**hi so just FYI i got tired of posting at midnight so imma just update on Wednesday mornings instead if that's good with y'all. Peace**

Ari had been examining a gold pocketwatch when he heard Lyla's scream.

Jamie was on the other side of the room, trying her best to ignore him as they rummaged around the basement.

"Wait, stop." She straightened, dropping her hands. "Do you hear that?"

Ari ran his thumb over the bronze lettering, squinting at the inscription. "No."

She reluctantly sat back. "I thought I heard footsteps."

Ari felt something pulling at the ends of his mouth. "Are you scared?"

"No!" Jamie shot back, fixing her attention on the floor. Ari softly put the pocketwatch down and padded around to her other side. Sometimes Jamie seemed to be so deep in thought. Ari wondered what she could be mulling about in that strange mind of hers.

He had no idea what possessed him to do it- perhaps there was a tiny devil on his shoulder that whispered things to him. Or, perhaps he was just a wicked boy- like the old woman on his street always used to say when he was ten, while waving her broom at him and chasing him out of the yard.

Either way, Ari perhaps should have left the poor girl alone, but he couldn't seem to stop himself as he gave Jamie's shoulders a tiny push, jolting her from her reverie.

"Boo!"

"Ah!" Jamie shrieked, jumping up. She shoved him, hard, with both arms, and Ari snickered as he caught himself against a dusty China cabinet.

"I knew you were scared."

"You will be, by the time I'm done with you."

Ari's eyes danced. "Ooh, was that a threat?"

A piercing scream had interrupted them, then, and now Ari had to admit that Jamie's fears weren't entirely unfounded.

"Oops" was an understatement, but, frankly, it seemed the most fitting word that he could think of.

He'd seen his fair share of corpses in his own time, but Ari couldn't imagine how strange it would be for Lyla to find one; pale and limpid, its iced strings of hair reaching towards the surface like seaweed.

Ari reached out a toe of his boot to push over the body. It was a man, judging from his features and fitted black suit. His lips were ashen and shut, and his bulging eyes stared straight ahead like a fish. A dead fish.

"Is that...?" Jamie began, blankly.

"Tybalt Sybell, I believe," Ari guessed. "Lyla?"

She gulped, visibly. "That's him."

Aveline bent down, squinting thoughtfully at the corpse. "I don't think he drowned," she decided, glancing up at Ari. "His skin is definitely discolored, but I would say it's been a few weeks, give or take."

"You think they killed him beforehand?"
"Who killed him?" Eli blurted. His head swung between the two of them like a clock.

Ari huffed, how was he supposed to know? He opened his mouth to snap at him before Aveline stood back up, looking Lyla over with obvious concern.

"Lyla, are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Lyla protested, but her shoulders shook slightly though she wore one of Aveline's heavy coats.

"Let's get her inside." Ari stomped back towards the door to the house, bracing his hand on the frame against the howling wind. He was freezing, and it seemed like the snow was only going to fall harder. "Sybell's obviously not going to be back for a while."

"Ari!"
He chuckled, Sybell's plush carpet sinking under his boots as he strode over to one of the fancy upholstered chairs and plopped down on the cushy fabric. Jamie took the one across from him and folded her arms tightly across her chest.

"What's the matter?" Ari asked, unfazed by the dead body that lingered like a bad stench just outside the door. "It's just a dead body."

"Nothing," she mumbled, which was stranger since she didn't usually ignore Ari's attempts at picking a fight.

"What is that?!" Lyla cried, skirting out from underneath Aveline's arm over her shoulders to point at the thin golden chain protruding from Ari's jacket. He looked down in confusion.

"Oh, this?" Ari pulled at the chain, revealing a small pocketwatch. "Jamie and I found this hanging on the doorknob of one of the bedrooms. I wasn't sure if it was important, so I took it." Plus, it had looked valuable, but Ari didn't add that part.

"Let me see that." Lyla snatched the jewelry from Ari's hands (rather rudely, in his opinion) and ran her thumb over the back. "This is Tristran's!"

Ari felt his eyebrows raise. (That was all he did these days; saved princesses and raised his eyebrows. A constant state of skepticism.) "What?"

"Look," said she, excitedly brandishing the bottom of the watch. Dammit, she was right — the letter T was engraved on the back in ornate cursive. "This is his. I've never seen him anywhere without it."

"Aveline and I found a lot of dresses upstairs," Eli mused. "Expensive ones. Unless Sybell has, like, seventeen daughters-"

"They were here," Lyla finished. "Tristran must have left the pocketwatch behind so that we would know!" Her eyes lit up with a childlike excitement that made Ari want to look away. He knew better than to entertain hopes that were soon to disappoint.

Ari turned to Aveline as if to say, can you believe this nonsense?

"It's possible," she shrugged. "A doorknob is a rather odd place to leave a pocketwatch."

