⌜ chapter eight ⌟

"I almost forgot." Jesper turns to Arya as the five of them stop at a bar top.

"You forget most things." The brunette mutters before asking for something to drink — she'll settle for anything that isn't expensive.

"Keep it up, and I won't give it to you." He threatens, and she only nods, not at all interested at the moment. "You asked for a souvenir."

"You mean, when you were supposed to be getting coal, but instead you gambled away all of the money?" She quirks an eyebrow as she looks up at him, pulling the cloak she's now wearing tighter around her shoulders in an attempt to keep her ruined corset hidden. "And when exactly did you have time to get me anything?"

"I got it first, of course."

"Of course." She chuckles, and Jesper notices when the sound causes Kaz to look down at her.

From his inside jacket pocket, Jesper pulls out a red apple. The amusement leaves Arya's face as she looks at the fruit, and he smiles.

"Not what you were expecting?" He asks.

"Are you trying to make me cry over an apple?" She asks, and he chuckles.

"Actually, I was trying to make you smile." He tells her. "I know you said that the walk to the apple tree was your favorite part, but you wanted to get Milo, so..."

"Thank you, Jesper." She smiles as she takes the apple from him.

"Only the finest apple for the most beautiful girl in town." He hooks his arm around her waist as he leans down and presses his lips to her cheek.

The angle that the two are at makes it difficult for Kaz to see exactly what took place, especially considering he refuses to look directly at them. He doesn't want the others to see the way he watches Arya. In truth, he doesn't want to watch her the way that he continuously finds himself doing so.

The brunette chuckles as she nudges Jesper, lightly pushing on his chest to get him to back up a step. She doesn't know what's gotten into him recently, but she finds him amusing. And, more than anything, she's happy that she seems to have made a friend, even if leaving him behind will be hell later on. But she doesn't want to focus on that part just yet.

"I'm going to see about our job." Kaz tells them before walking away from the group, getting back to work.

He's gone for quite some time.

"Stop putting this on me." Arya throws the goat's leash at Jesper, and he chuckles as he looks at her.

"Come on, it's a little funny."

"Yeah. As funny as when you were screaming that we were gonna die in the train car." The brunette retorts, and he glares at her.

"The Little Palace winter fete." Arken places the flyer back on the bar top in front of them, ignoring Jesper and Arya. "There's just no way he can find a way to the Sun Summoner without Nina. Especially during this ridiculous party. The place will be crawling with Second Army."

"Such pessimism still." Arya shakes her head as she eats another chip.

"We're in luck." Kaz says as he walks up on the brunette's other side. "There's a good chance we can crack on. Now that we're three days travel from the capital, the next play is finding a way inside the Little Palace."

"Can you get blueprints like I asked?" She asks, and he nods as he looks down at her.

"It turns out the Kribirsk archives house the Little Palace blueprints. But...they're kept under lock and key. Far from the prying eyes of the masses." He smirks.

"Yes." Jesper cheers.

"What does that mean?" Arken questions as he looks at him.

"When one door closes, open a window." Arya says with a smile, her green eyes meeting Kaz's blue ones once again.

"I love this woman." Jesper says as he wraps his arm around her waist. "Can we keep her, boss, please?" He asks as he tosses him the other end of the goat's leash.

"What are you-" Kaz looks between them as Arya snatches it back before quickly wrapping the leash around Jesper's throat like a scarf.

"I am not his pet, Jesper. Now stop it with the leash before I use it to hang you." The brunette tightens it around his throat, and he coughs as he quickly reaches up and yanks on it.

Inej chuckles as she and the others watch them. Arken's eyebrows furrow as he looks away from the pair, and Kaz shakes his head at their constant bickering.

"Still want to keep me?" Arya smiles as Jesper glares at her.

A few minutes later, he's saying goodbye to the goat, and Arya watches with a furrowed brow as he places a black cord around its neck. "I leave you a bullet, to remember me. Let's promise never to forget each other, Milo. But I must go now. I leave you in the care of this lovely barmaid, who needs your support here."

