Alpha Prince's Little Dagger

ASTRID The colorful marketplace outside of Mooncrest Castle has been busier than usual today, with guests streaming in from all corners of Phaegia to attend Prince Cassius’s wedding. Typically, this would be a boon to my sticky-fingered business, but with the crowds come even more guards. They’ve been vigilant as ravens all morning. Everywhere I look, stalls are draped in bolts of bright fabric, laid out with fragrant spices, or hawking the lowest prices on horseshoes, fresh eggs, and mulled wine. The castle looms beyond them like a dark mountain, but even its shadow can't eclipse the chaotic excitement of the packed bazaar. “A pretty bracelet for your pretty wrist!” an older woman calls through the scramble of voices, her wares winking in the early morning sunlight. If I could afford it, I want to tell her, pulling the hood of my cloak up and over my halo of dark curls, I wouldn’t be here in the first place. I’m exhausted, but I can’t justify calling it a day just yet. I’ve barely nicked enough coin to cover the week’s milk. Sighing, I scan the fat crowd, my eyes skipping from a blacksmith bearing down on an anvil to a juggler walking on stilts to— There. Two women so lost in conversation they've tuned the rest of the world out. Casually, I make my way toward them, pretending to inspect the gleaming trinkets displayed along the way: golden goblets, ruby earrings, perfectly balanced daggers. For a second, I let myself imagine a different life. One where I could simply walk up to the cutler and choose a sturdy new bread knife for my younger brother, Luca, and give it to him as a belated thirteenth-birthday present. What would it feel like to shop my way through the market instead of steal my way through it? I shake the thought out of my mind. I don’t have time for such flights of fancy. “—must try the peach mead,” the woman in peacock blue is saying. “Who knows when there'll be another royal wedding?” Her friend, dressed in rich plum, snorts. “Prince Cayden may be supposedly unlovable, but with a face like that? King Ashton will have no trouble finding a match.” Now that I’m close enough to count the pearl buttons down their lushly dressed backs, I register the topic that has consumed their entire world: Mooncrest’s bachelor royals. “He hasn't so far.” The woman in blue fans herself, sweat beading on her forehead. “And the prince is already twenty-two.” “I hear he's the one refusing to entertain potential suitors,” the woman in plum says. “Still feels guilty about his mother and whatnot.” She shrugs. “He'll get over that when the right woman comes along.” The woman in blue raises a brow, grinning wickedly. “Oh? And are you intending to be that woman?” “You're terrible!” Her friend giggles, too loudly. “And anyway”—she lowers her voice conspiratorially—“I'd take the Ward of the North over the Cursed Prince any day.” “You'd take him to bed, more like.” “Terrible—!” The first time I overheard another human lusting after the royals, I was shocked. Handsome or not, they were werewolves. Now, at eighteen, I’ve heard enough of this sort of daydreaming to know it’s especially popular among young women. I still can’t understand it. Nothing could make me see werewolves as anything but monsters. I duck my chin to hide my eye roll as their conversation turns into an argument over which of the two is more attractive. Their terrible taste in men—and weremen, no less—only solidifies my resolve to relieve them of their coin pouches. If they can afford such fantasies, they can afford to chip in for Luca’s dinner. I allow their voices to dim into white noise and check the small, sharp blade tucked up my sleeve. It should slice through their pouch strings without a snag.Tucking my chin, I step forward— And reflexively stumble back, turning, as a scream tears through the square behind me. A wave of black has descended on someone in the midst of the crowd. I wince. The guards may be in human form, but that wolf strength lives in their bones; they don’t have to shapeshift to access it. As they jostle for control, I glimpse their captive—and freeze. Even though I know that Luca is at his apprenticeship and therefore cannot be the boy in the guards’ grasp, the boy’s terrified face reminds me so much of Luca’s after he wakes from a nightmare that my heart crumples in like tin. I close my eyes and breathe away the fear. It’s not Luca. As I peer closer, though, I realize that I do know this boy. Kind of. I met him just the other day, when he tried to hand me a rebel pamphlet. I'd separated myself from him as quickly as I could—it was suicide to be seen consorting with known rebels, as I well knew—but not before he gave me his name. Ollie. From how swiftly the guards reacted this time, I assume he wasn't so lucky with his pamphleting. “I didn’t know!” Ollis screams. “I swear, I didn’t know what the pages say! I can’t even read!” Electricity arcs through the crowd, but no one moves. It doesn’t matter whether Ollie is telling the truth. When it comes to rebellion, the monarchy is cruel as a public stoning. “Please!” Ollie screams. Please! I—” He goes silent with a resounding smack. For a minute, I’m terrified the guard has killed him, that his backhand snapped Ollie’s neck, but the boy’s fingers stir, just barely. The guards drag him away, but the whole market is on edge now. So am I. Watching Ollie’s prone body, I can’t help but think of another prone body: that of my father’s. Unlike Ollie, his defiance earned him the kind of punishment you don’t wake up from. The tension in the air and in my shoulders is too much, and I sigh, rattling my near-empty coin pouch. It’ll have to do for the day. Thinking home would be a reprieve from tension, though, was a mistake. Sitting at our haphazard kitchen table—the only table that fits in the tiny shack that Luca and I call a home—and counting out the day’s meager take, the desolation of our situation has never been more apparent. Luca is growing like a weed, and even though I fork over half my dinner each night, I can still see the outline of every one of his ribs. The first chill of fall will be setting in any day now. Food will be even tighter come winter. Thank God for Luca's apprenticeship. He may not earn any wages yet, but he's allowed to take home any loaves of bread that fall on the ground. Some weeks, that's what we live on. When Luca walks through the door half an hour later, a smile eating up his face, I expect him to present one of those loaves. Instead, bouncing on the balls of his feet, he drops a pouch onto the table. It clanks against the wood. A trove of riches compared to my sad little handful of coins. “What—?” I start, but he’s already racing away with an explanation. “There is no way he noticed me,” he says. “That merchant. Rich good-for-nothing.” For a moment, I can’t speak. Then— “Are you insane?” I hiss. Our father's face flashes through my mind. The way he'd squeezed me in his arms that fateful morning. The guards who'd taken him away. Luca was too young to remember the execution, but that doesn't excuse this recklessness. He knows what Mooncastle guards are capable of. Shock cuts across his glee, followed by anger. “He deserved it, Astrid! With what he was doing to that poor girl. You’d’ve done worse than snatch his coin if you were there.” “Not if I had the opportunity you do, I wouldn’t’ve!” I half-shout, anger and fear spilling out of me. “Not on the day of a royal wedding, I wouldn’t’ve! A merchant? He’ll definitely have pull with the guards! Just wait until he realizes he’s been robbed.” “You worry too much,” Luca says, shaking his head. “That man has more than enough.” He looks down at the handful of coins I brought in, at the velvet pouch beside them. “And even with my apprenticeship, we need this. You know we do.” He’s right, of course. But I also need him to stay safe. “Luca,” I say, sighing, “the whole point of me going down this route is so you don’t have to follow in my—” “Wait,” he cuts in, his eyes widening. “Do you hear that?” I don’t—until I do. Heavy footsteps and cruel, growling laughter. The sonic tell of Mooncastle guards, of men who are wolves who are on the hunt. And my brother is their prey.