Archive of Our Own

Chloe Frazer was a liar.

Now, calling her such wasn’t in any way an insult, or an accusation. It was a fact, and, in all regards, a rather well known one. Chloe herself would admit to it in a heartbeat. She was a thief, and thieves lied. End of story. To her, there was nothing wrong with being a liar, especially if you were a good one.

And Chloe? Chloe was one of the best.

Once, at gunpoint, she’d convinced a corrupt, black-market-dealing, money-grubbing thug and half his band of drooling goons—who’d ambushed her in the depths of a crypt she’d spent months researching a way into—that the only way to open the hidden door to the secret chamber where the treasure horde was kept was to spin around in circles as fast as they could while patting their stomachs with one hand and rubbing the tops of their heads with the other.

Naturally, most of them had been too dizzy to shoot at her afterwards, when she’d bolted through a nearby split in the wall and made off with the real treasure—not gold or jewels, but a half-crumbling ancient manuscript over a thousand years old, which had fetched a pretty sum from a rich Oxford scholar back in England, who intended to have it displayed at a public museum in the near future. Chloe had used the resulting funds for a quick vacation to visit her mum in Australia while prepping for her next job. To date, it was one of her greatest accomplishments. Turned out, a silver tongue could get you far in life, so long as you were dedicated.

Most of her lies, Chloe was proud of. Her own cleverness astounded her sometimes. In her line of work, lies were necessary to survive. It came with the territory. There was no such thing as an honest thief. But that wasn’t to say some didn’t bother her afterwards. Like that mess with Nate, years ago, during their quest to find Shambala and the Cintamani Stone, with Chloe hiding as a mole in that brute Lazaravic’s camp, betraying Nate just to betray someone else, to keep her cover, to save her own skin. And yes, she’d changed since then, but still, she didn’t like to think too much about it.

It was a masterpiece, in a way, how she’d pulled it off in the end—or nearly had, some big mouth blowing her cover at the very last second—but she still hated the memory of the look on Nate’s face when she’d turned her gun on him, and the feeling it’d given her, like a great big knot in her stomach. She’d loved him, then—or thought so, at least—and lost him despite (or because of?) those perfect lies she was so proud of.

Still, it’d worked out, hadn’t it? Nate and Elena were happily married now, a fat, gurgling baby on the way, and Chloe… well, Chloe was Chloe. Besides, Nate was forgiving to a fault. No hard feelings from a Drake for her. Chloe knew, no matter what, Nate was on her side, and was grateful for it.

But, surprisingly, that wasn’t the lie she regretted the most. No, that one belonged to her bold little fib in India, concerning the involvement of one Sam Drake, to Nadine Ross. That lie, she hated more than any other she’d ever told. The sock in the face and bloody nose she’d gotten in return was much less than she’d deserved. Nadine had been so furious with her. Utterly betrayed. Chloe had felt monstrous about it. Physically ill with guilt.

But then, just like Nate, Nadine had forgiven her, stood by her, rode on that hurtling death-train with her even though she’d been so convinced they’d die—and, well, they hadn’t, which was nice, but the gesture itself, the sheer amount of trust built behind it, was something Chloe still struggled to accept, even now.

Those first few months working together, in India and beyond, Chloe hadn’t even been entirely sure that Nadine remotely liked her, let alone wanted to be her full-time partner, or, dare she say, friend. Eventually she’d realized the somber attitude was simply how Nadine was as a person. Where Chloe was loud and cheeky, sometimes obnoxiously so, Nadine was quiet, cool, and standoffish. After India, however, Chloe saw more and more warmth gradually emerge from the other woman, noticing that as time went on, they began to rub off on each other. Chloe thought before she leapt now, and when she made a dirty joke or a wry quip, Nadine, rather than just glare or ignore her, would fire one back without hesitation, sometimes crude or bawdy enough to reduce Chloe to hysterical tears.

Chloe knew they made an odd team, the two of them. A real sight—a roguish, lying thief and an ousted PMC show-runner. Yet, here they were, still together, nine months after the Tusk of Ganesh fiasco. They made a good pair. Chloe was happy with it. Nadine was the brawn of their partnership. The strength, the muscle, the backbone—hell, she could be the arse, too, since hers was so nice. Chloe was the head, the mouth, and the heart. She came up with the ideas, the schemes, the jobs, while Nadine made sure it got followed through, done, and done right.

It worked. They worked.

And if it took just a small bit of deception (white lies, the Americans called it?) to grease the already smoothly-turning wheels, so to speak, well. Chloe had that covered.

Nadine, on the other hand—it made Chloe smile, just thinking about it—was a truly horrible liar. Since they’d formed their partnership, she’d attempted to lie to Chloe only once, over a trivial matter. They’d been swapping tense night watches during a two-week-long stint in Brazil, wary of a local bandit known for swiping zealous treasure hunters of their hard-earned prizes. Chloe had woken one morning after what felt like a very suspicious amount of sleep, and correctly guessed that Nadine had purposefully neglected to wake her, because that was another thing about Nadine Ross—she was selfless to a fault, and wouldn’t think a second past letting Chloe snore her lazy arse off all night while Nadine herself went without rest for over twenty-four hours simply because she knew she could do it.

Anyways, Chloe had confronted her in a proper snit, and the second Nadine took a breath, Chloe could tell, instantly, she was about to lie. It’d been painfully obvious—her entire body changed, shoulders scrunching high around her ears, broad back curving into an uncomfortable cringe. She hadn’t been able to look Chloe in the eyes either, darting hers down and to the side as she made a lame excuse of catching a wink or two herself during the night.

Chloe had merely looked at her, waiting, and five seconds later, Nadine burst out with the truth, that she’d wanted Chloe to get her rest, and that she knew her partner was tough, but Nadine, ultimately, was tougher.

Which, yes, was true, but besides the point.

As far as Chloe could tell, Nadine hadn’t tried to lie to her again after that. Not because Chloe had put up a fuss about it—she hadn’t, and the job had turned out fine anyways—but because Nadine was the type of person who went out of her way to always be honest, especially with Chloe, which only bothered Chloe a little, because she did the exact opposite, as often as she could. Maybe it was because she had more to hide.

So, yes, Chloe Frazer was an excellent liar. And that was fine, but sometimes, she couldn’t help but wonder: what was she, without the lies?

She found she wasn’t quite sure.

—

“Christ, it’s hot in here,” Chloe complained for the fortieth time in as many minutes. “I’m going to faint. Catch me, china.” She swooned playfully, the back of her hand pressed to her damp forehead.

Ignoring her, Nadine peered down a dark corridor, then consulted their ripped, coffee-speckled map, muttered something to herself, and went a different direction, clearly expecting Chloe to simply follow her without question. “This way,” she grunted.

“That’s fine,” said Chloe, trying to ignore the feeling of her sodden ponytail sticking to the back of her neck, heavy with sweat. “Suddenly I’m feeling better.”

Greece had always been one of Chloe’s favorite places to travel, but at the moment it was trapped in the height of a particularly searing-hot summer, and, unfortunately, she and Nadine were about as far from a cabana on the beach as they could get. White sand and brisk surf had been exchanged for a sweltering pile of rusty red rocks, formidable humidity, and arse-sweat. There’d be plenty of time for play afterwards, Chloe knew—right now, they were on a job.

The rubble-strewn ruin they were currently standing within had once been a sizable temple dedicated to Dolos, an ancient Greek god known almost exclusively for being a lying trickster. Chloe was a personal fan of his, and had been for some time, while Nadine had admitted she’d never heard of him, back when Chloe was just beginning to piece together her research.

According to Greek mythology, Dolos was a master of deception. It was the literal meaning of his name. He was perhaps most famous for tricking the other Gods into believing their beloved statue of Aletheia—literally, Truth—was real, when it was actually a perfectly made copy built of clay. The real statue, Dolos had hidden away, never to be seen again, and shame for that, since many manuscripts Chloe had unearthed in her studies claimed it to be made of a far more valuable material than river clay—say, solid gold?

Of course, trying to find the real statue of Aletheia had proven harder than Chloe had anticipated. Dolos wasn’t known for his lies without good reason. He made Chloe look like a stuttering amateur. Every ripped map and musty old book she’d managed to get her hands on had led them to one dead end after another.

Finally, after a month of digging through practically every library in England, Chloe had found a text revealing the location to a long lost temple dedicated personally to Dolos himself. They’d traveled to Greece by plane—commercial, not private, since Sully was busy—then rented a shoddy two-level river boat, much like the one they’d used in India to reach the Ghats. Chloe had turned down a local guide, sure of the way, while Nadine drove the boat herself up the narrow river and branching tributaries with the all-natural one-hand-on-the-wheel, elbow-hanging-out-the-window confidence of someone who’d been doing so all their life—one of the only times in their work where Chloe had let her take ‘control.’ It would’ve been something approaching romantic, if not for the irritating presence of Sam Drake, tagging along for the ride.

Now, Sam was a friend, and good for a beer and some laughs, but not much else, in Chloe’s opinion. Not to be cruel, but she really could have done without his husky chuckle or the stink of his foul cigarettes for another month or three, but the elder Drake brother had an infuriating knack for worming his way into their jobs.

The only reason he’d come along this time was because he could read ancient Greek. Chloe was rusty, and the last time she’d translated a language she was only partially fluent in, she and Nadine had ended up trapped in a spider- and snake-filled tomb in Bosnia for almost fifteen hours before managing to find a single two-inch area of open air where cell-phone reception miraculously worked—Chloe had been standing on Nadine’s increasingly weary shoulders, arms outstretched over her head, hands gone numb, when her phone blipped encouragingly. One frantic call later, and they’d been saved.

Since then, Nadine made it a point to insist they use only linguistic experts when it came to deciphering ancient texts. Chloe didn’t know what all the fuss was. It’d been an honest mistake, back then (that was a lie). Plus, the fifteen hours they’d spent in that tomb hadn’t been completely awful (that was another).

