06 - Rule of Thieves Read online

  I didn’t give him so much as a last look but turned and stalked off across the garden, my throat aching with emotion but my back proud and straight.

  “Wait,” he called after me.

  I paused but didn’t turn.

  I heard his footsteps as he came up behind me. “Ilan, after I’m praetor, will you marry me?”

  It was a startling question. One I’d never seriously considered before. But as soon as he spoke it, I knew what my answer must be.

  “No,” I said. “But I’ll marry you before you’re praetor, if Hadrian will perform the ceremony.”

  An Ending

  And that is how I find myself back in Selbius and standing on the rooftop of the Temple of Light, awaiting the arrival of Hadrian and my soon-to-be husband who has gone to find him. I have no wedding clothes or maidens of honor for the ceremony that will take place within the hour. But what does a Dimmingwood outlaw care for such things?

  Looking over the gardens of the Beautiful district stretched out below, I see them in my mind as they were so recently. Blood-soaked and strewn with the bodies of those cut down in what people of the city now call the End Battle. The fight that marked the end of the Skeltai war and the beginning of peace throughout the province.

  But the scene the sun shines on today is very different from the memories in my head. Signs of the fight are already being cleared away by workers who buzz around the area like a swarm of ants. They’ve scrubbed the blood from the cobbled walks. The churned earth and trampled flowerbeds are being repaired. The broken pieces of the Queen Tamliess statue have disappeared to be replaced with a fresh block of sparkling granite from the quarries.

  I see a little man, looking smaller still at this distance, chipping at that mountain of stone with a hammer and chisel. Rumor says this artist has been inspired to create a monument to commemorate the End Battle. Some suspect the statue will take the form of a female archer with a familiar likeness. If that is so, I suppose passersby will soon look on it and say, “There is a hero of the war.” Or even, “There is the wife of the new praetor.”

  But I, I will always think, there stands an outlaw of Dimmingwood.