Master of One

by Jaida Jones

  After a long, wretched silence, Inis let out a shaky breath. “I hate that you’re not as stupid as you look,” she said.

  She wasn’t the only one.

  But if Rags was in this, really in it, then he was going to throw everything he had at it. Morien would regret finding someone clever enough to beat the traps the fae had set.

  Rags had slipped every snare but the last one, Shining Talon himself, who had landed him here. And he’d had nothing in the weeks since but experience and time to work out how to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

  From here on, when he worked to free himself of Morien’s machinations, he’d make sure to dodge that final hook.

  74

  Somhairle

  There were, by Rags the thief’s count, twenty-seven fae trapped underneath the palace. Twenty-seven fae gathered and imprisoned on Queen Catriona’s command. Twenty-seven fae exploited, suffering, as Somhairle drew free breath after free breath.

  Mm-hmm, Three agreed. Things are worse than I feared. And what I feared wasn’t pretty.

  Twenty-seven fae, and Somhairle still hadn’t made the connection with Three that he needed in order to find the next master. The next fragment of the Great Paragon. The next step in the path to rescuing the cruelly enslaved fae.

  That was treason. Unquestionable.

  Equally unquestionable was that it had to be done.

  A yet more complicated prospect when the Crown was one’s mother.

  “You’re quiet,” Inis said. “You’re . . . suffering.”

  Somhairle blinked. He stood, drawing Inis after him. Rags was sleeping off the effect of the blindfold, Shining Talon sat unmoving as an inanimate relic, and Somhairle was ready to return to Morien’s sight. He pulled Inis’s blindfold free, tucking it into a pocket. “Time is of the essence, Inis. We must find the next master.” Now that Morien was listening, he added, “I shall redouble my efforts. We’ll leave the thief to rest. The Last awaits our success, and I’d rather not disappoint him.”

  His only lead, however, had been a spark of hope that it might be Laisrean. Someone he cared for, one of the few people truly connected to him.

  Finding the next master had come easily to Inis.

  Never assume anything comes easily to anybody, summer lad, Three cautioned.

  Inis had scarcely lifted her head since they’d arrived on the Hill, as though a blade hung over the back of her neck.

  Faced with Rags’s discovery, a prince—Somhairle—had chosen treason. It was no longer unthinkable that the Ever-Loyals might have done the same, with the same knowledge.

  “I shall find Laisrean.” Somhairle found his voice as they entered his inner rooms. This was similar to fighting through a day of pain. He had to keep moving. If he settled, grief and shock would catch him, and those were more dangerous than his mother’s silver eyes. “It could still be him. We just have to find the silver, too.”

  Trust me, Three said. Be patient.

  Somhairle did trust her, but patience wasn’t implicit in that trust.

  “You aren’t tired?” Inis’s voice held no judgment.

  “Not yet.” With Three’s weight on one shoulder, Somhairle’s gait was lighter, more even than it had been with the crutch and the brace. “Well, tired of being a disappointment to those around me, perhaps.”

  He smiled, small and fey, so Inis would know he was poking fun. Plagued with doubts as he was, they were another price to pay for adventure.

  Though there was a stinging familiarity to his current position. Once again, not made to the standard of his fellows.

  Less familiar was the silence, interrupted only by the sound of their footfalls, in the Ivory Wing of the palace. Floors tiled in opals and pearl. The neat click of Inis’s heels. No Ever-Ladies lunching in the solarium, no Ever-Lords raucously debating in the drawing room. What few servants passed did so with their heads lowered like Inis’s, none of them greeting Somhairle as their prince other than to step widely out of his way.

  Inis slipped her arm through Somhairle’s as they took the moonstone stairs down, sideways, then slowly upward.

  Laisrean’s rooms were in the Crystal Wing, where the iridescent gleam of white stones battled diamond-bright patterns of paned glass.

  Hanging mirrors decorated the walls, their glittering frames wrought in the twisted shapes of brambles, antlers, and bones.

  A swift flicker of blue reflected in a panel down the hall. Somhairle hesitated by the nearest open door, which led to one of the palace’s many libraries. Inis came to a halt alongside him, Two’s silver tail poking out from beneath her skirts.