Currently, Sam was waiting outside the temple, smoking and sweating and doing whatever else men did when it was overwhelmingly hot and boring. Scratching his arse, maybe? He’d wanted to join them inside, but Chloe had deferred. ‘Watching the boat’ was the excuse she’d come up with. Anything to give her and her partner a few hours of relative privacy. She liked her time alone with Nadine, would fight dirty for it, even when it was just poking through a stale old ruin like this one, squinting hard to see in the murk, the white bars of their flashlights darting to and fro, lighting up squeaking mice, cobwebs thick as blankets, and the odd human skull, bleached and stripped clean by the ravages of time. Nobody from this century, she figured. Well, she hoped, anyways.

Nadine had been quiet all morning, which wasn’t unusual, for her. In combat, she shouted orders like a seasoned drill sergeant and bulled Chloe around, shoving her in and out of cover, and shot men dead in the forehead and snapped necks as easy as breathing. Here, now, in the relative calm before the storm, Chloe was the one in charge, so Chloe figured she should at least attempt to look like she knew what she was doing. She sort of did, for what it was worth.

Caught in a day dream about ice cream and a sizable swimming pool filled with blessedly cool water, she jumped when a cold canteen was suddenly pressed to her arm, grasping it on reflex.

“You looked thirsty,” said Nadine, by way of explanation, wiping her mouth from taking her own drink. Chloe leered at her.

“Do I? What else do I look like?”

Nadine just rolled her eyes, so Chloe laughed and drank deeply from the canteen before screwing the lid back on and returning it to her partner.

"We’re close,” Chloe promised, staring off again into the stifling black.

“You said that an hour ago.”

“Well, we’re clos-er.”

“We’ve been in here all day, Frazer.”

“That long? My. The hours are just flying by with such delightful company, wouldn’t you say?”

“Can we just get going? I don’t want to be in here all night too, ja?”

“Right," said Chloe. "Promise, we’re nearly there."

(Lie.)

Two hours later, eyes bleary from squinting in the dark, noses itchy from the billowing red dust, feet swollen and throbbing in their stuffy boots from the pressing heat and endless walking, they stopped. Chloe was a little surprised—they’d made it this far in one piece, without triggering a single trap. Greek Gods loved their traps, so she’d been anticipating a slew of them, had planned out all sorts of evasive maneuvers to try. Pity there weren’t any here—or perhaps they’d hit every trick tile on the way in and then some, and had nothing but blind luck and ancient, faulty mechanisms to give thanks to. Whatever.

“Exactly as planned,” announced Chloe triumphantly.

“You planned a dead end?” Nadine replied, eyeing the mighty stone wall before them, decorated with ancient Greek carvings and texts, chiseled out from crooked bricks the size of her palm. While anyone else would think as such, Chloe knew better, the beam of her flashlight slicing through the black to trace the near invisible seams at the wall’s center and sides. It wasn’t a wall, but a door. She grinned.

“And you doubted me, china?” she teased as she slung the small travel pack on her belt to the ground and began to rifle through it.

“Door’s still closed, last I checked,” Nadine quipped right back, the ghostly beam of her flashlight moving slowly across the wall, back and forth.

“Not for long. Where’s that stupid… Ha!” Chloe snatched out a pencil and the letter key for ancient Greek Sam had quickly scribbled onto a random piece of paper earlier that morning—really, if she messed up the translation again, Sam was right outside, and Chloe could scream rather loud, so she wasn’t terribly worried—and got to work.

“It’s a riddle,” she announced after a few minutes.

“Great.” Despite the gloom, Chloe could just make out the desultory scowl on Nadine’s sweat-lined face. “I love riddles.” Her utter lack of enthusiasm and deadpan delivery earned a short but loud laugh from Chloe. She was pleased to hear Nadine laugh quietly at herself in return, and settled back to her translating, her pencil scratching loudly in the silence that followed.

“Wait,” she said, a minute later, frowning down at what she'd written out. “This… I’ve seen this before.”

“You have?”

“So have you. Guaranteed.”

“Alright,” said Nadine. “Hit me.”

Tracing the letters on the wall with her flashlight as she went along, Chloe read aloud, “What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three at night?”

Nadine blinked in surprise. “Actually, ja, I have heard that one.”

“Everyone in sixth grade English knows it, I bet. It’s from Oedipus.”

Beneath the stone scrawl of the riddle were numerous smaller bricks faded in color, littered with characters of the Greek alphabet. To solve the puzzle, one simply needed to input the correct answer by spelling out the proper word.

Chloe extended a finger, ready to begin, then hesitated. “It’s too easy,” she mused, feeling leery. Her gut was telling her something was off.

Nadine shrugged. “Maybe, back then, the answer wasn't so well-known. Oedipus, you said? Want to refresh my memory?”

“Right. Oedipus, King of Thebes. Tragic fellow. Killed his dad, married his mum, brought about a prophecy that destroyed his own city? To win the throne, he had to answer a riddle from the Sphinx. Same one as here, see? The answer, of course, is man.”

“How’s that?”

“So, morning is when man is a baby, crawling about on all fours. Afternoon is man as an adult, walking on two legs. Evening is when man is old, using his cane to hobble about. The answer,” she paused again, “is clearly Man.” She pointed at the corresponding letters, and again felt a surge of uncertainty.

“So push it already,” Nadine said, impatient.

“Like I said, it’s too easy. Remember, this is Dolos we’re talking about. The ultimate liar. Would he want a correct answer? Or would he want—”

“A lie?”

"I wonder… What’s the opposite of man, you’d say?”

Nadine halted in the middle of wiping her sweaty forehead on her arm, and guessed, “Beast?”

“Right. And you do so love your little beasts, don’t you, Ross?”

"Shut it, Frazer.”

Chuckling, Chloe leaned forward, taking a steady breath, then reached out, and cautiously pressed in the bricks to spell out, Beast, half expecting nothing to happen at all. She gasped when all the bricks made a hoarse grating sound and sunk into the wall. Something within thunked, and then the wall itself split in half. With a shuddering crack, it swung inward, exposing a dark, musty chamber flanked with spluttering torches, filling the room with an ominous red glow.

Even without the sudden firelight, Chloe could immediately see that the chamber was completely empty but for one thing, and it was most certainly not the stolen statue of Aletheia.

Perched upon a thin stone altar spiderwebbed with cracks and layered in a thick swath of red dust was a single wooden box about as big as her closed fist. There wasn’t even a lock on it.

Chloe stared blankly, stunned. “Well.”

“Frazer,” grunted Nadine, after a second.

“Ross?” Chloe replied.

“Thought this was the vault.”

“Um.” Chloe glanced around, noting the appropriate lettering on the walls. She didn’t need Sam’s key to decipher several instances of Dolos’s name, and recognized other words as well, Fool being the most prevalent. Not a good sign. “It is?”

“Ja?” Nadine scoffed. “’Cause all I see is a box. And unless the statue of Aletheia is a lot smaller than we thought, it’s not in here, is it?”

“Hmm.” Taking careful steps, Chloe entered the newly revealed room. It was abominably stuffy and stank of fetid age. Had she guessed wrong on the puzzle, and revealed a fake treasure chamber? No, it couldn’t be. Nadine was going to kill her if that was the case. Anyways, Chloe didn’t buy it. Like it or not, this was their prize for cracking the riddle.

Wary of traps, she went slowly. Nothing creaked or clunked or crunched under her feet. Blades didn’t fall from the ceiling. Gouts of flame didn’t spew from the walls, other than the torches crackling quietly in the background. The floor didn’t drop away into a yawning black abyss. It paid to look at the positive, sometimes.

She tiptoed over to the altar, half-crouched the entire way, prepared to bolt or duck or maybe just scream if anything happened, then slowly rose to stand normally when nothing did. She looked about curiously, then gave a testing hop, boots smacking loudly against the floor as she landed.

Still at the entrance, Nadine made a startled sound, followed by a quiet growl at Chloe’s daring.

“Just keeping you on your toes, china,” Chloe teased with a wink as Nadine hesitantly joined her inside. By now, Nadine was used to her relentless charm, and just huffed instead of berating her for not being careful.

“Funny, Frazer.”

“Now, let’s see what good ol’ Dolos left for us, shall we?” Chloe turned to the wooden box, easing the top lid open, tense with anticipation. She’d given up hope for a golden statue, but that didn’t mean they had to walk away completely empty-handed. Not if Chloe had anything to say about it.

Inside the box was a bracelet. It wasn’t gold, or silver, or bronze. It wasn’t even made of metal. To Chloe, it appeared to be composed of a dozen or so dull circular-shaped beads made of some kind of wood, each bead the size of a pea, bored through the center and strung on a short length of frayed string.

A cackle erupted from Chloe’s throat before she could stop herself. She swallowed it down into a hacking cough, but Nadine stilled bristled and glared at her in annoyance, as if Chloe had somehow planned this. It seemed their little treasure hunt wasn’t a treasure hunt at all, but a great big trick. Or a lie, which, considering it was Dolos they were talking about, seemed perfectly fitting.

"Um. Whoops?” Chloe tried, sounding only somewhat remorseful. She knew when to admit that she’d been gotten, and she’d been gotten good.

Nadine was already stalking off, muscular shoulders rigid with annoyance, damp t-shirt straining around her clenched biceps, the dark bloom of a sweat stain growing at the small of her back. “Waste of time,” she ground out, sounding properly outraged with being swindled so soundly.

“Aw, come on, Ross,” Chloe called after her. “Wasn’t the real treasure the friends we made along the way?” Chuckling to herself, she prodded the bracelet with the edge of a blunt, dirt-stained fingernail, and when it didn’t disintegrate into dust or burn her skin at the touch, she picked it up between forefinger and thumb to get a closer look.

“Chloe!” Nadine hissed from the doorway, sounding ridiculously exasperated.

“What?”

“Don’t just grab it! It could be a trap!” Nadine snapped, her voice sharp with worry. Chloe grinned. China really did care. How sweet.

“I’m not leaving here with nothing,” Chloe insisted. “If all I get for two months of prep and a full week of sharing a boat with you and Sam sans bathing is this stupid little bracelet, then so be it.”

