Bailey Thistle was mortified at herself.

The night prior contained her first kiss; then her second, then her third. Each was with a different person. Two of which were people she’d known for a very short period of time.

Fuck.

A crumpled-up bolus of shame floated through her inside. Phantoms of three sets of lips were there with her, brushing against hers like they were parts of herself she’d long since lost.

“Okay. Okay. I’m cool. I’m normal,” she said to herself, despite being quite abnormal and only debatably cool.

She stood up and paced wide parabolic shapes across her room. A headache occurred to her, but that was the least of her problems. The real issue was that she’d kissed three people and more than that, she wanted to do it again forever.

“Okay. Bailey, you’re going to go down there and tell them that was very nice, but could we please forget that ever--”

“No,” she interrupted herself, “no. What am I saying? Forget? That’s all I want to remember! But--”

The trouble was that her list of wants became recursive. She wanted to hold all three of her friend’s hands and kiss them and… get married near a lake. But then the embarrassment and burning acid shame set in, and she wanted to not want those things, but then after that she wanted to not not want those things, and so it went.

“Fuck me.”

She peeled off her dress, a deep blue thing that veered into being indigo. It was caked onto her skin, with the wet cold of the wintry air serving as the filling.

“Okay. No. Don’t tell them to forget it… but. I can’t do it again. Have to restrict it to just kissing Henry.”

“But no, Henry was okay with -- ugh.”

She wasn’t supposed to want any of this. The fact that her affections seemed to lie with three people… loving one person was already risky. Placing love in another person was promising a piece of oneself, with the understanding that that piece was never coming back. Was there even enough Bailey to go around for three?

Cold compelled her to throw on new clothing; she chose her green robe. Gravity and a growling hunger in her belly compelled her to leave her room; she went downstairs.

There, before her, were the three people she’d made out with, sitting in a circle at the dining table. Emma was there also in the room, but based on her gloomy expression, she was in a whole other cosmos all her own.

Henry stood up and went over to Bailey.

“Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning. Here.” Henry handed her the cup. Bailey recognized it instantly and gulped it down, without even tasting it. It was better that way.

“Wow. Not even questioning it, huh?” Hannah said.

“I’ve had Henry’s hangover cure before. Just let it slide down your throat, and keep your tongue pinned down. Works every time!”

It would restore her body’s water and salt and proteins and all that, but sadly his hangover cure didn’t fix shame. Bailey took a seat at the table, weighed down by it, pulled closer to hell by it.

“I’m making breakfast, if that’s okay?” Henry said.

“Sure, go for it.”

There was a quiet energy at the table that morning. Everyone save Bailey and Emma looked worn out, with ruffled hair and day-old clothes on. As Henry hummed and cooked some delicious-smelling thing in a pan, everyone just sort of sat in silence and looked at one another.

Except for Emma, who was looking out a window with furrowed brows.

“Ugh,” Lillian said, “my jacket is sweaty and disgusting. I should have taken it off last night.”

She shed it and hung it over the back of her chair, leaving her in her trousers and starchy button-up. Once more, Bailey marveled at her… she wore men’s clothing well. Whatever gender business was going on with Lillian Stone was unfortunately right up Bailey’s alley.

“Yeah, my clothes aren’t doing so hot, either,” Hannah said. She pulled at the arms of her dress, a hand-me-down from Bailey’s exponentially expanding wardrobe. That dress in particular was a thick wool fabric, deep blue in color, and it settled over Hannah’s stomach and hips beautifully.

Fuck.

Bailey being bisexual was old news, even pre-knowing she was a woman, but fuck. Hot guys? Hot ladies? Hot messes? They all did it for her. She was whatever the opposite of picky was, at least in terms of presentations she found attractive.

“So how are you, Bailey?” Lillian asked.

“I slept okay.”

Lillian nodded.

“That’s good. That is, however, not an answer to my question.”

“Alright. Fair,” Bailey said, “I don’t really know. Lots of things to think about, you know?”

“I do.”

It was at this point that Emma snapped out of whatever fugue state she was in, and snapped her attention towards everyone at the table. Dark bags had formed under her eyes, and her gaze had a thousand-yard stare quality to it.

“Woah, are you okay?” Bailey asked.

“I’m peaches and cream.”

That, to borrow from Lillian, was not an answer to Bailey’s question. It was in fact barely a coherent sentence.

“Come sit down for a second, Emma. You look exhausted.”

