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The Ragged Flagon smelled of spilled mead, damp stone, and the faint metallic bite of canal water that seeped through the old cistern walls. Somewhere near the bar, Dirge was arguing with a drunken fisherman over whether he had already paid for his second bottle. Tonilia watched with the bored patience of a woman who knew exactly how the argument would end. Delvin had his chair tipped back on two legs, boots propped on a crate, dealing cards with one hand and nursing a mug with the other.
Rhodes sat across from Vex at the corner table, a small pile of septims between them and a look of growing offense on her face.
“You’re cheating,” Rhodes said.
Vex did not so much as glance up from her hand. “You say that every time you’re losing.”
“I say it every time you cheat. The overlap is not my fault.”
That earned the faintest twitch at the edge of Vex’s mouth. She placed a card down with deliberate calm. “You joined a thieves’ guild, Rhodes. Try to keep up.”
Rhodes studied the table as though the cards might confess under enough pressure. Then she tossed another coin onto the pile with a soft clink.
“Raise.”
Delvin, listening from two tables away, gave a low chuckle. “That pride of yours is going to bankrupt you one day, girl.”
“It hasn’t yet.”
“Aye,” Brynjolf said from the bar, his low voice curling easily through the noise. “But some of us have been waiting with professional interest.”
Rhodes glanced over her shoulder.
He leaned against the counter with one hip, a ledger open beside him, one hand loosely curled around a cup he had forgotten to drink from. The warm lamplight caught the loose strands of his red hair, bronzing the edge of his cheek and the old scar that cut faintly near his jaw. He had been pretending to review the Guild’s numbers for the last quarter hour. Pretending poorly.
Rhodes smiled, slow and pointed. “Shouldn’t you be doing something useful, Bryn?”
“I am. I’m witnessing a preventable financial tragedy.”
“Then fetch me another drink while you watch.”
His gaze lingered on her a moment. “Already giving orders, lass? Dangerous habit.”
“Only if people obey.”
He held her eyes a beat too long. The noise of the Flagon seemed to slip around the moment rather than through it. Not gone, but distant enough for Vex to notice.
Vex always noticed.
She made a quiet sound of disgust and slapped down another card. “Are you two done staring, or should I leave you the table?”
Rhodes looked back to her hand, entirely unrepentant. “You’d like that. Then no one could catch you marking the deck.”
“I should have let Mercer recruit someone less exhausting.”
“You’d miss me terribly.”
Vex’s smile sharpened. “I would sleep beautifully.”
The door at the far end of the Flagon opened.
It did not slam. It did not scrape louder than usual. Still, something in the room shifted. Conversations thinned. Dirge stopped mid-threat. Tonilia lifted her head.
The man who stepped inside had to duck slightly beneath the low frame.
He was broad through the shoulders, armored in worn steel and fur rather than leather, his dark hair pulled back from a severe, weather-carved face. Snowmelt darkened the edges of his cloak. He carried himself like he expected hostility and had never once altered his course to avoid it.
A warrior, then. Not a dockhand. Not a cutpurse. Not a customer who had wandered too far beneath Riften by mistake.
Brynjolf’s posture changed almost imperceptibly. His mug touched the bar. His body turned just enough to put the stranger fully in his view.
Dirge took one step forward. “You lost?”
The Nord’s gaze moved across the room without haste. Past Dirge. Past Delvin. Past Tonilia. It landed on Rhodes.
And stopped.
Rhodes had been reaching for her cup. Her fingers froze around the rim.
For the first time all evening, the easy amusement left her face.
“Vilkas?”
The warrior’s expression barely shifted, but something near his eyes softened. It was not a smile, not quite. It was worse. Recognition.
“Tessa.”
Brynjolf’s eyes flicked to Rhodes.
She was already on her feet.
The chair legs scraped stone. Her curls, half-caught from the day’s work and half-loose around her shoulders, shifted as she crossed the room quickly. Not cautious. Not suspicious. She looked, for one unguarded instant, delighted.
Vilkas opened one arm just before she reached him. Rhodes embraced him hard, both arms around his middle. He returned it with a hand firm at her back, bowing his head slightly toward her hair.
It lasted no longer than it should have.
Brynjolf disliked it immediately.
He could not have said precisely which part. The embrace itself was nothing. Old comrades did worse after surviving bad weather and worse odds. The familiarity of it, perhaps. The way Rhodes had moved without thinking. The way Vilkas had expected her to.
Or the name.
Tessa.
Brynjolf had heard it only rarely from her own mouth, and never casually. Even then she had seemed to handle it like a blade—carefully, privately. Here was this great solemn bastard walking into the Flagon and speaking it as though it had always belonged to him.
Rhodes pulled back, hands still on Vilkas’s forearms. “What are you doing in Riften?”
“Looking for you.”
Rhodes blinked, surprise softening into pleasure. “Well, you found me. Come sit down before Dirge decides you are here to break furniture.”
“I have never broken furniture without cause,” Vilkas said.
“That is a very Companion answer.”
She caught him by the forearm and drew him toward the nearest open table before he could object. Vilkas allowed it with the resigned patience of a man who knew resistance would only prolong the process. The Flagon’s attention followed them openly now. A warrior from Jorrvaskr did not wander into the Ratway every evening, least of all one Rhodes greeted like family.
“Tonilia,” Rhodes called, “something decent, if we have it.”
“We do not,” Tonilia said, already reaching for a bottle. “But I can pour him something strong.”
“That will do.”
Vilkas took the chair beside Rhodes. It looked slightly inadequate beneath him. Brynjolf remained near the bar, close enough to hear and far enough to pretend he was not listening with interest.
Rhodes rested an elbow on the table, looking him over properly now. “How is Jorrvaskr?”
“Standing.”
“High praise.”
“Aela still complains no one sharpens arrows properly. Farkas lost a wrestling match to one of the whelps and has insisted ever since that he slipped. Kodlak asks after you when he thinks no one notices.”
Something gentled in her face. “Does he?”
“He does.” Vilkas accepted the cup Tonilia set before him and gave her a brief nod. “He would be pleased to know you have not gotten yourself killed.”
“Not for lack of opportunity,” Delvin put in.
Vilkas looked at him, then back at Rhodes. “That sounds familiar.”
Rhodes narrowed her eyes. “Do not start.”
“You once fell through the roof of an abandoned watchtower because you insisted the rotten beam would hold.”
Vex’s brows lifted. “Did she?”
“It nearly did,” Rhodes said.
“It did not.”
“It held until the very end.”
“That is generally when failure becomes relevant.”
Delvin chuckled into his drink. Even Vex’s mouth twitched.
Rhodes folded her arms, though there was no true offense in it. “You left out the part where I found the bandit cache no one else had noticed.”
“After landing in it,” Vilkas said.
“A discovery is a discovery.”
Vilkas’s mouth moved in the smallest shadow of a smile. “She climbed out covered in dust, holding two coin purses and a silver candlestick, and told Kodlak the fall had been strategic.”
The Guild laughed at that.
Rhodes’s cheeks warmed, but she was smiling too. “It became strategic.”
Brynjolf watched from the bar, one hand resting beside his forgotten cup.
He knew that tone in her voice. The pleased defensiveness. The way her eyes brightened when someone remembered the foolishness and the triumph of an old story in equal measure. He had heard it before, usually when Delvin dragged up one of her early Guild mistakes or Vex recalled the first time Rhodes had bested her at a lock.
But this was different.
This was a story from before Riften. Before Madesi’s stall. Before Brynjolf had known the particular tilt of her smile when she was trying not to look delighted with herself. Vilkas had that memory without effort. He carried it like it belonged naturally among the things he knew of her.
Brynjolf found his expression cooling despite himself.
