by Jaida Jones
“Fine, I’ll say it, since no one else will: this place is creepier than the fae ruins,” Rags muttered, not quietly enough to avoid being overheard. He snatched at an imaginary bug, flailing in the corner of Inis’s sight.
“You too were reminded of my Folk?” Shining Talon asked.
Something in his voice made Inis angry, until she recognized it as the steely grip of self-control. It was the way her voice sounded when she was fighting not to let memories of happier times overwhelm her.
She couldn’t hate the fae prince. He’d lost nearly everything, and thus reminded her of herself.
Servants awaited them in the perfectly manicured front yard, took their horses, and averted their eyes without comment on the silver cat riding with Inis.
No doubt the servants were accustomed to peculiar comings and goings, to the necessity of keeping their eyes down and their mouths shut. Queen Catriona Ever-Bright’s sorcerers could snap their fingers and summon stranger companions than an exile, a thief, a fae cloaked in black to hide his ears and eyes, and a pure silver cat.
They entered the front hall while another servant hurried up the main staircase to find his master. Waiting, Inis caught sight of a round mirror hung on the wall, reflecting the summer scenery. Under her gaze, the mirror showed a sky blackened, flames licking its edges. Inis’s mouth ran dry. She couldn’t pull her gaze from the reflection, instead watched in horror as dark blood flooded the greenery, soaking the grass and leaves.
Unmarked mounds swelled up from the ground. The bodies of the murdered Ever-Loyals, now nothing more than food for worms, rose one by one. Father, Tomman, little Ainle missing half his face, all of his right arm.
Inis’s reflection was wan, her cheeks sunken, her brown curls sparse. She lifted a hand to touch her face, and in the mirror saw her skin give way like soft cheese. Her reflection dragged its fingers down, peeling off her flesh like sloughing the skin from a rotten fruit.
Blood ran down Mirror-Inis’s jaw and throat, melting her limbs into puddles at her feet.
Inis screamed.
Sudden impact, and she was flat on the floor, her gaze wrenched toward the ceiling. The terrible pressure in the air lifted.
I can’t protect you from the Lying One’s stain on your heart, Two said, but I can help contain it. Don’t give in to his lies.
The silver cat was bigger and heavier than Ivy now, his silver paws planted on Inis’s chest. The sudden change in his size had sent her sprawling.
Inis blinked to clear the red-stained edges of her vision. Rags stood frozen, halfway to pocketing a small Luster period vase, staring down at her.
“I’ve seen Ever-Noble ladies faint before.” He broke his gaze and looked to Shining Talon, then back at Inis. “They’re not usually that noisy.”
Inis found her voice. “The mirror.”
Morien had never tormented one of them when he wasn’t there to see its effect. Inis had known he was watching them at all times, but she’d assumed that was all he could do. She’d never heard of a sorcerer who could exert his will from afar, without being present.
A scraping sound on the steps above. A gasp. Inis was already lifting her eyes to see Somhairle on the balcony in his arm-and-leg brace, crutch attached, leaning on the railing, golden hair and golden eyes lit up in the slowly gathering “sunset.” He had the Queen’s face, her beauty and poise. Just not her strength or constitution. He’d grown a bare inch since the last time Inis had said goodbye to him.
“Inis?” he asked.
“It’s been too long, Your Highness.” Two leaped to the floor, and Inis scrambled to her feet, took the corners of her skirt in both hands to manage a not-clumsy curtsy. The memory of how deep it should be for someone of Somhairle’s station, how to rise gracefully, was as much a part of her as breathing. She fell into the old routine as easily as if she’d never left it.
Beside her, Rags executed an overly dramatic bow. Two also bowed, with perfect poise, one paw extended in front of him, his tail whipping the air.
Again, Somhairle gasped, as though he’d only just now looked beyond Inis and noticed the strangeness of her companions. Next to a thief, an ornate mechanical cat, and Prince Shining Talon, an exiled old friend wasn’t so shocking.
She hoped.
“Please . . .” Somhairle gestured with his good arm for them to follow him up the stairs, “introduce me to your friends.”
