by Jaida Jones
Was he sure that was all it was?
Deflection time. “You said your brother was that—uh, suit of armor. Body. Corpse I passed, in the tunnels. By the first door.”
Shining Talon nodded slowly. “You speak of the Lo— the ruins. Where you woke me. Your livelihood was injured then, too, as I recall.”
His strangely cool fae touch moved away from the damaged earlobe, ghosted the very corner of Rags’s jaw. Dangerous.
“This is not about me.” Rags slid down, curling against Shining Talon like a starved kitten. He gesticulated with the liquor bottle to distract from the fact that he’d shut his eyes, his face resting perilously close to Shining Talon’s hip. “I wanna know what a family does to get the honor of—whatever it was. The Sleep, staying behind, being the only one . . .”
The question came out less sure of itself than Rags had planned, but out it was. He had to take his victories where he could.
Shining Talon’s hand rested curled on Rags’s shoulder. Not beckoning him closer, not pushing him off. “My father was one of Oberon’s oathsworn warriors,” he said. Openly answering the question asked, without skirting or weaseling. “He was granted a high position in the Bone Court after years of distinguished service. A fae promise is wrought in iron and gold. Without sorrow, beauty would mean nothing. So with the privilege came sacrifice. That is duty.”
Rags’s mind drifted, unwelcome, to Dane—who had parents, rules, chores, and so had imagined Rags’s life to be one filled with wonders and adventures. Rags had given his old friend similar wisdom.
Sure, Rags had been a kid with no bedtime, but he’d also been a kid with no bed.
“See.” Rags poked his index finger into Shining Talon’s ribs, barely felt the frisson of pain that followed. “This is why I work with just me. No rewards to divide, no friends to wall you up in an underground tomb. Never had them, never will.”
It made Rags angry because it should’ve made Shining Talon angry. He should have seen it for what it was—a burden—and didn’t. What kind of value was there in being abandoned?
Never the kind of boy who liked to hit things with his fists, Rags preferred verbal sparring.
He waited for Shining Talon to object to his characterization of fae honor.
“You are lying,” Shining Talon said. Which, all right, Rags had asked for it. Hadn’t quite accounted for how bluntly it might come out. “You told me you had a friend, once. Before we were interrupted.”
“By you getting arrowed in the shoulder.”
Rags remembered every word that had come out of his mouth. He didn’t appreciate that Shining Talon remembered them, but there was nothing he could do about it.
Nor about the flash of memory that conjured up an uncertain smile and sandy hair: a boy Rags’s age, but soft and rounded where Rags had recently shot up from scrawny kid to something taller and made of all elbows.
Dane’s family had owned a butcher’s in the shittiest part of the city before it turned into pure Cheapside chaos, and he could be counted on to reliably slip a beef bone or some chicken necks Rags’s way when called to. On lucky days there was even a liver or a heart. Despite his better instincts, Rags kept coming back for the free food. No other reason.
They’ll be butchering me next, Dane used to joke, prodding his belly, as they lay stretched out side by side on a sunny rooftop.
Rags clenched his bad hand into a fist, didn’t allow himself to flinch when the pain returned. Pain dissolved his focus, which had been exactly what he wanted.
“Dane,” he said finally. “His name was Dane. And if you’re hoping to tell me to think of him for courage, don’t bother, ’cause he’s dead. Like our late pal Cabhan of Kerry’s-End.”
“Cabhan is not dead,” Shining Talon said. “The Lying One’s wicked arts would have told him if the heart ceased to beat, and then his location would be known to us.”
“That’s . . .” Sensing the need for a clear mind, Rags pulled away, though it felt like shit not being pressed against Shiny anymore, and precisely because it did, perching his borrowed bottle on the polished bedside table. He settled with the pillows at his back, brushing black hair out of his eyes with a sweep of his fingers. “Okay. So where do you think he went, then?”
“I do not know,” Shining Talon said. Rags’s heart sank. He’d asked the question he’d been wondering all along. How the fuck is Cab hiding?
