Master of One

by Jaida Jones

The problem with morning was there were no more stars to jabber about, so Rags worked on showing the kids some tricks, like making a coin appear behind their ears or out of their nostrils, then disappearing it again in midair with sleight of hand. He gritted his teeth and forced his brittle fingers through the motions.

  Only breathed when he didn’t drop the coin in the grass.

  “Are you a Lying One?” Smartass asked dubiously.

  “I lie,” Rags admitted. “But not the way you mean it.” He made the coin appear again. Happy’s smile could have lit up the whole forest. Rags hid his answering grin by hiding the coin in his sleeve, then pretending to cough it up.

  So it went.

  Rags assumed they’d walk until they dropped. When they stopped, he swayed on his feet. He’d nearly forgotten what it was like to be still.

  The scraping of stone. Rags peered over some shoulders, one of which was covered with bruising lashes, all of them dirty and torn-up and bloody, to see the fragments pushing a boulder between two great oaks. The silver cat was still re-forming after it’d been struck by lightning and slightly melted, the owl had clumps of feathers and chunks of beak missing, and the dog was really into sniffing trees, but the lizard had them working together smoothly to push this huge rock from one spot to another.

  Rags saw why.

  It had covered a hole, dark inside until Tal stepped forward and those same swirly patterns from the fae ruins began to glow around the edges.

  “The Queen’s people know about the tunnels,” Einan, or Scrappy Redhead, as Rags thought of her, warned them. “Who’s to say they don’t know about these?”

  “This will take us to the True Palace, the Heart of the Bone Court.” The way Tal said it, Rags knew it was an official name. “Once we are there, we can defend it from any intruder. Even those who know the way.”

  There was no arguing with someone who sounded that sure. Tal could be hilarious when he was protecting Rags from the threat of a spoon, but in moments like this, it was most obvious that he came from someplace other.

  A fae prince with a fae palace. Rags should’ve known from the beginning where he’d wind up in the mix. He wasn’t palace people.

  “Here.” Rags loosed Happy’s hand, fished in his pocket for the old, raw silver lump. It sat cupped in his palm, stretched the length to the tips of his fingers. “Your queen put this in the stars, so I guess it’s kinda like a star? Go on. Take it. It’s yours.”

  Happy took one look at the thing, then peered around to glance at Smartass. After a second’s wordless interaction, which was eerie at best, she shook her head.

  “It is not for us to bear,” Happy said gravely. “But if you like, we will keep it with us for a time.”

  “Until we reach our destination,” Smartass confirmed.

  Rags slipped the lump into their tiny, golden hands. Too tired to think any more about who was doing who a favor. So he missed what he should’ve caught: a faint glow, pulsing from within, a slender seam of sunlight around the lump’s middle.

  Then, with exquisite precision, it split open. Rags sprang back to cup his hands around the spilling light. Beacon, his senses screamed.

  They couldn’t let anyone find them.

  Nothing happened. Rags peered between his fingers, aware of Happy and Smartass doing the same. In his mind’s eye he pictured Inis’s dishware exploding through a wall, the Queensguard swords flashing through the air, and he hoped—

  “Maybe we’d better stand back,” he murmured nervously. Held his breath.

  The light faded. The egg-sized fragment had taken no animal shape but was now opened and flat instead of closed and round. Rags touched its surface with shaking fingers. Etchings in the metal. Like a drawing, or a diagram, carved with only straight lines. Rags nonetheless saw what looked like trees, and little ships, and a concentric, geometric symbol in the upper-right-hand corner. Like one of those impossible fae knots.

  Not a diagram. A map. Rags craned his head for Tal’s input, only to remember Tal wasn’t there. He was helping the group. Rags was the one dawdling behind.

  It figured. He’d finally solved step one of the puzzle, but he’d lost the guy he wanted to solve it for. The guy who could explain what to do with it next.

  “Would you hang on to it for now?” Rags thrust the silver map back at the fae kiddies. It was light and supple, despite being made of solid metal.

  Happy and Smartass shared another glance, then nodded.