Rhodes, unaware or choosing not to notice, pushed Vilkas’s drink closer when he had still not touched it. “Drink. You did not come all this way to insult my reputation sober.”
Vilkas looked down at the cup, then at her. “No,” he said.
The faint amusement left his face.
Rhodes noticed at once. Her posture changed slightly, the easy warmth sharpening into attention.
“I did not come only to catch up, Tessa.”
The use of her name drew Brynjolf’s gaze back to him.
Rhodes’s hand stilled on the table. “What happened?”
Vilkas set the untouched cup down between them.
“Something was taken from Jorrvaskr.”
The trace of humor vanished from her face.
“What?”
“A ceremonial blade from the old hall. It has been with the Companions longer than any living member can account for. Kodlak says it belonged to a Harbinger from the earliest days after Ysgramor’s line faded from memory.” His jaw tightened. “It was stolen three nights ago.”
Delvin eased his chair down onto all four legs. “And you came all this way to ask Rhodes to steal it back?”
“I came because she once told me,” Vilkas said, “that if Jorrvaskr ever lost something to a locked door, I should find her in Riften.”
A soft sound escaped Delvin’s throat. Not quite laughter. Not yet.
Brynjolf’s attention shifted to Rhodes.
She did not look guilty. She looked like someone remembering the exact conversation, and perhaps regretting only that it had proven necessary.
“It was a joke,” she said.
Vilkas waited.
Rhodes exhaled. “Mostly.”
Brynjolf’s brow lifted. “Mostly?”
She turned toward him, already defensive in that way that meant she knew she had given him material. “It was a standing offer made under very specific circumstances.”
“And those circumstances were?”
“That Jorrvaskr might one day be robbed by someone with more nerve than sense.”
Delvin gave a low chuckle. “And you volunteered the Guild before you’d been with us long enough to know where we kept the clean cups?”
“I volunteered myself,” Rhodes said. “There is a distinction.”
“Aye,” Brynjolf said, amusement warming his voice. “A dangerous one.”
Vilkas looked between them. “She said if we ever lost something to a locked door, I should find her in Riften.”
Brynjolf glanced at Rhodes again. “That is quite the promise, lass.”
She lifted her chin, though the corner of her mouth threatened. “I stand by it.”
For a moment, Brynjolf only looked at her—at the easy certainty with which she said it, at the fact that Vilkas had remembered and believed her enough to come.
Then he inclined his head, accepting it with the faintest hint of a smile. “Then I suppose we ought to hear what brought him here.”
Vilkas looked between them, unreadable, then continued as though he had decided not to ask. “We know who has it. A collector named Harlund Veyne. Wealthy. Connected to half the wrong people in Riften and enough of the right ones that we cannot simply walk into his estate and take what is ours.”
“You considered it, though,” Rhodes said.
“We considered several doors.”
“And breaking all of them.”
“It remains an option.”
Her smile flickered despite herself.
Brynjolf noticed that too.
Tonilia, behind the bar, gave a low hum of recognition. “Veyne keeps a country manor northeast of Shor’s Stone. Likes old weapons, rare books, anything he believes makes him look cultivated. He buys through layers of brokers and pretends not to know where things come from.”
“Not his first theft, then,” Rhodes said.
“Likely not.”
Vilkas nodded. “He hosts a private salon tomorrow night. A showing of newly acquired relics. The blade will be there, or near enough. We need it returned before it vanishes into some buyer’s collection.”
Brynjolf pushed away from the bar at last. “Then you are not asking for the lass alone. You are asking for Guild work.”
Vilkas met his gaze. “If that is the price of her help, then yes.”
“Not the price,” Brynjolf said. “The structure.”
Rhodes folded her arms. “He means he does not like being bypassed.”
“I mean,” Brynjolf said, without looking at her, “that no one walks into the Flagon, points at one of ours, and treats the rest of the Guild like furniture.”
Vilkas absorbed that. “Then I am asking the Guild.” A pause. “But I came because I trust her.”
There it was.
Not a challenge. Not even emphasis. A simple fact, spoken in that blunt Companions way, with no apparent thought for how it might fall.
Brynjolf felt it fall anyway.
Rhodes’s expression softened in a way she rarely allowed inside the Flagon. “We’ll get it back.”
We.
Not I’ll see what I can do. Not I’ll speak to Brynjolf. Not even the Guild can help.
We’ll get it back.
Brynjolf turned toward the nearest table, dragging a spare chair out with his boot. “Sit, then. Tell us everything.”
The plan took shape over maps, low voices, and too much cheap mead.
Harlund Veyne’s estate sat off a sloping stretch of road where the trees thinned and the ground rose in pale, stony ridges. The manor had once belonged to some minor clan that lost its money faster than its taste. Veyne had bought it, renovated it, and then hired guards who preferred coin over questions.
The blade, according to Vilkas, was long, narrow, and etched at the fuller with old wolf motifs worn smooth by generations of hands. He spoke of it without ornament, but his hand closed once against the tabletop as he described it. Rhodes noticed. So did Brynjolf.
“You’re certain it will be at the salon?” Vex asked.
“Certain enough to come here,” Vilkas said. “Not certain enough to risk waiting.”
“That is a better answer,” Brynjolf replied.
Vilkas gave him a level look. “I thought so.”
Rhodes leaned over the map, one finger tracing a line along the estate’s rear wall. “If Veyne intends to show it off, it will begin the evening in the main gallery. But if a buyer is coming specifically for it, he may move it before the guests leave. We will need eyes inside and someone positioned to adjust quickly if the plan changes.”
“I’ll go in,” Brynjolf said. “You too, lass. Veyne expects merchants, minor nobles, collectors—folk who enjoy being lied to as long as the liar is well dressed.”
“Can we manage that?” she asked, arching a brow.
He looked at her. “You managed the Black-Briar dinner. I nearly believed you were not enjoying yourself.”
“I enjoyed watching you suffer.”
“Aye,” he said, his voice warming despite himself. “And you were radiant doing it.”
The words landed softer than his usual teasing. Rhodes’s eyes held his for a fraction too long before she looked back down at the map.
Vilkas watched the exchange in silence.
Vex tapped the north side of the property. “I can work around here. Kitchen access, servants’ corridor, cellar if there’s one worth mentioning.”
“There is,” Tonilia said. “Veyne buys wine by the crate and locks the best behind iron, which tells you something about the man.”
“That he fears thirst?” Delvin offered.
“That he is rich and dull,” Vex said.
Rhodes smiled faintly. “Vilkas should remain outside until we know where the blade is. He will draw notice the moment he steps through the door.”
“I am capable of standing in a room without causing trouble,” Vilkas said.
Rhodes looked up at him. “Do you remember that job Kodlak sent us to handle near Rorikstead?”
“The land dispute.”
“Kodlak asked us to speak with the steward,” she said, fondness warming her voice. “You stood behind me in complete silence and looked at the poor man as though you were deciding whether to break him in half.”
“He was lying.”
“He was frightened.”
“He was both.”
Rhodes shook her head, smiling. “The matter was settled, but not because you looked harmless.”
A faint, reluctant amusement touched Vilkas’s mouth.
Rhodes caught it at once and smiled wider.
Brynjolf, watching, realized with faint irritation that this was how Vilkas smiled for her: not broadly, not freely, but with a quiet loosening she recognized at once. Rhodes did not need a laugh from him to know she had landed the remark. She knew his silences. Knew which ones were annoyance, which ones were thoughtfulness, which ones meant he was trying not to be amused.
Brynjolf knew her laughter. Her temper. The way she tilted her head before telling a lie. The minute pause before she did something reckless and expected him to catch up. He had begun to think of those things as knowledge earned.
Now he was confronted with a different ledger entirely, one written before Riften.
Delvin scratched at his beard. “Payment?”