53
Cab
Sil, One explained, though she used the phrase the Shining One to describe the fae at first, was diminished. She spoke the words with deep sorrow. Cab found himself breathless from the force of it.
Someone has sapped her nearly to emptiness, One went on. Replacing the sorrow was a crackling vein of anger. She is young, too young for her hair to be all white, for the color to be taken from her. Whoever has done this . . .
Cab didn’t envy the bastard responsible for the revenge One would take.
Sil and One embraced. When Sil drew back, her eyes were silver-wet with tears.
“I’ve never seen one of you before,” she murmured. “I was born after you were sent away.” She kissed One’s brow over her third eye. “Welcome, One of Many. I regret that I cannot greet you with the ceremony you deserve.”
One shook off the apology, a gesture she turned into a bow. Respect passed between her and Sil. Love and understanding. Its depths were something Cab, despite his connection to One, would never know. He stepped back. Gave them their space.
In the meantime, Einan kept a wary, curious distance on the tips of her toes. Cab pretended not to notice her swaying with the force of wanting to get closer but not too close, until she grabbed him by the sleeve. “Listen,” she whispered, “I’ve seen some wild shit in my time, but what the fuck is that?”
Cab held up his hands. He hadn’t been trained since childhood to explain or describe. Only to take orders. It was obvious to him, through what little chance to observe he’d been given, that this Resistance could grasp the stakes. He couldn’t do One justice with his stumbling tongue—and even if he could, he wasn’t sure he had the right to.
“This is what the Queen has been seeking.” Sil straightened. Taller somehow, with One at her side. “A piece of a terrible puzzle we cannot allow her to complete. Our remaining agent within the Silver Court alerted us that the first piece had been found, and so we moved quickly. To find you, One of Many. The Great Paragon was the deadliest weapon ever crafted by my Folk, and somehow, the Queen of Mirrors has learned of its existence. Her sorcerers have been bleeding us dry for decades in their attempts to find it. It seems they are closer than I thought. And they were close enough before my rescue.”
Once, Cab had been a child not much larger than Sil, head crowded with cockeyed thoughts of guarding the realm. What a fool he’d been.
The name Queensguard made it clear exactly who its members defended.
Cab searched, found his voice. Met One’s eyes to see if he had leave to speak and accepted her slow blink as permission. “Rescue from what, exactly?”
He already knew from his own experience with one of the Queen’s sorcerers that whatever the answer was, it wouldn’t bring him comfort.
54
Cab
There was a chamber of iron below the palace. In that chamber were twenty-seven fae children like Sil, all of them kept alive but helpless, the veins in their wrists cut open. Bowls made of birch collected the dripping blood.
From their blood, the sorcerers forged new, more powerful mirrors.
With those mirrors, they maintained Queen Catriona’s long reign and longer life.
Cab had known sorrow, for himself and the things he’d done. Regret was an endless howling from the nameless beast in his heart. He’d passed too far into the seamy shadow-side of the queendom and glimpsed something horrible living in its darkness.
But he’d thought, foolishly, he’d seen the depths of it.
How cocksure, to presume the Ever-Loyal massacre had been the most extreme
of Queen Catriona’s orders.
The fae weren’t all gone, as the first Ever-Bright queen had proclaimed. Perhaps she’d been lying. Perhaps she hadn’t known. What mattered was this: while expanding her mines, Queen Catriona had found something more valuable and rare than silver, and she guarded this treasure more jealously than any other.
Shining Talon wasn’t the last of his kind. Once Sil concluded her story, Cab would tell her about the fae prince. There are more of you still breathing than you know.
He couldn’t begin to imagine how he’d get through the rest of it. Find Shining Talon, explain to him that he wasn’t alone, tell him where the other fae were. What had happened to them.
A human himself, Cab had no answers for why humans did the things they did. Just that war made its players into madmen. The Queen had obviously been leading her own silent war for decades.
But Sil’s story had only begun.
