Captured Crimes (Displaced Fairytales #6)

Chapter 1 Auria

The problem with stealing from an afternoon market is that guards notice more in the daylight. And they’re more ornery because they haven’t had dinner yet.

I ducked behind a post that supported two lines of hawker’s tents. My linen skirts didn’t fit behind the post, but perhaps the soldiers wouldn’t notice.

“No way, Goldy.” An elbow hit my side, and I turned to see a half-grown elf hiding with me. “I was here first. Go find your own shady spot.”

“Crusty,” I whispered at the vagrant. “I just need a minute to wait for some guards to pass by.”

A glint lit up his eye. “If I yell at you, they’ll ignore the bread I stole this morning.”

“It’s bread they’re after me for!” I hissed back at him.

“Sorry, Goldy, I need them to like me.” I clenched my jaw. This kid was a nightmare. Sure, he’d kept me alive once or twice by sharing some bread crusts—and earned his nickname—but he was no more loyal than a rabid bat with a button tied on his tail.

He hesitated for a moment, and I tried to change his mind.

“Please, Crusty. You know what they’ll do to me!

” We’d both hit the streets when we were ten years old, but the next fourteen years had treated us differently.

I—a human—had grown up, and he—an elf who aged slower than humans—was still a child.

And he wasn’t nearly as concerned for me now as he had been a decade ago.

He glanced over my shoulder, and I turned to follow his gaze. A soldier stared right at us.

No. Crusty had no choice now—if he didn’t turn me in, they’d be after him too. I gripped my skirts and darted away.

“I saw you!” Crusty yelled. “You stole that!” Hopefully that worked for him. They might go easier on him because he was a child, but the little brat didn’t need to be arrested any more than I did.

I ran harder, turning into an alley that led away from the market. It was a risky move, because the market had more hiding places than the two miles of homes and back streets, but the chaotic collection of buildings held more places that completely concealed me.

“No fear,” I whispered to myself. Make a choice, and don’t look back. Second guessing only got people in trouble.

A loud squawk cut through the air. I glanced up and saw a white bird flying above me, on my left, so I turned right. This road was bigger, so I raced to the middle, slipped to the other side of a cart of apples, and slowed down.

The tall elf pushing the cart looked down his nose at me and then over his left shoulder at the guards that came spilling out of the alley. “I don’t hide criminals, Human.”

I replaced the hood that had fallen off my head as I’d run, tucking my hair inside it. “Being human is not a crime.”

He clenched his fists around the cart handles. “But running from soldiers would suggest you have done more than just exist.”

I didn’t know this elf, but he didn’t seem too eager to turn me in, despite his obvious aversion to humans.

I gestured at the soldiers with one hand, slipped one of the apples out of his cart and into my pocket with the other, and sighed tragically.

“Not everyone is as tolerant as you are of inferior species.” I shot him a desperate, vulnerable puppy sort of look.

“I don’t need you to hide me. Just don’t look at me for a few moments.

Once I’m out of sight, tell the soldiers you saw a suspicious human running into the forest.”

He sighed and looked away from me, straight ahead of us. I angled my body to hide behind him and made sure that my long, golden hair did not escape my hood.

We reached the end of the street after a few short minutes, and the apple-carting elf turned to me again.

“I haven’t seen any soldiers for at least a minute, but they always patrol the street I’m turning onto.

” He tipped his head to the left, where several other produce carts were lined up with sellers behind them.

I stepped farther away from him, toward the end of the street. “Thank you. I know you didn’t have any reason to help me, and I really do appreciate it.”

He nodded, started to roll his cart away, and then stopped. “I will report you when they check on me during setup. I expect it will be within twenty minutes.”

Of course. It was too much to hope a random elf would pity me long enough to risk civil disobedience. I smiled and flourished a deep curtsy. “Then I shall run fast.”

And I did, straight into the forest.

* * *

Once I cleared the tree line, my white cockatoo flew down from the canopy and landed on my shoulder. I patted his foot. “Hey, Rat, thanks for the tip back there.”

He chirped, so I reached in a pocket and pulled out a sunflower seed for the bird. “Any advice now?”

Rat dropped the sunflower seed shells on the ground and took a few seconds to swallow before pushing off my shoulder, chortling, and flying ahead.

I raced after the bird. He’d always flown faster than I could run, but he made sure I could keep up. I wasn’t sure if it was his bird senses or the weird magic he had, but his advice had kept me safe for over a decade, so I wasn’t about to stop following it now.

We wove through the forest without following any trails or patterns. There was a lot of leaf litter and spaces between trees, but brambles, vines, and branches still slapped me when I ran this fast. It’s why I wore a leather jerkin over my dress.

After ten or fifteen minutes, Rat dove into a dense copse of trees. I slowed down to a walk and slipped inside the thicket. Then I slowed even more and tried to make sense of what I saw.

A small cottage—adorable, but definitely abandoned for years—sat in the middle of a clearing. The clearing must have been created with magic; otherwise, it would have regrown in the time it had taken vines and brambles to completely cover the entire house.

Rat perched on a thick vine growing on the door. He looked over his shoulder, at the way we’d come, and squawked his warning screech. Then he faced the door and chirped.