  Is now really the time for a story? Inis’s expression said.

  “Laisrean?” Somhairle called out, stepping over the threshold. The mirrors could see him doing what looked like Morien’s bidding.

  But it wasn’t Laisrean dressed in blue. It was Lord Faolan Ever-Learning, slouched in a handsome chair, and he didn’t look happy to greet an old friend. Not even one whose home he’d recently invaded.

  “Your Highness!” Faolan didn’t stand, though his gaze slurred warmly from Somhairle to Inis. “And treasured guest! Please, sit, if you’d like. I can’t say much for the company, but the drinks are excellent.”

  “We really can’t stay.” The edge of hostility in Inis’s voice, the arch of one of Faolan’s dark brows over his long, sharp nose, the glare of mirrors set along every paneled bookshelf, made Somhairle light-headed.

  “Speaking for a prince? Even a mostly exiled one? Tut.” Faolan swept a gloved hand over the books in front of him, spilling a glass of wine in the process and splattering his nearby papers. Old, precious maps, sections of fae designs, the stuff Somhairle’s dreams were made of, blotted at with a silky handkerchief, smeared rich red. Destroyed. “You forget your manners. Too long from court. Well then! Don’t allow me to detain you in your important business.”

  Faolan stood, swaying and clasping Somhairle’s shoulder to do so. His breath wine-sweet, then wine-sour. Inis looked away in disgust and missed the intimate press of paper from Faolan’s palm to Somhairle’s.

  Faolan staggered away, deeper into the library.

  “Ah, another shining example of Queen Catriona Ever-Bright’s court,” Inis muttered.

  Somhairle turned his back to her for the moment it took to fumble open Faolan’s note. Written not in the impeccable hand Somhairle recalled, but hurriedly, almost blindly. As though he hadn’t been looking at the words as he wrote them. Or as though he couldn’t, for fear of who might see them through his eyes.

  It was signed only with a fingerprint in red, a smudge from the spilled wine.

  JUST BECAUSE THERE IS NO SHARD IN YOUR HEART DOES NOT MEAN SHE IS NOT WATCHING. THERE ARE EYES ON EVERY PRINCE. ALWAYS.

  Somhairle twisted the note away into a fold of one sleeve, to be burned later. After he decided how to share Faolan’s warning with the others.

  Preferably once he’d figured out what it meant.

  “We should find Laisrean,” Somhairle said, cheeks hot, “without further distraction.”

  75

  Inis

  Laisrean was only available for dinner later that night, though the delay heartened Somhairle greatly once he learned of Two’s origins. He seemed hopeful that Laisrean’s silverware would undergo a similar transformation.

  “Eat extra for me,” Rags said sulkily, flopping down on the arm of the chair in which Shining Talon sat silent. “I’ll keep an eye on this one. Show him how it feels to have somebody clucking and fussing and not letting him breathe.”

  Inis reached out to Shining Talon, thinking to take his hand. To show him compassion. To explain that she was afraid they would be easily defeated if they weren’t in this together, that she was afraid they would never leave the palace if they didn’t act quickly.

  What she saw in his eyes was a reflection of her own loss, and she recoiled.

  Yet away from them, alone inside her dressing room, without Rags and his loud mouth filling her head w
ith noise, there was nothing to distract Inis from the promise of seeing Laisrean again.

  There was no way he could recognize her.

  A piece of her wished he would. Managing her rage was as much a part of her day-to-day as breathing, but the beast that stirred when Laisrean took her hand was an enemy she no longer understood.

  Maybe, if he had to look her in the eye, he’d explain to her why her brothers and father had been taken from her, murdered in cold blood in the middle of the night. How he could still wear those leather cords around his wrist when his mother’s Queensguard had been the ones to execute—

  Inis shook her head, dabbing extra powder over her nose. Her hand shook, a dusting of snow white spilling onto her chemise.

  It was next to impossible to get dressed without a mirror, but she couldn’t trust her own reflection these days.

  “Are you sure this isn’t asking too much of you?” asked Somhairle at her back, as he watched her fumble in front of the cloak-obscured vanity. He looked so concerned for her. Had the face she was making been that awful?

