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“Pride before the fall,” she retorted, arching a brow.

“As if you have any room to talk,” Leif muttered, crossing his arms.

“Back on the topic at hand,” Bram scowled, flashing a glare Wren’s way as if it were her fault the conversation had been waylaid, “this is the sixth port town we’ve scouted in two months, and it’s already full of people on the lookout for us. Especially for YOU.”

Wren winced at Bram’s tone, and pulled the hood of her ash-colored cloak tighter around her head. Wren had braided her crimson hair back and smeared it with the brown clay that built up near the rivers running through the forest in order to dull the color. It was already flaking off—it never lasted long, but her hair was one of the biggest giveaways of who she was after all, so she persisted in coating it in the disgusting stuff as often as she could. Wren knew she should cut all her hair off, but a rebellious part of her refused to even entertain the notion.

I am the Dragon Princess. My hair is part of who I am. I refuse to remove part of me for the Verlanti royal family.

“The wanted fliers,” Wren murmured, wishing she had one to look at closely, “were they issued directly from the palace or—?”

“A few were from Soren, but the ones by the orphanage, brothel, and fish market were issued by your dear husband,” Leif said. “With a substantial reward offered for your capture, unharmed. Clearly he knows who to target for help and how to bribe them.”

Husband. The word didn’t seem to capture what Arrik was.

“Unharmed, and even offering money,” Bram said, chewing over the words. He cast a critical glance over Wren, who forced herself not to turn away. “One wonders why he’d go to such great lengths to get you back when it would be easier to have someone cut off your legs and drag you back.”

Wren didn’t reply. Bram wasn’t the only member of the rebellion who suspected that Wren was in cahoots with Arrik, and believed she should be blamed for his actions.

As if I had any sway over him at all. As if Arrik would ever have listened to me.

A very small part of Wren knew this didn’t quite ring true, but she ignored it. The prince was as good as dead to her.

“Regardless of the fliers,” she said, “we still need to infiltrate the gentleman’s club.” A furtive look to her left, then her right; Leif and Bram followed suit, then crept down several back alleys until they reached the staff entrance to the club.

Despite his distrust of her, Bram nonetheless had worked well with Wren on other such missions, and respected her abilities. Wren could fight, and her time spent memorizing the passages beneath her father’s castle on the Dragon Isles made her adept at sneaking around unnoticed. There was no animosity between the two of them, so long as they wereworking.

“You remember what to do?” Bram whispered, pulling out a wig from a bag along with pins. Wren hastily tugged her hood down and put on the black, long-haired wig just as Leif covered his own hair with a softly wavy, hazel-colored wig. The long hair was all he needed to pass as a young woman instead of a teenage boy—along with the dress he had on, hidden by his cloak. Leif helped her secure wig with what seemed like way too many pins.

She eyed Leif’s wig and frowned at Bram. “Why the devil do we get a wigs now but I have had to put sludge in my hair for the last several months?”

Bram gave her a nasty smile. That was all she needed to know. He wanted her to be miserable. The miscreant. She answered his question.

“Target the duke and his companion, Bellnai,” Wren recited. “Leif targets the duke himself, since his tastes run…young.”

Leif grinned viciously. “And if he thinks to touch me—”

“You’ll avoid bloodshed at all costs or I swear I’ll abandon you in there,” Bram grunted, his dark eyes full of warning. “Now, off with you. I’ll enter from the front as a guest. We have an hour to gather information before we abandon the mission, got it?”

Wren and Leif nodded. The information they needed was simple: find out where Prince Arrik currently was, and what he was doing.

It was easy for Wren and Leif to slip into the gentlemen’s club as working girls. The place was loud and busy, even though the sun had barely set, with some patrons demanding three or four serving girls for them alone. Wren and Leif smiled easily at anyone who caught their eyes, snaking through the crowd before anyone could catch sight of them for longer than a second and recognize them from the posters.

The point was to fit in, not draw attention.

With these disguises, I doubt anyone would work it out.

Wren picked at the pink silk of her outrageously Verlantian dress. She had grown used to their flowy somewhat scandalous fashions over the last couple of months—she’d had to—but that didn’t mean she liked them. Having the curve of her waist exposed, and the column of her back, and the line of her thighs, made Wren more uncomfortable than she could possibly say.

But she didn’t show it on her face. Leif had taught her well how to walk and talk like a Verlanti serving girl, so Wren focused on that as the two of them homed in on the duke and his companion, proffering claret-colored wine from a golden pitcher. Both the duke and Bellnai eagerly accepted a cup, the two of them eyeing their new serving girls with approval. To their immense luck, the two were already discussing Prince Arrik when Wren and Leif came upon them.

“They say his barbarian wife tried to kill him on their wedding night,” Bellnai said, reclining on his seat to sweep his gaze up and down Wren’s frame. She resisted the urge to flinch. “Though I don’t mind a bit of spice in the bedroom.” His eyes twinkled and he winked at Wren. “What say you, lass?”

“I’m known to enjoy a tussle or two,” Wren replied, exchanging a deliberately filthy look with Leif for the sake of their act, even as her stomach knotted. She hated this part. Bellnai and the duke traded glances, looking positively delighted.

“I heard it was the other way around,” said another serving girl, who was fanning the highborn gentlemen with a gigantic palm leaf. “That Prince Arrik tried to kill the Dragon Princess. Like how he murdered his other wives!”

“Hush now,” the duke scolded, though it was clear he was enjoying the gossip as much as the others around him. “We must not badmouth our dear prince, nor suggest he’s done something that has not been proven. In any case, the Dragon Princess must be close by—Prince Arrik is due to arrive in town tomorrow after stopping by Kray’s Village in the forest tonight.”