Ari glanced at Jamie as the others dissolved into excited conversation, only to find that she was already studying him. She hastily looked away and started to stand up from her chair.

Without thinking about it, Ari's hand shot out to grab her wrist. Jamie stiffened perceptively, her eyes flickering downward, like a shutter closing.

"Listen, thief girl." Ari's voice was low as he carefully studied her guarded expression. "Do you want to find these royals or not? If you know something, you'd better tell us now."

Jamie clenched her jaw.

"I have a million more reasons to distrust you than you have on me," Ari pointed out. Finally her eyes shimmered up to his, really meeting them, for the first time. They were more green than blue today, sparking like colored flame, and Ari blinked to realign himself.

"No ransom note," Jamie uttered rapidly, the words moving nearly too quickly for Ari to catch up to them. "No casualties besides Tybalt the Zombie over there. The royals are obviously being herded from place to place like a herd of cattle. You're not an idiot, what do you think is really happening here?"

Ari bit the inside of his cheek to hide his surprise. He realized his hand was still on her wrist, and yanked it away as if it stung.

"Oh!" Lyla exclaimed. Ari startled, finally breaking his staring match with Jamie. Lyla had opened Tristran's pocketwatch, and a tiny roll of paper slipped out, gliding to the floor. Ari's interest perked as Lyla bent to pick it up.

"What is that?"

"Tristran must have hidden a note." She unfolded the paper, which was only about two inches long.

"It says 'benodet'," she reported. Lyla lowered the paper from her face. "Does that mean anything to anyone?"
It didn't mean anything to Ari. "I have no idea."

"Let's figure it out later," Aveline suggested. "We should get out of here before someone comes in and arrests us for Sybell's murder. Truthfully, I'm not in the mood for prison."

"We need to make one more stop before we leave," Ari decided. "Aveline?"

His first mate looked immediately hesitant. "Ari, I don't think..."

"We need to at least talk to them. What if they know something-"

"What happened? Who do you need to talk to?" Eli interjected, and Ari wondered if Eli ever had anything to contribute besides asking questions he knew no one would bother to answer.

"Ari?" Lyla prompted.

"Aveline and I have a friend here," Ari admitted.

Lyla cocked her head. "You two have friends?"

"Not really," said Aveline, shucking her coat back on over her shoulders. She tucked her curls out from under her collar and irritably fished a strand of hair from her mouth. "He's more of an acquaintance."

"What kind of acquaintance?"

"The less-than-reputable kind," Ari replied acidly.

Eli made a face. "Is this going to help with the investigation?"

Aveline's mouth set grimly as she headed towards Sybell's front door. "I suppose we'll have to find out."

Twenty-five minutes later, they found themselves standing in front of a small nameless building at the edge of the village square. The paint was chipping in flecks on the boards, and the OPEN sign hung lopsided from where it dangled precariously from one nail on the front of the building.

"A tavern?" Eli said dubiously. "Are we going to get drunk?"

"We are," Aveline corrected. "You and Jamie are waiting outside. Lyla, you're coming with us."
Lyla seemed briefly surprised, but obediently sidled up next to Aveline.

"What? Why?" Eli whined.

Ari could hear the smugness in his own voice. "Because we don't trust you." He glared at Jamie, and she glared right back. "See you in ten."

--

Lyla had never been to a village tavern before. But if she'd been asked to imagine the scene, she would have pictured it exactly like this.

She sat between Aveline and Ari on a dirty bench that teemed with bodies. Men and women in grimy leather and low-cut corsets chortled at each other's bad jokes in a windowless room lit only by the lone, sweating candles on each table. Lyla could barely hear anything over the booming voices and found herself being continuously jostled by people with menacing expressions and alcohol on their breaths. The hand of one of the drunk men across from her kept "accidentally" sliding up her thigh.

"Oi! Keep your grubby paws to yourself, or I'll rip 'em out of their sockets," Aveline barked from Lyla's other side. His hand jerked back and he hurriedly scooted away.

"I'm so happy we get to share this experience together," Ari said cheerfully, regarding with evident amusement a red-faced, obviously inebriated man across the room who kept falling off of his chair. "It's bonding, you know?"

Aveline leaned towards Ari across Lyla's lap and Lyla's nostrils were briefly overpowered with the scent of jasmine.

"You're an idiot," she informed him.

"Am I allowed to ask who it is exactly that we're waiting for?" Lyla inquired, sensing that if they began arguing, they'd likely continue doing so for some time.

"No," Ari and Aveline chorused. As if on cue, a short, snub-nosed man seemed to materialize in front of them. He tipped forward conspiratorially, so close that Lyla could smell onions on his breath.

"I told Jeckel you're here," he said slowly.

Lyla followed Aveline and Ari down the hallway and up a creaky flight of stairs. They entered a large room down the upstairs hall, where a lanky redhead stood washing dishes at a basin. His mouth stretched into a grin when he saw them, the corner of his eyes crinkling at the edges.

