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T hey were gone way longer than they should have been. I was worried, but Ollie was losing his damned mind. Ollie tended to get dramatic about people he loved, but Lucy was smart. And Neco might hate Lance, but he hated the Barons more. He hated everyone in that part of town.

If some arseholes tried to jump Lucy because they thought she was a gay man, she could handle it. If she was outnumbered, Neco would step in, right?

“Should we invade the fancy part of town and save our woman?” Ollie asked, bouncing around like he’d eaten too many sweets.

“That’s romantic, right?” Ronan said. “Women like that kind of thing.”

“Lucy isn’t most women. She’d beat your arse and then ban you both from being her taste tester.”

“She’s just forced to be Lance all the time. Lance would kick our arses, but maybe Lucy is into it,” Ollie said.

“Lance is Lucy, and they’d both break our faces,” I pointed out.

“She might need our help,” Ronan said.

“Lucy isn’t just scrappy in a fight, she’s brilliant. She’s been helping manage the tavern on all fronts since she was thirteen. She knows how to toss drunks without offending them. She could probably talk her way out of any situation.”

“She’s perfect, isn’t she?” Ollie sighed.

She really was. And her idiot father had his hands on her.

We’d been around her all the time since we were babies and we never guessed her secret.

The Baron guard didn’t provide barrack housing.

They all had to get up whenever they needed to so that they could make the long walk to work if they couldn’t afford a horse.

Lucy only had a donkey she didn’t get along with. Petunia hated everyone but Ollie, and she was getting too old to make that kind of journey. Lucy and Neco would have to leave in the middle of the night to get there on time, which meant Lucy wouldn’t have much time to work in the tavern.

And I hated that. Not a lot of people in Guttertown got to do what they loved for a living and Lucy had that. The walk from where the Barons lived to Guttertown was pretty far, but they should have been back by now.

Most of the Argent kids were dedicated to their moms. It had always been like that. When your father was a deadbeat whose only use for you was how he could profit off you, you tended to latch onto the parent who stayed.

All they needed to do was sign their name to the roster and they would have been given whatever cure they needed from the Baron’s stores to give to whoever needed it. Neither of them would have delayed once they had it. They wouldn’t have taken that risk with their moms.

Yeah, maybe I was starting to panic. I was worried about Neco, too. Neco would utterly lose his mind if something happened to Theda. I cared about both of those people. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them or their mothers.

Yeah, it was officially time to panic. We were going to the rich people part of town, just in case.