Nadine tried to snatch the bracelet out of her hand when she joined her by the door, looking ready to dash it to the ground, as if it had committed some personal affront to her—which it sort of had—and wasn’t just some old junk no one else had deemed fit to rob. Chloe jerked her hand away, winked again at Nadine, and slipped the bracelet on over the squeezed-together fingers of her left hand, working it over the ball of her thumb with little effort.

“What do you think?” she asked, holding her arm this way and that to show off her new trinket. “Matches my necklace, don’t you think?” Honestly, it looked even worse in the torchlight, the wood dark and listless, but Chloe liked the charm of it. It made for a good souvenir, if nothing else, as it was painfully obvious that the only treasure in the entire temple was completely and utterly worthless.

Ah, well. You win some, you lose some. Chloe knew that. Being a thief had its ups and downs, like any job. Maybe a couple months from now, Nadine could have a proper laugh about it. Chloe was ready to laugh about it now.

"Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Nadine groused, a bead of sweat dripping off the point of her chin and hitting the floor with a barely audible plink. Chloe hung back to take a few quick pics of the vault with her cellphone to show Sam before trudging along after. It seemed their trip had, indeed, been a complete waste of time. Chloe resigned herself to an unpleasant hike out of the temple, followed by a tense few days of travel by boat in which Chloe would be outright ignored while Nadine picked fight after fight with Sam over every tiny thing imaginable just to work out some of that roiling anger.

Still, it could’ve been worse. They could’ve been ambushed and shot at. Chloe would take a trick over a bullet any day.

Tailing after Nadine, she afforded herself one last glance over her shoulder at the pitifully empty antechamber. It’d been fun and all, but, like Nadine, she found herself ready to be rid of this place.

“See you, Dolos,” she muttered, and gave a small wave.

And then something strange happened.

They were in a side hallway, maybe half an hour later, skirting a collapsed pillar and odd bits of fallen ceiling when Nadine called to a slightly lagging Chloe, “You okay back there, Frazer? Didn’t get lost, did you?”

Chloe, who would’ve usually replied with something vaguely flirtatious like, Not a chance, Ross, you’re stuck with me, or Yes, maybe we should hold hands so we don’t get lost in the dark, said instead, “Sorry, I was staring at your arse. It looks fantastic in those pants, and it’s very distracting.”

And, okay, whoa. What?

Nadine stopped short, head cocked, her flashlight swerving back around. “Sorry?”

To her dawning horror, Chloe found herself repeating, word for word, at an even louder decibel than before, “I said, I was staring at your—”

At precisely that moment, the cut stone beneath Chloe’s foot sunk downwards with an ominous click. Something shifted, and Chloe looked up just in time to see the business end of an ancient, rusted battle axe dropping from the ceiling, swinging in a flashing arc, heading right for her face. Before she could blink, Nadine had crossed the distance between them in a dead sprint, tackling her around the waist. They landed hard on the floor, Chloe sprawled on her belly, breath knocked out of her as Nadine’s heavy body bore down on her lungs. Chloe felt a sharp rush of cool air as the axe blade whistled by. The curved edge snatched at her hair and just barely missed Nadine’s back, the very tip snagging at the bottom of her dark blue t-shirt and tearing a neat, three-inch slice in the material.

They both lay utterly still. Chloe felt Nadine’s hot breath fill her ear, smelled her musky sweat, and realized she hadn’t finished the rest of her sentence, and felt weak with adrenaline and not a little relief. In more ways than one, she’d never been more grateful for a booby-trap in her life.

The axe reached its apex, swung back down on its own weight, then gradually settled and went still, dangling mere centimeters above them. The two women peeked up at it, breaths held.

“Shit,” Nadine said shakily, and rolled off Chloe, who gingerly sat up. “Okay? You hurt?”

“Knocked my head a little,” said Chloe. “Thanks.”

“Ja.” Nadine rose carefully to her feet, eyeing the axe in distrust, then offered Chloe a chivalrous hand, hauling her upright with profound ease, then began patting her clean, ineffectually slapping at the rusty dirt and dust streaked across the front of Chloe’s sweat-stained t-shirt. A giggle escaped Chloe’s throat at the sweet gesture, and Nadine stopped, flushing. “Come on,” she said brusquely, snatching up her dropped flashlight, leaving Chloe to follow.

After that, they took their time. Chloe was shaken, and confused, but relatively unharmed. Really, her pride had taken more of a hit than her. Rookie mistake, stepping on that trap. Christ, that part of the floor hadn’t even been the same color as the rest. How could she have missed it?

Still, she was glad Nadine seemed to have forgotten her…outburst, because there was teasing and then there’s…whatever that was. Chloe knew she was a shameless flirt, unafraid of voicing certain observations or attractions, but, like lying, she considered herself an expert at it. She had strategy. She hinted. She nudged. She suggested. She didn’t club someone over the goddamn head with it, like that.

Besides, making her partner uncomfortable in any way was the exact opposite of her intentions. Flustered, yes. Blushing? Even better. But not repelled, or, God forbid, disgusted. Besides, all their months together, and Chloe still didn’t even know if Nadine preferred men or women. Not that it was any of her business—(perhaps it was both, like Chloe herself)—but again, none of her business!

As the swinging axe had illustrated so well mere moments before, it really wasn’t the time to be wondering about such things. Later, maybe, she’d mull it over. Now, though, they needed to get back to the entrance. The heat was really doing Chloe in. She felt dizzy and faintly nauseous. Perhaps that was to blame for her verbal slippage. Yes, that sounded plausible. Some cool air would do her good.

Less than ten minutes later, it happened again.

They were climbing over another mound of rubble, picking their way with care, wary of turned ankles. Midway through, Nadine paused to check on Chloe, ever watchful, and asked, “Need a hand, Frazer?”

Chloe meant to say, I’m good, Ross, and said instead, “I need both, immediately, down my pan—”

She tripped, just then. Nadine lunged and caught her smartly by the elbow. Chloe glanced down to admire the way the sweat gleamed off Nadine’s muscular forearm, and then her eyes landed on the wooden-beaded bracelet she’d only just placed on her own wrist, not even an hour ago, and her stomach plummeted into the floor.

No, she thought. It can’t be.

Now, Chloe had dealt with cursed treasure before. Usually by running the other way, as fast as she possibly could. Still, she’d been there in Shambala. She’d seen things that couldn’t be explained by modern science or mathematics or the barest amount of logic. She knew that some adventures—Nate’s, mostly, he had rotten luck with them—could take a sudden turn into the supernatural before you knew it.

And while that might be a Drake's cup of tea, Chloe? Chloe didn’t do supernatural, or curses. And she certainly didn’t do magical bracelets that made you blurt out your innermost thoughts and desires.

Truth, she realized. It makes you tell the truth.

Fucking Dolos.

"You okay, Frazer? You seem a little off,” Nadine said, but lightly, as if she were partially joking. Her expression, however, lingered just a hair too close to blatant concern for Chloe’s comfort. Shit. Had she caught on already?

Chloe paused, and with some strategy, told the truth. “It’s hot in here.”

“Ja,” Nadine agreed. “Come on, then.” Keeping a steady but gentle grip on Chloe’s elbow, she helped her climb the rest of the way over the rubble, callused fingers scratching pleasantly across Chloe’s flushed, damp skin, but Chloe almost couldn’t find it in herself to notice.

She waited until Nadine released her to check down a small side passage, trying for an quicker way back to the entrance, then, in the brief cover of privacy, scrabbled at her arm like a madwoman, digging her nails under the bracelet’s worn wooden beads, knowing how easy it should’ve been to break the thin cord tied around her wrist. Yet, try as she might, the bracelet refused to budge. No matter how she wrenched or twisted, the string held true, as if it were made of steel wire. It seemed to have gotten impossibly tighter, too, and though she’d slipped it on easily enough, she couldn’t for the life of her slip it back off. Had it magically shrunk? Oh Jesus Christ.

Chloe forced herself to stop. She was sweating hard and breathing fast, her pulse pounding in her ears. This was…not good.

Could be worse, though, she forced herself to acknowledge. The bracelet could’ve just killed her. Or made her age incredibly quickly. Or blinded her, or robbed her of her voice completely, or a hundred other equally horrible things. Statistically speaking, she’d lucked out.

Then came the thought of all the things she might possibly say to anyone, or Sam, or especially to Nadine in the coming minutes, or hours, or—Christ—days this bracelet could stay on her wrist, and at once, she wished it had, in fact, taken her voice instead.

Because Chloe Frazer had a secret.

Now, a secret was not a lie, per se. Keeping silent about something delicate or inopportune wasn’t lying, at least not in Chloe’s book. And she would know, wouldn’t she? She was the expert here. Not like the bracelet cared. Not like it’d listen to her at all.

The secret was that, throughout the past nine months and half-dozen or so adventures she’d had with her newfound treasure-hunting partner, Chloe had come to realize that perhaps her feelings for Nadine…went a little further than just friendly. Which was normal, since of course you’d grow close to someone you spent a good deal of time with, someone you traveled with, got shot at with, laughed and hurt with. How could you not feel something stronger than the usual camaraderie with a person after risking your life and limb for one another (the train), or listening to them voice their hidden insecurities (losing Shoreline), their innermost wishes and dreams (Iceland’s Northern Lights)?

And it wasn’t just that. Chloe genuinely liked Nadine. She liked how much of a stickler she was about risk, and rules, and how she fussed about Chloe’s safety all the time. She liked her upfront gruffness and her secret warmth. She could listen to Nadine recite animal facts for hours. She was good and kind and honest and everything Chloe wasn’t.

The muscles? The muscles were just a bonus.

“Found a way through!” Nadine called out suddenly, her voice echoing throughout the temple. “It's a shortcut. Leads right back outside. Coming, Frazer?”"

"I wish,” Chloe blurted, made a face, and then croaked loudly, “Yup!”