“Yeah,” Hannah put in, “you look like you were up partying all night.”

Emma’s gaze could have curdled freshly-milked, uh, milk.

“I’m the life of the party. Reality bends itself to my will to make my entire existence one long party. Yesterday was like if a party and another party were college roommates and sucked each other off in a fit of mutual pity and desperation for human contact,” Emma said, with a hard edge to her voice.

This, for Bailey, felt like too much information. She decided to think about how ‘party’ stopped sounding like a real word after enough repetitions of it in a short timespan.

“Good for you,” said Hannah, who had no patience for Emma whatsoever. She sipped out of a cup and rolled her eyes, to properly demonstrate her irritation.

“Yes. Hooray for me. I’m going out.” Emma made a move for her bedroom.

“Where?” Bailey asked.

Emma took this question in a stride, which is to say, she crumpled it up and tossed it in the nearest refuse bin.

“What do you care?”

“Me? I care a whole lot. You seem in a bad way.”

This response drew a fascinating new expression from Emma. The expression in question was an empty grimace, the kind of expression one might get frozen onto their face and need to alter their brain chemistry to stop making.

“Did you not hear about how I’m the life of the party?”

“Yes, but is the party a funeral?” Bailey said.

“Stop being so clever. It’s an annoying trait.”

By then, Emma had called Bailey annoying, or a pest, or a pain in the ass, many times. That was a fact of their siblinghood; Bailey was clever and irritating, as a little sister ought to be. But this was not a normal sisterly ‘Hey, you little pissant, shut your mouth’ ‘Hmm, no, I don’t think I shall, Emma’. This was … real. Cruel.

There was no time to react, because Emma was already vanishing up the stairs.

“You deserve better than that,” Henry said, from his spot in the kitchen.

“Do I?” Bailey asked, because she was unsure if she did or not.

 

*****

 

Bill couldn’t help but notice Henry’s absence. It was roll call, with everyone in the Order standing in a neat little line, and Henry wasn’t there.

But, curiously, Sir Fredrick was. He never ever came to roll call, usually. He was above needing to stand in a line. Such was the wages of being a hero, apparently.

“Where’s the new one?” asked the roll-taker.

“Not here,” Ulysses put in, “Bill, he’s your roommate. Have you seen him?”

“Not since yesterday.”

This information was taken with the same level of interest one might take in a single cloud on a rainy day. When the man taking attendance spoke of ‘punishment’, he did so like he was reading it off the Daily Apocalypse's weather column.

“Hmm. We’ll find a new punishment detail for him. Sir Frederick!”

The old hero ambled over. For some reason, Bill felt a knife of dread in his gut as Sir Frederick approached. The hero seemed… troubled, existentially. It was as if he had received bad news, and that bad news was now seeping out of his pores and into the atmosphere.

“Yes?”

“How do we punish the new blood? He’s not here.”

Sir Frederick pinched his temples, as if maybe Henry was hiding up there. He wasn’t, though. Just for the record.

“I will go fetch him.”

“Is -- is something wrong, sir?” Bill asked.

“So many things are wrong,” Sir Frederick said, “but I know how I can fix them. Or, some of them. There’s only one place he could be. You stay put here.”

 

*****

 

After breakfast in the tower, Henry had a nice time sitting on the couch. The quiet of sharing a space with three people he cared for was a special, sacred thing, and he savored it all.

Bailey was there with him on the couch. She was quiet, in the way that a freshly exhumed grave was quiet. In fact, she had not said a single word since Emma’s departure that morning. So while Hannah and Lillian talked in quiet voices over the dishes, Henry dispensed emergency cuddles.

“What’s on your mind?” he asked, as he took her hand in his.

“Mmmmmm,” she said, with a flat inflection.

“Yeah. I hear you.”

If Henry was one hundred percent honest, he thought that the whole world took Bailey Thistle for granted. But, more relevantly, both Alice and Emma seemed to do this to an absurd degree… he didn’t get it. Maybe it was the massive raging crush he’d nursed for the last five or so years of knowing her, but he didn’t understand how anyone could treat her the way her sisters treated her. It was like they assumed Bailey would just grin and bear whatever nasty attitudes they felt like heaping on her… it was rancid.

“When you asked, do you deserve better,” Henry said, “the answer is yes. A thousand times yes.”

“Would you say that if you didn’t think I was the sexiest woman alive?”