  “Don’t think I missed that look,” Rags grumbled, but he didn’t object when the fae children clung to him again, taking up their positions on either side of him like watchful sentinel hounds.

  Rags’s hands might be clever, but when it came to this kind of heavy lifting, the job was easier in a group.

  89

  Inis

  Inis was still alive, which was more than she’d hoped for. It hurt to live, but this pain was different and new. It was hers and no one else’s, the molten core of her anger. She’d carry it as surely as she carried Two.

  During their escape from the Hill, she’d torn the Queen’s sunburst flag from a parapet, formed the silken fabric into a sling, and put Two inside it, tucked him close to her chest. He’d shrunk to the size of a scrawny barn tom, which made Inis think of Ivy holding the big silver cat in her arms. He didn’t speak but remained there silent, save for his purring, the rumble a healing warmth that vibrated through Inis’s ribs and let her know he’d be all right.

  In time, they both would. Inis knew too well how to be patient, biding the months until an ache became a living part of her.

  She was glad Morien hadn’t killed her. It meant she hadn’t left Ivy alone to fend for herself with Mother and Bute.

  She thought about Ivy whenever the pain in her skin became too great, whenever her weary muscles shuddered and threatened to snap and seize. She had to survive, because there was a chance Morien had survived, too. Her family’s cottage in the Far Glades might not be his first stop on a tour of revenge—but if he lived, he would use her family to hurt her.

  She was still sodden from their swim in the moat the day before, no sunlight underground to dry her. Would these fae tunnels never end?

  It was hours of stumbling, sweaty travel before she could look at Laisrean. Before she could gather enough willpower to glance outside herself and see the ruin of the boy who’d been her friend, the brave, battered young man he’d become.

  She approached Somhairle first, brushing his shoulder with hers to let him know she was there for support. She knew he was tired when he let her take his arm under the elbow, supporting him like he supported his brother on the other side.

  “I’m sorry.” Somhairle’s chin tipped down, his gaze on his boots. “I couldn’t do anything. If I’d been able to fight—”

  “Keep talking like that and I’ll knock you down and leave you in the tunnels.” Inis kept her voice steady, her eyes fixed on the darkness ahead. “You helped free the little ones. That’s why we came.”

  “Still.” Somhairle let the word stretch on into silence. Then he brightened, lifting his head, his mouth a crooked glint in the otherworldly light from the fae glyphs wrought in the stone. “You were magnificent. Like a legend out of the Lost-Lands.”

  The soft thunder of Two’s purr grew louder at the praise.

  “You as well,” Somhairle added in his direction. Two grinned.

  When they stopped to let those of them with shorter legs rest and give the injured a chance to do the same, Shining Talon, Cabhan, and Einan left to gather mushrooms for sustenance while the others licked their bloody wounds. Inis put her back to the stone wall, lowered herself to the ground with Two cradled in her arms.

  She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she must have, because she dreamed of fire and silver and Two’s eyes guiding her through the darkness. In the dream, she wasn’t afraid, though she was in pain. She knew where she was going and what she had to do.

  No one can stop us when we fight, Two said.

&n
bsp; No one can stop us because of what we fight for, Inis replied.

  Much later, when she woke, Laisrean was sitting at her side. His right eye was a shuttered mess, a feverish stink seeping from beneath its bandage.

  Unbidden, Inis reached to touch his face, tracing the prominent arch of his cheekbone to his strong jaw. She didn’t allow her hand to shake.

  Two stirred in his sling when Laisrean shifted. Inis let her hand fall away, but Laisrean took her gently by the wrist, fingers pressed to her fluttering pulse.

  “Wanted to give you something.” His voice was rough. With his free hand, he reached to tug at the knot in the leather cords around his wrist, then winced, pulling away as though he’d been burned.

  The ends of his index and middle fingers were bloodied and raw.

  They’d started to pull out his nails in Coward’s Silence.

  Lucky, Inis thought. In a way, her brothers, her father, had been lucky to die before enduring weeks of torture.

  “Let me help,” Inis said. Not a question, no coy protestation at the thought of a gift. They were beyond courtly artifices.