  She turned and dusted his nose with her powder brush. He sneezed. “I’ll be fine. You know, no matter how much you wish for it, it might not be Laisrean.”

  “Then we’ll have had the excuse to dine with pleasant company,” Somhairle said, turning the coin queen-side up, as he always managed to do.

  Inis kept her mouth shut. In a mood like this, she’d start a fight with anyone. Even Somhairle, who didn’t deserve it.

  “I’ll see you there,” she told him instead. She needed a minute to clear her head, to be free of princes both friendly and foreign.

  If you did want to fight, there are plenty of bones around here worth crunching, Two said lazily, without looking up from where he was curled at the foot of her bed.

  I need you to stay where you are, Inis replied. Keep an eye on Rags and Shining Talon while Somhairle and I are gone. Make sure they don’t do anything stupid.

  Could chomp on the little thief’s bones for you. When Inis shook her head, Two sighed. You say no, but you’d smile if I did it.

  Inis pursed her lips. There was a dress on the bed, skirts and bodice the color of the sky between the moons at twilight, a ghostly purple-blue that shimmered nearly silver in low light. A gift from Morien, another costume to help her play her part. It was extravagant, not Inis’s usual style. Certainly not what she’d grown accustomed to during House Ever-Loyal’s banishment.

  Dressing like an Ever-Noble lady without the assistance of Ever-Noble servants took more than one attempt, but she managed to secure the laces and adjust the neckline of the dress, making certain everything settled in the right places.

  The gown made her skin glow like fresh cow’s milk. Or maybe that was Morien’s glamour.

  She gave Two a final pat on the head and left.

  Laisrean might be able to see through the glamour if they were alone for too long. And there was another issue Inis couldn’t shove aside, which was whether she’d make it through a meal with Laisrean without giving herself away.

  Chomp chomp, Two called to her as she made her way to Laisrean’s wing of the castle.

  A servant guided her through the rooms until they reached one lit with handsome candlelight, a steady fire in the fireplace, and a table set with the latest delicacies.

  The rooms had changed since the last time Inis had—

  She swallowed, ignored the flash of memory better this round than the last. Somhairle hadn’t arrived yet. She should never have sent him away, should have known arriving in numbers was the safer bet.

  “Ah.” Laisrean, who’d been reading on a couch by the fire, shut his book and stood. His broad face broke into a smile, banishing the hint of shadows beneath his eyes, as though he’d been up too late the night before. Attending a fancy ball, no doubt. Inis dropped into a quick, deep curtsy. “No need to be so formal. Sit, please. I’m sure my brother will be along any moment.”

  “It’s not like him to be late,” Inis agreed. In the firelight, Laisrean was more golden than brown. There was kindness in his eyes: polite but distant, meant to keep guests at arm’s length. His black hair had been wetted, then combed to keep it in place.

  Inis remained standing and cast her gaze to the fire in front of her. Slowly, she unclenched her hands and used them to smooth out her billowing skirts.

  You are not Inis Fraoch Ever-Loyal, she told herself. Ailis was uncomplicated, with no history to weigh her down. She cast about for something to discuss before silence settled and suffocated.

  What was he reading?

  “You look tired,” she said.

  Laisrean laughed, then startled at the sound coming from himself. He gazed into the fire as though he sought what Inis saw there, and Inis looked away toward the mantel, where one of the servants had placed a bouquet of red and orange lilies.

  “Forgive me.” Her cheeks were hot, her expression horrified. “I spoke out of turn. Prince Somhairle told me how hard his brothers work on the Hill, and I . . .” Inis did her best not to choke on the words. If Somhairle didn’t arrive soon, Inis didn’t trust herself to maintain this deception.

  The first time she’d repaired the thatching of the cottage roof with Bute, it had taken her hours to learn how to prevent the sharp stalks from slicing her hands. It had been a hard-won lesson, paid with a hundred tiny cuts.

  She felt the same trying to maintain her composure alone in Laisrean’s room, trying not to think about his mother’s role in the ruin of her family.

