I spin around. Abel’s disappeared now, of all times? The little boy still lies crumpled in a heap, the shopkeeper still shouts his fury.

  This is the rebel’s whole purpose, isn’t it?

  Passersby avert their eyes and scurry away from the scene. A few even nod their heads. Someone mutters, “Trash, always causing problems.”

  The man kicks the small, emaciated body and I want to scream.

  My world swirls around me. A child. How can anyone harm a child, whatever his crime? Where has Abel gone? How can he abandon this boy?

  Swift and subtle as a shadow cast by a cloud passing over the sun, a dark form appears. The shopkeeper flies back into the glass of the storefront and his head cracks against the pane. Blood trickles out of his newly disfigured nose. Before he can right himself, a boot impacts his gut and blood sprays from his mouth. He slumps to the ground.

  The assailant straightens up, dressed in all black, with a hood pulled over his head, a mask obscuring his face, and a lock billowing at his shoulder. He glances at the little boy who’s crawling away the cobblestones. Then he looks up at me.

  Abel.

  A rush of gratitude consumes me. Fills me with a strange sensation, a burning in my bones, an urge to act.

  Moving as if powered by something foreign and outside my body, I cross to the boy and lift him under his thin arms. He couldn’t have been over six or seven years old. He fights weakly against me, but another crack of shattering glass has him flinching into my arms.

  “Shh, you’re safe,” I whisper and clutch the boy’s frail little body against me.

  A guard clatters up behind Abel, shouting for reinforcements, sword pulling from its sheath. Abel spins around, boot flashing out to strike the guard’s wrist before he’s even brought up his sword. Abel’s elbow crashes against the guard helmet with a crack that has to be from some kind of metal armor hidden up his sleeve.

  I need to get out of here. Fighting the urge to watch, I run for the nearest alley and its welcoming darkness. The child clings to me, his face pressed into my shoulder.

  Behind, there’s shouts for more guards, followed by the clack of boots and hooves as they arrive. I don’t dare stop. There’s no chance I’ll leave it up to guards to decide the fate of a child whose stealing has caused a brawl. A brawl with a rebel, no less.

  Worst of all, I can’t bear the thought of what will become of Abel for this small act of justice.

  When I’ve rounded several corners and the commotion in the square has faded out of earshot, I lower the boy down onto the cobblestones and kneel beside him.

  His nose bleeds, but doesn’t appear disfigured.

  “Are you alright?” I ask.

  He looks up with hollow, desperate eyes. Of course he isn’t alright.

  Anger courses through me. A burning, crushing, helpless anger. He’s starving, maybe even ill. And I have nothing for him. No food, no water. Nor can I buy any without returning to the market or leading him on a blind journey to another food vendor in this unfamiliar area. I can’t take him home with me, and I know of nowhere else that won’t turn us away. I have some coin, but this boy needs more than that. He needs someone to take care of him, steady food, shelter.

  “Where are your parents?” I stroke his hair, hoping it’ll give him some semblance of comfort.

  “Ma’s dead, pa’s in the pits,” he croaks out, his voice hoarse and weak. The Pits. It lies somewhere beneath the palace, a work camp of sorts mining for coal, I think. Farnell’s spoken of it with hate and resentment every time someone he knows is sent there.

  Footsteps sound behind us.

  My pulse spokes and I reach for the boy as I twist around.

  Abel.

  I let out a breath. What he’s done for this child is more than I’ve ever done for anyone.

  He pushes his hood back and—to my shock—tugs down the face wrap, exposing a narrow nose with a slight crook at the base, a broad jaw covered in dark stubble, and high angular cheekbones.

  It sucks the breath from my lungs.

  His trust.

  He’s… beautiful.

  Abel nods at me in a silent acknowledgment, then crouches down beside the boy. His expression softens and the sharp angles of his face smooth into something gentle, kind, amazing. “You alright there, son?”

  The little boy stares up at Abel with wide, frightened eyes.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “I’m going to take you to a safe place. You’ll have something to eat and a spot to sleep. You might have to do some scrubbing or fetching, but Ma’s honest and no one’ll hurt you there. You’ll be free to leave any time you want. Alright?” Abel’s voice is softer than I’ve ever heard any man speak before.

  The little boy continues to stare, long enough I’m sure he’ll never respond. But Abel waits and, finally, the boy nods.

  “I’ll carry you.” Abel offers his arms to the boy and waits again. The significance of the autonomy he offers strikes my very core. He doesn’t take the boy, didn’t instruct or command. He offers and waits for the child to choose. It sends a shiver down my spine and is the single most admirable thing I’ve ever seen.

  The little boy nods again.

  Abel picks him up and turns to me. “You can come if you want, but…” He glances over his shoulder as the sound of voices and clanging armor carries over from a street over, rapidly growing louder.

  “We should go now,” I say, partly because I don’t know where I am, and partly because I cannot bear for this to end here.

  Abel smiles and shifts the boy’s weight to one arm and, with his free hand, tugs his mask up over his face again.

  I struggle to keep up with Abel’s long strides, but I share his desire to move quickly. We travel down progressively more bedraggled streets, heading southeast, until the east wall meets the southern wall. A dilapidated cluster of buildings makes up its corner.

  One is a tavern—Black’s Tavern—and, beside it, a disheveled-looking eatery. Overhead the eatery, a sad-looking sign hangs sideways by only one of its two hooks, teetering and twisting in the light breeze. It reads Ma’s K-tch-n, many of its painted letters faded to obscurity.