Vilkas looked to Rhodes first, then seemed to remember the structure Brynjolf had insisted on. “The Companions will pay fairly.”
“Aye,” Brynjolf said. “You will.”
Rhodes gave him a warning glance.
He ignored it. “Recovery of a politically sensitive object from a guarded estate, under time pressure, with the possibility of unknown buyers and wards. That is not a favor. That is a contract.”
“It is both,” Rhodes said.
“No,” Brynjolf replied, meeting her eyes now. “It can be personal to you and still be Guild work. Those things do not cancel each other out.”
She held his gaze. The table quieted around them.
Then she nodded. “Fair.”
Brynjolf felt a small, mean spark of satisfaction that she had yielded the point in front of Vilkas. He disliked himself for it at once.
Vilkas reached inside his cloak and set a leather purse on the table. It landed with enough weight to hush Delvin’s next comment.
“Half now,” Vilkas said. “Half on return.”
Delvin picked it up, tested it in his palm, and gave an appreciative grunt. “The Companions must miss this blade badly.”
“It is part of our history,” Vilkas said.
Something in his tone stripped the levity from the moment. Delvin gave a short nod and set the purse down.
Rhodes rested both palms on the table and bent closer over the map. “Then we leave before dawn.”
Brynjolf looked at her hands, small and ringless against the parchment. “We?”
Her eyes cut toward him. “Did you think I would miss it?”
“No. I was deciding whether to make you argue for the privilege.”
“Then you would be disappointed. I have no intention of arguing.”
“A first.”
She gave him a look. “Do not push your luck.”
Vilkas glanced between them again.
This time, Delvin did laugh.
They left Riften while the sky was still a deep, uncertain blue, the city’s rooftops rimmed in frost and the canal water black beneath the bridges. The air had teeth. It bit at exposed skin, sharpened breath in the chest, and curled pale steam from the horses’ noses as the four riders passed through the gates.
Rhodes rode slightly ahead at first, her cloak pulled close at the throat, her hair braided back for travel. The sapphire necklace she usually kept hidden flashed once at her collar when the fabric shifted, then disappeared again. Vilkas took the road beside her with the ease of someone accustomed to long miles in silence. Brynjolf and Vex followed several paces behind.
For a while there was only hoofbeat, the creak of leather tack, and the faint clatter of a raven taking flight from a pine branch overhead.
Vilkas’s gaze dropped briefly to the ebony bow secured behind Rhodes’s saddle.
“You still favor the bow, then,” Vilkas said.
Rhodes followed his gaze to the ebony curve strapped behind her saddle. “I never stopped.”
“No,” he said. “Though you were determined to master the sword as well.”
“I might have done it sooner if my teacher had not been so merciless.”
Vilkas glanced at her. “You did not need gentle handling.”
“Oh?” Rhodes said, brows lifting.
“You were stubborn. Proud. Stronger than you looked.” His attention returned to the road, as though this were a perfectly ordinary defense. “I was hard on you because you could take what I gave you. More than most.”
Rhodes turned slowly in her saddle, mischief lighting her face.
“Careful, Vilkas,” she said, voice warm with amusement. “A woman might think you enjoyed finding out just how much she could take.”
Vilkas frowned at first.
Then the meaning reached him.
Color rose sharply across his cheekbones. “That is not what I meant.”
Rhodes’s head tipped back, laughter spilling from her, bright and helpless in the cold morning air.
“I know,” she said, still laughing. “That is precisely why I said it.”
A few paces behind them, Brynjolf’s grip tightened on the reins.
He knew perfectly well the Companion had not meant it that way. That did not improve matters. Rhodes was still laughing, open and delighted beside him, and Vilkas had gone visibly flushed at her teasing. For reasons Brynjolf chose not to examine too closely, the whole exchange annoyed him more than it had any right to.
Rhodes huffed a soft laugh and shook her head.
“I do still practice,” she said, quieter. “When I can.”
Vilkas nodded once, accepting the answer without pressing. “Good.”
That single word seemed to please her more than she would have admitted.
Brynjolf looked ahead at the road, jaw tightening before he could stop it.
He urged his horse forward a little. “You have been keeping up with your sword work, then, lass?”
Rhodes glanced over, perhaps surprised by the interruption. “Enough not to embarrass myself.”
“That would take effort.”
“Are you questioning my dedication?”
“Never. Only your definition of ‘enough.’”
Vilkas’s eyes moved briefly toward Brynjolf, then back to the road. “She learns quickly when she chooses to.”
Rhodes gave a soft, dismissive sound. “I learned quickly because you made disapproval feel like a competitive sport.”
“It produced results.”
“It produced headaches.”
Brynjolf let out a quiet breath through his nose. “And here I thought the Guild had perfected that technique.”
Rhodes looked at him, amused. “You inspire an entirely different sort of headache.”
“A flattering distinction.”
There was enough warmth in her glance to take the barb out of it. Brynjolf should have been satisfied. Instead, he remained keenly aware that Vilkas had known one version of her before he had ever found her at Madesi’s stall.
They rode another mile before Rhodes drew her horse closer to Brynjolf’s. “Are you going to be strange all day?”
He looked ahead. “I am rarely strange without cause.”
“That sounds very much like a yes.”
Vex rode past them without turning. “It is.”
Brynjolf gave her back a flat look. Vex ignored it.
Rhodes’s mouth twitched, but her eyes remained searching. “You were sharp with Vilkas at the table.”
“I was clear.”
“You can be both.”
“He came into our place asking for you as if you were a blade he had left behind and wanted returned.”
Her expression changed. The amusement left it. “That is not what he did.”
“No?”
“No.” She adjusted her grip on the reins, voice quieting. “He came because I told him he could. Because I wanted him to know he could.”
Brynjolf absorbed that without looking at her.
“He is family,” she added.
The words should have soothed him. They did, somewhat. But family, in Brynjolf’s experience, was not lesser than desire. It was often more binding. Harder to compete with. Impossible, if one had the sense not to try.
“Aye,” he said at last. “I gathered.”
“You do not like him.”
“I do not know him.”
“That has never stopped you forming an opinion.”
“True.” His mouth tilted faintly. “But I am trying to behave.”
She studied him sidelong. “This is you behaving?”
“Remarkably well, under the circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
He looked at her then. Her eyes were bright in the cold, curious and too perceptive by half. He could have said it. He could have let the truth cross his tongue while the road stretched empty before them and Vilkas rode just far enough ahead not to hear.
Instead, he smiled.
“Companions,” he said. “All that honor. It makes my skin itch.”
Rhodes stared at him another second, not convinced. Then she looked forward again. “Try not to break out in a rash before the job.”
“I will do my best.”
“You usually do.”
It was spoken lightly, but Brynjolf felt it settle. He wondered whether she knew how much trouble she caused when she offered faith as casually as other people offered coin.
By midday, the road had risen into scrubby slopes streaked with snow. They stopped near an old stone marker half-swallowed by moss, where a narrow stream cut through the frozen ground and ran clear over pebbles. Vex moved off to check their provisions with visible disinterest in company. Brynjolf crouched near the stream to refill a flask.
Rhodes sat on a fallen log and drew a small whetstone from her pouch. Before she could angle her dagger against it, Vilkas crossed from the horses and held out his hand.
She glanced up. “What?”
“Let me see it.”
“I know how to sharpen a blade.”
“I know.” He remained where he was, patient as stone. “You also rush when your mind is elsewhere.”
Rhodes looked down at the dagger, then back at him. “My mind is not elsewhere.”
Vilkas said nothing.
She sighed, but there was fond resignation in it rather than true annoyance, and handed him the weapon.
Brynjolf, flask half-submerged in the stream, went still.
Vilkas settled beside her on the log, the dagger resting across his broad palm. He drew the stone down the edge with slow, practiced strokes. Metal rasped softly against stone. Rhodes leaned her elbows on her knees and watched the water flash between the rocks.