Henry and Bailey both laughed, in that way that was both sad and joyous at the same time.

“Yes. But I’m also right, you are the sexiest woman alive… well, one of three of them.”

It wasn’t much of a joke, so why were they laughing? Why did Bailey’s stomach rise and fall with mirth?

“Wow. You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Hey, you’re the one who kissed the other two.”

Bailey scratched at his beard with her fingers. It tickled.

“Sadly, you’re right. I’m not alone on the pedestal… I’m one of the four hottest people in the world, and I have to live with that.”

“Four? Who’s the last one?”

“You, you doink.” Bailey poked his forehead with her index finger, which was a particularly aggressive form of pointing at someone.

This seemed to confuse Henry; he quirked his eyebrows and tilted his head, perhaps to see the question on his mind from another perspective. Evidently, it wasn’t enough, because he said, “’Doink’? What’s a ‘doink’?”

“What you are! A very sexy man who is very silly and needs to be reminded of that fact.”

“Hmm. I’m not sure that sounds like me.”

Bailey poked him in the forehead again, and scratched his beard. He made a slight noise at that that satisfied Bailey to hear immensely.

“You’ll have to take my word for it.”

“Kiss me if you think your word is any good,” Henry said.

She kissed him. Once more, lips met lips, meat loved meat, and the resulting spark was enough to start a forest fire. The destructive and reconstructive power of their bodies meeting was enough to ruin a party dedicated to a child’s place in a gendered hierarchy and make it a much better party with less gender and more fun.

“Hot dog. Alright. Sure, I’m a doink.”

“It’s that easy?”

“You’re very persuasive.”

It was at that point that both Hannah and Lillian joined them in the sitting area. Sadly, the couch was only so big, so they had to scoot some chairs so the four of them could be in tight proximity.

Everyone looked at everyone else; eyes found eyes, smile found smile, laughter found laughter. A wave of embarrassment washed over the four of them, as if existing in proximity had become as charged as making out with one another.

“So,” Lillian said.

“So,” said everyone else, in counterclockwise order.

“I wanted to… discuss last night. But I have to inform you all of something before we get to that.”

Lillian faced Hannah, and at once her eyes changed to a deep purple, and the suggestion of horns emerged from her forehead like twin headaches.

“First of all, Hannah, I am a dragon. Or… I’m on the way to being one. I’ve yet to make the final change.”

“Oh, wait. That’s how you climbed up without using bedsheets,” Hannah said.

“Bedsheets?” Bailey asked.

“Yeah. Sorry. Used your sheets as a grappling hook to climb to the roof.”

Bailey was too surprised to be upset.

“Don’t do it again?” she said, in the form of a question, because she didn’t know how to process that information. Hannah agreed to this with an affirmative word; bedsheets made rotten grappling hooks anyhow.

“The second thing… all of you,” Lillian put her hand out, “I’m going to do something very dangerous. Tonight. And there is a chance that I may fail and get caught or die. So…”

Lillian bit her lip… her incisor was sharp, sharper than a human’s. Bits of her dragon-ness were making themselves known.

“As much as I want to, say, kiss all of you and have romantic goings-on, I cannot in good faith do so until I know I’m in the clear.”

“Alright,” Bailey said, “that’s fair. But can I say my reactions?”

Lillian nodded.

“One: holy shit you like me. And all three of us? Wow. I mean, same, I like you so much I can hardly process it, but wow. This is not what I expected when I got a new job all those months ago. And two: can I ask what it is you’re doing tonight?”

It came out like she was asking if Lillian was free for a date, which was not at all the intention. This was a dangerous thing, damn it, and Bailey had to focus on the important thing: making sure Lillian Stone lived to see another free sunset.

Though Bailey did have a thought…

“Breaking into the chapel. Lord Gaius has some documents I need to steal. Once I have them, I am to give them to someone else,” Lillian said.

Both Henry and Hannah’s reactions happened at once, and they were both ones of recognition. This was somewhat confusing to Bailey, who had known nothing.

“So that’s your heist,” Hannah said.

“Oh, yeah, this is the thing you’re doing for Yulia,” Henry added.

Lillian nodded.

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess,” Bailey said, “you’ll have to come back safe to us, hm? Is there maybe a way we can help?”

For a second, then two, then ten, then twenty, Lillian looked…

Here were the facts: Lillian’s mouth was open, in the way it might be if surprised. Her whole body froze, but not out of the cold. A slight noise flew from her mouth. It was the shape of shock in a body; the shock of being wanted, of being asked to return safe.