But the more important question was whether Rags could do the same.
Frustrated, he ran a hand through his hair, then shook out his fingers. Shoved his hands into his pockets in search of his fragment to toy with and instead recoiled when he remembered what he’d stuffed there days ago.
Morien’s magic blindfolds.
He shivered.
Fear wasn’t the right reaction. Rags had been walking around with tools in his pockets the whole time. Was so distracted, he hadn’t thought to appraise their value or test their worth.
It wasn’t like him.
Those blindfolds had shut out the world when Morien had put them around his eyes. Rags drummed his fingers against his left ribs, thinking.
Wondering if the gamble was worth it. If he turned out to be wrong, made a bad play . . . Morien would know something was up. He could kill Rags for trying to be clever, right in front of Shining Talon.
The fae prince didn’t need that after losing his family. Losing everyone. Everything.
Shining Talon was still talking about Cab. “He has slipped the Lying One’s net. Someone has helped him. Assistance I have not been able to provide you. Forgive me—”
Rags held up a finger, prompting Shiny to shush.
If he was going to do this, he had to do it quick, like setting a bone or jumping between rooftops the first time.
“I’m going to sleep now,” Rags said, forcefully. “Because humans still do that, and with everything going on, I’m fucking tired.”
He shut his eyes, ignoring Shining Talon’s look of handsome bafflement, and pulled the blindfolds from his pocket. It was quick work to tie them around his chest, covering his heart.
Rags flexed his sharded right hand, covering it with his left. No reason to trust Morien when he said the shards in his hand were for causing pain and nothing more—like spying through his fingernails—except Shining Talon had seen mirrorcraft like this before being put to Sleep.
Rags trusted him not to get them both killed.
That was new. The whole trusting thing. Fortunately, no time to examine it.
When the final knot was tied, it felt like a boulder had settled on Rags’s ribs. Had he done it right, or did the cloths sense his subterfuge and want to kill him for defying their master?
“Well,” he wheezed. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Wonder gleamed on Shining Talon’s face, which meant Rags probably wasn’t about to die. And no sign of Morien appearing to tear his heart from his chest, which was always appreciated.
Shining Talon reached forward, a flicker of distaste darkening his features when he touched the cloths.
“To use a Lying One’s arts against him . . . you are cunning, Rags.”
“A hunch,” Rags protested. He felt light-headed, though whether that was from the blindfolds or the compliment, he wasn’t sure. “Now we can talk without that creep listening in. So if you’ve got any brilliant theories? It’s time to share them.”
What Shining Talon said next took the rest of Rags’s breath away. He hadn’t actually expected an answer.
“I believe that I am not the only surviving member of my kind. I told you about our Enchantrisks, yes? They performed feats of wonder for our people, and were our best defense against the sorcerers. My connection with One is weaker since she has bonded to her master, but I know this much: Cabhan of Kerry’s-End is still alive, and someone has taken the poisonous mirrorglass from his heart.”
Rags’s thoughts tripped over one another.
There was another fae. One with control of magic, if Rags was
following along correctly.
What Lord Faolan had said about enemies of the Queen was true.
Only if those enemies had the power to fix Rags’s problem. . . .
Then he was pretty sure they weren’t his enemies.
Somewhere out there, while they were being attacked and before Morien had started his slaughter, another fae had passed Shining Talon by. He wasn’t the last of his kind. Wasn’t doomed to remain alone.
They had to find this other fae. Set Rags free in both hand and heart. Release Shining Talon to the custody of somebody a little more appropriate.
That meant throwing himself into this quest like he really believed there was something waiting for him at the end of it.
He wasn’t the guy for the Great Paragon. But he could see things through to help himself, and maybe a friend. No, an acquaintance. No: a fae he’d dug out of the ground once and was now bound to forever more, apparently.
Rags’s heartbeat was slowing, fading, but dizzy relief briefly overpowered any distress at the situation.