“You still carry this one,” Vilkas said.
“It has served me well.”
“It was poor steel when I first saw it.”
“It has been improved since then.”
“By someone competent, I hope.”
“Several people more competent than you.”
That made him glance at her, unoffended. “Unlikely.”
She nudged his boot lightly with hers. He did not look up again, but the corner of his mouth shifted.
Brynjolf capped the flask harder than necessary.
The sound made Rhodes glance over.
He rose smoothly, as though nothing had occurred, and rejoined the horses. Vex, tightening a strap on her saddle, did not look at him.
“Do not,” he said.
“I have said nothing.”
“You were about to.”
“I was only wondering whether you needed your own whetstone.”
He stared.
Vex pulled the buckle tight. “For your temper.”
Brynjolf exhaled through his nose. “You have become intolerable.”
“I learned from the Guild’s finest.”
Across the clearing, Vilkas returned the dagger. Rhodes tested the edge carefully with her thumb and gave a small nod of approval.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You are welcome.”
Simple. Quiet. Entirely ordinary between them.
Brynjolf looked away before either of them could catch him looking.
Harlund Veyne’s manor glowed against the darkening countryside like a polished lie.
Every upper window shone gold. Lanterns lined the curved drive, their flames wavering in the evening wind. Carriages gathered near the entrance, lacquered black and deep wine red, while servants hurried between them with bowed heads and gloved hands. Music drifted from within—strings, delicate and expensive, bright enough to suggest refinement and repetitive enough to become tedious before the hour turned.
From the rise overlooking the grounds, Rhodes studied the estate through the veil of bare-limbed trees.
“Two at the front door,” she murmured. “One on the east path. Another above the stable arch. More inside, certainly.”
Vex crouched beside her, blending almost seamlessly into the shadows. “Kitchen entrance is active. I can use it once the first course begins.”
Vilkas stood several paces back, hood drawn over his hair, every inch of him still visibly not a servant, merchant, or drunken guest.
Brynjolf adjusted the cuffs of his borrowed coat. It was dark green velvet, fine enough to pass at a glance and irritating enough to make him long for leather. He had tied his hair back neatly at the nape. A small silver pin gleamed at his throat. He looked like a man who had money, secrets, and no fear of either.
Rhodes turned toward him, and for half a breath, forgot to speak.
He noticed. Of course he noticed.
“What?” he asked, voice low.
“Nothing.”
“That looked rather like something.”
She took a measured breath, recovering herself. “I was assessing whether your disguise would hold.”
“And?”
“You look almost respectable.”
“Almost?”
“There is still something criminal about the mouth.”
His gaze dipped, only briefly, to hers before rising again. “Careful, lass,” he said, voice low with amusement. “Say a thing like that and I’ll start wondering what crimes you’ve imagined it committing.”
For a moment, Rhodes only looked at him.
Then a glint sparked in her eyes—warm, wicked, entirely too pleased. “Would it trouble you terribly,” she asked, her voice softening, “if I had a few in mind?”
Brynjolf’s expression changed by a fraction. The teasing remained, but something beneath it caught fire.
“Trouble me?” he murmured. “No. Though it may make behaving myself tonight a more difficult enterprise than expected.”
Her smile deepened before she could stop it.
Then, over Brynjolf’s shoulder, she caught sight of Vilkas watching them from beneath the shadow of the trees, his expression unreadable in that particularly stern way of his.
The moment snapped back into place.
Rhodes cleared her throat and lifted her chin, smoothing the front of her sleeve with sudden, unnecessary precision. “Then I suggest you make a heroic effort. We are meant to be invited guests, not the scandal of the evening.”
“Aye,” Brynjolf said, offering her his arm, satisfaction still warm in his eyes. “Though you do make one sound considerably more enjoyable than the other.”
Behind them, Vilkas cleared his throat with pointed severity.
Rhodes looked away first.
Brynjolf smiled faintly and offered his arm. “Shall we?”
She placed her gloved hand over his sleeve. The contact was part of the disguise. Nothing more. He told himself that as they descended the hill toward the manor, though the warmth of her fingers bled through the layers of fabric as if she had set a small fire there.
At the drive, she transformed.
It was not sudden, precisely. It unfurled. Her shoulders settled. Her chin lifted. The quick, defiant brightness that made her Rhodes softened into something polished and dangerous in a quieter way. Lady Tessa Rhodes emerged from beneath the thief’s cloak—not false, Brynjolf realized, but carefully stored.
She smiled at the footman as though she had been raised among men trained to open doors before she reached them. Which, he supposed, she had.
“Lady Ellarine Voss,” she said, offering the false name as smoothly as wine poured into crystal. “And Master Edrin Hale. We were told Lord Veyne’s collection was not to be missed.”
The footman checked the guest list. A subtle nudge of illusion, too delicate for anyone untrained to notice, softened his eyes as he found names that were not there.
“Of course, my lady. Welcome.”
Inside, the manor smelled of beeswax, roasted pheasant, perfume, and old wood warmed by too many bodies. Guests clustered beneath high ceilings painted with pastoral scenes no one looked at. Servants carried trays of dark wine. The music swelled from a quartet near the staircase.
Brynjolf and Rhodes moved through it like they had done this a hundred times together.
She inclined her head to the right people and ignored the right people more artfully still. He smiled where needed, laughed when expected, murmured just enough to seem wealthy and mildly bored. They circled the central gallery, where relics had been arranged under glass or on velvet stands: an Akaviri helm, a chipped Dwemer sphere, a painted shield of doubtful provenance, a falmer dagger too ornate to have ever seen battle.
No Companion blade.
Rhodes accepted a wineglass from a passing servant and raised it near her mouth without drinking. “Not here.”
“Vault, then,” Brynjolf said under his breath. “Or private showing.”
“Veyne is near the west arch.”
Brynjolf followed her gaze. Harlund Veyne stood surrounded by admiring guests, a man in late middle age with silvered hair, rings on three fingers, and a smile like varnish. He was speaking to a woman in elaborate blue silk, but his eyes continually moved, checking the room. Proud of the attention. Anxious beneath it.
“Let us give him something else to watch,” Brynjolf murmured.
Rhodes’s eyes flicked to him. “What do you propose?”
He took her wineglass from her hand and set it on a passing tray. Then he drew her slightly nearer, his palm settling at her waist.
She inhaled.
It was quiet. Only he heard it.
“You look displeased,” he said, angling his body toward hers as though they were caught in some intimate dispute. “That should help.”
Her hand came to rest lightly against his chest, steadying herself or playing the part. “You might have warned me.”
“And spoiled your reaction?”
“You are very confident for a man who has not yet explained the plan.”
“Veyne is looking. If he believes I have offended you, he may come to smooth it over. Men like him dislike discomfort at their parties unless they are the source of it themselves.”
“And if he does not come?”
“Then I will continue offending you until someone intervenes.”
Her lips twitched, but there was color high on her cheeks that had not been there moments before. “You seem practiced.”
“Only in theory.”
The music turned softer, a slow measure that suited candlelit parlors and bad decisions. Veyne glanced their way once. Twice. His attention caught.
Brynjolf leaned in closer, his mouth near Rhodes’s temple. “He is watching.”
“I gathered that.”
“Try to look less pleased with yourself.”
“I am not pleased.”
“You are enjoying this.”
“Bryn,” she said, warning and amused at once, “if you make me laugh, I will ruin your entire plan.”
“Then resist.”
Her eyes lifted to his. For a moment, neither of them seemed interested in Lord Veyne at all.
Outside the western side window, beyond the reflection of chandeliers on glass, a dark figure stood among the hedges.
Vilkas.
Still as stone. Watching.