Bailey found that to be a profoundly sad reaction. She’d have to remind Lillian she was wanted until it stopped being such a surprise; assuming that was an accurate assessment.

“I don’t--”

Bang, bang, bang, went the downstairs front door. It sounded like steel plunged into flesh, like metal consuming meat, like armor trapping someone in its cold bosom for a lifetime. The sound was gray and gnarled like a dead tree with weapons of war growing off its branches.

“Fuck’s sake. I’ll get it,” Bailey said.

She went downstairs, and found that Sir Frederick had already let himself in. This would have been alarming if it wasn’t so damned annoying.

“Can I help you?”

“Where’s Henry? He’s in trouble,” Sir Frederick said.

She looked at the man. He was wearing armor… had she ever seen him out of armor? What was he protecting himself from?

“Is that right?” she asked.

“Yes. Is he here? I can’t imagine he isn’t.”

“If I hear from him… I’ll let you know,” Bailey said.

It would do, as a deflection. Or so Bailey thought...

“He’s here, though, isn’t he?”

“I will let you know, Sir Frederick, if I hear from him. Good day!”

Bailey coaxed him towards the front door. At first, this worked, but she hit a snag once he was in the doorframe.

Until then, he had not been looking at her. But then, at the door frame, he did. His face twisted into a horrifying shape. It was like he was really seeing her for the first time; his whole expression looked like an exclamation point made flesh.

“Say, while I have you,” he put a weird spin on the word ‘have’, as if he possessed Bailey somehow, “are you by any chance descended from a pair of doctors? Or a surgeon and a midwife, more specifically?”

Every bone in Bailey’s body said one thing; lie. Lie your stockings off, Thistle. She obeyed those commands without a hesitation. It was a rare moment when she felt so unanimously compelled to do anything, let alone lie.

“No. My father was a tailor, my mother a singer. Is that a problem?”

Sir Frederick ‘Child Kidnapper and Murderer’ Raymond frowned at her, as if his eyes were needles poised to draw secrets from her flesh.

“No, not a problem. I will come back later to check in and see if he’s been around here.”

“You do that,” Bailey said.

She shut the door in his face, but he was still hovering out front. When she was most of the way up the stairs, she stopped and waited to listen for his footsteps.

“There were two of them left… I can’t believe I missed them. Was that one of them? How’d they get out of the house…”

And then, after speaking that terrifying sentence, he finally stopped casting a bright shadow over the tower’s door.

Two of them left. Knowing his sordid history, knowing how he’d taken Emma… two of them. Two kids he couldn’t take and raise to be conformist assimilationist tools.

Fuck.

Bailey had to be careful around that guy, even though she had a vision of stabbing his eyes out with a fork, or perhaps throwing him in the hungry Golden River. All she had to do was play it cool and stick with her lie. Even if he saw through it, that would keep things from…

It would maybe stop whatever horrible thing could happen from happening.

She went back upstairs, with a terrible idea in her stomach.

“Hey Lillian,” she said, “will this plan of yours involve fucking the Order and/or Sir Frederick, specifically, over? In any capacity at all?”

“I certainly hope so.”

“Can I help you do it?”

Lillian frowned, and bobbed her head from one side to the other.

“If you want, I will not stop you.”

She took Bailey’s hand in hers.

“Listen, though. If it comes to a choice between you and me? Choose you. I’m an Inquisitor, and I have some level of legal immunity. You are a civilian, and if you’re caught helping a crime against the church, you will be swept away, as if the Golden River had finished swallowing you. Do you understand?”

A cold, wet shiver ran its way through Bailey’s bloodstream. She understood the threat of being swept away by a force beyond her power just fine. If not for Lillian’s hand touching hers, she might have frozen over right then and there.

“Yes. I do, Lillian.”

“And you still want in?”

“I want to make Sir Frederick bleed.”

Lillian nodded. There was a solemn understanding between them. It took all of Bailey’s power to not grab Lillian in a hug and swear sweet nothings about burying him and his Order, whatever it took.

“If Bailey’s doing it, I’m doing it,” Henry said, “and also, fuck the Order. Let’s kick their asses.”

“And if you’re getting in a scrape, like hell I’m letting you do it by yourself,” Hannah put in.

Was that a smile on Lillian’s face? A mischievous one? Adorable. Bailey squeezed her hand, and Lillian squeezed back.

