Page 55 of Stealing Tink
“Correct. We’ll be taking a passenger train. Would you like to know why?” The Nomad pauses, and I have a feeling it’s simply for the effect of aggravating the rest of us. It must work, because Venus taps her fingernails against the table.
“Oh, come now, don’t leave us in suspense,” says Phoenix.
“This cargo train that will be transporting the faerie dust,” says the Nomad, “will be—”
He stops as I write on my notepad, and I try not to be too pleased that he waits for me. Let me guess. It passes directly under the tracks of the passenger train.
“So you’ve done some train jumping, I surmise,” he says.
“You want us to jump from one moving train to another?” asks Phoenix.
“You should be the one least worried about it,” says the Nomad with a grin.
Phoenix goes immediately tense. “You know I have no desire to use that power.”
“Well, desire and necessity aren’t exactly the same thing, are they?” says the Nomad.
“I wouldn’t be worried about the jumping, if I were you,” says Acel. “There’s no way the Company would agree to a route that involved crossing paths with another train.”
“Oh, I have no doubt in my mind that it will not be their intention that the trains cross the overpass at the same time,” says the Nomad. “But things do happen.”
You mean, you happen, I write.
The Nomad’s smile is a bit too smug for my liking, and I suddenly have the urge to scratch out what I’ve written.
“How many train-robbings have you executed?” asks Acel, in a tone that suggests he’s still considering whether or not to hightail it back to his queen and reveal the Nomad’s location and plans.
“Let’s just say the number is greater than your chances with the princess,” says the Nomad.
Acel glares, but the Nomad turns to me and whispers, “You should have poisoned the queen’s cup.”
CHAPTER 24
There’s one problem with the Nomad’s train heist plan.
It requires Venus to make herself invisible.
The lot of us sit in the Nomad’s office, hours into trying to figure out how to extract her magic from the empty canvas.
Even Lars has run out of ideas.
Which is probably why he’s currently rambling off statistics about marriages between those who grew up in vastly different classes.
The numbers aren’t good.
You sure all of this is worth it? I write, pushing the writing pad over to Acel.
“I don’t care about Lars’s statistics,” he says.
No, I know you don’t. I mean is the princess worth having to listen to Lars?
That earns a chuckle from Acel, but he quickly turns somber. “I’d give anything to be with her. Were I gifted a thousand lives, every one of them would be spent chasing her.”
The Nomad’s quill screeches against the parchment upon which he’s writing.
“That’s a line straight out of a Noctorious poem if I’ve ever heard one,” says Venus, leaning back in her chair and tossing an apple into the air. If she notices the hurt flash across Acel’s expression, she doesn’t acknowledge it.
Noctorious.
