NOA

When Noa had first arrived in Amarais, she hadn’t imagined it would’ve struck her with such familiarity. The breathlessness that ripped through her as she stood mere meters away from the Amaraian palace wasn’t so much due to its size or pristine exterior that gleamed a glittering white from the glow of the streetlamps, but rather how it loomed over its dominion. The gated courtyard-garden fanned out behind it, littered with fir trees woven with dazzling lights that carried through the tall privacy hedges. All of it danced as an embellished image in her mind of a place much further from here where snow had also once crunched beneath her boots and forced the air from her lungs through puffs of cold smoke.

She rubbed her hands together, feeling the friction of her gloves and ignoring that annoying ache that began to form in her legs. She’d been crouching for too long in the bushes on the perimeter of what was legally palace grounds. Then again, everything within Synos’s palace sector was considered palace grounds. Some would say that what she was about to do was the most foolish thing she’d ever done, but she was almost certain she could remember something far stupider, given enough time.

A figure crouched down beside her, his black hair obscuring his face until he brushed it away with his own gloved hand. Calm, dark eyes peered forward from the corner of her vision, surveying the same structure she’d been taking in. “Gluttony’s counting guards,” he said. “They’re about to change posts.”

“About to hit the five-minute mark,” she breathed.

“What happens if it’s not here?” he asked, sliding his attention back to her.

“Then we bust ass to that other house, case it, and get the hell out.” She shrugged, her fingers running along the edge of the flat, black mask resting on top of her head, tucked just inside her hood.

“Five minutes until guard change,” came the voice in her ear. A monotoned, collected woman’s voice that made Noa’s core tighten at the sound—Sloth, the final member of their party doing overwatch.

Greed put a finger to his own comm piece. “Greed and Pride in position. Gluttony, status?”

“On my way back,” came a man’s voice that didn’t sound all that different than Greed’s. But the soft, velvety tones were traded for something a little rougher around the edges and a lot more irritable through a grumble. “Two guards are already calling it quits.”

Noa narrowed her sights on the ridge of the upper windows barely visible through the garden, catching the heads of people roaming the upper ring of the ballroom. “I bet you’re wishing the two of us were in there right now, aren’t you, Greed?” she asked with a teasing smirk. “Taking in the night sky through that observatory-esque window, arm in arm with glasses of champagne.”

He rolled his eyes. “You mean thrown into a car and hauled off to a high-security prison for party-crashing whatever the hell this is?” He made a circular motion toward it. “I think I’ll pass.”

“We can dye our hair blond and get some contacts.”

“You going to ask Gluttony to dye his hair blond too just in case?”

“I could…”

“Could what?”

Noa whipped her head around to find Gluttony crouched down behind them, his gold-flecked eyes watching her with suspicion. Her lips formed a line, humming. That was the one visible difference between him and his twin brother that allowed her to tell them apart at a quick glance. A characteristic that she decided didn’t go all that well with blond.

“Forget about it,” she said, tapping her comm. “Sloth?”

“Forty seconds.”

“What was she saying?” Gluttony asked, furrowing his brows as he nudged his brother’s elbow.

“That you’d make a good blond,” he replied, lips twitching while he pulled down his mask.

Horrified, Gluttony’s head swung toward her. “Why the hell would I ruin perfection?”

“Twenty.”

Noa gagged and tugged her own mask over her face, shielding her lack-luster brown eyes and plain pale face from view like her mousy brunette mess of pulled-back hair tucked into her hood. “Everyone know where you’re going?”

“Straight for a drink on the ride out of here,” Gluttony said as he snapped his mask back into place.

“Ten.”

Noa eyed the last guard begin his final lap down the street, clad in navy blue and silvery—sorry, platinum-white trim with a short sword at his side. Once he was out of view, and Noa heard that magic word of “go,” she sprinted across the street. Moonlight poured over cleared pavement and decorative stone walkways as the three of them kept to the shadows that spanned along the fence line. It made a sharp turn toward a door with a small pad beside it that flickered green right before she grabbed the handle.

“Unlocked,” Sloth said. “All clear and cameras are locally looped.”

“Thank you,” Noa said in a sing-song voice back to her, throwing her shoulder into the hard metal.

It flew open to a white hallway turned gray with the overhead lights shut off. A thrill worked through her as the dark closed in behind them. She kept to the wall, stalking down the hall on silent footsteps until it gave way to a trickling of light from around a corner. She motioned for Gluttony to move to her side, which he did before he stopped to check that the route was clear.

“Go,” Noa hissed, hurrying him forward.

“Sorry for checking my damn corners—”

“Consider this a trust exercise. Now move.”

Grumbling, he jogged down the hall ahead of them, glancing back before he vanished down another corridor. It could’ve been a glare, but Noa shrugged it off in favor of the double doors to her right, framed by frosted wall sconces and ornate end tables. Weird little twisting porcelain sculptures sat on either side, which she guessed probably cost more than a night in their hotel room. She slipped a square key from her pocket and pressed it to the sensor under the handle, watching it pulse yellow a couple of times until it flashed green. A satisfying click granted her entry.

