Page 13 of For the Love of the Quest

“No, please enlighten me,” Thomasin said, picturing Edith’s face. Lips turning up into a smile despite her best effort. Red flush across her round cheekbones, delicate nostrils flaring.

“It’s … striking,” Edith said.

“Striking. That’s all I get?”

“Yeah, striking. You know, it sends the message that ‘hey, I could kill you with my bare hands, but don’t worry, I’ll look really stylish while I do it.’ ”

Thomasin laughed loudly, her head tipping back. Beads of cold water dripped from the ends of her hair and onto her back, seeping through the thin material of her shirt. “The aesthetic doesn’t seem to work on you, though. You smiled at me when I tried to rob you, and then, the same day, strolled into my inn very confidently for someone who had no earthly clue how to hire a mercenary.” Thomasin said it teasingly, but there was real curiosity beneath the words.

Edith huffed a laugh, and Thomasin heard a splash of water. Edith’s voice sounded closer, as if she had swam up to the shore. “I think I was too busy being impressed by you to be scared of you killing me.”

Impressed?A strange feeling squirmed in Thomasin’s chest. She was impossibly flattered. Edith must have interpreted the silence very differently because she added with a tone of forced humor, “You aren’t planning on killing me with your bare hands, are you?”

Thomasin turned her head to face her before remembering midway through the movement that she shouldn’t look. So instead, she froze with her head half turned, eyes fixed on the ground behind her shoulder. “No. I’m not going to kill you.”

I’m just going to betray you and sell you back to your father, she thought bitterly. But Thomasin couldn’t allow herself to feel guilty. Not when her entire career and reputation rested on her getting enough money to bribe the constables into forgetting her transgressions, and not with Worthing lurking over her like a vulture over a not-quite-dead-yet body. Being a legendary mercenary was all she knew, and if she lost that, she didn’t know what she’d be left with. She had never spent much time thinking about who she was outside of her work. As Marshall had told her on his deathbed, she was nothing without the syndicate.

Thomasin thought of how passionate Edith had been about her books, her key, the treasure hunt as a whole. Thomasin hadn’t been passionate about anything in so long.

“Why did you decide to go on your quest?” she asked Edith abruptly.

She heard a ripple of water and imagined Edith tracing her fingers through the surface of the river. “One of my earliest memories is my grandmother telling my siblings and me bedtime stories about King Arthur. She told us that she had the only key to his treasure and that someday she would go on the adventure of a lifetime to find it.”

“She never did, though?” Thomasin surmised.

After a long silence, Edith said quietly, “No, she didn’t. But I promised her that I’d find it, so that’s what I’m doing.”

Thomasin understood that more than she wanted to admit. “So it’s all for her, then?”

“And myself. I believe in the treasure as much as she did. I spent my childhood following her around the manor, begging her for more stories.”

“Stories you think are true?”

“I do,” Edith said confidently. “And when I find Excalibur, I’ll be able to prove it to everyone else.”

“Why didn’t your grandmother ever try to find the treasure?”

There was a long silence, and it took all of Thomasin’s admittedly weak self-control to not turn around and look at Edith in that moment. In the week she’d spent with her, she’d come to appreciate how openly the girl’s emotions played on her face. Edith hid nothing, and Thomasin could read her like a book. It was a relief to not have to worry about a person’s hidden motivations or secret agendas for once. Edith was honest and free with her emotions to a strangely naive extent. Usually, Thomasin would find such behavior weak, but she actually liked knowing what Edith was feeling. There was a safety in it. With Edith, Thomasin didn’t feel like she was always waiting for the trap to spring shut.

But now, the bonds of propriety kept Thomasin from seeing if her question had offended or upset Edith. “You haven’t drowned, have you?”

“No, sorry!” Edith called back with a forced laugh. “It’s just a long story, and I’m so cold I can hardly feel my teeth.”

There was splashing, and then Thomasin listened to the sounds of Edith getting dressed. The shaky clanging of metal was followed by Edith’s soft voice calling out from behind her.

“Could you—do you think you could help me with this buckle? My fingers are numb, and I can’t quite get it.” She gave a short, frustrated laugh.

Thomasin pivoted on a heel and strode over to where Edith stood near the river. Her hair was wet and unbound, falling to just below her shoulders. Thomasin had never seen her look so disheveled before. Even throughout their travels, Edith had managed to maintain the perfect image. Her hair was always done up, and her face was always painted precisely with cosmetics. Now, her pale skin was bare and every part of her looked softer, more vulnerable.

A few strands of wet hair stuck to her cheeks. Without thinking, Thomasin reached out and brushed them away. Edith stilled under her touch, eyes widening. Her cheeks and nose were already bright red with cold, but Thomasin imagined that if they weren’t, she would be blushing. “Sorry,” Thomasin murmured under her breath.

Edith looked up at her through her eyelashes and offered a shy smile. “Nothing to be sorry for.”

The air between them pulled tight, and Thomasin couldn’t help but stare at Edith, the soft glow of her beneath the moonlight. She looked away only when Edith fidgeted with the buckle at her waist. “Right,” Thomasin shook her head with a little laugh. She reached for the belt that held Edith’s skirt in place. The metal was frigid beneath her fingers. As she threaded the fabric through the buckle and clasped it in place, she tried to ignore the brief accidental brushes of her fingers against Edith’s stomach. Even through the linen of her shirt, she was drawn to the soft warmth of her.

She dropped her hands as quickly as she could.

“Thank you,” Edith said, bending over to put on her socks and shoes.