by Jaida Jones
“Stop that!” Rags shouted.
The image shattered, splintering to pieces. Shining Talon stood between Rags and the shower of broken glass around his feet, having destroyed the balcony door with no weapon other than his body crashing through it.
“The Lying One.” Shining Talon’s keen gaze swept over Rags’s face, read the information he wanted from Rags’s expression. “I should have known, when Lady Inis spoke of the mirror, that he had found another way to torment you.”
Too startled to speak, mesmerized by the slide and clatter of glass shards falling from Shining Talon’s shoulders and hair as he straightened, Rags nodded. Felt like a shitheel for not saying something. Thanks for being my noble fae protector yet again when I wandered off and got attacked by my own reflection, the usual shit that happens to me these days.
Rags was starting to anticipate the noble-fae-protector bit. Enjoy it, even, which felt dangerous. He’d thought Shining Talon had moved on to bigger and better goals, but this was proof he was still paying attention.
“My apologies,” Shining Talon said, “for the destruction.”
Rags opened his mouth to tell him to shut up when Shining Talon shifted to kneel in Somhairle’s direction instead of Rags’s. The door was a twisted ruin of wood at his back.
Right. The fae prince acknowledging the other prince in the room. No concern for Rags, which was what Rags had wanted. Now that he had it, he needed to learn not to hate it.
“You saw something, too?” Inis’s usually hard voice threatened to crack. Shadows on shadows in her eyes as her mouth twisted into a sour smile. “Why is the Last haunting us? Aren’t we doing what he wanted?”
Rags’s knucklebones ached. Morien’s poisonous mirror shards might have wormed their way bone deep.
It said something about Inis that she thought anyone needed a reason to be cruel.
“Maybe it’s how he cheers himself up at the end of a busy day.” Rags shrugged, pretending to shake off Morien’s mirrorcraft as easily. “Maybe he’s still sore about Cabhan and wants to remind us who’s in charge. Keep us from letting someone else get kidnapped.”
“He’s a bully,” Inis said. “Hardly a surprise, considering . . .”
Her gaze drifted to Somhairle. Rags wondered if she’d been about to insult his royal mother.
“I have an idea.” The prince deftly cut the knot of tension in the room with the honeyed warmth of his voice. He braced himself with his good hand on the back of his chair, composed enough to smile at his guests. “Why don’t I lead you on a tour of the grounds? No glass to concern yourselves with out there.”
“Sure,” Rags found his voice. Grateful for the distraction. “Shining Talon here likes nature stuff. Might as well let him hug some trees.”
“Trees,” Shining Talon said, “do not like to be hugged.”
56
Rags
Off through the orchard, where glowbugs danced among roots in the dark, chaining their ankles like jewels. Or manacles. Somhairle kept their pace steady, probably faster than he’d go if he were taking a stroll alone, but he didn’t stumble or falter. The grace of his loping stride and perfectly balanced brace and crutch were like music.
That delicate silver contraption reminded Rags of something out of the fae ruins, the metalwork so thin and fine it resembled silk in places, but was sturdy enough to bear Somhairle’s weight. It twisted in interlocking geometries around his wrist and up to his elbow, and if it hadn’t been for the way the prince leaned on it, it might have been a bit of jewelry, a court fashion, not a vital support.
Yeah, for the countryside, this place wasn’t actually too bad. Except when the glowbugs gathered around Shining Talon, haloing his body, shimmering like the corona around the sun. It made him harder to disregard, like a great big signal fire lighting up exactly what Rags hoped to ignore.
Now that Shining Talon wasn’t looking for him constantly, his silver gaze had become more precious than gold.
Sometime between their arrival at the house and their departure from it to tour the grounds, Shining Talon had twisted his hair into a high tail like a horse’s, the white streak braided alongside the black and disappearing into whatever was keeping it tied up. Fae magic, Rags assumed. Why wouldn’t it apply to hair the same as it applied to anything else? The fanned ends brushed the back of his golden neck.
The sight of him like that had initially stopped Rags in his tracks. He couldn’t help but feel as lowly as a glowbug, pulled in by the same light that had beguiled their tiny insect brains.
Except Rags was big enough that it was obvious when he stared.
“These are new,” Shining Talon said. About the bugs. Held up one finger while two of them circled each other around its tip. “I appreciate them.”
There was a fruit smell on the breeze, heavy and sweet. Peaches, maybe, though it was hard to tell, because the only peaches Rags had ever tasted were rotters thrown out after swelling unsold in the full-day sun of the market.
Maybe this answered one of Rags’s most burning questions: Do fae sweat? Maybe Shining Talon did, and this was what it smelled like.
Rags had slept on him all through the night and he still didn’t know the answer. That didn’t seem right.
“Are you well?”
Rags didn’t realize how close Shining Talon had gotten until it was too late and there he was, fingers on Rags’s chin, glowbugs haloing him like a theater’s limelights. Rags tried not to go cross-eyed watching the bugs instead of Shining Talon.
“What?” Rags’s voice betrayed him the way a squeaky hinge called out his thieving in the night. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got mirror shards in two very important parts of my body, and I’m being haunted by mirrorcraft.”