  There was a time when she might have imagined Laisrean taking her hand to give her a lover’s token. The smell of roses would have been heavy in the air, the last breath of summer still clinging to the evening like vines to their stakes, the sky deepening pink and gold.

  Miles underground and far from the Hill, Inis smelling of moat water and charred with lightning, Laisrean’s blood and rot tainting every breath, the gift was far from fantasy.

  Expectations and reality. They somehow intersected.

  Lais tapped one of the two leather cords braided around his wrist and Inis dutifully untied it. The knot had frayed from years of wear, and it took some doing to pick it apart, but she managed it with broken nails and stubborn will.

  “Here.” Lais took the cord when she’d finished and clumsily looped it around her bare wrist. It was large enough to fit nearly double. Inis watched in silence. Her heart swelled with sorrow at the look of concentration on Lais’s face, the care it took for him to tie a simple knot.

  An ember of her old anger glowed to life between her ribs.

  If they ever met the Last again, she’d make him pay. Then, she’d make the Queen pay, too.

  When the task was done, Lais held up his wrist with its single cord to match Inis’s. She took his hand in both of hers.

  “I couldn’t save him. He told me, if it came to that, I shouldn’t try. Shouldn’t compromise myself.” Lais tipped his head back, staring at the bedrock above their heads. Inis didn’t need to ask who he meant. “It’s no excuse. I don’t want you to forgive me. I wanted you to know. . . .” A low grunt of pain, followed by a hissed sigh. “Thought I could make up for that with Malachy. Keep Morien’s anger on me, buy the boy some time. Yet we’re all missing bits and pieces.”

  Suddenly wearier than she’d ever been, Inis rested her head on Lais’s shoulder. She couldn’t speak around the lump that had formed in her throat, but she wanted to show him it was all right. She understood: Tomman hadn’t told her his secrets not because he hadn’t trusted her. He’d kept them from her because he’d hoped to save her life that night, protect her from the massacre on the Hill.

  She couldn’t blame her brother for the path he’d chosen, not when she wore his trust bracelet and now fought for the same cause he’d died to champion.

  They sat together in silence, the darkness swaddling them, Laisrean’s breathing deepening, finally evening out. Inis thought he’d fallen asleep when, unexpectedly, he spoke again.

  “Do you remember the last time we talked? Your family was returning from Ever-Land, and your sister had made us all wreaths of laurel flowers.” Lais’s eyes were closed, but the tight set of his mouth had eased. “When you got out of that carriage, crowned in pink and gold, I thought . . . I’ve still never seen anything more beautiful in my life.”

  Inis hadn’t come this far by letting herself daydream about the past. She never paused to wonder what might have happened in another life.

  If Tomman hadn’t discovered the decay rotting beneath the Hill.

  Things were horrible but honest. Inis laid a hand on Lais’s chest and leaned in to press her mouth to his soft lips.

  Lais sucked in a breath and his lashes fluttered. When he looked at her with his good eye, Inis was shocked to find herself nervous. Her. After everything they’d dealt with. After she’d been struck by lightning, tormented by the Last.

  “We should have done that a long time ago,” Lais said.

  “Speak for yourself.” A certain sensible tartness appeared in Inis’s reply. With it, she felt more like herself than she had in days. “I’ve been busy saving your Resistance.”

  Lais’s answering laugh was choked and soft, but satisfying. He put an arm around her shoulders and she let him keep it there. When Somhairle approached them to see what was so funny, a warm rush of gratitude settled deep in Inis’s bones.

  She’d regained a part of herself when she’d gone back to the Hill, something she’d believed was lost forever. She couldn’t know when she’d get to see Ivy again, or their mother, or Bute.

  She could manage that because she wasn’t fighting alone anymore.

  Two had done more than bring Inis back to these princes. He’d brought her back to herself.

  90

  Rags

  Time lost all meaning in the tunnels. They stopped only for brief spurts of rest, always with a fae keeping watch. They survived on mushrooms that Shining Talon insisted weren’t poisonous. Rags never wanted to see another, had dreams that he was turning into one.

