Little Thieves (Little Thieves, #1)

by Margaret Owen

I stiffen, rocking back on my heels. Something jumps at the back of my throat. I know they both have reason to doubt me, but there’s an old, choking kind of panic when I’m telling the truth for once and no one believes me. It catches me like missing a stair, and for a moment I’m back before the von Hirschings, swearing in vain that I am not a thief.

Ragne turns to the rest of the table and screws up her face into a garish leer. “I am the Vanja. I take things and I am mean for no reason.”

Nothing stolen is ever really yours. And you still have to answer for what you took, who you hurt.

The maid was learning to lie, you see, because she had learned the truth would not protect her. She was learning to pick locks and to grease hinges, and as she dusted the castle’s meager handful of treasures, she was thinking through all the ways she could sneak them out. It was only a game, she told herself. It was only if she needed it.

No. I am not coming out of this night grudgingly liking the smug bastard. I refuse on yet another principle (which is: There’s only room in this town for one smug bastard. That smug bastard is me).

Maybe it’s the girl in the mirror, my ghost still haunting myself, the one who still clutches the dying taper of a hope that we can change, we can make it through the thorns, we can stop hurting each other.

It’s not that I don’t understand why he’s doing this, I just don’t want to understand why he’s doing this.

starting to connect the dots on the curse: At least a few gems disappear every time I do something, well, selfless.

I am one of the little thieves, and he will send me to the gallows himself.

It’s a rare sight, seeing Death’s shoulders shake with silent laughter as Fortune looks more indignantly betrayed than a cat in a bath.

“I think there are lives that make it easy to be good. Or what most people call good. When you have wealth, status, family, it’s easy to be a saint, it costs you nothing. I can’t say if you’re a good person or not. But the more I know of you, the more I understand that the world keeps making you choose between survival and martyrdom. No one should fault you for wanting to live.”

“the fact is that your life has been hard because people keep choosing to make it that way. And today I was one of them, and I am so, so sorry. I chose to believe the worst of you, to hurt you trying to prove I was right. I did it, even knowing what the von Falbirgs put you through. I’m no better than they are.”

It’s the worst kind of relief for someone to say it was never in my control.

You’re a walking morality lecture with something to prove, and I’m a scoundrel with an unflinching sense of entitlement to other people’s property.”

but grief is a house on fire. It needs to burn itself down.

You know the saying, little thieves and great ones?” I nod. “I’ve always hated it. It’s everything wrong with the empire, that we punish people who are usually just trying to survive, when people like the margrave get away with whatever they want.

“Y-you’re taking my word for it?” I stumble. That’s when his eyes return to me, and they do not waver at all. “Why wouldn’t I?”

😭😭

“The secret,” Emeric says, “is to watch you.”

as I slowly drift awake now, I realize my pillow is … moving. And warm. And it has a heartbeat.

Of course Klemens is more important; I’m a girl he barely knows, even if—even if I let myself think there might be an after for us.

She's wrong

Somehow, I’ve let all these people, even Barthl, matter to me. I’ve found them shelter and smuggled them around the castle and fought monsters and somehow, somehow, I have let myself be—loyal.

It was always going to end with him.

I will always be a thief. I am never going to let myself be happy. I’m always, always going to steal it from myself.

“You cared for something above yourself, with your whole heart,” she says. “You made up for your greed.”

“She tricked you,” he says with unabashed delight, “into deposing a tyrant. That’s very funny.”