Shining Talon looked at him, eyes narrowing. Rags felt himself swallow.
“You are not as skilled in concealment as I would have guessed,” Shining Talon said, “for a thief.”
“Say that to my face.” Rags tilted his chin up, breathlessly defiant.
The furrow of confusion in Shining Talon’s brow slung a jolt of heat low through Rags’s belly. It also brought him to his senses. Whatever he was entertaining, he needed to stop. Shining Talon took him too seriously, followed his whims too completely.
“I am saying it to your face,” he replied.
Like Rags had known he would.
“Come on.” Rags rapped his knuckles against Shining Talon’s shoulder, pretending it was a door. His attempt at camaraderie as they broke apart naturally. “They’re gonna leave us behind, and Morien will want to know how we lost two masters this time. I’ve had about enough of being tortured by my own reflection, thanks.”
Shining Talon nodded, though his gaze on Rags was piercing. Seemed pointed enough that he wanted Rags to know Rags wasn’t fooling him.
He knew Rags was running away. He was letting him do it. Which confirmed it was the right thing to do, since the right thing was always the not-as-fun thing.
“The Lying One’s powers seem to grow alongside his rage,” Shining Talon confided as he drew even with Rags. “Though it goes against our nature, we must give him no reason to find further displeasure with us.”
Because there was hope, if they could stay alive long enough to reach it. Another fae Enchantsy-something out there, who’d take the treacherous glass from Rags’s heart and his hand, maybe take his star lump, too, set him free to live his unremarkable thief’s life without the scent of fae blood on his knuckles, fae fingers in his hair.
Rags groaned and quickened his pace. The thought was supposed to make him feel better, not worse.
They came through the orchards to the edge of a crescent-moon lake, Somhairle’s manse in the near distance. The final traces of sunset still stained the hills in golds, softened, spread pink like spilled wine across the sky. Confusing, until Rags realized it was another sorcerer’s trick, magic always at work to frame Ever-Land as picture-perfect. He’d never missed his busy, dirty city more fiercely.
&n
bsp; But he could agree that Ever-Land wasn’t all bad.
“Magic here,” Shining Talon murmured. As if they agreed with him, the glowbugs held back from the edge of the water. So did Inis, Rags noticed, like she was afraid of what she’d see in the lake’s smooth surface. Not that he could blame her. He hung back for a moment longer, then risked it. In place of fine breeding, he had curiosity to feed.
Across the lake drifted the reflected shimmer of so much precious metal that Rags started to drool, had to clamp down on a gut-punch of sticky-fingered desire. At least it made for a distraction from the other kind of desire.
He didn’t look at Shining Talon.
They faced a private carousel for one small prince to use, the cost of which could have gilded every room in the Clave dorms. Carved bronze garlands wove around the top, framing the wink of gold, the glitter of silver beasts affixed to ivory poles.
“My first birthday present from Her Majesty,” Somhairle explained. “Inis and I used to ride it together with one of my brothers and both of hers.”
Her brothers, who were now dead. Rags had to say something, quick. “What’s something like that cost, anyway?”
“I know. It’s extravagant, like Her Majesty.” Somhairle wavered, then caught his balance. One toe dipped into the lake, staining the tip of his boot, splashing the bottom of his crutch, which slid on the shale. “My apologies. It’s been a long day, with more excitement than I’ve seen in months, and I—”
They all moved to Somhairle’s side, Two included. Rags crashed into Inis and Shining Talon’s speed put him in front of them. But none of it was necessary, because one of the carousel’s menagerie had unhinged itself from its pole and was already winging its way over the water toward them.
Not graceful. Lopsided. It had only one eye, and it was missing half a wing.
Kind of matched Somhairle, Rags thought.
Then it was before them, leaving ripples across the surface of the lake where its talons had dipped too low, its sharp-tipped feathers arcing to Somhairle’s crippled side.
The prince’s crutch melted off his arm, the rest of his brace off his body.
The last piece of Three had been with Somhairle already.
It wasn’t enough to fix the missing eye, but it patched up the wing perfectly.
Without his crutch, Somhairle slipped, barely catching himself on a nearby sapling. He wouldn’t keep his balance for long. Inis started toward him again, then let experience hold her back, instead reaching a hand down for Two to butt his face into.
Three, in the form of an owl, was nearly too big to land on Somhairle’s shoulder, but it did, balancing him on his weak side. Instantly, panic faded from Somhairle’s expression, that split-second concern replaced by a peacefulness that made Rags avert his eyes.
He knew what was coming. The beauty, the bonding.
That didn’t mean he had to watch.
Or think about how that was promised for him. Some made-of-metal animal from times past invading his thoughts, making him feel better than ever, letting him know how little he’d meant in his life up until—
When Rags turned away, Shining Talon was there, facing him.
“Gonna put a bell on you.” This close, Rags had to look up to meet his gaze.
“That would be inadvisable.” Impossibly tall, impossibly golden, with a jaw cut sharper than a broken window. “A warrior’s pride is his stealth.”
Rags groaned. “Don’t remind me.”