His face gave away almost nothing. Yet Brynjolf saw the way his attention fixed on Rhodes at his side, on Brynjolf’s hand at her waist, on the private shape of their bodies in the crowded room.
There was a small, ignoble satisfaction in it.
He despised that too.
Lord Veyne approached before he could examine himself further.
“My lady,” Veyne said, brows drawn in gracious concern. “Is everything to your comfort?”
Rhodes turned with such believable restraint that Brynjolf nearly admired her aloud. “Lord Veyne, I assume.”
“At your service.”
“Your collection is spoken of highly,” she said. “Though I confess I had hoped to see something more singular.”
Veyne’s eyes brightened. “Ah. A discerning eye.”
“I try to cultivate one.”
Brynjolf took his hand from her waist, though not before letting it linger half a second beyond necessity. “My companion has been difficult to impress since entering. I trust you have not invited us all this way for common pieces.”
Rhodes gave him a look of cold aristocratic reproof so fine he almost bowed.
Veyne, eager now, smiled. “There are items reserved for serious patrons. Not all guests understand provenance. Or discretion.”
“Discretion,” Rhodes repeated softly. “Now that is promising.”
“Perhaps after the next course, I might show you both a private acquisition.”
Brynjolf smiled. “We would be honored.”
The private acquisition never came.
Halfway through the next course, Veyne vanished from the dining salon with two guards and a thin man in black gloves who had not been among the earlier guests. Rhodes saw them leave through the mirrored side passage. Brynjolf saw her see them.
She dabbed her mouth with her napkin, eyes on her plate. “Buyer.”
“Aye.”
“They are moving now.”
Brynjolf set down his fork. “Vex will have reached the cellar.”
“Vilkas needs a signal.”
“I will handle the room. You slip away first.”
Her gaze snapped to him. “Alone?”
“For half a minute, lass. Try not to turn it into a tragedy.”
She did not like it. He could tell by the set of her jaw. But she nodded.
Brynjolf rose first, drawing attention with a soft apology about wine and air. He allowed a servant to direct him toward the terrace, then disappeared instead into the corridor behind the musicians. A moment later, the dining hall erupted into commotion as one of the decorative wall sconces crashed to the floor in a shower of sparks and flame. Guests shrieked. Servants rushed forward. Chairs scraped. Veyne’s steward began shouting.
Rhodes vanished in the confusion.
She moved quickly through the side hall, skirts gathered in one fist, the other drawing a narrow lockpick case from beneath a silk sash. The manor’s warmth fell away as she entered a narrower passage lined with portraits and poorly concealed doors. The air smelled dustier here, less perfumed. Real.
A servants’ door opened ahead. Vex slipped through like a shadow.
“Took you long enough,” Vex whispered.
“Veyne moved early.”
“I noticed. Cellar is clear. The private vault is below the west stair. Vilkas is in.”
A faint sound reached them from farther down the corridor—metal striking stone, then muffled footsteps.
They descended.
The service stairs ended beneath the house in a brick-lined hall where the wine-cellar air lay cool and damp against the skin. Crates had been pushed aside near the far wall, revealing a reinforced iron door now open by the width of a palm. Beyond it, a smaller corridor disappeared into darkness.
Vilkas waited at the entrance, sword still sheathed only because Vex had apparently threatened him.
His gaze moved over Rhodes at once, checking for harm. “You are late.”
“You are intact,” she whispered back. “Let us both be grateful.”
His eyes dipped briefly toward her gown, clearly unsuited for whatever came next. “You wore that by choice?”
“It got us inside.”
“It will catch on something.”
“Then I will tear it.”
There was a brief pause.
“That would be practical,” he said.
Vex rolled her eyes. “Can we save the clothing review until after we rob the man?”
Brynjolf appeared moments later at the stair behind them, coat unbuttoned now, expression sharpened by purpose. “Guests are occupied. Not for long.”
His eyes moved immediately to Rhodes, then to Vilkas standing close beside her, then to the open iron door.
“Forward,” he said.
The vault corridor narrowed sharply, stone walls rougher than the manor above. Someone had carved shallow grooves into the floor every few feet. Rhodes noticed them and stopped.
“Wait.”
Vilkas halted beside her. Brynjolf, a pace behind, went still.
She crouched, skirts pooling uselessly around her knees, and brushed her fingers above one groove without touching. “Pressure mechanism.”
Vex knelt across from her. “Blades?”
“Likely. Or darts from the wall.”
Brynjolf studied the dark slit between stones. “Can you disarm it?”
“Yes.” Rhodes reached for her tools. “Give me a—”
A sound behind them.
Boots. Many.
Brynjolf turned. “We have company.”
Vex swore under her breath. “I will slow them.”
“No,” Rhodes said. “We need—”
The floor clicked beneath her knee.
It was so quiet. Almost delicate.
Vilkas moved first.
His hand closed hard around her waist and wrenched her backward just as the wall split open with a metallic hiss. Curved blades snapped through the space where her throat and ribs had been.
The force of his pull sent them both stumbling. His heel struck the uneven stone behind him, and they went down together in a rough tangle of limbs and startled breath, Vilkas hitting the floor flat on his back with Rhodes falling over him.
The blades sliced empty air above them.
Then, with a dull mechanical shudder, they retracted into the wall.
For a moment no one spoke.
Brynjolf had also lunged toward her. Too late, he realized. Too slow by half a heartbeat. The knowledge landed sharp and useless in his chest as he stopped beside the trap, one hand still half-lifted toward where she had been.
Rhodes braced one palm against the stone beside Vilkas’s shoulder. Her other hand rested flat at the center of his chest, fingers spread over cold armor. A dark curl had come loose near her cheek, hanging between them. Their faces were close enough that, had either of them breathed differently, their mouths might have brushed.
Vilkas’s hand remained at her waist.
Not restraining. Not quite. Simply there, broad and firm where he had caught her, as if the instinct to let go had not yet arrived.
Rhodes inhaled sharply, once, twice, the shock of the near-miss still visible in the rise of her shoulders. Then her eyes focused on Vilkas beneath her, and something in her expression softened with breathless disbelief.
“Still overbearing,” she murmured.
The words were light. Familiar. An old path worn smooth between them.
Vilkas looked up at her, his face unreadable from where Brynjolf stood. But his voice, when he answered, came lower than before.
“Still alive.”
Rhodes’s mouth curved faintly.
And she did not move at once.
It could not have been more than a heartbeat. Perhaps two. The kind of pause no one else would think to measure.
Brynjolf measured it.
He measured the hand at her waist. The closeness of their faces. The private ease in the words exchanged while his own blood still thundered from seeing steel miss her by inches. He measured, too, the bitter little fact that Vilkas had reached her first.
Then Rhodes pushed herself upright, gathering her skirts beneath her as she rose. Vilkas sat up after her, his hand falling away only once she had fully moved beyond it.
Brynjolf’s face had gone still in a way Rhodes had learned not to trust.
“Perhaps,” he said softly, “we can save the reunion for after we have finished the job.”
Rhodes turned.
“What exactly is that supposed to mean?” Rhodes asked.
Brynjolf’s gaze stayed on the corridor, on the trap, anywhere but her face. “It means we are under a manor full of guards and losing time.”
“That was not what it meant.”
“Lass—”
“No.” She stepped toward him, skirts whispering over the stone. Her cheeks were still flushed from the fall, her breathing not yet fully steady, but her gaze had sharpened with anger. “Do not dress it up now. You said it clearly enough the first time.”
Beside her, Vilkas had gone still.
The dust of the fall clung faintly to one shoulder of his armor. His expression had cooled, the brief relief of seeing Rhodes unharmed sealed away behind the reserved severity he wore so well. He did not look at Brynjolf for long. He looked to Rhodes instead, as though unwilling to turn the moment into a contest in front of her.