"I want to find it endearing, but I also still want to kick his ass." Arya sighs as he walks away, and Inej smirks as she glances from the now retreating Jesper back to Arya.

"I have a job for you." Kaz says as he walks up beside Arken. "We need to hitch a ride east to the Little Palace."

"Hm." He nods, and the younger boy pulls out some money.

"Make friends."

"But that's the hardest job." Arken says as Kaz and Arya start walking away from him.

"You managed to win us over, didn't you?"

"Barely." Arya mutters as she keeps pace with him, then she looks down at what she's still wearing. "And I thought this damn thing was annoying when I was wearing it properly."

"You said you needed to breathe." Kaz glances at her.

"Oh, believe me, I'm glad it's ruined." She tells him. "But now it's hanging weird, and people keep looking at me." She then pulls the brown cloak shut.

"We're going to get clothes now."

"We are?"

"You can't pull off a heist properly if you don't look the part." He says, and she takes a deep breath, nodding as she follows after.

"And what part am I playing?" Arya asks as she looks up at him.

"We'll have to see after we get the blueprints." He tells her. "Until then, you just need to blend in wherever we are."

"As long as someone gets me some clothes, that shouldn't be too hard." She says. "I'm generally pretty good at picking up new things."

"And you have experience learning new worlds?"

"Uh... Sort of." She says, and he looks down at her. "It's a...long story."

» » » « « «

The five of them are now in one of the two rooms that they've gotten to sleep in while they're planning their heist. They just got back from eating, where they met up after working on their separate tasks. Now, most of the group is enjoying each other's company, while Kaz fleshes out the final details of the plan to get the blueprints.

"You never answered my question before." Jesper says as he looks at Arya, and she turns her head to look at him.

"And what question was that?"

"Do you have any special friends waiting for you back home?" He asks, and Inej groans as she looks at him.

"Leave her alone, Jesper." She tells him.

"Define special." Arya raises her eyebrows.

"I'm curious, is all." He says, and she waits for him to continue. "You said women aren't your type, right?"

Her eyebrows furrow as she tries to figure out where he's going with this. "Right."

"So, have there been any men at all...or was our fearless leader the first man to ever tear your clothes off?"

"Jesper." Kaz hisses as he looks over at him.

"Ignore him." Inej shakes her head as she looks at Arya.

"Tell me something, Jesper." Arya says as she turns toward him.

"Only if you tell me why your cheeks are red."

"Because you're imagining things." She dismisses, and he smirks. "Why is that so many of your thoughts seem so...perverse?"

"Because he has three mindsets: heist, money, sex." Inej tells her.

"You forgot goat." Arya looks over at her, and Jesper mocks the girls' laughter.

"You're still avoiding the question." He narrows his eyes at her.

"About special friends, or about Kaz?"

"They're one in the same."

"Oh, so I can just say yes, and we'll be done with it?"

"Yes, you have a special friend, or Kaz was the first to ever tear your clothes off."

"You didn't specify which one you wanted answered." Arya smiles when his expression turns annoyed, and Inej chuckles. Her smile falls as she looks down at her hands. "No, Jesper, I don't have any friends waiting for me at home. I have my brothers."

His expression softens as he looks at her. "How can there be no one who befriended you?" He asks. "You're fun, you're beautiful."

"I'm the town pariah." She tells him. "The bastard child that resulted from my mother's infidelity. No mother wanted her daughter associating with someone so tarnished. No father wanted his son marrying a woman who comes from adultery...because apparently my society believes that it's a disease that can be passed from mother to daughter. People at her funeral said she deserved to get sick, that it was God's punishment for her sins...but nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. She had paid for making a fool of her husband, we all did."

"It's lucky you found us then." Jesper offers her a small smile, which she returns. "Are you sure you want to go back?"

"I have to." She nods. "I have to save my brothers...if they aren't dead already."

"Save them from who?"