“I suppose we could hide here,” I said, “but the elf soldiers are crazy good at tracking. I’m sure they’ll follow my path through the forest, and we’ll have to snap some vines to get this door opened—”

The bird cut me off by biting through a vine that blocked the door handle.

He clearly wanted me to go inside. I reached in my back pocket and pulled out two lock picks.

The giant padlock used an easy, old-fashioned mechanism that I opened in about three seconds.

Rat bit through the biggest vines, and I grabbed the door handle.

I grinned at the bird. “You’re sure nobody will be mad at us letting ourselves in?”

He chortled like I’d made an epic joke.

I laughed back, and turned the handle. “No fear, then.”

I had to heave my shoulder against the door to convince the hinges to let us in, but it only took one good push. I held the handle as the wood gave way, practically falling into the cottage.

Sunlight spilled in with us, highlighting pristine piles of dust on top of a table and three chairs. “Look at that,” I told Rat. “A small one for you, a middle-sized one for me, and a big one for a giant elf visitor.” I rubbed my nose as it twitched from the powder-ridden air.

The bird ignored me and flew across the room, landing on a door frame on the opposite side of the room and squawking like we were about to be arrested.

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t even hear them yet.

And I doubt going in that room will keep us any safer than staying in here.

” I really needed to find a way to live that did not include stealing.

One of these days, I would get caught, and I never wanted to be at the mercy of a royal elf again.

Memories sent a shiver up my spine. “We should go somewhere else, Rat. If those soldiers find us, this cottage will be a death trap.”

The cockatoo scratched at the closed door, sending skiffs of dust flying into the air.

“Fine. We’ll check it out and then go.” I left the main door open, hoping some of the outdoor light would filter into the next room.

I grabbed the handle, and Rat jumped onto my shoulder.

“If it’s dark in there, we’re turning right around.

I don’t care how much you want to go in. ” Dark was worse than elves.

I flung the door open wide, revealing a bedroom.

The space was darker than the first room, but not black.

Not with both doors open. Stepping inside, my eyes adjusted to the light difference.

“Aw, look, Rat, beds. One small, one medium, and one large… just like the chairs.” If they didn’t have inches of dust I’d have been tempted to lie down on the middle-sized one.

“Sir! You should check this out!”

My breath caught. Someone else had entered the little copse of trees. I stepped farther into the room so nobody would see me if they looked in the doors. On the other side of the wall, I heard underbrush crunching.

Another voice joined the first. “Did you find her?”

I gripped my skirts and tried to ignore the panic mounting in my chest. I was trapped. I’d walked myself into a cage, and they were going to get me. Any moment, they’d round the cottage and see the open doors—

“No.” The first voice interrupted my thoughts. “But this would make an excellent place to hide.”

Rat jumped off my shoulder and flew to the far wall. He landed on a painting of a waterfall and started pecking at the canvas. The paper tore, dropping dust everywhere.

I rushed closer to him. “Rat! What are you doing?” The bird had finally lost it.

After fourteen years of keeping me safe, he’d led me into a dead end, and now—with no hope left—he decided to shred a painting.

“This is not helping,” I whispered, wrapping my hands around him.

“We need to sneak out before they get to the entrance.”

But the cursed animal squawked and flapped out of my hands, crashing into the painting. My heart sank into my stomach as the bird, painting, and frame collided and smashed to the ground in a loud tumble of feathers and torn canvas.

“What was that?!” one of the soldiers outside shouted.

What to do? What to—

My thoughts screeched to a stop as a circle the size of my head glowed silver on the wall where the painting had been. The painting had covered it. And Rat had known.

The bird flew up to my shoulder and pointed a wing at the glowing silver. I pressed a hand to the wall.

“Thief!” One of the soldiers stood in the house’s entrance. “Step away from the magic!”

Magic the soldier wanted me to avoid?

I grinned. I had no idea what it would do, but if the soldier didn’t want me to have it, I definitely did. Maybe I still had some options after all.

As my hand made contact with the wall, the circle grew, expanding until the glowing silver was as big as a door.

It encompassed my hand and the texture changed from wood to…

nothing. My fingers slipped through the silver as easily as they would through a cloud.

I pulled my hand back to where I could see all my fingers, but I kept contact with the growing silver circle.

I wanted whatever that soldier wanted me to avoid.

Within seconds, a great big, silver circle filled the middle of the wall, taller than me and twice as wide.

“Step away from the portal!” The soldier advanced up to the door to the bedroom, but he did not cross the doorframe. He softened his voice, but still shouted. “You’ll be safer in prison than in an unknown portal!”

A portal?

I stared at the magic—magic that was mysterious enough that the soldiers didn’t even want to be in the same room with it. Did I dare go through?

I turned back to look at the soldiers. Prison. Pain. Monsters. I’d dare anything to avoid them.

My heart pounded harder, shaking my entire chest. “What do you think, Rat?”

The bird jumped off my shoulders and flew straight at the silver magic. He passed through it, as if flying into a thick cloud that I couldn’t see through.

I could not see through it. That made me almost as anxious as the soldiers behind me.

Almost.

I fisted my skirts with one hand and rubbed the ring on my thumb with the other. No fear. I took a step back, and ran into the portal.