Sabrina dropped her head to the table. Her forehead slammed against the wood, and she groaned, the stench of stale beer and old sweat a brutal violation on her senses.

“I should have known,” Sabrina moaned, “that meeting them would lead to something like this.”

“I did warn you.”

Sabrina scoffed, “You certainly did not.”

A brush of air tickled the side of her face, and a blur of colour appeared out the corner of her eye. Sabrina twisted her head, so her cheek rested on the warm tabletop.

Alex smiled, her brown face squished, her dark green eyes a fresh sparkle in the lamplight. Metal tankards clanked, and hands pounded as a rumble of laughter echoed from one of the tables at the back of the pub, a joyous celebration for a winning hand of cards.

“Bri,” Alex began, her breath sweet as the cinnamon bun she had just eaten, “wizards are cheating scoundrels, tricks and spells hidden right down to their underwear. Why...why did you do it?”

“I don’t know. I beat them,” Sabrina’s arm flopped under the table, gesturing towards the cheering group of patrons in the corner. “I just wanted to win, to earn us some more credits, to help us get away from this dump.” Sabrina’s forehead met the table again. “Now we don’t have any.”

“No, because the wizards have it all.”

Sabrina growled. “I know!”

Why had she been so stupid, so arrogant? One win at a game of cards—and a new bag of shiny credits—against a group of drunk old men, and Sabrina believed she could take on the most powerful sorcerers in the city. She knew of their reputation and heard the stories of men and women wasting all their wares and losing their life savings in an evening.

Oh, how big-headed she had been, how desperate.

“So, dear, what are we going to do now? We can’t pay for our room; we can’t pay for travel. It’s a good job we bought our food before eating it.” Alex chuckled. “Maybe we could steal it back.”

It was a joke—Sabrina knew that—Alex had never done anything remotely illegal in her life, but something about the idea stuck, a small flower bud in her chest until it grew so big she was sure she could burst.

“That’s a great idea! They basically robbed us,”—Alex raised her eyebrows—“me,” Sabrina corrected, “So if we take it back, technically, it’s not stealing.” Sabrina stood, her chair scraping against the stone floor, and touched Alex’s shoulder, her fingers sinking into the plush fabric of her pink cloak. “Lexi, you’re a genius.”

“No, I didn’t mean—”

But Sabrina stopped listening, her mind already growing a plan. She would get their money back, and they would make it out of the city or die trying.