"The woman who had me sent here." She takes a deep breath. "She destroyed our family, and when I found a way to destroy her...she had a witch open a door — a rift between our worlds. I tried to fight, but she was so much stronger, faster. She shoved me through, and somehow I ended up in Kaz's office. I tried to get back through the rift, but it closed before I could make it."

"How did she open the rift?" He asks, and she shakes her head.

"I don't know. Witches where I'm from get their magic through their bloodline, and I don't have magic in my blood." Arya looks down. "Our witches seem so different from your Grisha... I don't know if the rift can even be opened from this side. I doubt there was ever a plan for me getting back at all... Truthfully, I haven't stopped wondering why she didn't just kill me. It would've been easier than sending me through a door to a different world."

"Maybe it was divine intervention." Arken speaks up for the first time in awhile, and she scoffs as she shakes her head. "Is it really so hard to believe there's a higher power at play?"

"I believe there's a higher power." Arya says as she looks at him. "I just gave up on the thought a long time ago that any divine being still cares what happens to us."

"Because of what happened to your mother?"

"Because I prayed until I was sixteen for the beatings to end, for my mother to take me and my brothers away from the pain and suffering, to longer have to live in fear of my father... Instead, I lost my mother to illness, my brother enlisted to fight in a war that he despised, and I was nearly killed time and time again before getting shoved through a glowing door into a world where I can't so much as read a thing that is written here." She tells him. "You can believe in your Saints, but I'm not putting even a modicum of faith in something that I can't see that I can trust."

"You have no faith then?" The older man asks. "No hope?"

"I have faith." She nods. "Faith that I can do what I need to get done. I believe in what's in front of me, what's real... Kaz, do we have a plan to get the blueprints yet?"

"Alright. Royal archives heist." Their leader says as he walks over to where they're sitting. "Here's the game plan. Watchmen are on guard around the clock. We want to get and get out as quietly as possible. That means the hardware stays in the holster, Jesper."

The boy in question groans. "Fine." He reluctantly agrees, and Arya chuckles.

"Inej, the dome on the roof is directly above the repository where the blueprints to the Little Palace are kept." Kaz tells her.

"Got it." She nods. "That's my way in."

"I'll set a trail of phosphorus that will lead you straight to the target." He continues. "The repository is secured at all times behind a two-part lock mechanism. So, Inej, you have to leave the way you came in. Two hours after sunset is when you'll go in, Jesper. You'll need to blend in."

"Easy." He smirks as he looks at Arya, and she shakes her head at him.

"The lighting valves are on the second floor."

"I'll take my cue once I see the lights go out." Inej says. "And then follow your trail straight to the blueprints."

"The archivist has to pull them a number of times a day, so we can't steal them so they'll know something is up." Kaz tells her.

"So? Make a copy."

"Be careful. If you're heavy-handed, you'll bleed the ink."

"I know what I'm doing."

"Are you alright?" Jesper asks as he looks at Arya, and her eyebrows furrow in question when her gaze meets his. "You seem a bit lost in thought. Not second guessing yourself, are you? The blueprints were your idea."

"No." She shakes her head. "Actually, I was sort of wondering what my father would have to say if he knew what I were doing. Partaking in a heist to break into a palace to kidnap a woman who may or may not be some mythical...prophecy."

"Daddy's little disappoint." He teases, and she chuckles. "I'm so proud."

"Well, someone ought to be. It's not an easy job." She smiles. "It is kinda fun being the family disgrace though. Nothing to live up to because nobody had any expectations to begin with."

"Not even your mother?" Inej asks. "Or your brothers?"

"My mother only wanted me to marry a man better than the one she did. Shouldn't be too hard, she set the bar pretty low." Arya says. "And my brothers... They only wanted me to be happy. And I'm not currently unhappy, so..." She shrugs.

"Life fulfilled." Jesper declares. "You really should stick with us." He tells her, and she offers him a sad smile.

"Or you could come home with me."

"Oh, really?" He smirks, and she rolls her green eyes.

"Yeah, alright, I walked into that one." The brunette mutters as she gets to her feet. "And now I'm walking away." She says, and he chuckles.