Page 116 of Stealing Tink

My heart would stop in my chest, if it wasn’t already pumping ferociously in panic.

Sweat breaks out on my forehead, fear right behind it, as the Nomad of my nightmares stares back at me.

“What? Don’t tell me you didn’t see this coming. Isn’t this what your dreams have been telling you would happen all along? Did one kiss erase what your mind has been warning you of since childhood? Stupid woman, always falling for men who so clearly want to use her to get to someone else.”

A single tear falls from my cheek, and the Nomad has the audacity to laugh. “Goodbye, Wanderer,” he says, unsheathing his dagger and pressing it to my throat. Then, leaning in close, so that I can feel his hot breath against my cheek, he whispers, “I look forward to doing this again one day.”

But whatever he’s about to do, he doesn’t get the chance. There’s a grunt, and the dagger in the Nomad’s hand clatters to the floor.

The one in my hand doesn’t.

It stays lodged, right where I left it, between the Nomad’s ribs.

He staggers forward, catching himself with his palm on the floor, the other hand running to his side, where the hilt now protrudes.

I’m not sure what I expect to see in his face. Anger, defeat, fear of death.

But when the Nomad glances up at me, the only thing beaming on his face is pride, and a bit of relief.

“Goodbye, Wanderer,” he whispers before he falls.

The Nomad doesn’t close his eyes in death. And for a split second, the moment I realize I’ve watched him take his last breath, my heart wilts.

It’s only then that I can feel the pain of the sword in my side.

Moments later, Acel rushes into the tent.

“Tink,” yells Acel, running toward me.

But Acel never gets to me.

Because a bright light flashes before my eyes, and there’s the sound of something ripping, and then I am gone.

CHAPTER 52

ACEL

Acel stares down at the man known as the Nomad.

The Nomad.

When the name used to come up in meetings with the queen, whispered on the mouths of nosy courtiers and bitter on the tongues of the queen’s soldiers, Acel had pictured a different sort of man. Brutal. Vulgar.

But when Acel had first laid eyes on the Nomad, he had heard another word in his ear. Boy.

In life, the Nomad had hidden it well. The casual confidence. The way he commanded a room. The bulk. The knowing eyes—those were what did it, in Acel’s opinion. Those eyes knew more than even the most ancient among them.

In death, eyes closed, there is no hiding it. The Nomad is a boy. Ten years Acel’s junior, at the least. He is a boy, and he is dead.

Acel does not know whether to mourn him.

When the Nomad had asked him to sneak into Peter’s tent and steal the pan flute, he had not argued. He had argued a bit when the Nomad, after acquiring the flute, had told Acel to leave. The alarm had already sounded, and though Acel expected the Nomad would go after Tink, he thought the Nomad’s pride in thinking he could do it on his own would end up with Tink hurt. So Acel had searched the carnival and ended up back here.

When he had arrived inside the tent, the events had been a simple calculation in his mind, honed for such things from his decade of service to his queen. The Nomad had betrayed them. It wasn’t so much the sword jutting from Tink’s abdomen—the Nomad was the dagger and poison type—but the look on her face. The way her golden brows had knit together. The sorrow in her eyes.

The thrust of her dagger into the Nomad’s side.

Acel had rushed for her, but there had been a flash of light. Acel was better trained than to blink, but it hadn’t mattered. The light was soon gone, and so was Tink.