Page 3 of Tangled Fates

In the last fifty years, the production had slowed down, making it even harder to find and more expensive. Those who did carry Oria were often ransacked for their supplies unless you had the power to defend yourself. Last month the supply had dried up, no one had it, no one knew what had happened, until we found a man who had done a pickup once. He was under a magical oath, but I knew powerful people and we were able to break the oath and make him talk.

A tower on a mountain in the middle of nowhere is what we were looking for. He didn’t know the exact location of it because all he did was follow the guide but we did have a general idea of where to look and that was the best start we could hope for. This was the best kept secret of the twenty-first century.

It was shocking no one had found it yet, but so many rumors had surfaced over the years as to how vials of Oria were made. Many people speculated that it was the fountain of youth that was being bottled up or it was a special herb that had been given to someone by the gods. There was even a speculation that Oria was a person and this was their power being mass produced, which didn’t make sense because you couldn’t just bottle someone's magic.

A knock on the door made me look up from the backpack I was packing.

“Hey, I’m going to see Addie, do you need anything else?” Soren asked me, leaning against the door frame.

“No, but I think we should talk with Gray before you head out,” I said, putting another change of clothes in the bag.

“Good, he has a few ideas he wants to run by you before we leave,” he said.

“Alright, I’ll be down in a minute,” I called out as he left.

I finished putting in a few magical items along with a healing kit before zipping it up, setting my bag by the door before leaving my room. I headed down to the basement where we had our office set up.

Gray was sitting at our big table looking at an enormous calendar we had up with his brows furrowed.

“You look like you're taking a shit,” Soren laughed, throwing something at his twin, which he caught without looking.

“I was actually thinking about you,” he said, scanning the calendar.

“You see something we don’t?” I asked sitting down.

“We got an inquiry about possibly stealing a princess of some sort. She was adamant it had to happen in the next couple of months before Beltane, but didn’t give any other information,” he spoke while still looking at our schedule. “I don’t know if we will have time to do it, but I was just looking to see what we could push back.”

“How much?” I leaned my forearms on the table.

“Fifty million,” he said, as his brother whistled at the amount.

My eyebrows shot up at the amount, they really wanted to have priority.

“What did you tell them?” I asked.

“I told her I’ll call her back when I can have some stuff moved. So, let's decide when we want to do this so we can make sure we have time for it when we get back,” he said, finally looking at me with his emerald eyes.

“I say let's do it when we get back. Depending on where we need to kidnap this girl. It should be an easy in and out thing, unless we need to battle a dragon or some other creature.” I chuckled because if she was willing to pay that much, there had to be a catch.

“How long is it going to take us to do this job?” Gray asked, opening up a notebook to take notes.

He was the most organized out of all of us, so when it came to scheduling our clients, he was the most efficient at making sure our time was spent well.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Our priority is five objects and out of those five, I’m worried about two.”

“Just two? I’m worried about all of them. Gadolinium from the mountain of the gods is extremely rare and so are rubies from the garden of death,” Soren countered.

“Yes, but I have a contract for those. It's going to be expensive, but I can have those delivered. Lindsey said she would get them for us as long as I completed the money transaction,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “The Oria is going to take us the longest because we have to look for it, but I don’t expect it would take us more than a week to get done.”

“I think that’s being overconfident,” Gray said scribbling in his notebook.

“I say at least two weeks,” Soren said, looking down at some papers. “Maybe three just in case things go wrong.”

I rolled my eyes. “We have a general idea of the place and we have the amulet that should let us on the property. The man said there were no guards, just a powerful witch.”

“And if we run into the powerful witch?” Gray raised his brows.

“We will deal with her like we have every other person guarding what we need to take,” I said, knowing I was coming off as overconfident, but we had done this plenty of times, it was muscle memory at this point.

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