  Trying not to notice the way his shoulders strained at the fabric of his fine tunic. Would he ever stop growing?

  “It’s far from nonstop balls and banquets, if that’s what you’re asking,” Laisrean answered.

  The words alone were easy, friendly, but there was a sharp look in Laisrean’s eyes. He knew Inis had said the wrong thing and was trying to figure out how to proceed. He took a step toward her, and like it was a dance, Inis stepped away.

  The fire burned at her back. Any further retreat and she’d singe her skirts. She smelled smoke and lilies and imagined the Lost-Lands burning again.

  Queen Catriona liked beautiful things. Unless they stood in her way.

  “I fear I’ve forgotten my place.” Inis lifted a hand, restless, to brush a stray lock of glamoured blond hair from her forehead.

  Laisrean touched her wrist, fingers gentle against the place where it narrowed to meet the heel of her hand. “I don’t mind it myself. But it’s best not to speak out of turn in front of your friend Morien the Last. I warned my brother, but he trusts people.”

  Threat? Or joke? If Inis fought his hold, she’d know by whether he hung on or let go. Defiant, she lifted her chin, daring him to be the one to crack the veneer between them.

  Laisrean didn’t tighten his hold. He looked at her, not through her. So focused on her that she became the only true thing in the room.

  The fire blazed. Her skin thrummed with its heat, its orange reflection in Laisrean’s eyes. For one scant moment, it was as if he knew her. The same quality had drawn her to Somhairle: he made her feel seen. But what anchored Inis to one prince cast her out to sea from another.

  “There’s something about your eyes,” Laisrean said.

  He couldn’t see her. He couldn’t know her.

  “Your Highness, please . . .” Inis demurred as her words curled, turning to white ash on her tongue.

  A faint knock at the door. Laisrean dropped her hand as if it were a hot iron and went to answer. Inis wanted to open the windows and let the cold night air rip her chignon loose from its careful pinnings. She wanted to press her hands to her face, to rend her skin and scream, become the Morien-warped reflection she saw in every mirror.

  Instead, she stepped away from the mantel and folded her hands politely in front of her. Somhairle and Three stepped inside, the former with sincere apologies and a bashful explanation—“I used to turn right at the mirrors to find your wing, but there are mirrors everywhere now, aren’t ther
e?”—for his delay.

  Again, she took in Somhairle’s newfound grace. It was remarkable. All he’d needed was a giant silver hunting bird to balance him out.

  “Welcome, little one.” Laisrean patted Somhairle on the shoulder, his smile bright again for his brother. “I’m not sure I have anything that’s to your owl’s liking, but no matter. Plenty for the rest of us.”

  Somhairle paused for only the briefest of seconds when he caught sight of Inis. She didn’t know what she looked like, and she didn’t want to know. Cheeks hot, she offered Somhairle a tight smile.

  “You look lovely,” Somhairle said, his discretion a continued blessing. “Is that a new dress?”

  Inis told herself not to look at Laisrean as she turned in a slow spin. How could she succeed at being someone else when the sharpest parts of her kept poking through?

  All she had to do was breathe to the end of this dinner. Whatever came next, she’d breathe through that, too.

  “Let’s sit—eat. I don’t know about you—well, your appetite could always use some encouragement, Somhairle—but I’m ravenous.”

  Laisrean held out a chair for Inis first, then helped his brother sit, giving Three a companionable pat, which she arched into.

  Traitor. How could she like him?

  And how could Inis want him to look at her again, to see her, while knowing what she knew?

  Inis focused on her food, and Laisrean and Somhairle shouldered the brunt of the conversation. Mostly Laisrean did the talking, sharing news about their other brothers, about shifting court politics, about his latest job inspecting the Queensguard in search of traitors. Inis sat up straight and took small bites.

  She’d aroused his suspicion before, couldn’t afford to draw further attention.

  “That must mean you’ve been working with Lord Faolan.” Somhairle frowned, stole a glance in Inis’s direction. The silverware hadn’t transformed, they were on their fourth course, and they had crossed into dangerous territory in the conversation. “Fighting the . . . what was it?” An impressive touch, since Somhairle knew full well. “Ah, the Resistance.”