Vex, standing several paces back near the stairs, glanced between the three of them and muttered something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like a prayer for patience.
Footsteps echoed somewhere above.
She looked toward the noise, then back at them. “I will take the hall,” Vex said flatly. “You three resolve whatever this is before it gets someone stabbed.”
She disappeared up the passage before Rhodes could object.
Vilkas’s gaze remained on Rhodes. “Disarm the trap,” he said, voice even. “I will watch the far end.”
It was a courtesy, Rhodes realized. An exit offered without retreating. He had heard the edge in Brynjolf’s remark. He understood enough to step away from it.
Her jaw tightened. “Vilkas—”
“I am fine,” he said.
She knew him well enough to know that did not mean the words had missed. It only meant he would not make them her burden in the middle of a job.
He moved down the corridor with his sword drawn, taking position several paces ahead, his back to them.
Rhodes knelt again, angrier now, which made her hands unnervingly precise. She worked the mechanism open, breath controlled, picks glinting in the dim light. Brynjolf crouched opposite her, silent.
When the final spring clicked loose, she lifted her eyes to him.
“Walk with me,” she said.
It was not a request.
They advanced down the corridor together while Vilkas moved several steps ahead, close enough to intervene if needed, far enough not to intrude.
The darkness pressed around them. Somewhere behind, Vex struck someone hard enough that a body hit stone. Brynjolf could hear his own pulse, steady but louder than he liked.
Rhodes spoke without looking at him. “You have been needling him since he entered the Flagon.”
“I have been assessing him.”
“You have been assessing whether I smile at him too easily.”
His jaw tightened.
She saw it from the corner of her eye and felt something in her irritation shift—not soften, exactly, but sharpen into understanding.
“Are you jealous of Vilkas?” she asked.
Brynjolf did not answer at once.
The pause was brief, but Rhodes caught it. He looked ahead toward the end of the corridor, jaw set, as though the stone door waiting there required his full attention.
“That is not the word I would choose,” he said at last.
“No?” Her voice stayed quiet. “What word would you choose?”
“Cautious.”
Rhodes gave a short, disbelieving breath. “You were not cautious on the road. You were irritable. You bristled every time he spoke to me. You looked half-offended when he sharpened my dagger, as though he had taken some liberty.”
Brynjolf’s mouth tightened.
“He knows you well,” he said.
There it was. Not all of it, but nearer the truth than anything he had offered yet.
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “He does.”
“And you seem very comfortable being known by him.”
Her steps slowed.
The words were not cruel. If anything, they were too controlled, too carefully measured. That made the hurt beneath them easier to hear.
“He is my shield-brother,” she said.
“I am aware.”
“Are you?” Rhodes turned to him fully now, forcing him to stop with her. “Because you have spent the better part of this job behaving as though his affection for me is some insult to you.”
Brynjolf’s gaze flicked to hers, sharp at that.
Then she added, more quietly, “He saved my life just now. And you made it ugly.”
That landed. Brynjolf looked away.
The corridor opened into a small stone antechamber. A locked door stood ahead, polished iron with a keyhole that would take skill and time. Vilkas stationed himself near the passage they had come through, gaze outward, giving them privacy without acknowledging that he did so.
Rhodes knelt at the door. Brynjolf remained beside her.
“He is my shield-brother,” she said again, softer now, though not gentler. “He was there when I first came to Whiterun and had no idea what I was doing, no matter how confidently I lied about it. He tested me. He doubted me. Then he respected me enough to stop handling me carefully.” Her pick slid inside the lock. “He kept my secrets before anyone in this city knew I had secrets worth keeping. I will not have you turn that bond into something cheap because you are in a mood.”
Brynjolf stared at the faint shine of her hair in the low torchlight, at the concentration between her brows. Every defensive reply he reached for sounded thinner than the last.
“I know what he is to you,” he said at last.
“Do you?”
“Aye.” His voice dropped. “That may be the trouble.”
Her hand stilled.
The lock did not matter for one suspended second.
Rhodes looked up at him.
He did not smile. Did not disguise it this time. There was frustration in his face, and something more exposed beneath it. Not accusation. Not anger at her. Unease, reluctantly offered.
“He knows you in ways I do not,” Brynjolf said. “You trust him without stopping to think about it. You let him correct you. Care for you. Pull you out of danger and tease you for being alive in the same breath. And you laugh because it is not new between you.” A brief pause. “I found I did not care for discovering how much of your life existed before Riften.”
The confession sat between them, stripped of its earlier pettiness. Rhodes’s expression changed.
“Bryn…”
A shout echoed from the corridor. Vex. “Any time now!”
Rhodes blinked once, dragged back into motion, and returned to the lock. “We are not finished with this.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I expect not.”
The lock turned.
The vault was smaller than Harlund Veyne’s pride suggested it ought to be, but richer than his taste deserved.
Shelves lined the walls, stacked with lacquered boxes, jeweled ornaments, old scroll cases, silver goblets, and weapons mounted decoratively rather than respectfully. A central table held several wrapped objects prepared for transport. One had already been opened.
Vilkas crossed the room in three strides.
There, laid on black velvet, was the blade.
It was simpler than Brynjolf expected. No jeweled hilt. No ostentatious gold. Just pale old steel, a grip darkened by time, and a wolf motif worn near-smooth along the fuller. Yet the instant Vilkas saw it, his entire body altered. The tension changed shape. Became purpose fulfilled.
He reached for it with bare hands, reverent and controlled.
“Careful,” Rhodes said softly.
Vilkas gave her a look that suggested he had never been careless with anything in his life. He wrapped the blade in its cloth and secured it across his back beneath his cloak.
Voices rose in the corridor.
“Found us,” Brynjolf said.
The thin man in black gloves appeared first at the vault entrance, followed by two guards. Behind them came Veyne himself, flushed and furious, flanked by another three men with drawn steel.
“My guests,” Veyne said, breathing hard, “will be most distressed to learn they were dining among gutter thieves.”
Brynjolf smiled. “From what I saw of them, they will survive the disappointment.”
Veyne’s eyes shifted to Vilkas and widened with comprehension. “Ah. The hounds of Jorrvaskr finally learned to sneak.”
Vilkas drew his sword.
Rhodes stepped forward, skirts torn now at one side from the corridor floor, a dagger in one hand and the other already glowing faintly with restrained illusion. “You stole from them.”
“I purchased from an intermediary.”
“Then your taste in intermediaries is as poor as your judgment.”
Veyne’s mouth twisted. “Kill them.”
The room erupted.
The first guard lunged for Rhodes. She pivoted, silk twisting around her legs, and drove her dagger upward beneath his arm where the armor opened. He grunted and folded. Brynjolf caught the next man’s wrist, turned the blade aside, and buried his own knife low in the thigh before striking the man’s temple with the hilt.
Vilkas met two guards at once with brutal economy. He did not fight prettily. He fought as if the shortest line between insult and silence was through bone. Steel rang against steel. One guard stumbled backward into a shelf, sending a rain of goblets clattering across stone.
The black-gloved man raised one hand. Magic sparked blue-white in his palm.
“Down!” Rhodes shouted.
Brynjolf dropped instantly. The shock of frost magic cracked across the vault where his head had been, exploding against the back wall. Before the caster could shape another spell, Rhodes flung a shard of illusion into his senses. His focus broke. He blinked hard, staggered—and Vilkas threw a dagger that struck him square in the shoulder, pinning his sleeve to the doorframe.
“Useful,” Brynjolf said from the floor, rising.
Vilkas gave him the barest glance. “You were still crouching.”
Brynjolf almost smiled despite himself. “A fair assessment.”
Veyne tried to flee in the confusion.
Vex appeared behind him as though she had been conjured by annoyance, caught his collar, and slammed his face into the doorframe.