"Aveline and Ari! Haven't seen you two in a while."

"Jeckel," Aveline acknowledged.
"Come! Have a seat." The man named Jeckel gestured to the small round table next to them. Lyla waited for Aveline and Ari to sit down first, wondering who exactly this Jeckel fellow was.

Jeckel slung a rag over his left shoulder and selected a bottle and a few glasses from one of his cupboards before taking a seat across from them. "Hey, one of the girls saw you leaving the Apreuna palace. You stealin' from the royals?!"

"You can't prove anything," Ari blurted, and Aveline elbowed him in the side. "Uh, no, actually, we got hired for a job."

Lyla tugged on Ari's sleeve. "Should you be telling him this?" She whispered.

"It's fine, Lyla."

Jeckel's gaze landed curiously on Lyla as he unscrewed the cap from the bottle and tipped it over one of the glasses. "Who's this?"

"No one." Ari rested his forearms on the table and leaned forward. "Look, Jeckel, we only wanted to ask about those missing royal kids."

Jeckel stopped pouring and peered at them from under hooded eyes. "How old are they?"

"It's not about that." Aveline shook her head. "We're on a different kind of job. Sort of."

Lyla tried her best not to look confused.

Jeckel put the bottle down. "People are saying they ran away. Got mixed up in something suspicious."
"Perhaps," said Aveline. "Truthfully, we think they were kidnapped."

"Well, I wouldn't know anything about that. You want me to ask one of the girls?" Jeckel tilted his head backwards and cupped his hands over his mouth. "Susie!"

"What do you want?!" Someone rasped in a harsh, feminine sort of voice, and a moment later a tall woman came stomping out of one of the backrooms.

Her corset had been laced so tightly it looked as if it had been painted on, and was extremely low-cut besides. She had charcoaled eyes with fuschia eyelids, and her close-fitting skirt barely reached the tops of her nylon-covered thighs. Shocked, Lyla glanced at Aveline and Ari, who didn't seem fazed in the least bit.

"Hey, you two." The woman apparently named Susie nodded at the pair as she hung a faded fur coat on the metal rack on the wall. "How'd the last job go?"

They knew her?

"They're not here about that," said Jeckel, folding his arms. "You hear anything about princes going missing?"

"Oh, goodness me!" Susie delicately placed both hands on her chest like one of Lyla's bumpkin cousins. "A royal? In our end?" She let out a loud burst of laughter that made Lyla jump. "They wouldn't admit to workin' with us in a million years."

Aveline pressed further. "You haven't seen anything strange at the home?"

"Oh, c'mon, Miss Dimitri, you know if I see anything suspicious I come right to y'all. I know this line like the back of my hand, and I can tell you right now— no one I know is selling royals."

"Selling?!" The word tumbled from Lyla's lips like a spilled drink. All of the eyes in the room swung to her, and Lyla suddenly wished she had kept her mouth shut.

"Who is she?" Susie inquired sharply.

"She's helping us," said Ari with finality. "She's safe."

Susie stooped down to peer at Lyla with a practiced, quick gaze. Up close, Lyla could see that her lips were bright red and smudged, but the tired obscenity of her appearance suited her, somehow. "Her hair is lovely. You from the North, sweet?"

Lyla opened her mouth and closed it like a landed fish. "Yes. Apreuna. I'm a lady's maid."

Ari and Aveline both looked at her quickly, and Lyla gave the barest of shrugs. Back home, she'd sometimes been mistaken as Princess Natasya's lady-in-waiting, so she figured it would be easy to assume the identity now.

"Really?" Susie sniffed. "Those hands look a little soft for a maid."

Or not.

"You looking for a job?"
"She's not interested," Ari interrupted, and Susie glared daggers at him.

"To clean, you ninny. We could use a maid. And I wasn't asking you, I was asking her."

"Susie, do you know Tybalt Sybell?" Aveline chimed in, stitching a beatific smile onto her lips. Susie grunted and leaned back on her heels.

"Seen him around," she conceded. "He's one of those rich folk. Been missing the past month, apparently."

"Well, he's been bumped off," Ari said, bluntly. "We had reason to believe he might have had something to do with the missing royals. But now our only lead is dead, and no one posted a ransom note, so, quite frankly, we have nothing to go off of."

"The kidnappers aren't asking for money?" Susie's powdered forehead wrinkled. "You know what that means."

"What?" Lyla tipped towards her, resting her elbows on the table. "What does it mean?"

"Those royals are being used for something," Susie said seriously. "What that is, I've no idea."

**the mystery thickens! any theories about the royals? also, I know Ari and Aveline's backgrounds haven't really been talked about much, but we got to see some of their rather eccentric friends in this chapter, and who they are will hopefully become a bit clearer as the book (series???) goes on. **