By the time she drudged up the guts to rejoin her partner, Nadine was at the main entrance, working through a pile of rocky debris. On the way in, they’d nudged a leaning column and accidentally caused a partial collapse of the front doors, resigning themselves to deal with it on the way back.

Now, as Chloe watched, Nadine began to slowly dig a moderately sized hole in the slide of broken red rocks wide enough for them to slip through. With perfect form, she crouched low on her haunches, positioning her arms strategically around a particularly big chunk of blocky stone. She sucked in a sharp breath, then gave a heave and, with a powerful burst of her legs, arms, and back, stood upright with the enormous rock held close to her chest, then twisted her torso sharply and hurled the rock to the side. It landed with an ear-splitting crack and bounced once before stopping. Nadine, sweaty shirt plastered to her shoulders and flanks, wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and mechanically started on another boulder. The nape of her neck gleamed with sweat, the muscles all down her spine bulging as she hefted another heavy rock even bigger than the first and slung it away with similar ease. Through the rip on the back of her shirt, her brown skin glistened in the faint daylight.

Chloe clamped her lips together and looked away, swallowing down all the words that wanted desperately to come barreling up her throat. It very nearly hurt to do so.

Two rocks later, Nadine paused in wiping her face with the bottom hem of her shirt, baring her sweaty, dirt-streaked stomach, taut abdominals twitching with every gulping breath. She blinked at Chloe, and frowned.

“Alright, Frazer?” she asked, gasping slightly from the exertion. She smelled badly of sour dust and musky body odor. Her face was soft and caring.

Chloe’s stomach plunged. She felt physically ill with the effort of not speaking.

“Chloe?”

And, shit, that did it. The quiet note of apprehension in Nadine’s voice, the fact that she’d called her Chloe and not Frazer, which meant she was genuinely worried, and the way she was looking at her now, all gentle and open and…

This time, Chloe paid specific attention to her body, and noticed how, just before her mouth was forced open by an unseen power, her arm went stark cold, goosebumps racing from her wrist all the way up her shoulder and then down her spine like lightning.

“I have to tell you something,” she said, as her brain screamed No no no shut up shut up SHUT UP!

“Ja?” Nadine dropped her pulled up shirt, stuffing it back into her belt with quick, efficient thrusts of her hands. Her thick arms bunched and coiled with every move. “What is it?”

“I—”

Chloe was saved by a sudden shaft of sunlight, a clattering slide of red rocks, and Samuel Drake himself, tumbling head over heels into the temple with them.

“Ow, shit, shit!”

Sam rolled once, twice, then landed upside down in a pile of disheveled clothing, mussed hair and awry limbs, covered in dust, the knee of his pants ripped open, and then sat up with a pained groan, brightening when he saw them. “Guys! There you are!” Pinched between his thumb and forefinger was an unlit cigarette, miraculously unbroken from his fall. He popped it between his lips, fished out a lighter, lit it, and released a puff of acrid smoke.

Nadine’s attention immediately turned to Sam, and Chloe sent a quick prayer of thanks to the heavens. God only knew what she’d been about to say. Something incredibly humiliating, surely.

“Drake,” Nadine sneered, glaring at Sam like he was a cockroach she’d like to squash. “What are you doing here?”

“Eh. I got tired of waiting. You guys were taking too long.”

“We had it handled.”

“Aw, come on. You know you missed me.”

“Shut up.” Giving Chloe a final, lingering look, Nadine kicked away the rocks Sam had disturbed, then bent and disappeared out of the hole he’d created.

Chuckling to himself, Sam grinned at Chloe. “You missed me, though, didn’t you?”

And, shit, there went the bracelet—

“Actually, I wish you’d stayed on the bloody boat, like I asked.” It was an unkind thing to say, but somehow it came out lightly, and Sam simply grinned at her in response.

"Geez, Chlo, you’re breaking my heart here,” he joked with his usual roguish/annoying charm, exhaling another noxious stream of cigarette smoke. “Is a smile too much to ask for?”

Where before Chloe would chuckle along or rib Sam for his inopportune timing—it was his only timing, when it came to her and Nadine—now she swallowed tightly and quite suddenly blurted, with equal humor, “Maybe if you weren’t such a goddamned cockblock I’d be happier to see you.”

The moment the words were out, Chloe gasped, shocked at herself, then screwed her face up into a wince, like she’d just bitten into a particularly sour lemon. Or took a shot of tequila. No, two shots.

When she peeked her eyes open, Sam was gaping at her, mouth hanging slack, cigarette wobbling perilously on his lower lip. It fell, and Sam slapped frantically at his chest to try and catch it, missed, and choked out, “Jesus. Um. …Okay?”

Chloe pressed her palm to her brow. A fierce headache was pricking at her temples, making her eyes throb and her jaw clench.

“Sorry,” she said quickly. At least the bracelet let her do that much. “I’m just, you know, in a bad mood. It’s hot and we didn’t find any real treasure, just a bracelet, and Nadine’s pissed and I hate when she’s pissed and, yeah. Today’s been a complete shit-show.” She let out a ragged sigh, then blinked. Every bit of that was true, wasn’t it? Ha. Take that, bracelet.

The hurt faded from Sam’s eyes, and he laughed. “Shit, really? Nothing? I mean, this is Dolos we’re talkin’ about, God of Trickery, so can’t say I’m really surprised. But listen, I’ve got this lead that I promise you is legit—”

Groaning, Chloe stomped away, ducking through the hole as Sam tagged doggedly after her, already planning his (their? ugh) next job. Really, she didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear anything, or think. Or, most of all, speak.

Impossibly, it was hotter outside the temple than it’d ever been, despite the fact that the sun was already on its way down, turning the darkening, late afternoon sky a fiery shade of burnished copper. Chloe could practically see ripples of heat rising off the ground, and the trees, and probably her own head, her entire body gone damp with perspiration by the time she reached the spot they’d left their ride.

The two-level river boat, at least, hadn’t drifted off in Sam’s absence, and was still floating wearily against the river’s light current, protected by the sharp bank of dirt and stone they’d squirreled it beside, tugging futilely at its lowered anchor. Nadine was already aboard, up in the captain’s cabin, ready at the wheel, engine coughing and hacking like a grumpy old man with a cold.

Chloe climbed aboard and immediately went below deck, where she collapsed on the closest available flat surface, which ended up being an empty crate, half-listening to Sam blather on. She hmmmed and hawwwed at the appropriate times, playing with the bracelet tied snug around her wrist, feeling trapped and anxious, but too worried to try anything more than plucking at the bit of string with her fingertips. Maybe, if they got far enough away from the temple, it’d stop working…?

Finally, Sam seemed to catch on to her dark mood, and went back outside to smoke as dusk settled into evening, leaving Chloe with nothing but the grumbling chug of the engine beneath her feet and the steady rock of the water as the boat slowly meandered further upriver, headed back toward civilization, and home. They were in for a long ride, several days worth at least, and Chloe had planned on sleeping for much of it. Fat chance now; nerves wrung out, head throbbing, wrist itching.

Woozy from the heat, she staggered to their minuscule, sorry-excuse-for-a-bathroom and shut the rickety plywood door behind her. The smell within was atrocious, but probably, she should be thankful the boat had a toilet at all, jerry-rigged as it was. A bucket would’ve done better. In lieu of a working faucet, she splashed water from a nearby jug over her head into the chipped, yellowed sink jutting from the wall, then scrubbed a clean rag over her greasy face, feeling only slightly better afterwards. Her expression in the cracked, streaky mirror was wan and strained.

She needed to get the bracelet off, ideally, as soon as possible. To do that, she’d need research, properly done, and while their boat came equipped with a battered antennae duct-taped to the roof for cell service, it only worked if you stood just right and for long enough, and—

As if on cue, her cellphone began to buzz in her back pocket. Chloe automatically fished it out and did a double-take at the name lighting up on the screen. It was her mum.

“Seriously, mum?” Chloe muttered to herself. She loved her mum just fine, called her every couple of weeks to check up on her, visited when she could, but the timing couldn’t be worse. Had Sam been giving her lessons? Already feeling sick, she groaned, and wondered, Really, how badly can this go?

Bad, probably, but it was her mum. She couldn’t not answer.

“Shit,” she sighed, and hit accept. “Mum! How’s it?” Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad; she rarely lied to her mum.

“Chloe, dear,” cried her mum through a hiss of static. “How are you, my girl, we haven’t talked in ages!”

Oh, please, it hadn’t been that long, and—

Uh oh. Goosebumps erupted along Chloe’s arm. She stuttered, tried to clamp her mouth shut, then blurted out cheerfully, at full volume, “It’s going great, mum, listen, I’ve got good news!”

“What’s that, dear?”

“I’ve found my wife!”

There was a moment of utter silence. Then, a squeal of static. Chloe heard her mum repeat incredulously, “You’ve found who?” and then hung up on reflex, jabbing at the little red button on the screen with a stiff thumb, horrified with herself.

“Shit, shit, shit!”

Oh, Jesus, did she really just say that? Aloud? Not telling her mum how she felt about Nadine was not a lie! Well, maybe a lie by omission, but—

Her mum was going to be furious. Not so much about the whole wife part, since her mum was all about being open and free and God knows what else, but more with the hanging up on her part. She hated that. Suddenly, throwing her phone over the side of the boat to avoid a callback seemed terribly tempting, and—

Sheer terror raced through Chloe’s veins when her phone lit up a second time, but it wasn’t her mum. It was Nate Drake.

“Really?” Chloe hissed, glaring at the tiny screen. “Really? Don’t call for a month, not even a hey-how-are-ya, then suddenly you fancy a chat? Why does everyone want to talk the second I get a half bar of service? Who’s next, Sully? Just my goddamned luck. Christ.” She almost let it go to voicemail, dreading what else she might possibly say.

Sheer guilt forced her to answer, knowing Nate was probably worried about his brother, galumphing about with them in the arse-end of Greece, and about her and Nadine (well, more Chloe than Nadine, what with the throwing-him-out-a-window and all) and she’d already ducked his every attempt to question her about the details of the job, telling him next to nothing, and friends were supposed to check in with each other, blah, blah, blah. Ugh!

