Beyond the Thrones

Blending into the Shadows - Elara POV

If I ever told my father that I was involved with the Night Walkers, there would be no good way to describe his level of anger. While most of us in the Lower Quarter secretly rooted for them to successfully steal from the rich, my father always grumbled about how stealing was wrong under all circumstances.

So when I snuck out of the house to meet up with the Night Walkers, I had to be extra careful not to wake him up. He was usually a heavy sleeper, but it was always a good idea to leave nothing to chance.

When I got to the meeting place, I was met with several glares as I was the last to arrive and had put them behind schedule. There were a dozen of us in total. While there were several different Night Walker groups, they were only loosely associated with each other. They knew which houses the others would be hitting that night so that no one encroached on another's territory.

My faction would be splitting into even smaller groups of three people tonight since we were going to steal from four houses. Being the new girl, I was going to have to be the one to pull off the theft as it was considered "grunt work."

I thought it would have made more sense to let the more experienced person steal the stuff as they would have a better chance of not getting caught. However, I kept my opinions to myself as I didn't want to get kicked out of the Night Walkers before I even joined.

The other two would be in charge of keeping watch. One of those two was my friend and connection to this particular faction of the Night Walkers. Isabel and I had grown up together since her father started his bakery right across from my father and me.

"Hey, Elara, are you ready to go?" Isabel asked me, her brown eyes filled with concern and her head tilted. She wore a shirt, pants, and mask, all black as we were supposed to blend into the shadows as best as we could, hence the name Night Walkers.

"Yeah, I'm ready. I'm just jittery since this is my first time," I replied.

Isabel nodded. "There's nothing to worry about. The guards are all too incompetent to notice what we are doing and we never steal too much. That way the rich bastards won't have any clue we stole from them and we can take from them again in the future."

"How do you know they won't notice?" I asked.

"We've been doing this sort of thing for years. Only one Night Walker has ever been caught, and he only had a loaf of bread that he had stolen," Isabel said.

I let out a prolonged exhale, unaware until that moment that I had been holding my breath. I couldn't risk getting caught. If I did, my father would surely lose the shop and we would be without a home. 

"We meet back here to divvy up the haul once we are done. Understood?" Walter, the leader of our group, said, his eyes going from person to person to ensure we did as he commanded. He towered over the rest of us and had enough strength to take on three fully grown men. If someone got on his bad side, they wouldn't wake up for several days. Naturally, he had risen through the ranks within the Night Walkers quickly.

We all nodded in confirmation and went our separate ways. There was no chit-chat between my group. We were on a mission and talking would only lead to distracting us from the target. I could still feel my heart beating in my chest, but it was best if I kept it to myself. I didn't want to give the Night Walkers a chance to second guess having me join as they might think I was too much of a coward.

After about an hour, we came to the crossing point between the Lower Quarter and the Upper Quarter, which were separated by a wall that stood at fifteen feet tall. It was made of a dark cobblestone that seemed to blend into the night. It provided the perfect cover for us to sneak over it and into the Upper Quarter.