Tassia ran towards the building, using momentum to propel herself upwards as she dug her fingers into the rock. She kicked her foot against the stone wall and grunted when she did it again. There was a soft grinding sound as the material gave way and Tassia was easily able to make herself footholds in the otherwise smooth rock. She flipped her brown braid behind her before climbing up the wall, slamming her foot in every so often to increase her stability.

The barely-matured female tried not to let herself think of how easy her task would have been if her wings hadn't been cut from her back to no avail. The prominent scars on her back stung with a phantom pain as she shook her head, trying to forget about anything that would distract her from what she had to do.

The mission was simple. So simple it shouldn't even be called a mission but Tassia liked to give what she had to do a sense of importance, making her livelihood seem more interesting than it actually was.

Take now, for example. All she had to do was sneak into one of the least protected houses belonging to Lord Keir, the ruler of the Court of Nightmares, go to the cellar she had oh-so-carefully labeled in the map she had memorized, and steal a small bag of jewels from the vast sum of gold that was sure to be there.

But Tassia let herself imagine fire traps and tripwires. She was going to steal gold from a dragon and the dragon's lair was just a well-decorated house. She would tell this story to her brothers before they slept, they loved hearing about her exploits. She wasn't a thief, not really. Tassia considered herself a Robin Hood of sorts. Taking from the too-rich Lords that didn't care about any of their less well-off subjects and giving to the poor, namely to her and her brothers.

The entire world was birthed from a magical object of extreme and unimaginable power called the Cauldron. The world was divided into Prythian, where Tassia lived, the Kingdom of Hybern, and the mortal lands.

More than four hundred years prior, the lands of the mortal humans and the immortal Fae had no separation between them. Many Fae from Prythian and the Kingdom of Hybern abused and mistreated humans, often holding them as slaves. The humans rebelled and began the War, which forced the immortal Fae of Prythian to choose to fight alongside the humans to help them gain their freedom or to join the King of Hybern and his ruthless commander to defeat the humans and continue their enslavement.

At the end of the War, a treaty was established between the Fae and the humans abolishing human enslavement by the Fae and ordering the separation of Prythian from the Mortal Lands by the enormous, invisible structure called the Wall.

Tassia's grandmother was human, a remarkable woman she had heard many stories about but had never met. She had never understood how her grandmother had gotten over the Wall, and her mother never liked to speak of it.

She shook herself out of her thoughts and narrowed her eyes and the intricate decorations all over the room. Lord Keir wouldn't even notice the amount she had taken and will continue to take from him. Not when compared to the gold he got from the High Lord to continue ruling the Court of Nightmares in the truly nightmarish way he did.

She might have felt bad for the servants she knew were going to get a beating if the Lord ever noticed the coins she had stolen but whenever she felt that way, she thought about her brothers, Aleskand and Charlus, huddled together in the cold trying to stay warm and wearing tattered clothes whilst the servants stayed in their Lord's house and dined on his lavish food.

She would have felt that way if it weren't for the fact that the servants threw any leftovers in the fire, not even allowing those starving to dig them out of the trash.

Tassia had to remind herself of this before she reached the small window she had noted the servants left open in order to allow fresh air into the musty house. She could already feel the precious metal in her palms and her mouth watered at the thought of the fresh bread she could buy with it. It had been months since they had any bread. The money from her latest thefts had gone towards buying Charlus fever medicine and Aleskand a new pair of boots.

All their food was meat that Tassia killed. She was terrible with a bow and arrow but she could set traps well. Unfortunately, the animals in the land were dying out and Tassia considered herself lucky if there was enough food for one meal a day.

She desperately needed a new cloak too, Tassia thought, as she pushed the window open and pushed herself through the opening that was barely wider than her starved body. She drew her tattered cloak around herself and shivered despite the soft flames in the fireplace.

Tassia knelt by the fire and stretched her hands, palms first. The warmth filled her body and she wriggled her fingers, feeling sweeping through her sore joints. She reached into her cloak and took out a small switchblade; one of the few weapons she took with her when she was kicked out of the Illyrian camp shortly before her mother's death.

Her blue eyes were fixed on the silver blade which had her mother's name engraved on her hilt and traced the smooth writing with her fingers, blinking back tears. Now, she thought, was possibly the worst time for grieving. Although Tassia's mother had passed years ago, the girl barely let herself register it and threw herself into other activities to avoid having to deal with the pain she felt. As such, at random times and places she remembered parts of her mother, her sea-green eyes which her oldest-younger brother Aleskand had inherited, or her fiery hair that was similar to the youngest Charlus', and the sadness threatened to envelop her.

Tassia let herself count to ten, slowly and forced herself to focus on the situation. She let out a shuddering breath and closed her eyes before opening them. She stealthily crept over to the door and opened it, letting loose a relieved sigh that the door didn't creak. She knew the guards had changed their shift six and a half minutes ago, giving her ample time to climb up the side of the house. The new guards were likely to be more alert so once she got into the cellar, she would have to stay there until their rotation was nearing an end before she made her escape.

She was snapped out of her thoughts by the sound of people talking and jumped up, using the door frame to hold herself in the air, close to the ceiling, almost parallel to the ground.

Weak.

She was weaker than she had expected, more out of shape from stopping her usual dose of exercise to take care of Charlus.

Her muscles were already shaking and her breaths came in harsh pants. With their sharp fae ears, if any of the servants or guards decided to pay attention to the noises in the house, she was done for.

She didn't know what they would do to her if she was caught. But torture and murder weren't out of the question.

She could not get caught and leave her brothers to fend for themselves.

Thankfully the servants passed without an incident and Tassia slowly lowered herself to the ground. Beads of sweat had already begun to form on her upper lip and lower back. She walked down the stairs, sticking close to the steps, and freezing at every sound she heard.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Something wasn't right but Tassia couldn't figure out what it was. Her instincts rarely failed her but often assumed the threat level was higher than what she actually faced. She had always been jumpy, but since leaving the camp, her anxiety and fear had risen to new heights.

She took note of the eighteen people she sensed in the house. That was how many were supposed to be there. Even the noises didn't sound out of place. Soft murmurings and hushed whispers from guards and servants alike who didn't want to be caught slacking if Lord Keir decided to grace them with his presence. She forced herself to relax. Nothing seemed to be wrong. Nothing seemed to be out of place. But still, her blood sang and begged her to get out of the house.

Normally, Tassia would have listened to herself but she and her brothers hadn't had a full meal in so long and Tassia was so close to the gold she could practically hear the sound of the coins clanking against each other in her purse.

She walked into the cellar, her switchblade out in front of her and she stilled at a faint creaking noise. She saw something dart around the edges of her line of sight and whirled around to see something squeaking in fear. She forced herself to relax again. A rat. It was a rat.

Tassia pictured the way Charlus and Aleskand would laugh when she told them this story over dinner, embellishing a few details and hiding how truly scared she was. Tassia reached over and opened the lock on the door guarding the treasure easily enough.

Rich males thought that their money would protect them from everything when it was, more often than not, the very source of most of their problems.

She filled her bags with as much gold and jewels as she could carry before crouching down, hiding amongst the huge piles. She rubbed her hands together and felt the hollowness that hunger had caved out in her belly. Tassia wished she had taken some pieces of the rabbit she cooked last night with her but she also knew that her brothers needed it more.

She was just beginning to fall asleep, despite her best efforts to keep awake when the air in front of her whooshed. She flinched to see a tall man with pale skin and tattoos covering half his face smirking at her coldly.

"Well, well, well. What do we have here?"