“Nate! Hi!” she answered, voice colored with false bravado. The faster she could get this call over with, the better. “Everything’s fine, just have a bracelet on me that I can’t seem to take off and makes me tell the truth? Funny, right? Ha ha! How ‘bout you?”

“…Um,” Nate said, his staticky voice sounding appropriately puzzled. “I’m…okay?”

“Right. So, Sam’s fine, everyone’s fine, Dolos is a shit, please don’t ask me any other questions because, honestly, I’m not sure whether you’ll like the answer or not!”

It was quiet. Then, Nate began to chuckle. “Funny, Chloe. Real funny. Sam put you up to this? Hey, he’s tried that one with me before. Didn’t work then, either.”

“Not a joke, mate,” Chloe replied, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth. Really, she should just hang up, damn the consequences. Then ditch her battery down the toilet. That’d get her some peace and quiet.

“Oh yeah?” said Nate, sounding like he didn’t believe her for a second.

“Yee-up.”

“Okay.” Now there was naked challenge in Nate’s tone. Like he still thought she was messing with him, and it was his job to make her fess up and admit it was all a big joke. “If you can’t lie,” he drawled theatrically, “what’s your middle name?”

Shit. That dirty little bugger! Nate had been trying to wheedle that tidbit of information out of her for years. As far as Chloe was concerned, she didn’t have a middle name, and had made a point of never telling it to anyone, not even Nadine. It wasn’t so much that she was embarrassed of it, just that… well, not everyone and their mum needed to know everything about her, all right?

But now she felt she couldn’t just hang up. That’d be like throwing in the proverbial towel, and Chloe wasn’t a quitter, not anymore. She jumped on trains now, and finished jobs right. So instead of cutting the line or telling Nate to piss off, she let the bracelet take over, and grit out with some resentment, “It’s Marie.”

Nate exploded with laughter, the poor reception squealing in Chloe’s ear. “No way! Marie? Chloe Marie Frazer?”

“It’s for my grandmum,” Chloe snarled, “so go ahead and laugh at a dead woman if it makes you happy.”

True to form, Nate laughed himself silly, eventually petering off into breathless gasping as he attempted to compose himself.

“Satisfied?” she snarked.

Clearing his throat, Nate said, “Now how do I know you didn’t just make that up to get me to be quiet?”

“I already told you,” Chloe ground out. “I can’t lie.”

“Alright,” said Nate, sounding like he was coming around to the idea, or at least was adequately amused by it. “If you really can’t lie, tell me something you’d never say to me, ever.”

Well, that was an easy one. But it wasn’t going to be pretty, and she probably shouldn’t—oops!

“Nadine is ten times the partner you ever were with me.”

The line fell completely silent. Chloe wondered for a moment if the call had actually been dropped, and pulled her phone away from her face to check. It hadn’t. She ticked the volume up a couple notches.

“Nate? Still there, mate?”

“…That actually, uh, hurt a little. I’m gonna need a second,” said Nate meekly, his voice audibly wobbling, covering it up with a sharp cough. Chloe immediately felt terrible. Stupid goddamn bracelet. She’d kept quiet about that fact for the very reason Nate had been so hurt. It was something he hadn’t needed to know. But it was still the truth, wasn’t it? And how did that saying go? The truth comes out.

“Whew,” said Nate, clearing his throat roughly. All traces of humor had drained from his tone, but at least he didn’t sound so vulnerable anymore. “So. A bracelet that makes you tell the truth, huh?”

Chloe sagged with relief against the sink and nearly burst into hysterical tears. Finally, someone on her side. “Yeah. Not as fun as it sounds, believe me.”

Immediately, that famed Drake mind went to work. “Alright. Which Greek God are we dealing with here?”

“Dolos, the one and only.”

“Ouch!” Nate audibly winced. “Okay. That won’t be fun. Hmm. You try taking it off, yet?”

“Won’t come off.”

“What’s it made out of?”

“Wood, I think. And string. Some fiber, like twine.”

"Ok, how 'bout using a knife?”

"Almost afraid to try.”

“Maybe it won’t let you remove it, but someone else can. You let Sam have a look at it?”

“Nate, you really think I’m gonna tell your brother about this? He’d have a goddamn field day, asking me all sorts of nonsense. Probably record it, too.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Nate mused. “What's Nadine say?”

Chloe hesitated, nervous. “Haven’t, uh, haven’t exactly told Nadine yet.”

“What? Why not? Maybe they cover magical cursed bracelets in Shoreline training. Right after throwing people out windows.”

“I can’t tell her,” Chloe insisted. “I—I don’t want her to know.”

“Thought you said she was ten times the partner I was,” Nate said mockingly, with just the slightest edge of jealousy.

“Nate, listen, about that—”

But Nate barreled over her, suddenly emphatic. “But, come on, Chloe, that can’t be true, right? Ten times? It was different, you and me. I mean—we were together. We dated. And I know you and Nadine are good friends, but it’s not the same—”

Goosebumps. “Oh, not for lack of wanting.”

Shit!

“Huh?” went Nate.

“I said,” Chloe repeated with horrific clarity, her lips hovering centimeters from the phone’s speaker, “not for lack of wanting.” Then, because the bracelet hated her, and was out to get her, found herself elaborating further, quite unnecessarily, “Me and Nadine, being together.”

“Um.” Nate was silent for a moment, as if his brain couldn’t quite comprehend what Chloe was suggesting. Christ, was it that hard to put two and two together? It almost made Chloe want to throw him out a window. “Come again?”

Chloe was glad he couldn’t see her rolling her eyes. “We should change the subject,” she pointed out, and then immediately afterwards blurted, “It means I want to be with her.”

“But you are with her,” said Nate, like Chloe was the stupid one. “You guys are partners.”

“I—” she began, cutting off when her entire arm went ice cold. Oh, this wasn’t going to be good. It was really, really time to get off the phone. Like, now. Now!

As if in slow motion, her thumb began to shift to hit end call, but not before she could get out, “Not like that, Nate, you twit, when I say together I mean I desperately want her to fuck me—”

Oh Jesus fucking Christ.

Mercifully—ironically—the phone cut at that moment. Chloe stared at it with a horrified expression, as if in heartbroken betrayal, then put her phone facedown on the sink, and screamed.

Loudly.

When she left the bathroom a few minutes later, changed into fresh clothes and hair re-tied in a sloppy braid but composure only halfway collected, Nadine was hovering nearby, leaning awkwardly on the tiny worktable they’d crammed into the hold, flanked by two rusted folding chairs, the damp particleboard top covered in Chloe’s crumpled and ripped bits of research.

Chloe froze, feeling oddly guilty and embarrassed. Nadine didn’t look alarmed enough to have heard everything she'd said in there, but she’d definitely caught the tail end of Chloe’s little tantrum. Half of Greece probably had, which was just... wonderful.

“Everything okay?” Nadine asked, in a stiff sort of way that meant she genuinely wanted to know the answer.

“Not in the slightest,” Chloe answered, entirely truthfully.

Nadine blinked at her, then took it in stride, probably thinking Chloe was just being her usual sarcastic self. “All right,” she said. “Just checking.” Then she leaned back, and looked at Chloe just the way she liked, with a small smile on her face, all tired and soft and the furthest thing from the big bad neck-snapping, arse-kicking mercenary Chloe knew her to be. Her hair had gone hopelessly frizzy from the humidity, fighting its way out of her tightly bound ponytail, damp curls sticking to her sweaty forehead, cheeks streaked with red dirt. One of her forearms was crusted with dried blood from some spill or another, and she had a mean-looking scratch on her brow, the skin there turned puffy and dark. She hadn’t showered or changed yet, her pants covered in a thick layer of dust, ripped t-shirt stained with dark circles of sweat at her sides and under her arms. Chloe could smell her from across the room.

She was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

Those very words came hurtling up her throat, and more. With supreme effort, Chloe swallowed them down, gagging from the strain, ignoring the fierce buzzing of her left arm by subtly stomping on her toes with the heel of her other foot. The sudden pain momentarily dulled the urge to speak, and she let out a grateful sigh. A win for her corner, but really, how long would that work?

“I’m wiped,” said Nadine, and she did look rather weary, the sharp line of her muscular shoulders drooping noticeably low, arms crossed loosely over her chest, every hard part of her gone heavy and soft. “Drake says he’ll stay up and drive for a bit so we can get some rest. I’ll switch with him for watch later, but I’m guessing we won’t be running into any thieves wanting a piece of that fancy bracelet of yours.”

Chloe grinned gamely at her joke, surreptitiously covering said bracelet with her other hand. She didn’t even want to look at it right now. “Sounds good,” she replied, just for something to say, fighting back anything—everything—else.

“Eish.” Nadine rubbed her hand over the back of her neck and made a face at the layer of grime it left on her palm. “You take the cot. It’s your turn. I’ll take the hammock.”

Chloe glanced over at the lumpy cot squashed into the corner of the hold, opposite the table and chairs. Small and flat as it was, topped by a thin, moth-eaten blanket, it was arguably the most comfortable space on their cramped little river boat, besides the padded captain’s chair in the cabin above. The hammock on deck, in Chloe’s professional opinion, qualified as a medieval torture device. The few nights she’d spent in it had been more than enough for a lifetime. Still, Nadine wouldn’t complain about having to sleep in it, because she didn’t complain, ever, and she’d probably find a way to trick Chloe into getting the cot for the rest of their time on the river, and really it was sort of infuriating how kind Nadine was, and—

“Let’s share,” Chloe said, and then grimaced, taken slightly aback. She honestly wasn’t sure if that’d been her, or the bracelet. Maybe it was both.

Nadine stared, as if Chloe had suggested they both jump in the river and swim their way back to town. “Share? You want to share?” She eyed the cot doubtfully while Chloe attempted not to panic, or at least not do so visibly. It wasn’t that outrageous of an idea, was it? They’d shared plenty of beds before, on jobs when necessary, or if money was tight; real mattresses in cheap motels or makeshift ones in the field, and always platonically enough. Well, besides a tease or two from Chloe, because who could blame her? “You feeling alright, Frazer?”