“I can work with this. Give me an hour to think, and we can make this work.”

 

*****

 

The training room absorbed the echo of  -- no, not crossing blades -- combat. In lieu of sword noises, it was mostly the grunts of Bill and Ulysses as they swung wooden blades at one another.

Neither was doing very well, because they were both lousy swordsmen. Years of training in the sword had borne them nothing but fetid, rotten fruit. They swung at inopportune times. They blocked too early and attacked too late. Their footwork was, to their misfortune, like a dancer’s who had forgotten what exactly this ‘dancing’ business was about.

“So where do you think he is?” Ulysses asked.

“How… how in the world would I know?”

Ulysses swung, and badly wished he was working unarmed instead.

“I don’t know. Make something up!”

“He fell down a well,” Bill said.

“That’s stupid.”

Bill riposted an attack, but the riposte felt like the way week-old oatmeal tasted. He missed the followup attack, and left his defenses wide open.

“You told me to make something up!”

“Yeah, and you said something stupid. Cause and effect.”

Thankfully for Bill, Ulysses swung wide and hit the floor instead of him. They were both still in the game by sheer incompetence.

“If that’s so bad, you make something up, then.”

“Fine. I think he’s--”

“Go on, say it,” Bill said.

Ulysses paused, because his wooden sword was in fact stuck in a crack in the floor. He pulled at it, but it stayed put. This was the third time this had happened in one day.

With a sigh, he went over to a rack of wooden swords. He removed one from the rack resentfully, with all his resentment aimed squarely at the weapons.

“Okay, I can’t think of anything better. He fell down a well. He broke every bone in his stupid ginger body… at least he doesn’t have to deal with the Order anymore.”

Neither of them liked that idea very much, though. Ulysses kicked some dust at the floor, and Bill sucked on his lip like it was a sour treat.

“He wouldn’t leave us to our fates,” Bill said, “he’s too nice for that.”

“Okay. He broke half the bones in his stupid ginger body and lived. Happy?”

“As a clam.”

It was a lie, but it was a lie both of them could accept.

“What do you mean by ‘leave us to our fates’, anyhow?” Ulysses said.

“You know that, uh, well, we’re never getting out of here. We’ll be old and gnarled and bitter like Sir Frederick on his bad days, and by then we’ll be so set in our ways we’ll forget we ever wanted to leave.”

Ulysses felt his stomach drop at the thought. The idea that the walls of the castle might close around him forever and leave but one path forward sat in his body as a kidney stone might.

“Do you think you could do it? Forget?”

“I mean, it’d take a while. But yes. If I have to.”

“What if you didn’t have to?”

Bill exhaled.

“You say that like you believe that, and that, uh, freaks me out. What are you thinking?”

“I asked the Inquisitor to steal our contracts from my dad’s office.”

A jaw hung open and gulped at that; it was Bill’s.

“Okay, first question, who are you and what have you done with Ulysses? Two: If you are Ulysses, are you out, and I don’t say this lightly, of your gourd?”

“All I’m saying is, she gives us those, we burn ‘em? All we need is some chaos to distract everyone and we can just run. They can’t hold us down if the contracts are destroyed.”

“Do you really, really think that we’re bound here by pieces of paper?”

“I mean… yes?”

What else were they bound by? Destroy the contracts, they would be good to go. No more death oaths!

“We’re stuck because as far as your dad, my brother, and Sir Frederick are concerned, we’re, you know, weapons. They’ll sharpen us up and shave off our curves, turn us into the blades that clip wings off of dreams. We’re gonna spear the hope of a new self through the neck with lances, and we’re going to shrug off the possibility of rebirth with the shield of denial.”

“So you say we just sit here and let it happen, then? Like, I should go back to punching Henry?”

“No... Damn it. Do you think she’s gonna actually do it? Steal our contracts?”

The idea that the inquisitor would betray the deal had occurred to Ulysses, but it wasn’t a useful line of thinking. If she did so, Ulysses would be left in a lurch, and there would be no drastic measures left to take. The outside world would be closed to him for good.

The Order, after all, had a history of hounding its targets for years; burn their house down, take their children, let them flee. Wait until they settle into a new place, and make threatening moves. Then let them flee again.

If the Order had any shred of mercy in them, they would either leave people alone or kill them painlessly. But ‘mercy’ wasn’t how Ulysses’ great-whatever grandpa and friends got a holiday named for their dragonslaying exploits, was it?

