The Ritual by H. Anthe Davis, Erica Dakin

I waited, but instead of my nervousness of the day before, I was now restless with excitement. This time I would be the one following and observing, and I could not wait to see Zashter at work.
    I prepared as meticulously as I had the day before, hesitating over my lockpicks and loot bag, then deciding that I should treat this as if I were going out on my own. My fatigue had disappeared entirely, and in the last measure towards midnight I paced around, too animated to sit down.
    In contrast, Zashter sat staring at the fire for a long time, although I occasionally caught him casting a pensive look at me or Shani, now fast asleep in her sleeping roll. His eyes were as inscrutable as ever, but his anger seemed to have disappeared, and as a distraction I studied him covertly.
    I still felt the same incessant tug of attraction whenever I looked at him – it had not lessened even a fraction since that moment I had first bumped into him, despite his distasteful attitude, and it puzzled and annoyed me equally. I had been attracted to men before , of course, but never this strongly, and it had never survived if I subsequently got acquainted with the subject in question and he turned out to be a cock.
    Was that Zashter, then? He could certainly act arrogant and abrasive, but he had shown me enough of a glimpse of something else that I wasn’t sure it was as black and white as that. Moreover, I wasn’t sure whether it mattered – I was attracted to him to an extent that it influenced my behaviour, and that stung. Every time I found my gaze being drawn to him, just to look at him, I wanted to scream at myself, yet all I could think was one thing: want .
    Gods, he was dangerous. Luscious and dangerous, and I knew next to nothing about him, least of all why he was letting us tag along. I couldn’t think of a single reason why he would profit from us being there, which made me all the more wary of him, of letting him know that I was interested. Apart from that I also knew that there was sense in not muddying our professional relationship with a personal element.
    So why was it so hard to ignore the attraction? As we were waiting for our eyes to adjust to the night he turned to me, stretched out his hand and gently tucked a strand of my hair back under the black velvet cap from which it had escaped. It was an intimate gesture, casually given, and it sent my heart into an uneven gallop. All around us everything was quiet but for the occasional hoot of an owl, and I was certain that he could hear the thunder of my heartbeat, just as I could hear the hum of my own blood.
    “Ready, Little Firelocks?” he murmured, and I nodded, my throat dry as dust.
    “Lead on, Black Eyes,” I whispered, not trusting my voice and resorting to the same nickname tactics as he; I wasn’t sure I could say his name without giving myself away.
    His fingers trailed across my cheek when he let his hand fall down again, and the touch burned on my skin for a long time afterwards as I followed him through the night.
    He cast the occasional glance back at me, and after a while he said, “Don’t stalk. Move as if you belong, don’t skulk like a thief. The shadows are yours – claim them with confidence.”
    I stared at his back, confused, but then I noticed that while he walked quietly, he also walked as if he was merely taking a stroll in the park. Confidence, he had said, and he radiated it. Strangely enough I saw that it did indeed make him harder to see, as if the simple fact that he moved as if he was meant to be there made the mind forget that it wasn’t supposed to be so.
    I straightened, forced myself to relax, to saunter. For a short while it took up all my attention, and I startled when I suddenly heard his voice right by my ear. “Good, you pick up fast. That’s much more stealthy already.”
    They were the last words he said until we were back at the fire. The entire operation, from opening the door through ransacking the jewellery coffers to