"I feel horrible,” Chloe said. “But I really do want to share.” And she did. Badly, in fact. Yet, at the same time, the prospect utterly terrified her. Which was just ridiculous, really. She was Chloe goddamned Frazer. Nothing terrified her. Except maybe the truth.

God, this bracelet needed to come off now.

A bead of sweat rolled slowly down Nadine’s temple. Just before it dripped off her jaw, she reached up and flicked it away with a finger. “You sure? Gotta be 90 degrees in here. Hot enough with one person. I don’t mind the hammock. Honest.”

Honest. Of course she was being honest. Nadine didn’t know how to be anything else. How did she make it look so easy? Chloe should’ve been taking down notes from day one, apparently.

Before, she would’ve bantered and bullied Nadine into ultimately agreeing with her, treating everything like a joke, as she always did. Oh? You sure you want that hammock? Up on deck. With Sam. Listening to him whistle and sing all night. Smelling those stinking cigarettes—really, how has he not run out of them yet? All while those ropes from the hammock dig into your back like metal wires. Right. If that’s more tempting than a night curled up tight with yours truly, well, that’s your business, isn't it, Ross. Hmm? What’s that? You’ve changed your mind? Thought so.

Instead, she said simply, “I’m sure.”

At last, Nadine shrugged, giving in. “Fine,” she said, then caught a whiff of herself and grimaced, popping up from the table with a groan. “Gonna wash up first, though. Shower’s the first thing on my list when we get back, ja? Tired of making do with… what do the Americans call it? A cat-bath?”

“Oh, I’d love to give you a cat-bath,” Chloe growled under her breath, not bothering to correct her. She’d hoped Nadine wouldn’t catch that, but the other woman gave her an odd look before gently pushing past her into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her.

So.

Not only had she told her mum she’d found a wife, and Nate that she, quote-unquote, desperately wanted Nadine to fuck her—cue embarrassed cringe—now she and her partner were going to share a cot, all while under the effects of a magical cursed bracelet that forbade her from lying in any way.

Spectacular.

Chloe glared down at her arm, and the bracelet latched to her wrist, like some horrible blood-sucking leech. This was getting very old, very fast. Maybe she could mention something to Nadine as soon as she came back out of the bathroom. Carefully, though. Like, in a hypothetical way.

Nadine, you know that bracelet I hypothetically put on? Well, it’s hypothetically making me tell the truth. Also, I’m head over heels for you. Hypothetically.

Christ. She stomped across the hold and threw herself onto the cot, barely resisting the urge to flail her arms and legs like an outraged toddler. This entire situation was just so… so… so stupid! It wasn’t like she’d planned on never telling Nadine about the way she felt. She’d just wanted more time, and a better setting, and not Sam goddamn Drake tagging along like some inept, bumbling sidekick like he always bloody did. But then it’d always seemed like the right moment never arrived, or it felt too soon, so she’d kept quiet, joking and flirting and lying to cover up the silence, and waiting, waiting. For what?

You may think you’ve changed, her mind jeered treacherously, but you’re still nothing more than a coward.

“Oh, shut up,” she snapped at herself, and laid her head back on their sole, flatter-than-a-sheet-of-paper pillow, glaring up at the creaking deck above. Within seconds, her back began to ache fiercely, spine stiffening against the vibrating boards beneath her, cushioned only the barest amount by the lumpy, reeking cot. The rumble of the chugging motor made her teeth buzz and ears itch, filling the room with the faint stench of petrol, joining with the lingering whiffs of Sam’s cigarettes, a general haze of body odor, and the subtle must of moldy wood.

She’d tell her, Chloe decided. Not about how she felt, but about the bracelet, and what it was doing. Soon. Just not this very second. She’d proven, already, that she could control herself when it really mattered. That she could bite back the words and keep her mouth shut against the truth. It hurt, and made her feel dizzy and sick, but she could do it. She’d find a way to endure. How hard could it be, to just not talk?

And then out of the bathroom came Nadine Ross, stepping into the low light of their single electric lantern dangling from the ceiling, practically topless in a tight, functional black sports bra, paused midway through the task of pulling her t-shirt off over her head. The neck was caught in the band of her ponytail, and she made an irritated noise as she attempted to work it free. Chloe’s eyes widened and zeroed straight in on Nadine’s bared stomach, where the harsh light from the lantern threw shadows across the sharp ridges of her lean stomach, hard, knotted muscles flexing and shifting as she twisted and moved.

Nadine freed herself at last and eyed the shirt with an annoyed huff, fingering the fraying slice at the back, where the axe had cut through the material like butter. “The shirt’s a loss,” she announced, balling it up and throwing it back into the bathroom, kicking the door shut after it.

“Pity. I really liked that one on you,” Chloe replied, and then bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

Well. Off to a great start, weren’t they?

Nadine gave her a wry smile. Rather than rifle about in her duffel to find another shirt to wear, she simply undid the clasp of her belt before yanking it from her pant’s loops with a sharp snap, and tossed that on the ground too, the heavy leather thumping loudly against the boards. Oh Jesus Christ, was she going to sleep like that—?

“S’hot,” Nadine mumbled. “You mind?”

“Nope,” Chloe squeaked, and coughed into her fist as she shifted aside to make room for Nadine on the cot. It was a tight fit, but they managed somehow, shuffling carefully, mindful of wayward elbows and knees, ‘til they were lying beside one another, Chloe on her back and Nadine on her side, facing away, towards the wall. Chloe’s entire right arm was touching Nadine’s warm, slightly sticky torso. She swallowed thickly and forced herself utterly still, as if anticipating a surprise verbal barrage from the horrid bracelet clamped on her wrist.

Nothing happened.

Chloe relaxed an iota.

Five minutes later, she let out a deep breath and went limp. The bracelet hadn’t given a single twinge. Maybe it’d run out of energy? Power? Whatever? Right, like she was so lucky. Still, she wasn’t frozen in terror anymore, so that was a definite improvement.

And, okay. This was nice. Lying here, with Nadine. Different, but why should it be any different? They were just sharing a cot like they’d done more than a dozen times already. And so what if they were touching a little? It wouldn’t be all that strange for them to touch casually, not even if Nadine were to, say, roll over and sling one of those heavy arms of hers across Chloe’s side, and nuzzle a bit closer so her nose poked into the hollow of Chloe’s neck, hot breath steaming up Chloe’s ear. She wouldn’t mind at all. If it happened. Which it didn’t.

Ten minutes passed. Chloe had never felt so profoundly awake, or quite so aware of another person. She could feel Nadine’s broad back expanding and contracting as she breathed, and could tell she wasn’t fully asleep yet, just dozing. The musky, familiar smell of her wasn’t so strong as before, but still there, tickling Chloe’s nose in a pleasant way. The boat hold had grown stiflingly hot around them, and Chloe should’ve been disgusted with another warm body pressed so close, but found herself yearning for the opposite—to grow hotter, and press closer.

And, Christ, they were barely touching, and so innocently besides, but somehow it felt incredibly intimate, almost scandalously so. And they still had all their clothes on! Well, most of them. Chloe’d stripped off her bra in the bathroom, and now, despite the heat, her nipples were hard, her entire chest tingling like mad. She'd never felt so exposed, not even while having sex. Then she imagined what it'd be like to actually have sex with Nadine, and nearly moaned aloud, head spinning deliriously, breath growing ragged. What was going on with her? Jesus, had she already been driven insane? Also, exactly how long had it been since she'd last gotten laid? Too long, clearly.

This—all of this was that stupid bracelet's fault. Making her think about things she preferred to ignore, then making her say them aloud. Jesus, she hadn’t even made it more than a couple hours, telling the truth! How ridiculously pathetic!

You bloody love her. You love her so much you can’t even begin to think about how to deal with it.

Shut up! she screamed at herself. Shut up shut up shut up!

Suddenly, Nadine stirred with a grouchy noise, and Chloe went still, waiting for her to get settled again. To her surprise, Nadine rolled over to face her, their noses abruptly inches apart. Their eyes met in the faint light, and Chloe looked away first. “Sorry,” Nadine muttered, as she gently maneuvered Chloe’s hip slightly to the side to make room for her bent thighs, folding them below and above Chloe’s knee before stealing their only pillow for herself with a grunt of apology. With great care, she wriggled an arm behind Chloe’s head, propping her neck up on the thick firmness of her bicep, a wonderfully compact, makeshift replacement, then made half a dozen or so minute further adjustments, seeming entirely intent on making sure Chloe was completely comfortable, a look of pointed concentration lining her sleepy face. “Good?”

“Mmhmm,” said Chloe. It was all she could trust herself with, at the moment. A lump grew in her throat. It only got worse when Nadine brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear in a sweet, thoughtful gesture. After some time, she felt strong enough to say, sincerely, “Thank you. For today. Saving me from that axe.”

“Already thanked me,” Nadine replied drowsily, as if it were nothing at all, drifting back into a fuzzy doze. She nuzzled her face into the pillow in a way that should be illegal, then made a long, drawn out, Mmmmm sound of contentment, and Chloe could not suppress a full-body shiver. Nadine stirred. “You cold?” she asked, sounding adorably confused.

Sweat beaded on Chloe’s brow. She was the farthest thing from cold as she possibly could be. “No,” she said simply. Of course, Nadine just grunted and curved her free arm over Chloe’s stomach to pull her slightly closer by the opposite hip. Chloe’s heart somersaulted. Oh, Jesus, this was horrible. She never wanted it to end.

“Listen,” Nadine muttered against her temple, her voice soft and rumbly. “Are you really okay? Back there, in the temple, you were acting funny. And it sort’ve sounded like you said…” she paused, and Chloe physically felt her blush, the warm, tacky skin of Nadine’s neck and chest growing palpably hot, “…things.”