“I have files she wants. Real juicy stuff… I read through it. If her hate-hard-on for… well, I guess our whole organization is as big as I think it is, she’s gonna slobber all over this. In short; she’d fucking better.”

“I want you to say that again and this time consider your word choice,” Bill said, “because that was a doozy of a sentence.”

Ulysses furrowed his brow.

“Bite me, Byserson.”

“Pass, Gaius. You want to have another go at sparring?”

“Fuck no.”

“Me neither.”

 

*****

 

Planning a heist was a bit like planning a house party; there was a guest list, an itinerary, and an overwhelming terror that it would all go to shit once it was go time.

“Okay. This is going to be a quick entrance, and if we have any luck at all it will be a quick exit,” Lillian said.

They were gathered around a drawn-out map of the chapel. Lillian had done it freehand, but the lines were clean and formed right-ish angles. It was overall a pretty professional job, save for the drawn-in dragons eating cartoon priests.

When questioned on the half-eaten priests, Lillian just smiled and turned everyone’s attention back to the matter at hand.

“The thrust of it is simple; I will be breaking into Lord Gaius’ office through a window. I will need two people downstairs, one to serve as a lookout, and one to catch the documents as I drop them out the window.”

“Wait, wait, wait. You’re dropping them out the window?” Bailey said.

“Well, they will be in a bag, but yes. The window is our ingress and egress… if the doors to his office open at any point during this, we are capital-f fucked.”

Fair was fair; Bailey didn’t mind the idea of capital-f Fucking happening, but not in--

She had to stop. There was a time and a place to be horny as all get out, but this wasn’t it. Like Lillian said, it would be an absolute tragedy to be attached to her and then for her to get in massive trouble and never see her again…

Considering that had basically already happened to Lillian, Hannah, and Henry, Bailey found it vital to not let that happen.

“Alright. I’ll catch,” Bailey said.

“I’ll keep lookout,” Henry put in.

“Good. Now. Hannah.”

“Yes?”

“How would you feel about impersonating a reporter from The Daily Apocalypse?”

Hannah’s eyes lit up like the dragonquell torch parade, which was to say, she was more excited for that idea than one human being should have been capable of.

“Can I be extremely over the top and weird about it?”

“It’s not only acceptable that you do so, but in fact entirely necessary.”

Lillian said it with an evil, evil smile, complete with fanged canines.

“Fuck yes. What am I doing?”

“Distracting the staff. Their beloved propaganda rag sending a reporter in person would be an event of historic significance.”

“So, interviews and things?”

“Ask for interviews. Start debates with the pastor. Do anything and everything to gum up the works. Make sure no one enters the office while you’re at the chapel. Get as much attention as possible, as obnoxiously as possible, save for getting thrown out early.”

Hannah’s mouth quirked upwards.

“Okay. I can do that!”

For a moment, all was quiet. Lillian inhaled in through her nose several times, and squared up her shoulders. Bailey, for want of a better way of comforting her, offered up a hand. Lillian took it.

“Wonderful.”

Lillian cleared her throat.

“Henry, as lookout, you’ll be watching the path behind the hallway. Bailey, you’ll be right under the window… if Henry so much as sneezes a warning, you get out of there. Understand? No heroism.”

“No heroism,” Bailey echoes, “only villainy and evil from me.”

“You understand, then.”

“If any of you feel the urge to back out… please, please,” Lillian said, “do so now. I am daring you with powdered sugar on top to live your lives without the burden I’m carrying. It’s not something I would wish on any living thing, no matter how vile.”

“Dare rejected,” Bailey said.

This garnered a sad laugh from Lillian. This was happening. There was no way in the whole hot cosmos she was going to do this alone.

“Also, you dared us with ‘powdered sugar’, which is a bullshit thing Bailey made up. Not a properly formatted dare, you get zero points,” Hannah said.

“Hey!”

Hannah made a kissy face at Bailey, which stayed Bailey’s irritated expression.

“I joined this order expecting… I don’t know. But no. I want to know the truth about this as much as you, if not more. Plus, Lillian, if you think I’m giving up a chance for a reprise of our old heists, you don’t know me as well as you used to,” Henry said.

No one said a word. The event horizon had been passed; promises were made, debts of owing one another had been incurred.

Thus, it was time to take it all to the bank.

“Alright, then. To hell with it, let’s do it.”