Her escape had been part of a greater plan to free all the young fae trapped with her. An Ever-Loyal had discovered the source of the Queen’s power, that chamber of silver blood and silence, but he and the Resistance had managed to set only Sil free before his plot was uncovered and he was killed for his efforts.
Captain Baeth had leaked the details of their plan, having feigned dissatisfaction with the crown in order to infiltrate the Resistance’s ranks and feed vital information back to Morien and the Queen. Cab remembered the day she’d revealed her role to the loyal Queensguard. Felt sickened by how they’d cheered for her as she laid out the punishment for those crow traitors the Ever-Loyals.
More Houses than Ever-Loyal had burned that night. A few of the lesser ones, diminished by the Queen’s greed as she bought up land to dig and dig, had also been torched. The usual grousers, Baeth had explained, with nothing to offer but complaint and treason.
The Resistance had been larger once.
No longer.
They’d risked too much by bringing Cab here, and he’d been working against them since before they met.
Not all of the Ever-Loyals had been innocent. One of them had been plotting against the Queen. Only the plotting hadn’t been part of a base grab for power, as the Queensguard had been told. Someone in House Ever-Loyal had learned a terrible truth, terrible enough they were willing to risk the consequences of acting against the Queen.
Cab had struck them down for that.
“Something ails you.” Sil paused in her story. Her eyes burned twin holes through Cab’s heart the same way he imagined her sharp nails had bored through his chest. She should have left the glass there—or torn his heart out with it. “Unburden yourself, Cabhan of Kerry’s-End.”
“Bet you I know what’s got his tongue,” Einan said, falsely bright, when Cab found himself unable to answer. Always was a coward. “Word is, they sent every Queensguard they had out into the streets that night. Even the recruits. No chance our man here wasn’t part of the Ever-Loyal massacre.” Though her tone remained light, Einan’s eyes were as hard as steel. “Always liked them when they came to see my shows. They clapped loud, threw flowers, never gossiped through the monologues. Good people. You helped kill them. Did I hit the mark, soldier?”
Cab nodded. “It’s as you say.”
Uaine, who’d stood silent until now, let out a choked snarl. She didn’t leap forward and grab Cab by the neck, though.
She clearly wanted to. But Sil held up one hand, and no one moved against him.
Cab would have welcomed it.
“Not all of the Ever-Loyals are dead,” Cab managed. State the facts. Make your report, soldier. “One of them shares the connection with Two—Two of Many—that I share with One.”
Good boy, One said.
Any clue where Two and his human are? Cab asked.
He felt, rather than saw, the flick of her tongue tasting the air around her. Some information’s too precious for communication of any sort.
It wasn’t the others she was protecting. It was One who’d gone silent, in order to protect Sil and her Resistance. To keep knowledge of her location hidden from those close to Morien. Cab shared the taste of his approval with her, though he had none for himself.
“And the others have not yet been found.” Sil’s eyes glittered brightly. “Our hope in this darkness is that the Queen does not fully understand what she plans to control. She does not know all the ways in which it can be used.”
“Her sorcerers can control us, if they find us first. The mirrorglass in my heart, in the Ever-Loyal girl’s heart—” Cab began.
“—can be removed.” Sil’s small hands formed tight fists. “As you have learned through experience, Cabhan of Kerry’s-End. And we must only contend with them if we do not find the others before the Lying One.”
“She’s got more than we do already. Two masters, one fae prince, and one fae fragment.”
“Then we must beat her to the rest, however we can,” Sil said. “If you are with us, I will allow myself to feel hope again.”
Fear, panic, the old urge to run. All these were present in the flood of adrenaline that surged through Cab at Sil’s words. She hadn’t posed a question. She’d given him the room to make a graceful retreat.
Back to what? Another village, not Kerry’s-End, this time with a silver lizard he couldn’t hope to hide? Consign this precious thing to cowardice, too?
No. Cab had stopped running from his past when he’d met One.
Am I a part of this Resistance? Cab asked her. Silly to want her approval, but it was something Cab had yet to wrap his mind around. He’d been taught to think of the Resistance as dangerous agitators, less than human, if he thought of them at all.