“No one leaves before I do,” she snapped.
Rhodes turned as one of the remaining guards broke from Vilkas and came at her from the side. Brynjolf moved. Vilkas moved.
Rhodes moved faster.
She ducked under the swing, seized the man’s wrist, used his momentum to wrench him forward, and slammed his forearm against the edge of the table until the sword clattered free. Her boot found his knee. He dropped with a strangled cry.
When she straightened, both Brynjolf and Vilkas stood half a pace from intervening.
She looked from one to the other.
“I had him.”
Vilkas sheathed his sword. “You did.”
Brynjolf adjusted his sleeve. “I saw. Eventually.”
Her eyes narrowed, but there was laughter threatening beneath it. “Eventually?”
“You were very quick.”
“That is a safer answer.”
Vex stepped over Veyne’s groaning body. “Are all three of you finished?”
Rhodes bent to retrieve the fallen sword and placed it out of reach. “Quite.”
They left Veyne tied to his own vault shelving, furious and gagged, with enough evidence of his other stolen acquisitions arranged conveniently in view that his next few weeks would become unpleasant no matter which faction reached him first.
The night had deepened by the time they returned to the tree line. The manor glowed behind them, still full of guests who had not yet understood that the host’s private collection had become a public liability.
Vilkas stood beneath the pines, one hand resting briefly over the wrapped blade across his back.
“Jorrvaskr owes you,” he said.
“Jorrvaskr paid us,” Brynjolf replied.
Vilkas looked at him. “That is not the same thing.”
“No,” Brynjolf admitted. “It is not.”
Rhodes drew her cloak close against the cold. Without the manor’s heat, her evening gown did little against the wind. Brynjolf noticed her shiver and had already begun unfastening his outer coat when Vilkas removed his own fur-lined cloak.
Rhodes saw both motions.
“Absolutely not,” she said.
Vilkas paused.
Brynjolf paused.
“I am not walking back to Riften wrapped in donated layers while the two of you stand there looking satisfied with yourselves,” she said. “I have a cloak.”
“It is thin,” Vilkas said.
“It is adequate.”
“It is decorative,” Brynjolf added.
She looked at him.
He held up one hand. “An observation. Nothing more.”
“You both survived the job. Do not make me reconsider my relief.”
Vilkas, to Brynjolf’s surprise, seemed almost amused. He re-fastened his cloak.
They walked to where the horses had been tethered farther down the slope. Before mounting, Vilkas turned to Rhodes.
“You should come to Jorrvaskr soon,” he said. “Aela asks after you. Farkas claims he does not, which means he does. Kodlak would be glad to see you.”
Rhodes’s face softened. “I know.”
“You still have a place by our fire, Tessa.”
The night wind moved between them, carrying pine and distant smoke.
Brynjolf looked down at the saddle strap he was adjusting and told himself he had no reason to listen so carefully.
Rhodes stepped forward and embraced Vilkas again. This time there was less surprise in it, more intention. Her cheek pressed briefly against the cold edge of his armor.
“Thank you for coming to me,” she said.
“I knew where to find you.”
She drew back, one hand squeezing his forearm before letting go. “Ride safely.”
“You also.” His gaze moved to Brynjolf. “Guard her well.”
Brynjolf’s eyes lifted.
Rhodes opened her mouth, probably to object to the phrasing, but Brynjolf answered first.
“She guards herself,” he said. Then, after a beat, “But I take your meaning.”
Vilkas nodded once. It was not warm. It was not unfriendly, either. It was something like respect, offered without ceremony.
He mounted and turned his horse west toward Whiterun.
Rhodes watched until the trees swallowed him.
Then she returned to Brynjolf’s side.
Not Vex’s. Not the road ahead. His.
A small thing. Barely a choice, perhaps.
He felt it anyway.
The Cistern was quieter when they returned, dawn not far off and most of the Guild asleep or pretending to be. The central water reflected the lanterns in trembling gold lines. Somewhere above, Riften was beginning to stir—faint cart wheels, the first groan of a market stall being opened, a gull crying over the canal.
Vex disappeared toward the beds with a muttered warning that no one should wake her before noon unless the Guild was on fire. Delvin, who had somehow managed to be awake, took one look at Brynjolf and Rhodes entering together and decided, with rare wisdom, to collect only the payment purse before vanishing back toward the Flagon.
Rhodes found Brynjolf seated near the water a short while later.
He had changed back into Guild leather. The fine green coat lay folded beside him as though he had already judged and dismissed that version of himself. The Sapphire Dagger rested in his hand, its blue stone catching low light with each slow turn of the blade. It did not need sharpening. He was doing it anyway.
Rhodes approached quietly, but he heard her. He always did.
“Couldn’t sleep?” she asked.
“Was not trying.”
She sat beside him on the stone ledge, close enough that their shoulders nearly touched. For a moment neither spoke. The Cistern water lapped faintly against old stone.
Then Rhodes said, “You were jealous.”
Brynjolf kept his eyes on the dagger. “I behaved poorly.”
“That is not a denial.”
“No.” He dragged the cloth once more along the blade’s edge, though there was nothing left to clean. “It is not.”
She waited.
He glanced at her at last. “You seem very pleased to have extracted the confession.”
“I am pleased you made it voluntarily. It saves me the trouble of arguing you into honesty.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
“It often is.”
There was a trace of amusement between them, but it quieted quickly. Rhodes watched him for a moment. His posture was composed, but not loose. One thumb rested at the base of the dagger’s hilt, still, as if he had forgotten it there. The jealousy that had irritated her beneath the manor no longer looked petty in the Cistern’s dim light. It looked like something he had hated feeling and hated revealing more.
Her voice softened. “Vilkas matters to me.”
“I know.”
“I do not think you did. Not really.” She folded her hands in her lap. “You heard the words. You understood the category. But you spent most of the day resenting that it was true.”
Brynjolf gave a small, rueful breath. “That is uncomfortably fair.”
“He was one of the first people here who looked at me and saw what I could do before he decided what I ought to be. He challenged me. He trusted me with difficult things. And when I needed a place to stand, Jorrvaskr offered one.” She looked at him steadily. “I will not make that smaller to make you feel safer.”
“I would not ask you to.”
“You nearly did.”
He accepted that with a small nod. “Aye. I nearly did.”
The honesty of it disarmed her more than an excuse would have.
He turned the dagger over in his hand, watching the sapphire flash. “When he came into the Flagon and you crossed the room like that, I thought—” He stopped.
Rhodes waited.
Brynjolf rarely lacked words. That he searched now made her chest tighten.
“I thought perhaps I had mistaken the shape of things,” he said finally. “Between us.”
Her breath caught softly.
He did not look at her. “You and I have our games. Our work. Our habits that everyone else seems determined to remark upon. I have grown accustomed to certain privileges. Your attention. Your trust. The way you come to me first when a job turns strange.” His mouth pulled faintly at one corner, but there was no real amusement in it. “Then Vilkas arrived and spoke your name as if he had known the true one longer than I had known the false. You laughed with him in a language I did not understand. You let him care for you without turning it into a contest. And I found I liked the thought of being singular to you more than I had admitted.”
Rhodes looked down at her hands. The words settled one by one, each more dangerous than the last.
“You are singular to me,” she said.
His gaze lifted.
She met it, steady despite the quickening in her pulse. “Not because no one came before you. Not because no one else matters. That would be a very small kind of importance.” Her voice thinned slightly, then steadied. “You are singular because you are you.”
Brynjolf did not move. The air between them shifted, drew taut.
Rhodes swallowed. “Vilkas is home in one way. Jorrvaskr is home in one way. But I came back to Riften.”
“Aye,” he said quietly.
“No.” She turned toward him more fully. “I do not think you understand what I mean.”
His fingers stilled on the dagger.