“We should remain in possession of these foul items to exchange information freely whenever we have opportunity.” Rags saw, rather than felt, Shining Talon soothe a thumb over his chest. Morien, Rags had to remind himself, fear gutting any hope of pleasure. They were talking about the blindfolds. “He will see nothing, hear nothing, while your heart is shrouded. But we must take care. Too long a silence, and the Lying One will notice.”
“I feel a little”—Rags gestured to his chest, unsure of how to convey the situation—“like my heart’s not beating?”
Shining Talon rested his palm on Rags’s chest. His heart reared like a horse gone mad after years of being yoked to a cart. “I assure you that it is.”
“Ah,” Rags croaked weakly.
“There are ways to break the Lying One’s control,” Shining Talon continued, “and I intend to find them.”
Rags meant to roll over and close his eyes, return to the pretension of sleep. Instead he paused halfway and rolled back, reached his thumb up to brush the crossed bones at the corner of Shining Talon’s wide mouth.
The Clave had all kinds of rituals for luck, most of which had neither explanation nor provenance. It was the symbol that mattered: the touching of the lintel over a doorway or the brow of a statue, till one honored spot was shining wood or burnished bronze. Rags wanted to return to this touch over and over, with the same reverence.
He let the question burning his throat die. Shining Talon is gonna stick around.
He closed his eyes and feigned sleep as Shining Talon untied the strips of red cloth, returned them to Rags’s pockets. Slowly, skittering like prey, his heartbeat returned to normal. Shining Talon’s weight shifted, settling to sit against the bed frame beside him. Rags reached for his lump, that fae puzzle, to keep from reaching out to Shining Talon instead. To keep from closing his palm around golden skin.
He might not have to solve that puzzle for Morien.
Might get to solve it for himself.
Rags should have been grinning. Instead he squeezed his eyes shut tight and willed himself to fall asleep before his hand started up with the stabbing pain again.
After everything they’d been through, he figured he deserved a break.
51
Inis
When Morien announced that he would not accompany them on their journey, Inis nearly believed that, after a long absence, fortune had shown her face at last.
“Although I am most eager to join you once again in the saddle, I must meet with the Queen, and will accompany Lord Faolan to the palace without delay.”
“Our fondest regrets.” Inis curtsied, only preserving the peace because she’d seen firsthand what happened when Rags’s mouth ran wild. “We will keep you similarly informed, of course.”
“Never forget that I see all,” Morien intoned.
Then he was gone.
“You know a guy’s the worst when he takes all the fun out of insulting him behind his back,” Rags fired off.
Inis found herself seized with the sudden urge to laugh. She gnawed it down. There was no way Rags was taunting Morien on purpose. He couldn’t possibly be that thoughtful, could he?
Thankfully, no retaliation from Morien followed, though Inis could swear Rags looked over his shoulder for it more than once.
The ride to Ever-Land took them little more than a day. Lord Faolan Ever-Learning owned preferential property, his country estate sitting as close to the royal vacationing grounds as possible without encroaching on them.
Whatever task he’d undertaken for the Queen, she was happy enough with the results that she had granted him this lovely place.
And who, Inis wondered darkly, had she stolen it from, in order to make a gift of it?
“Where’d an Ever-Lady learn to pack a wallop like the one you laid on Cabhan of Kerry’s-Back-End?” Rags sat straighter in the saddle, his grip on the reins ice white.
“Stop talking. I have to concentrate in order to lead us the right way,” Inis told him. Which wasn’t fair, but it was true.
One could only reach Ever-Land by picturing it in their mind. An impossible task, unless one had already been there, exactly the sort of fae paradox the gentry loved to imitate.
Inis closed her eyes and let the undertow of her memories drag her down. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared. For the past year, she’d been fighting to forget, so that it felt like the simplest thing in the world now to surrender that fight. To remember everything, how perfect it all was, and how all had been taken from her without a single breath of warning.
The charges levied against her brother Tomman were that he had allied with the Resistance and conspired to overthrow the Queen. That was so nonsensical that Inis had been forced to believe her family was banished for nothing. Some political slight, some envy simmering to the point of boiling bloodlust. Someone had wanted what her family had, and didn’t mind a little murder to get it.
