Page 76 of Kingdom of Locks

“I was helping,” Amell protested, pulling on his tunic as he followed her. “I don’t understand what the fuss is about. And why do you need practice in archery? You’re almost as good as I am.”

“I’m better,” Tora snapped. “Always have been.”

“Then why—?”

Tora raised her hands before her face, balled them tightly, and took a deep breath. Releasing both the air and the fists, she turned a long-suffering look on her brother.

“Sometimes I find it hard to believe you can really be so completely oblivious, Amell.”

“Oblivious to what?” Amell demanded.

“You keep him away constantly,” his sister ranted on, “barely showing your faces in the city, and whenever you are back, you mess up my every attempt to—”

“Him?” Amell repeated, wondering which of them had gone mad. “This is about Furn?”

“Yes, it’s about Furn,” Tora groaned. “Obviously it’s about Furn.”

“But…”

Tora’s strange posture from the evening before flashed through Amell’s mind, when she’d tilted her head. Suddenly he realized why he’d noticed it. It had almost looked like she was trying to look up at Furn through her lashes, the way many girls had done so pointedly to Amell, and the way Princess did with total artlessness. Only it didn’t really work in Tora’s case, given she was about as tall as the man in question.

“Tora,” he said, a feeling of horror creeping over him. He glanced around at the bustling corridor and lowered his voice. “Tora, are you in love with Furn?”

“Of course I’m in love with Furn, you dolt,” Tora said calmly, without the slightest hint of embarrassment. “I have been for years. And I think—I really think—he likes me too. Maybe he’s not as deep as I am, but sometimes he looks at me like…well, never mind that.”

“I do mind,” said Amell, reeling from this revelation. “He looks at you like what?”

“Like I’m the one he wants to protect, not you,” Tora shot at him.

Amell blinked, processing this. “He was certainly very jumpy about your safety the time you came to the prison with us.” He frowned. “But Tora, you can’t steal my guard and best friend away from me. He’s off limits!”

“Don’t I know it,” Tora grumbled. “You think you’d be enough to scare me off, when I have Mother to contend with?”

A slow grin spread across Amell’s face. “Not quite a prince, is he? But how dare Mother think some stranger would be better than our Furn? He’s the best man alive! Dragon’s flame, it would almost be worth losing him to have him join the family. Not to mention you’d be able to stay in Fernford instead of being married off to one of the Mistran princes.”

“Thank you for your unwavering and unselfish support,” Tora said dryly.

Amell ignored her, thinking over her bizarre behavior the last month or so. “If you’ve been in love with him for years, why have you started acting like a lunatic all of a sudden?”

Tora made no attempt to argue his choice of words. “Because things are getting desperate. Mother’s become obsessed with marrying me off, and if I can’t get Furn to admit his feelings to himself soon, it will be too late.”

“Hm.” Amell frowned, thinking of his mother’s words the evening before. “You might be right there.” He felt a rush of sympathy for his sister. The state of his own heart made it easier for him to understand why Tora might go to such ridiculous lengths in an attempt to win the man she was in love with.

“But nothing I’ve tried has worked,” Tora said despairingly. She lifted her hands, counting on her fingers. “I tried getting myself into danger so he’d have to heroically rescue me. But even at the site of a violent prison break, I couldn’t find a sniff of real danger!”

Amell nodded sagely. “It’s maddening how difficult danger is to come by when you really need it,” he agreed.

“I tried flirting with someone else to make him jealous,” Tora went on. “I tried paying him overt compliments on his appearance.” Her voice turned dry. “If Lord Fancypants is anything to go by, that’s what men like. And just now I tried pretending feigning helplessness so he could show me how to do something. And I think it was actually working until you elbowed your way in!”

She glared at him, rubbing her hip as if in memory of when he had literally elbowed her.

“Sorry about that,” said Amell, unable to help grinning again. “Want me to put in a good word, make up for it?”

“Don’t you dare!” Tora gasped. “You will absolutely and unequivocally make things worse if you try to talk to him about it.”

Amell raised his hands in surrender. “All right, all right, I’ll keep your secret. But all of those ideas you just listed were stupid. Why don’t you try being yourself? Seems to me you’re the kind of girl Furn would like without any playacting.”

“You mean too tall, lacking in curves, and with unflatteringly large teeth?”

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