It was a tidy space, holding a minimalistic desk in its center, framed by decorative built-in shelves that were cluttered with digital picture frames, more weird sculptures, and… books? She started over to one of the horizontal stacks, gentle in her removal of the thick tomes until the whole thing came free, held together in her hand. She frowned.

“Why?” She held it up to Greed in his search along another wall, turning the fake, glued-together books around. “Why the hell would someone do this?”

“Would you stop fooling around and help me look for the safe?” he asked, standing up from one of the floor cabinets.

With a huff, she put it back down and dropped to the cabinet portion of the shelving unit. It opened to a bunch of cables, old devices, and dusty hard drives. She closed it, biting down on her tongue as she crawled toward the middle cabinet. A quick tug on the handles, and her eyes went wide.

“Well, shit.”

Greed’s muffled footfalls against the carpet greeted her, and he pulled open the cabinet a little further. He pushed up his mask, confusion consuming his features. “A manual safe?”

“Should I call Gluttony?” she asked.

“No, move.” 

She stood, worrying her lip as he took her place, put his ear to the small metal door, and began to turn the dial.

“Have you ever cracked a safe like this before?” she asked.

“Once…” The far-off look in his eye didn’t instill much confidence in her.

Noa gripped one of the shelves, pressing her thumb into it a little harder with each passing second. Her jaw began to clench in the wake of the silence. Well, at least, until that was broken by the sudden, distant pounding against the tile in the hallway.

Greed froze, locking eyes with her. That horrible, clawing sensation started working its way up her throat as she grabbed one of the small statues and rushed to the side of the doors. He threw his mask back on, standing with his hands gripping the desk, poised to overturn it. They waited. Noa’s pulse pounded in her ears as the footsteps grew louder, echoing with every nervous readjustment of the ugly little thing in her hand.

A shadow passed over the crack under the door, fading in and out, taking the running with it. Noa turned her face toward Greed again, the two of them stock-still for another moment before he dropped back down to his knees.

“Keep an eye on the door,” he whispered.

“Then hurry it the hell up.” She pressed a thumb to her earpiece. “Gluttony, is there anyone down there by you?”

His pause slipped into an eternity that tightened her grip on her makeshift weapon.

“No, why?”

Noa let out a breath. “Someone was running over here. Keep an eye out.” She kept her eyes on the door, taking a couple steps back while she strained to listen for some sort of indication of Greed’s progress. The only one she got was the final pop of its small door coming free, followed by his alleviated sigh. She fell to her knees next to him.

He pulled it open to reveal documents. Paper documents but documents, nonetheless. Noa’s stomach dropped just before she gritted her teeth and reached inside, shuffling through it all in hopes that there might be something sitting underneath.

“First fake books, and now real paper with—”

“Art receipts,” Greed finished, tapping the top of one in her hands.

“You got to be kidding me.”

“Let’s hope Gluttony found something.”

“Yes, let’s, or I’m going to be pissed that we’re spending another godsdamned night in this frozen hell.”

He tensed, clamping a hand over her wrist to stop her manic paper shuffling, filling the void with the sound of jogging. She scrambled to stand, reclaiming her statuette just in time to watch the shadow pass by the doors again.

“What the hell is going on?” she hissed down to him.

Greed tucked the documents back into the safe and pushed himself up. “I don’t know, but let’s wrap this up.” With a click of the small door and a spin of the dial, Noa relinquished her toy to its former home on their way out.

“Did we lock the doors?” came Gluttony’s voice in her ear.

“Um… no…” Sloth answered. “Why are you asking?”

Greed checked their own door, pulling it open for Noa to go first. When there was no follow-up from Gluttony, she decided to hop in with a question of her own.

“Sloth,” she said, “who the hell was running up and down the hall?”

“What? What are you talking about?”

Noa felt her features twist in confusion. Was she that distracted she completely missed all of that? Her pace quickened at the sight of Gluttony taking a stroll down the main hall at the end of the intersection. Something was wrong here—she just couldn’t place what quite yet. But once she rounded the corner, she found their next major problem of the night.

A boy and a girl were pressed up against the double doors leading to the center of the palace, neither of them all that much younger than her—maybe twenty or twenty-one. Both were dressed in black party attire: a suit and a simple long-sleeved, knee-length dress with dark leggings that registered in Noa’s mind as an unadorned staff uniform. The girl’s wide blue eyes stayed pinned on them in terror while she gripped the boy’s arm. However, he was the one that gave Noa pause. He had those tell-tale blue Amaraian eyes like his companion, but his hair wasn’t blond like hers. It was black.

“The doors shouldn’t be locked,” she said, unable to really compute anything else in her automatic advance on their two witnesses. This was something she needed to deal with, simple as that, even if she wasn’t sure how to deal with said problem just yet. The main problem was that voice cutting through her sluggish thoughts.

“I don’t see any of you on the camera feeds,” came Sloth’s reply, her voice climbing. “Hold on—”

That was when Noa saw it: the red, blinking light barely visible under the balcony past the half-glass doors. A small cluster of them stuck to the entrance to what had to be the ballroom. And they were blinking faster with each passing second. In an instant, she lurched forward, a motion that Greed mimicked.

“Get down!” she shouted, throwing herself over one of them as they flinched down.

The five of them hit the floor just as the world erupted in a loud chorus of shouts and booms and the tinkling of shattering glass.