Seems to me you’re feeling resistant, One replied.
“I won’t make myself unworthy of the sacrifices your people made to bring me here.” Cab hadn’t knelt for the Queen, but he bent his knee easily to the pale fae child in the sewer. Funny the way things worked out. “If I can serve you with my hands or heart, I’ll do it.”
Einan snorted. “Now I’ve seen gallantry.”
55
Rags
Rags hadn’t given much thought to the name Ever-Bright, but now that he’d met his first member of the royal family, he wondered if they were all as luminous as this one. Somhairle Ever-Bright’s hair was as curly as Inis’s, but short and pale as wheat. His sharp chin looked a mite off-kilter with the rest of his softer face, but he managed to give the impression of deliberate grace in his arthritic gait.
He couldn’t compare to Shining Talon’s fae glow, but he had the human companion of that quality. Goodness, Rags figured. Decency. The mother’s milk of kindness.
Rags didn’t miss the way Inis stood straighter with Prince Somhairle in the room. Gone were the sharp words and ready fists.
Rags was the only smudge on this courtly tableau now that Inis had made her transformation. Meanwhile, Somhairle’s attention had been wholly on Shining Talon since he’d laid eyes on the big fellow. He hid it badly, kept letting his glances slide into stares the way starving kids couldn’t help but follow the smell of bread.
“A prince of the Lost-Lands. In my home. Inis!” Prince Somhairle paced excitedly, hitching his way frenetically around the room.
“They were not lost when I knew them,” Shining Talon replied.
A prince, a fae prince, and an Ever-Loyal. Rags tried not to look at Shining Talon. Or, more accurately, tried not to look like he was hoping to catch Shining Talon’s eye, which was easier to do than to think about.
There was a time Rags hadn’t been able to turn around without tripping over his very own, very big, very shiny shadow.
Then he got too close.
Shining Talon hadn’t said anything about Rags falling asleep on him last night, almost like it’d never happened. He wasn’t thinking about it. Which made Rags feel rat-stupid for thinking about it, remembering it, expecting Shining Talon to talk about it because he talked about and to everything—including water and trees.
Somehow the sting c
ut deepest because Rags had known this would happen eventually. Expected it, deep down. Now that Shining Talon could be among finer folk with proper manners and real names, he didn’t need Rags for company.
Going unseen was Rags’s whole life, so why change now?
They’d let Inis handle the bulk of the explanations—what was going on and why they’d come. It seemed only right, and it gave Rags a chance to sit back and cover his hurt by appraising the room’s valuables. He glanced toward open glass doors that overlooked a balcony, let himself wander from the conversation toward the night sky.
A scattering of clouds overhead as he stepped onto the balcony. A shadow rippled over the paned glass, and Rags turned, flushed and ready with a quick comment about how Shining Talon couldn’t leave him alone.
But it wasn’t Shining Talon. Instead, Rags saw his own reflection, without the Ever-Land trees and twin moons behind him.
The Rags in the glass stood in a dark room, one lone window near the roof to let in light, fatty sides of meat hanging on hooks from the ceiling.
A butcher’s cool cellar.
Fuck no. Rags’s hand tingled. He made a fist, which heightened the pain enough to give him a focal point.
He’d already dealt with a mirror devil in the fae ruins. With Rags’s luck, why wouldn’t Morien be able to pull a similar trick?
Knowing it was only an illusion didn’t make it easier to look away. Rags’s reflection touched the hanging carcasses, setting them gently swaying.
“Stop it,” Rags muttered under his breath. He held his wrist to keep his injured hand from shaking.
Mirror-Rags grinned. Gestured to the last shadowy shape suspended from the ceiling. As it began to sway, it turned, and Rags saw that it had a face. Bloated, distended, his old friend Dane’s soft features were nearly unrecognizable.
Shh. Mirror-Rags pressed a finger to his mouth. Flesh grew over his lips, then sealed his eyes, his nose receding until the surface of his face was smooth as a hen’s egg.