Page 31 of Gilded Locks

She didn’t know how much time had passed, but it couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. With only a toe balancing, not really supporting, her weight, her arms started shaking. She moved.

By carefully releasing pressure on the branch below her, she kept it from creaking again. Then she hugged tight to the tree, peering around the trunk at the maple grove.

The Rogue was staring in the wrong direction.

Grace released pent-up tension in a soft, consistent exhale.

The Rogue started pacing noisily. He didn’t seem to have found her letter, and he wasn’t leaving.

I’m not coming,Grace wanted to shout. If he thought he’d been stood up, surely he would leave the way he’d come, on the path next to the oak Grace clung to, so she could attack.

But he didn’t head her direction. Instead, the Rogue uttered a deep grumble Grace couldn’t decipher, tramped to the maple tree hiding her letter, and began to climb.

She almost snorted, watching him clamber up the tree. He was slow and uncoordinated.

The Rogue settled in the tree, pulled the verdure cloak around himself, and promptly disappeared into the leaves and shadows.

Grace stared at the faint shimmer of the camouflaged cloak.

Well, then.

The rest of her descent was silent and blocked from the Rogue’s view.

On the ground, she circled the Rogue’s tree, careful to stay out of his line of sight. Along the way she found an acorn.

Two feet from the tree, Grace pulled back her arm and chucked the acorn at the shimmer of the verdure cloak.

It hit, eliciting a deep cry of surprise and a flurry of hectic motion that shattered the illusion.

The Rogue tried to balance himself, waving his arms, but in vain. Clutching the cloak tightly around himself, he plummeted a dozen feet to the ground.

Grace wasn’t concerned. The shielding capabilities of the verdure cloak would have dulled the impact of the acorn and softened his fall, simply stunning him for a moment.

She approached with speed, intending to pull back the hood and find out who hid behind that mask.

When she was just steps from him, the man raised his cloaked head, saw her, and swiped a leg at her.

In the space of a blink, Grace found herself sprawled out, the force of the impact radiating through her back. She gasped, her body desperate for the air that had vacated her lungs.

She rolled to her side, gritting her teeth against a twinge of pain but determined not to allow the Rogue time to flee.

Only, when she managed to get to her feet, he stood lounging against the tree trunk.

“Well, that hurt,” Grace said in a whisper.

“You knocked me out of a tree.” He spoke in the deep, round tone Grace associated with the Rogue. The enchantment on the verdure cloth meant to conceal not only hid its wearer visually, but also altered the sound coming from behind it. No matter who spoke through the face cloth, which bore the same enchantment, the voice came out the same.

So his voice wouldn’t help her identify him. She must try to remove his hood, mask, or face cloth again.

“We weren’t playing hide and seek?” Grace said, sauntering closer. “I mean, I just assumed, since you asked me to meet you here, that if you were hiding, it was for a purpose.”

He chuckled. “Well, what was I supposed to do? I knew you got my letter, and yet, you were nowhere to be found. I had to wait somewhere.”

Grace’s heart lurched. He knew she’d gotten his letter. He had to have been watching, then. Had James looked back after he left? She continued to approach. A few more steps, a quick swipe, and she’d know.

“Ahh. Well, that explains why you were so noisy as you walked and climbed.”

“What?” The Rogue stood a bit taller.

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