“I could have returned to Whiterun after the first week,” she said. “I could have gone back after the first job went wrong, or after Vex told me I would get myself killed, or after you accused me of improvising on that ledger job when I had, in fact, made an excellent judgment under pressure.”
“That remains disputed.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Do not ruin this.”
His mouth softened. “Would not dare.”
She exhaled, but the faint smile passed quickly. “I stayed because the Guild became mine. Because I wanted this life. And because…” She looked at him, suddenly less practiced than she had been with nobles, guards, lies, even danger. “Because you were here.”
For once, Brynjolf had no clever answer ready.
The water moved in the silence. Somewhere beyond the Cistern, a pipe knocked faintly in the old stone.
“Lass,” he said, and the word came out lower than usual, stripped nearly bare of playfulness. “You ought to be careful saying things like that to a man with very little discipline left.”
Heat rose beneath her skin. “I thought you prided yourself on discipline.”
“I do. That is why its decline concerns me.”
She should have laughed. Ordinarily, she would have. A quip would have restored distance. Put the moment safely back in its box.
Instead she stayed where she was.
His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to hers as though the detour had cost him something. Rhodes felt it like a touch.
“You frightened me tonight,” he said.
The change in direction made her blink. “The trap?”
“The trap. Veyne’s guards. Your habit of standing exactly where danger means to fall.” His voice remained quiet, but the emotion underneath it was no longer hidden. “When Vilkas pulled you back, I was relieved before I was jealous. I hope you know that.”
“I do now.”
“I was a fool after.”
“Yes.”
He accepted that too. “I did not like being too late to reach you.”
Rhodes’s expression softened. “Bryn.”
“I know you do not need saving. I know it. I have watched you make men twice your size regret underestimating you. That has never stopped the wanting.” He looked toward the water, jaw tightening once. “Wanting to be the one close enough. Wanting you safe. Wanting…” He let out a quiet breath. “Too much, perhaps.”
Her hand moved before she fully decided to lift it. She rested her fingers against his forearm.
He went still.
The contact was gentle, nothing compared to an embrace, a rescue, a hand at her waist in a crowded manor. Yet the Cistern seemed to narrow around it. The lanternlight shivered on the water beside them. Somewhere in the old stone, a pipe clicked and settled. Every ordinary sound seemed suddenly very far away.
“You were close enough,” she said. “You are close enough.”
His gaze dropped to her hand, then rose slowly to her face.
Neither of them spoke.
There had been moments before—too many of them, if she was honest. Glances that held too long. Touches made in jest and remembered afterward with far less humor. Conversations that went quiet at the wrong moment, or perhaps the right one, until one of them reached for a joke and pulled them both back from the edge.
This time, neither of them did.
Brynjolf lifted his hand slowly, as if giving her every chance to turn away. His knuckles brushed the side of her face, light against her cheek, before his fingers settled just beneath her jaw. The touch was careful. Almost disbelieving.
Rhodes leaned into it before pride could stop her.
Something in his expression broke open.
He kissed her.
Not with the careless confidence he wore in crowded rooms, not with the teasing ease he used to make her blush and then pretend he had not noticed. His mouth met hers with a tenderness that caught her off guard, slow for only a heartbeat before all the restraint between them gave way beneath it.
Rhodes inhaled sharply against him and kissed him back.
Her hand tightened around his forearm, then slid higher, fingers curling into the leather at his shoulder as if she needed something solid to hold. Brynjolf’s thumb moved along the edge of her jaw. His other hand came to her waist, drawing her nearer on the stone ledge until there was no careful space left between them.
He tasted faintly of mead and the cold night air still clinging to his skin. He kissed like a man who had thought about it too often and allowed himself none of it. Like the first touch had only confirmed a hunger he had been trying, unsuccessfully, to starve.
Rhodes felt a soft sound catch in her throat.
Brynjolf answered it by deepening the kiss, just enough to make her forget the Cistern, the job, the long ride back from Veyne’s estate. There was only the warmth of his hand at her waist, the rough edge of his glove against her side, the astonishing reality of his mouth on hers after so long circling the possibility.
When they finally parted, it was not by much.
His forehead hovered close to hers. Their breaths mingled in the narrow space between them. Rhodes opened her eyes and found him watching her as if he had never seen her clearly until now.
For once, Brynjolf looked almost shaken.
“Lass,” he murmured, voice rougher than before.
She did not know what he meant to say after that. She was not sure he did either.
Footsteps sounded from the tunnel.
“Well, well.”
Rhodes startled so hard she nearly knocked her shoulder against his. Brynjolf turned his head with a slow, dangerous stillness.
Delvin stood at the edge of the Cistern passage, one hand braced against the stone archway, his grin broad enough to be criminal even by Guild standards.
“Vex is going to owe me a hundred septims,” he said, entirely too pleased with himself.
Rhodes stared at him, cheeks going hot. “Delvin—”
“No need to explain, girl. I have eyes.” He looked at Brynjolf, whose expression promised violence. “Took you long enough, lad. Some of us were beginning to think we’d die of old age before either of you got brave.”
“Delvin,” Brynjolf said.
“Aye?”
“Choose your next words with great care.”
Delvin’s grin widened. “My next words are these: when you lot are done making up for lost time, we’re waiting in the Flagon. New job came in while you were out, and apparently the Guild still requires its second-in-command, lovestruck or not."
Brynjolf closed his eyes briefly, as though calling upon every scrap of self-control he possessed.
Rhodes, mortified and helplessly amused all at once, pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. It did not work particularly well.
Delvin pointed at her. “There. At least one of you has a sense of humor.”
“Go,” Brynjolf said.
“I’m going.” Delvin pushed away from the arch, still chuckling. “But do try not to take another three years before the next milestone. The wagering gets dull when there’s no movement.”
His footsteps retreated through the tunnel, laughter trailing after him.
Silence settled again.
Not the same silence as before.
Rhodes stared at the water, one hand still curled absently against Brynjolf’s shoulder where she had grabbed him. Her pulse had not recovered. Her mouth tingled. She was abruptly, acutely aware that everyone in the Flagon would know within moments. Vex would know. Delvin would make sure of it. The Guild would be insufferable.
Beside her, Brynjolf let out a long breath.
“Well,” he said quietly, “that will travel fast.”
Rhodes turned back to him.
His expression had regained some of its composure, but not all of it. His hand had fallen from her waist, though he had not moved away. There was color faintly high across his cheekbones. She treasured that immediately.
“Let it,” she said.
His eyes held hers.
The corner of his mouth lifted, slow and warm. “Aye?”
She should have gathered herself. Should have stepped back, smoothed her tunic, made some clever remark to prove she was entirely unaffected by the fact that Brynjolf had just kissed her senseless beside the Cistern before breakfast.
Instead, she stayed close.
“Aye,” she said.
Something softened in him at that. Not triumph. Not even surprise. Relief, perhaps. The kind he would never name unless pressed very hard.
He glanced down once at the Sapphire Dagger resting beside him, then back at her. “For what it is worth, I meant what I said before.”
“Which part?”
“That I am glad you have a place by their fire.” His voice was quiet now, the earlier heat gentled but not gone. “Vilkas. Jorrvaskr. All of it. Everyone ought to have somewhere they are wanted.”
Rhodes smiled, small and real. “Are you?”
“Aye.” His thumb brushed, almost absentmindedly, against the side of her hand where it still rested near him. “I am simply partial to the idea that you might choose this one more often.”
She looked around the Cistern—the water reflecting low lanternlight, the sleeping stone, the distant murmur of the Flagon waking beyond the tunnel, where Delvin was almost certainly announcing his victory to anyone with ears. Then she looked back at Brynjolf.
“I already do,” she said.
And this time, when pleasure warmed his face, he did not try to hide it.