  Abel leads us to a side alley between the east wall and Ma’s Kitchen, and shoulders his way in through a side door. A bell overhead calls out our entrance into a narrow hallway. Rosemary and sage mingle with the char of cooking meats.

  We descend a hall, passing an ajar door home to clanging pots and muttering voices.

  “Abel, that you?” A tall, plump woman pushes the door fully open, her hair in a tight knot atop her head. Fierce, bright eyes fix upon us.

  “Hey Ma.” Abel continues on without hesitation and turns into a room at the end of the hall opposite a long flight of steps.

  The woman, Ma, tucks a towel into the waistband of her apron and bustles down the hall after us with a pronounced limp.

  Unsure what to do, I slip into the small room after Abel. It’s sparse with bare walls and only a table at the center with a half dozen chairs.

  Abel settles the boy down in one chair, then turns to embrace Ma.

  “Look at you, filthy!” Ma draws back from his embrace as if he repulses her, yet her hardened face breaks into a broad smile. “Always getting into trouble. What have you done this time? Fanny! Bring us some stew!” she barks over her shoulder, yanking the towel from her apron and kneeling beside the boy. “Hold this to your nose. You bleed on this floor, you wash it. Where’d you find this one?” She picks at the boy’s shirt and holds out his spindly arm, tsking like Clara might for too much flesh on mine.

  The woman reminds me of the Foundress. Loud. No nonsense. I like her immediately.

  “Let’s say you probably shouldn’t send him on errand near the East city stables anytime soon,” Abel says, grinning.

  “Aye! What a place to make a mess! You’ll get yourself killed, you will.” She takes a lighthearted swing at Abel—who dodges easily with a chuckle.

  A young girl, not over eleven or twelve, comes scurrying into the room carrying a tray of three steaming bowls and a long loaf of bread. The girl, Fanny presumably, sets it on the table, gives us a clumsy half-curtsy, then distributes the food.

  The boy brings the bowl straight to his mouth.

  Ma shoos Fanny away and thrusts a spoon into the boy’s hands with a stern look. “Abel, slow that boy down before he goes throwing it all back up.” She swings her intense gaze upon me and scrutinizes my face, my clothes. One thin, drawn-on eyebrow arches high. “Now, who’s this one?”

  I curtsy deeply. This woman deserves all the respect I can offer. I open my mouth to introduce myself, then glance at Abel, unsure if I ought to use my real name.

  “A new friend.” Abel nods at me and waves his hand at his head like I should remove my hood. “She’s Will’s girl. She grabbed the boy for me.”

  I hesitate, then ease back the hood. A woman who’ll take in a stray boy out of the kindness of her heart can’t be an enemy of mine, right?

  Ma’s eyes widen and her gaze sweeps over me anew. “Aye! What’s she doing with you, of all people, Abel?” She snatches my hands in hers and her eyes redden around the edges. “Child, I’ve not seen you since you were a wee. Since… well, since long ago. Sit, sit, look at you. Skin and bones, you’ll have some, too. And you, Abel, sit. Why does everyone insist on such thinness these days?”

  With that, she hobbles off back into the hallway, barking after Fanny again.

  “Why… How does she know me?” I say, still staring after the empty doorway.

  Abel shrugs. “Your father was very involved in this community when he was alive. He donated a lot of money to Ma to help with the kids she takes in. It’s part of why she can afford it, even today.”

  “He did?” My heart pangs. How can there be so much about my father that I don’t know? That he kept from me. Yet, a swell of pride aches in my chest. He’d been an even better man than I ever knew.

  Abel leans back in his chair and tugs down his mask to fall loose around his neck. “Your father was one of us, before he died.”

  My breath catches at the sight of Abel. His angular, masculine face and that broad, shadowed jaw. The thin, but shapely lips I can now see move with every word. He’s even more beautiful than I imagined. And still I don’t recognize him. “What do you mean, ‘one of us’?”

  Abel’s jaw tenses and his brows draw together. “I mean, he’s the reason I sit here. He’s the reason we exist at all. He’s the reason we’re alive, the reason we’ve avoided extermination. Why we stay in the forests. Our code. He began us. He was everything to us. To me.”

  I stare at him. I hear his words, but they must be about someone else. “I don’t understand. He was the High Guard. He served the King.” The King’s voice echoes in my head, Why is Will’s name on this stone?

  “He did, yes.”

  “Then he can’t be what you say.”

  “He was a man who fought for what was right, both for the monarchy and against it. I followed him into the forest that first time he went looking for a place for us to assemble. I was only fifteen then, but I was there that first time we gathered, when we first spoke out loud about fighting against the monarchy. I swore myself to his dream that day.”

  I suck in a breath, and my eyes burn. It… can’t be. My father? My hero? A.. traitor?

  “He began us, Aubrey. He named us the Apostate’s Disciples. He made us what we are. Gave us purpose and a way to fight. He began the rebellion, Aubrey. He was the rebellion. That’s why I wrote his name on that stone.”

  My stomach gives a horrible, sickening twist. I can’t breathe. “But… A wyvern killed him. I was there.”

  Abel’s lips press together. “A wyvern didn’t kill your father, Aubrey. I checked his body myself. He had a knife wound in his back. Wyverns don’t stab people. He was murdered.”