion—dress uniform, silver chain mail fitted close, his paladin's seal at his shoulder. The commission had been explicit: the Princess’s coronation jewel—the Eye of Aethelgard—was to be presented before the full court, and it was to arrive intact. Hollander had assigned six guards to the display case and positioned himself where he could see all of them.
Ilya had come in through the ceiling. Had dropped, light as a cat, in the three-second window between the shifting of the guard, and had the Aethelgard in hand before the nearest guard finished turning.
Hollander had been on him in eleven seconds. He knew because he counted.
His hand fisted the front of Ilya's very nice doublet—deep burgundy, embroidered at the cuffs, which told you everything about how much this man enjoyed a performance—and the blade was at his throat, and it should have been finished.
Except.
Except the column's candlelight was catching Ilya's jaw at an angle that wasn't helping anyone, and his dark eyes had that quality—that specific quality—of someone who had already won the argument, who was simply waiting for you to figure it out. His mouth was curved. His collar, askew where Hollander had grabbed him, exposed that line of his throat that—
No. Hollander refocused.
"Your men are in custody," he said, far more controlled than his pulse rate would have one believe. "Whatever your exit strategy was, it doesn't exist anymore."
"Mm." Rozanov tilted his head, a small movement, heedless of the sword at his throat. "You could see it that way."
"Relent." Hollander pressed forward, just slightly—feel the wall, feel how trapped you are—and something in the rogue's expression shifted. His face relaxed. He wasn't scared. What was he, then? What was the thief feeling? Interest, maybe? Definitely not fear. "Relent, and I'll ensure the guards treat you and your men with—"
"Leniency?" Rozanov offered.
"—appropriate restraint."
Ilya looked at him for a long moment. The smirk hadn't moved. His eyes moved across Hollander's face with an attention that felt, absurdly, like being read—like he was a text Ilya was translating for sport.
"You know what I find interesting about you?" Ilya said. "You're very good at your job. Genuinely. Six months, you've turned me back four times." A pause. "But you tend to always assume you've already won."
Hollander's grip tightened. "I have you pinned against a wall."
"You do." Ilya's voice was perfectly pleasant.
"Relent," Hollander whispered, his face inches from Ilya’s. "Relent and give me the names of your associates. Do this, and I’ll personally ensure the guards go easy on you. I might even see to it that your cell has a window."
"A window?" Ilya let out a soft, huffed laugh that fanned across Shane’s lips. "You do really care, leftenant. Such a noble, chivalrous man."
"I am trying to save your life," Shane snapped, the frustration finally bubbling over.
"Always looking down from your high horse." Ilya's voice dropped to a low, velvety register. Every bit sey, but no less dangerous. "Look down, little Paladin."
Hollander's gaze dropped.
The obsidian dagger was thin, a rogue's blade, made for gaps in armor, wedged perfectly between two links of chain mail. Right at the juncture of his inner thigh and groin. Ilya's wrist hadn't moved, but the blade had been there the entire time.
Hollander went still.
"There it is," Ilya said.
Then he brought his forehead forward in a brutal, ringing headbutt that caught Hollander square on the bridge of his nose. Stars exploded in the paladin's vision. Before he could recover his footing, Ilya’s knee came up, slamming into his stomach and doubling him over.
"You..." Shane wheezed, his face flushing a deep crimson, more from embarrassment than from pain.
"Me," Ilya whispered.
The blow came from the left—the pommel of a second blade, produced from somewhere Hollander hadn't accounted for, catching him clean at the temple. He dropped to the floor. His longsword clattered to the ground and two inches from his face, the Eye of Aethelgard, left behind like an afterthought.
Ilya was escaping into the crowd—again—and for all his training and skill, there was fuck-all Hollander could do about it.
"Next time, Hollander," Ilya’s voice drifted from the shadows of the doorway, sounding entirely too cheerful as he retreated. "Try to keep your eyes on my hands. Not my mouth."