  Had it been weeks? Hadn’t they passed those same glyphs a hundred times? Had the sun ever been real?

  After days of walking, they finally entered a broader tunnel and from there made their way into a massive chamber. The True Palace wasn’t anything like what Rags had expected.

  This was a black castle beneath the earth, tall spires wrought from the stone they stood beneath. It was attached at the floor and ceiling, delicate towers piercing downward from the dome in which they stood. Inlaid silver made patterns within the rock. Fae lights beckoned from the windows, steady and unflickering.

  It looked haunted as fuck. A place no one in their right mind would ever call a safe haven. But they were out of options, and they were following four silver fragments and a fae prince. Their right mind had already left the party.

  “Are we home?” Happy asked.

  Smartass squeezed Rags’s hand and said nothing. The wearier he got, the more Rags found himself missing the ass part of the little fae’s personality.

  They were far under the earth, but the curved walls around them stood high in a space so cavernous that Rags itched to shout to hear his own echo. He didn’t—what if he made the ceiling cave in on them? But still.

  A staircase had been hewn into the stone, polished steps leading toward the palace. The rocks set into the cave around them glowed like torches, lighting the way so it didn’t feel impossibly dark.

  Tal led them through the palace doors. Down a level. Past parallel feasting tables set with silver cups and plates, waiting for an absent court. Again, creepy, but the kids didn’t seem to think so. They rushed forward gladly, settling onto benches, picking up plates and inspecting them. Rags set Happy and Smartass free to join their—friends? Brothers and sisters?

  After what they’d been through together, maybe the distinction didn’t matter.

  “Sil would’ve loved this,” Rags heard Einan whisper.

  “We need beds for the wounded,” Cab replied.

  Rags rubbed his chest. The pain had faded over time, had been mostly replaced by the sting of the blisters on the soles of his feet, but he still felt its phantom traces, the scars left on his heart. He’d checked the real scar on the flesh over his ribs only once, then decided to avoid looking at it for the rest of his life.

  Dirty and beaten down as he was from days of traveling and forced mushroom consumption,
he was in better shape than most.

  Hope still held the fae girl’s corpse, had barely eaten a bite on the trek. The big guy, Prince Laisrean, had needed to be half dragged the last day, the bandage over his missing eye clotted and stinking something fierce, and Somhairle wasn’t much better, although he and Inis had done the majority of the dragging. Old lady Uaine was taking care of Malachy. The kids were being kids. Cab’s injuries could’ve been worse, but could’ve been better. That left Tal, with his slashed arm, and Einan, who’d assigned herself to looking after Cab and Hope in equal measure.

  And Rags.

  The last three on that list were the best of a fucked-up lot.

  “I’ll do the searching.” Rags hid a yawn in his shoulder. “’Cause I want a bed pretty bad myself, not ’cause I’m . . . ah, fuck it.”

  Smartass returned to him. He held out the silver fae fragment with both hands. Seeing it in the light of the hall, Rags had to admit: it looked an awful lot like a map.

  “Do not forget your star,” Smartass counseled.

  “Thanks,” Rags said.

  “In the meantime, get the grievously injured on the tables,” Cab added. “Those who can, clear off the plates, then help those who can’t to lie down.”

  “That means you, stalwart moron.” Einan steered Cab in the direction of the table while Happy, Smartass, and their crew stacked plates and set them aside.

  “I will accompany you on the search,” Tal said, suddenly at Rags’s side.

  Rags was too bone-tired to jump, but when he looked up into Tal’s face, he met the fae prince’s shining eyes for the first time in . . .

  How long had it been? Felt like ages.

  Rags shivered. “Gonna take revenge on me when we’re separated from the others, huh?” He attempted a laugh, failed miserably. “All I ask is, make it quick.”

  Tal shook his head, the briefest memory of confusion darkening his features before he set off through one of many arched doorways that surrounded the main room. Not wanting to linger or get lost in the fae maze—if there were more fae traps around, Rags didn’t want to meet them in this condition—Rags hurried after him. There were holes in his boots and blisters on his blisters, but he limped fast enough to keep up with Tal’s unfaltering pace.