She could believe it because she’d seen it happen to other families.
It made more sense to her than Tomman risking everything they had, everything they knew, without telling her. Without telling anyone.
None of this was helping her picture Ever-Land. Inis forced herself to think of laughter and rippling water instead of Ainle’s sharp, single, final cry. The scent of verbena flower and not fresh blood, the clack of practice blades instead of steel falling on bone.
Dawn in Ever-Land rose without urgency, a child without worry or care, decadently slow.
Sunlight warmed her cheeks. Tucked against Inis’s back in a shawl slung around her shoulders, Two purred.
Behind her, Rags gave a startled gasp at the change in scenery, his dark bay courser snorting in annoyed reply.
In Ever-Land it was ever summer, thanks to the sorcerers under the Queen’s command. The trees were full and lush, the flowers always in raucous bloom, and no unwanted clouds darkened the fair blue skies.
This had been Inis Ever-Loyal’s kingdom more than the Hill had: the sun-drenched fields of rippling grass and secret ponds secluded by crookback trees.
She’d taught Ainle to swim in one of the southern lakes. Led victorious assaults in countless war games. Dug holes, raced until breathless, buried trinkets for future explorers between gnarled roots.
She remembered braiding a wreath of hare’s bell and poppy for Tomman, who had refused to wear it. Wounded Inis’s feelings by doing so. She’d tossed the wreath aside; even then, her instinct had been to crush her humiliation. But Prince Laisrean Ever-Bright had rescued the wreath, said, “It may be the only crown I’ll ever wear,” as he set it crookedly on his head. Then he’d knighted Inis as his champion in a cathedral of white birch trees.
Inis recalled uncomfortably how it was then that she’d first noticed Laisrean’s black hair curling, damp with sweat against the nape of his neck. The way surprise had quickened her pulse, kneeling in the soft grass as the wooden sword kissed her shoulders. She’d been grateful to be seen,
included. Glad that one of her friends still made sense, and Laisrean wasn’t prey to whatever moods haunted Tomman’s footsteps.
It seemed like an insult that the air in Ever-Land should still smell as grassy and warmed by sunlight as it did in her dreams, without the same turn to darkness those dreams took.
Her only relief was that the Queensguard had gone missing before she’d been forced to guide him to this sacred place.
Though there was a sliver of her that was sad for Two, who didn’t get to spend more time with something, someone, like him.
The nudge of Two’s triangular head in the small of her back, right as their horses crested a shallow hill, answered her concern.
With you, Two said, loneliness has no meaning. Look below.
Ever-Bright Manor and its three outbuildings lay cradled in the shimmering bowl of the Ever-Land valley, backed by a spiral of golden orchards and a crescent lake.
The first time Inis and Somhairle had found a wild apple tree on the borders of his estate, she’d filled her skirts with the hard, red fruit. But the first bite had revealed a metallic aftertaste that Somhairle blamed on magic, and though he had no proof, Inis hadn’t given any of her harvest to Ivy.
Even then, nestled against the red-feathered breast of the Queen’s acceptance, with a prince’s friendship to shield her, Inis had been uneasy about sorcerers.
For all the good that instinct had done her.
“Do you see, Sir Rags?” Inis had no quarrel with the thief, yet couldn’t seem to soften her tone, which tapered to a rapier point. “We’ll make the manor before nightfall.”
She urged her dappled gray palfrey forward and they descended into the valley below, where Somhairle Ever-Bright waited, not knowing how they were about to crash into his life and change it forever.
Inis should have learned by now not to anticipate a happy reunion.
52
Inis
Ever-Bright Manor’s main house was exactly as Inis remembered it: quiet, haunted by melancholy, as remote as it was stunning. Its balconies facing the slowly gathering sunset were reflected in the silver-skinned lake. Something dark passed over the water’s clear surface like a shadow on a mirror, but there were no clouds overhead.
