Page 40 of Princess of Thieves

“That’s fine,” I say. “I just need it temporarily.”

With an email address—one that no one knows about, one with no digital breadcrumbs anywhere but here—and my birth certificate scanned, I can get in touch with the bank. That, plus the copy of Daddy’s will that Tuck helped me pull from the county records again—because there’s no way in hell I’m going back into Nottingham Town Hall—should be enough to get me access to whatever there is of my inheritance.

“Great.” Tuck smiles, and I give him a small smile back. It needed to be done—I know it did—but something about getting this close to starting over, for real, is almost bittersweet. “So whenever you—”

As he says it, my inbox pings with a new message. Tuck leans back and looks away, politely averting his gaze like I’m about to change into dry clothes or something. As he does, I catch a whiff of his cologne, woodsy and rich, and it catches me so off guard I have to clear my throat before I can even speak again.

“It’s from the bank,” I say.

Tuck looks back at me, his shyness forgotten. “It worked?” His boyish face lights up behind his glasses. I clamp my jaws together to avoid a smile.

I can’t. I can’t let myself do that.

“Let’s see,” I say as evenly as I can. “Looks like it’ll be a couple days for the paperwork to be processed. And then I’ll have to go to the bank, somehow, but then...”

“Then you’ll have your freedom,” Tuck finishes for me. His shoulders slump just slightly.

“Not exactly,” I correct, glancing from the computer screen to his face. “I’ll have my money.”

Tuck scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah, but money is freedom, right?” I must have wrinkled my nose or something, because he rushes on. “I mean, that’s America for you. I don’t exactly love that that’s how it is, but, I mean, you know...” He shrugs. “It’s like Rob always says—”

He cuts himself off sharply. “Never mind.”

My hand tenses on the mouse, and I withdraw it into my lap, the screen going unfocused in front of me. I think back to seeing Rob in the kitchen just now—how he looked so like himself, and yet not. Still handsome as a devil with a body to match, but...deflated. Devoid of the swagger and confidence.

And yet still too fucking proud or too stubborn or too...toosomethingto apologize to me.

“Maren, I...” Tuck blows out a breath. I turn to look at him, and he reaches for me, then reconsiders, his hand hovering in the air a moment before he pulls it back to his lap.Funny how someone who’s had his face between your legs suddenly can’t even put a hand on your shoulder, I think.

“Give him a chance. You can...I know it’s hard to believe, and I know this sounds rich coming from me, but youcantrust him. Rob is...he’sRob,” Tuck finishes a little lamely. He shakes his head. “I mean, God. Sorry. I know you don’t know him as well as I do.”

“I know him carnally,” I retort. Tuck blushes.

“Um...okay, fair,” he concedes. He rakes his fingers through his loose blonde waves. “I just meant...look, he definitely fucked up, and he knows that. Like,trustme, he knows that. But—”

“So why doesn’t he apologize?” I interrupt. “If he knows it, and he’s so goddamntrustworthy”—I draw giant air quotes—“then how hard is it to admit he was wrong? Forstarters,” I add. “At the very, very least.”

My pulse is thrumming in my chest now, each throbbing beat a reminder that every bad thing that’s ever happened to me was basically Rob’s doing. Whether he knew it or not. Whether he knewmeor not. It was still his fucking fault.

“It’s...” Tuck presses his lips together, then sighs. “It’s hard, I guess. I’ve told him a million times until eventually he just stopped listening to me at all. And you’re right, it’s not fair toexpectyouto do the heavy lifting here. I just...” He glances down at his hands, then up at me. “I just wish things could go back to the way they used to be.”

A sharp, swift pain slices at my heart when he says it.

Because so do I.

Badly.

Very very badly.

“Well, they can’t,” I say shortly. I almost crack a molar with the effort not to cry, but it works. “Not after what happened. Not unless you have the power to...undo the past, or something.”

“Yeah. Yeah.” Tuck nods, eyes downcast. Then he looks up at me, his warm brown eyes curious. “Hey, did you—not that it’s any of my business, I mean—but did you happen to, you know...” He gestures at me. “Figure out what you are? What kind of power you have?”

I sit up straighter. “No,” I answer truthfully. “I didn’t.”

“You’re not curious?”

Of course I’m curious,I think.But there are more important things than playing around with magic.

---