“Things,” Chloe repeated, unable to stop her voice from sounding faintly strangled. Her pulse quickened. Shit. It’d been stupid of her to think Nadine wouldn't notice her odd behavior and then call her out on it. Optimistic, but stupid.

“Ja, like…” Nadine hesitated again, the radiating warmth of her blush spreading to her cheeks and nose. “Anyways, it made me think you were acting—I dunno. Funny. Just… Just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”

I’m perfectly fine, Chloe recited in her head. What came out of her mouth was, “When you’re this close to me, I can’t think.”

And, okay, that wasn’t the worst thing she could’ve said. Not the best, either, though.

Very slowly, Nadine’s head came up from her pillow.

“Chloe?” she asked warily.

Chloe looked at her, and said, “I love it when you say my name.”

It was quiet. Then, Nadine announced, eyes narrowed, “Something strange is going on here." She was entirely awake now.

Chloe started to sweat, her heart abruptly hammering in her throat. Oh God. Was this it? Was this the moment? The moment when everything she’d been holding in for months and months came thundering out in a supernaturally-induced avalanche of mortification? “Strange?” she parroted again, since that’d worked so well the first time. “Going on?”

Nadine glared.

“Listen,” Chloe said. It was time to fess up, but Chloe wasn’t sure exactly how her partner was going to react to something not entirely of their world. Signs pointed to ‘badly.’ “Hypothetically—”

“Chloe,” Nadine growled deep in her throat, hovering above her now, her entire body tensed powerfully, as if prepared to attack some hidden enemy. Chloe squeezed her eyes shut and whimpered. She may or may not have just gotten a little wet at that thunderous tone.

“Um. Yes?”

"Tell me you’re okay.”

“I…”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t,” Chloe whispered.

Now Nadine looked scared. The bicep under Chloe’s head went hard as a rock. “What do you mean? Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“Then why won’t you tell me you’re okay?”

“I can’t!”

“You can’t?”

“I can’t.”

Nadine, being Nadine, caught on at once. Her eyes blazed down Chloe’s prone body with searing purpose, making her tremble, tracing over her face, her shoulders, her breasts and stomach, and fastened keenly on the bracelet around her wrist. She frowned, and leaned closer to Chloe with ferocious intensity. Her breath was hot and smelled faintly of hastily-used toothpaste. “Tell me my eyes are blue,” she demanded in a tone that brooked no argument.

Chloe, being Chloe, tried her best, pausing first to swallow and take a steady breath. “Your eyes,” she started slowly, trying to build up some momentum, “are—“ goosebumps! “—beautiful.” She tried to stop it there, but the ball had started rolling, smashing all the doors down, and suddenly she couldn’t help herself: “I could look into them all day. Don’t think I’ve ever seen them this close before. I don’t even know what the name of that color is. And you have freckles. On your nose. I want to sleep next to you every night. And don’t get me started on that bra. It makes your shoulders look good enough to bite. I just want to grab them and dig my nails in and hang on for dear life—oooh my god please make me stop.” She clapped both hands over her open mouth and squeezed her eyes shut, feeling as though she could die of embarrassment then and there.

It was mercifully quiet for a long moment. Chloe waited until she didn’t feel so much like bolting out of the hold screaming before sneaking a peek at her partner, only to find Nadine’s stony expression hadn’t changed. If anything, it’d hardened further.

"Look, Nadine—” she began.

“You’re messing with me,” Nadine said with stark finality. She sounded almost… angry. Or, not angry, but very, very upset.

A sad, broken chuckle slipped out from between Chloe’s lips. Oh, if only it were as simple as that. “I’m not, china,” she said, her tone dangerously close to pleading. “I’m really, really not.”

“No? This isn’t some big joke? Something you and Sam thought up?”

Jesus, the paranoia of this woman. Not to mention the lack of self esteem. Was it so hard to imagine she was genuinely desirable? Thank God Chloe loved her so much. Otherwise it’d be a real turn-off. “No!” she snapped. “Of bloody course not! That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Nadine ignored her, saying, “You can’t just—just go around saying things like that. It’s not funny anymore, Frazer.”

Oh, so they were back to Frazer now? Ouch. Well, fine. The truth was coming out, no matter if it hurt or not. “I said those things because they’re true! All of it! I swear to Christ, I’m not messing with you.” She paused, winced, then admitted, “Well, not this time, anyways.”

“This time?” Nadine jerked away and sat up sharply, withdrawing that wonderful arm from behind Chloe’s head. She knelt upright on the cot on her knees, fists balled on top of her thighs, looming above Chloe, who propped herself up on her elbows and rolled her eyes with a wry huff. Her entire left arm prickled and went tight with goosebumps, and for the first time since she’d put the bracelet on, she wasn’t holding back at all. It felt amazing.

“Look, I know I’m an awful big flirt, china. Messing with you is the highlight of my day. You’re adorable when you’re flustered, do you know that? But I never say something I don’t mean. And everything I just said? It's true. So there.” She stopped a moment to catch her breath, exhilarated by her blatant honesty. It was a real first. “Now, if you didn’t like it, you should’ve told me to stop on day one, and I would have, I swear!”

Nadine looked away, embarrassed. “Didn’t say I didn’t like it,” she said. “Just never thought anything of it. You do the same with everyone, yeah? Even Sam—”

“I do not! You take that back!” Chloe cried in outrage. She might like a laugh or two with the man, but she’d never given him a single line, not once.

Nadine huffed loudly. “Fine, you don’t talk about his arse or anything. But still. I just thought that’s what you did. So I ignored it. Didn’t think it… meant anything, ja?”

“Come on, china,” Chloe murmured softly. “Even you’re not that dense.”

Nadine made a sound that was somewhere between confused and offended.

“I’ll admit,” Chloe started carefully, “a lot of it is just who I am as a person. I laugh things off. I play things up. I joke. I flirt. And that’s all it was at first, with you.”

“At first?”

“Right. But now—”

“Now?” Nadine’s eyes went wide. She looked faintly panicked. Her body clenched, as if in anticipation, her muscles quivering visibly in the lantern's flickering light.

“Oh, don’t act so surprised,” Chloe scowled. “You think you can just tell someone you’re going to jump on a bomb-strapped train with them and expect them not to feel something? Not to care? You’re my partner, Nadine.”

The look Nadine gave her was frightened and touched and terribly vulnerable. Chloe had never seen her partner so unsure. Nadine was younger than her, but Chloe had never realized until that very moment by just how much. She looked like a lost little girl, sitting there on her heels before her.

The buzz of the overhead lantern filled their silence, the boat creaking and rocking around them.

“I care about you too,” Nadine mumbled back quietly, seeming to gather herself, her spine straightening, shoulders broadening, until she was Nadine again. Chloe looked up into her eyes and saw her partner. Tentatively, they smiled at one another.

So, there. It was out. Well, as much as Chloe could get it, anyways. It was quite enough, in her opinion. More than she’d ever have admitted herself. She hoped Dolos was happy, the twat.

Nadine gave a ragged sigh and leaned back, her rigidly held body relaxing into a loose slump. “Eish. What a day.” She eyed Chloe up and down again, paying special attention to the bracelet. “Now where the hell did all that come from?”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Chloe said matter-of-factly, sticking her left arm into the air, “this bracelet has a bloody curse on it, and I’d really love to have it off, right about now.”

“Ja? What’s it do, then?” Nadine asked suspiciously. “Make you spout dirty comments? Lies?”

“No,” said Chloe quietly. “I told you already. It makes you tell the truth.”

“The truth?”

“Mmhmm.”

Nadine regarded her warily for a moment, then took Chloe’s arm to pull at the bracelet experimentally, and asked, “What’s your middle name?”

Oh, that dirty little—!

“Marie.”

“Um. Shit.” Looking a bit shaken, Nadine snatched her hand away from Chloe’s wrist, as if afraid the curse would rub off on her, too. Then she stopped herself, and very pointedly put her hand back, expression set, unafraid. With gentle fingers, she turned Chloe’s arm about, peering closely at the wooden trinket. “Why didn’t you say something, back at the temple?”

Chloe bit her lip. “I felt stupid. And—and I didn’t want you to think I was stupid, too.”

“I don’t think you’re stupid. Just…too risky, sometimes. You shouldn’tve put it on.” Nadine was silent, then asked, “Why would you care if I thought you were stupid? You don’t care what anyone thinks.”

“I care what you think,” Chloe said. She thought she was finished, then blurted, “I want you to like me.”

Nadine gave her a look that was half-exasperated, half-affectionate. “I like you just fine, Frazer.”

“Oh. Good.” She felt absurdly relieved, hearing that, and then silly. Nadine noticed her tone, and the corner of her mouth began to quiver, like maybe she wanted to have a laugh. So, she thought this was funny, did she? Well, if Chloe ever got this goddamned bracelet off, she was going to make sure Nadine got her own turn, and then some.

“So,” said Nadine, looking somewhat smug, releasing Chloe’s wrist to cross her arms over her chest in a way that made her biceps bulge deliciously. “Makes you tell the truth, ja?”

“Sure does.”

"Hmm." Nadine regarded her for a moment, as if trying to figure something out, or solve a riddle of her own. “I heard everything you said to me today, you know.”

Oh, Jesus. Right. That wasn't embarrassing. “Everything?”

“Everything.”

“Shit.” Chloe grimaced, feeling suddenly uncomfortable. “I’m sooor—nope, can’t do it, because I’m not sorry, and I meant it, and you’re enjoying this, aren’t you, you dickhead?”

“Just a little,” said Nadine. Really, for all the times Chloe had ever made her blush, the teasing she’d gotten in over the past few months, it wasn’t like she didn’t deserve it.

“So, what,” said Nadine in that gruff way she used when she was attempting to seem indifferent, and was anything but, “You’ve got some kind of a great big crush on me, ja? Is that it?”

"Well,” Chloe began, “not so much a crush.”

“No?”

Chloe looked up, into her partner’s weary, sweat-limned face, and with all the ease and casualness of someone putting in their order at the tea shop—“Earl Grey, no milk”—said, “I’m in love with you.”

