Page 9 of Princess of Thieves

Something about his bashfulness takes me by surprise, and I find myself smiling. “Sure, of course.”

“Thank you.” He dips his head. “Give me five minutes. I’ll see you in the sitting room. And I promise—the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” He smiles, holding his fingers up in a scout’s salute. “On my honor as a man of the law.”

THERE’S A WEIRD DEJA-vu feeling to the room I find myself in.

So much of this place is like Rob’s house, but...not. It’s still a giant Southern mansion, still furnished with all the lavish trimmings a young man with plenty of family money could want, and yet there’s just something...different.

But I can’t put my finger on what.

I stare around me as I wait on the settee, arms pinned between my knees. On the mantelpiece are framed photographs: Guy in a graduation cap and gown, Guy in a suit holding a wine glass with a bunch of other men in suits, Guy at a podium speaking, Guy with a refined-looking older woman who must be his mother, and a few faded photographs of someone with his features but older—his father, presumably.

“Right,” comes a voice, startling me. “So, where were we?”

Guy strides in, wearing a gray polo and khaki trousers, looking for all the world like a Brooks Brothers model about to step onto his yacht. I push myself back into the couch, instinctively putting distance between the two of us.

“My father,” I say.

“Ah, yes. Maren, look, I know who you were living with, and I guess I don’t blame you for lashing out the way you did, for rebelling.”

“You don’tblameme?” I ask. His tone is kind, but something about the words feels off. “What’s there to blame me for?” Sure, it wasn’t a great decision, ultimately, but he doesn’t need to know why. He doesn’t need to know all the details.

A thought slashes through my consciousness.Doeshe know? Know they’re shifters? It occurs to me in a sudden torrent of questions, and I don’t even know how secret that part of their world is. Obviously, they all found each other. But who else knows? Have I been on the outside for so long, completely unaware that there was a secret society? And beyond their powers—what does Guy know about them? What does he know that I don’t?

What didn’t they tell me?

“I guess I could have made a better choice,” I say, “but I didn’t know where to go. Didn’t know why I was being chased.”

“I know,” Guy says softly, “and for that, I apologize. I was shooting from the hip. I figured it would be easier to get you alone and talk to you than to try and go through John, seeing as he wasn’t always the most reasonable person in my experience.”

“You can say that again,” I mutter.

“Maybe we both tend to be slaves to impulse,” Guy jokes.

“I guess I just thought—” My voice breaks off. I stare at the Oriental rug, at my hands, at the coffee table, and then up into his eyes, just for a moment. “I guess I really bought into what they were promising me.”

Guy smiles, not a condescending smile, but maybe a pitying one. “Maren, you’re an intelligent young lady, and I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,” he says, “but the wrong kind of men with a beautiful girl like you—they’ll tell you what you want to hear to get what they want, if you follow my meaning.”

My cheeks get hot. I wonder if Guy knows about what I did with them, what they did to me, what they made me feel. It’s almost horrifying. Not that I regret it. Not that I don’t—fuck.

Deep down, I still crave it, still wish I could go back and have things somehow fixed.

But I know that’s never going to happen.

And now I have an opportunity not to be naive again. I have an opportunity to know the full truth, or at least get another side of the story from someone who isn’t aligned with them, and from what I can tell, not aligned with the sheriff either. So I decide to probe as gently as I can.

“They didn’t tell me the whole truth,” I say. “It turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about who they really were.”

Guy interlaces his fingers and puts his elbows on his knees. “I’m sure—”

I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, playing innocent in the hopes that he’ll spill some more information. “You must know more about them than I do.”

“Oh, me?” Guy smiles. “Well, I’d be a pretty terrible assistant district attorney if I didn’t have tabs on the most notorious outlaws in Sherwood.” He sucks his teeth. “They aren’t good men. Robin Locksley—well, he has strong convictions, I’ll give him that. And I can’t deny that, at least from what I gather, he understands a lot of what’s wrong with Sherwood. But the way he thinks he can go about getting justice, it’s...selfish. Destructive. Abusive. It has consequences. And people’s lives are on the line—but never his, of course.”

“I—”

But I don’t even get to finish my thought—whatever it was going to be—before Guy gets up.

“I hate to run, but, well, duty calls.” He smiles. “I’ll be back this evening. Enjoy anything you want in the house, Maren.”

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