Her heart seized.

It was out. All of it. Oh, Jesus. Jesus!

This—this was why she should’ve stuck to one-night stands! Oh, God. This was— She couldn't— Now—

Fucking Dolos!

Nadine was silent. Completely frozen. She didn’t throw her head back laughing at the joke, or grab Chloe by the scruff of the neck and haul her up on deck to toss her arse right off the boat. The triumphant smirk quirking her lips slid away like rapid water. Her eyes were wider than ever. But, slowly, they didn’t fill with horror or outrage. Instead, they grew wet with something Chloe couldn’t entirely place. Something almost like regret.

“Ah,” said Nadine, coming alive, uttering a quick, “Shit. Shit! I’m sorry, Chloe.” She reached for her, then pulled away, lowering her gaze to her hands, clenched into fists atop her thighs.

“You’re sorry?” Chloe repeated, confused. “Sorry that I’m in love with you?”

Nadine’s head snapped back up. “What? No. No!” As if overcome with guilt, she dropped her eyes again. “Sorry that I made you say it—like, like that. When the bracelet was on. Like—like I forced you to do it.”

“Oh, so you believe me now, do you?” Chloe said with some scorn. Just because the truth was out didn’t mean she had to be happy about it. Humiliated came a bit closer to what she was feeling now. “That’s what it took? 'Marie' wasn’t enough?”

“No, I—”

“Well, there you have it, the truth is out everyone!” Chloe cried, addressing a make-believe crowd. “I, Chloe Marie Frazer, am arse-over-ankles in love with my partner, Nadine Ross. Tell all your friends! Don't worry, my mum already knows! Nate too, the bloody pisshead—”

“Chloe—”

But she was angry now, and not ready to listen, and embarrassed more than anything else. “If you’d just believed me in the first place I wouldn’tve had to go and make a goddamn fool out of myself!”

Nadine dropped her head like a child particularly ashamed of their poor behavior. “I, uh, I should’tve done that. That was wrong of me. I’m sorry.”

Chloe was quiet. Anything she could say—anything she might say—wouldn’t help, because really, this couldn’t possibly get any worse. She hoped desperately that Nadine wouldn’t leave her over this, break their partnership, though she wouldn’t be entirely surprised if she did. She should’ve known not to get overly attached. Sick with dread, she stared at the bracelet on her wrist, and the empty space on the cot between her and her partner. Nadine didn’t seem like she wanted to touch her at all now. For a brief moment, Chloe felt profoundly alone.

“So,” Nadine said into the awkward silence. “…Want me to help you figure out how to take it off?”

Cradling her throbbing head in her palm, Chloe nodded mutely, sitting up the rest of the way so she could cross her legs and proffer her wrist. She felt miserable. It wasn’t every day you tore your heart open and got left out in the cold with your arse in the breeze.

Nadine dug into the pockets of her cargo pants and came up empty. Swearing quietly, she got up from the cot and went to her duffel by the table. She searched through it for a minute, and eventually withdrew a pristinely kept Swiss Army Knife.

“C’mere,” she said in a soft voice, motioning for Chloe to join her beneath the buzzing lantern, where she could see better. Chloe sighed, coming to stand beside her partner, or perhaps soon-to-be ex-partner. Nadine wouldn’t meet her eyes, intent on her knife. Chloe looked away and held out her arm helpfully. No need to make this anymore painful than it already was by talking. This was probably their last boat ride together. The thought alone made her chest tight and her throat ache.

“I’m not like you, Chloe,” Nadine mused quietly, as she expertly flicked the smallest blade free from her pocketknife. “I don’t need a bracelet to tell someone how I really feel, ja?”

“Ah. If only we could all be so lucky,” Chloe quipped bitterly, trying to ignore how the feel of Nadine’s callused palm against her forearm gave her shivers, and how those few simple words made something inside of herself light up in tentative anticipation.

“It’s hard to be upfront about,” Nadine went on. “When you care for someone, and want them to know. To just come out and say it is one thing. Me, I like to show it other ways.”

Other ways.

Like how she’d tackled Chloe today, to save her from that swinging axe. Or how she’d reacted minutes ago, filled with a protective umbrage, when Chloe had been unable to tell her she was okay. And maybe—maybe—how she was looking at her now, with a naked sort of tenderness that made Chloe’s heart plunge and then soar.

“Right,” she said, just so she wouldn’t forget how to talk.

“You know I never take risks,” Nadine said. “That’s just who I am. But maybe I should take one now, ja?”

“Nadine, you don’t have to—”

Nadine rolled her eyes. “Don’t have to what? You’re not making me say anything. I haven’t got a bracelet on my wrist. But I can still tell you how I feel. Don't know how you haven't caught on yet. Even you’re not that dense.”

A sharp laugh broke free from Chloe’s throat at her own line turned back against her. Good one, china. Good one. The warm feeling in her chest had expanded to the tips of her limbs and the crown of her head. Was this what love really felt like? Good Lord. She'd been missing out.

“Come on,” said Nadine. “Why did you think I put up with all that teasing for so goddamn long?”

“Alright, alright,” Chloe chuckled wetly, choked with emotion. “I get it. You don’t have to say any more.”

Nadine smiled at her, eyes warm and sweet. Refocusing on her task, she levered the small blade under the bracelet’s thin string, poised to cut through at last, then paused. “Can I ask you one more thing, before I take it off?”

Chloe almost threw her hands into the air and screamed, settling with a wheezing sigh. Really, everything was out. What did she have to be afraid of now?

“Why not?” she said, then looked up, and realized just how close Nadine was standing to her. In a sports bra. In a hot, dark boat hold. With no one else—relatively—around. She felt herself blush, something she hadn’t done in years. Inches from her own, Nadine’s brown eyes appeared lighter than usual, like heated gold.

“Do you want me to kiss you, right now?” Nadine asked.

Chloe went still, breath catching in her throat. Nadine was watching her with that same intense focus as before, like Chloe was the only thing in the world that mattered, the cool metal of her pocketknife poised against the warm skin of her inner wrist, grounding her from floating away entirely.

And Chloe knew one thing for sure—she didn’t need a cursed bracelet to tell that truth.

“Oh, just get on with it alrea—”

Before she could finish, Nadine leaned upwards slightly—Chloe was the taller of the two, something she secretly relished and Nadine resented—and kissed her soundly, somehow managing to be both firm and gentle at the same time. Chloe made a sound that was a combination of a moan and a hum, and Nadine pressed just that much harder, until their mouths were completely sealed together. Her lips were chapped. Chloe couldn't remember the last time she'd flossed.

It was glorious.

Nadine pulled away first, her hot breath rushing out against Chloe’s kiss-dampened lips, making them tingle fiercely. Chloe smiled dreamily, eye still closed, thinking maybe that was all she was going to get, and thankful for any of it, but then Nadine was kissing her again, harder than before, and when Chloe parted her lips beneath hers to try and gasp in a much-needed breath, Nadine nudged her tongue into her mouth, and then she was really kissing her, not being gentle at all, and Chloe decided she didn't actually need that air after all.

With a loud groan, Chloe clung with her free hand to Nadine’s thick shoulder, nails digging in sharply to the meat of her, just the way she’d dreamed. It was better than she’d ever imagined. Nadine’s hand landed on the outer curve of her hip, boldly low, smoothing against the flesh of her arse, and squeezed. Chloe snarled into her mouth. Her ears were on fire. She wanted to claw her own shirt off and then get to work on that sports bra of Nadine’s. Their arms were still trapped awkwardly between them, and when Nadine tried to tip Chloe's neck back so she could nip at her sweaty throat, breasts pressed flush together, the blade suddenly poked against Chloe’s skin and she eeped loudly, making them both freeze. They parted, and stared as if stunned, then burst into laughter at the expressions on each other’s faces.

“Been wanting to do that for a while,” Nadine said, trying to sound serious and tough when Chloe knew it was all a ruse, could feel her heart pounding away at her breast like mad.

“Me, too,” said Chloe, enjoying the whole truth thing for once.

Sparing the knife and the bracelet a tentative look, Nadine asked, “What if it doesn’t work?”

“It will.”

And, well, that meant it would, didn't it? With the bracelet on, she couldn't lie. Chloe was anxious, but somehow, a part of her knew the bracelet was finished with its work, and was ready to release her from its grasp. All that fuss, and she realized now it’d only been trying to help.

“Okay," said Nadine. "Ready?”

"Ready.”

They held their breaths. And then—

The blade snicked through the string, and the wooden beads clattered loose to the floor, scattering about the hold. Some rolled through the cracks in the floorboards and disappeared. Others hung up on splinters or were lost in the depths of the cot’s blanket, cast to the side. One cracked in half and broke into even smaller pieces under Chloe’s boot as she lunged, clutching tightly at Nadine’s warm, heaving back as the other woman seized her by the ribs and lifted her right off her feet with a powerful surge of those strong, strong arms. She dug her nails again into Nadine’s bulging shoulders, wrapping her legs around Nadine’s fit waist and bit fiercely at her mouth. Nadine growled and kissed her back, and it traveled down Chloe’s tongue and into her throat where it grew hot and feral in her chest. Tangled in one another, they stumbled backwards, trying for the cot and hitting the shitty table instead, kicking one of the chairs so hard it folded up halfway and fell over with a clatter.

Nadine pulled away, eyelids drooped low, mouth shining. Her neck was prickled with sweat, her pulse visibly throbbing in the glistening hollow there.

“Sorry, I know this is fast—”

“Nadine,” Chloe said with utter seriousness, cupping her partner's beautiful face in her hands and pressing her thumbs hard into Nadine’s jaw. “I desperately want you to fuck me.”

The corner of Nadine’s mouth trembled again, as if about to break into a smile.

Maybe Chloe would try a bit more of this truth thing, sometime in the future. But not right now; she was busy.

It’d been a very long, very hot, very stressful day, though it was ending nicely enough. And if Sam Drake got bored and decided to wander down below deck to see what all the noise was about, well. Chloe would just have to shoot him.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, was not a lie.