Those looks, noble fae blood, and the ability to sneak up on a born thief? Not fair. At least before, Rags had found him too annoying for all that other stuff to matter, but now Shining Talon couldn’t even do Rags the courtesy of pissing him off like he used to.
He looked away and caught sight of the massive one-eyed silver owl bending its head to nuzzle Somhairle’s cheek. Somhairle held the bird’s face in both hands, one whole and one withered, and didn’t flinch at the hinged talons digging into his shoulder.
He was one tough nut, more so because he’d been strong enough to stay softhearted.
Morien would put an end to that with his mirrorcraft. Too bad they couldn’t cover their eyes now, pretend they didn’t know where they were so Morien wouldn’t, either.
The blindfolds, Rags thought. If Shining Talon could wrap one around his chest and one around Inis’s, maybe they’d have a shot at warning Somhairle before the sorcerer descended on them.
They’d already found Three. They had a matter of moments, if that, before Morien appeared to piss all over it.
“I’m bored,” Rags announced to Shining Talon’s face. Though they couldn’t speak mind to mind like Somhairle and Inis and their clockwork partners, Rags was trusting him to follow along. Didn’t know why. “Think I’ll take a nap.”
He closed his eyes and tapped his chest, tracing lines over his heart.
What was the point of Shining Talon staring at him every moment if he wasn’t going to learn to read Rags’s every movement?
A hand at his pocket. The blindfolds tugged free. One weight lifted, Rags’s face splitting into an unstoppable grin before another weight took its place.
For all that he had no real-world instincts, Shining Talon had figured it out. He’d figured Rags out.
“Inis Ever-Loyal,” Shining Talon said, in that voice that made everything sound like it was a precious gem from ancient times, “perhaps you would like to join him? I know human constitutions can be frail, and the ride here was long.”
“What are you—” Inis began. “I can assure you, Prince Shining Talon of Vengeance Drawn in Westward Strike”—of course she knew his full name and used it; that fat cat had probably told her what it was—“I am perfectly capable—”
Just like that, she stopped.
Rags supposed Shining Talon had communicated what was happening to her, or Two had picked up on it and tipped his master off, because next thing he heard was Inis’s yawn.
“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t let my pride get the best of me. Prince Somhairle, do you mind if we . . . ?”
“Of course, Inis,” came Somhairle’s soft agreement, no doubt having been clued in by Three. “I’m sure the Last will understand your need to rest, given all this excitement.”
Rags had to admit, the wordless-connection thing was a pretty sweet setup.
Soft footsteps in the grass. The sound of Inis lying down. Silence followed, then the rustling of cloth. Shining Talon took Rags’s hands, guided them to hold the cloth over his chest.
Time slowed. Senses dulled. Rags opened his eyes to a quiet world, what he saw separate from his now-hidden heart.
He watched as Shining Talon finished doing the same for Inis, her fingers white and gripping the blindfold tight.
“What about his hand?” Even with her heartsblood muffled by sorcery, Inis managed a glare of suspicion. The expression faltered into neutrality before recovering.
Rags shook his head, the small movement dizzying. “Think that was more about pain than spying. No, I know it was, since if Morien knew . . . he would’ve shredded us the first time I learned the knack for slipping our chains.”
“If you’re wrong,” Inis said calmly, “and this harms my family, Morien the Last won’t have the chance. I’ll get to you first.”
“I understand,” Somhairle said before Shining Talon was forced to explain. With Three on his shoulder, Rags didn’t need to guess how he knew. “Morien’s been looking for you.” A pause, while he listened to something Rags couldn’t hear. The owl known as Three was catching Somhairle up on his destiny, giving him the quick-and-dirty. “He seeks to complete the Great Paragon. To control it through his mirrorcraft. We can’t allow that to happen. We can’t.”
Somhairle turned his bright blue eyes on them with weighted understanding. Rags supposed it wasn’t that difficult to figure out.
An impossibly powerful fae weapon was only as strong as the weak humans commanding it.
“We didn’t have a choice. We had to come here.” Inis didn
’t sound miserable, couldn’t with the blindfold draped across her chest, but her jaw clenched. “I would never have done this if—”
“I know that.” Somhairle sounded surprised. “It’s impossible not to obey a sorcerer’s commands when it comes to mirrorcraft. Besides, the gift you brought balances out any curse.”
“Says the princeling who doesn’t have mirrorglass in his heart,” Rags said. “You’ll change your tune once he—”
“Obviously, we don’t intend to obey Morien’s orders forever.” Inis’s voice, strong and sure. Rags snorted alongside it, then sobered and nodded when her accompanying glare threatened to scorch off his eyebrows. “But our other choice is death, and I can’t be that selfish.”
I could, Rags thought.
But that wasn’t true. He owed it to himself, to Dane and every other kid who didn’t make it, to hold on to his life with both hands. He had to find a way out of this so he could free Shining Talon from Morien’s leash in the same slip.
Time to lay some of his cards on the table. Even if it meant throwing in his lot with the others.
“We don’t have much time,” Rags cut in, “before Morien figures out we’ve got a way to chat without him eavesdropping. But there used to be one more of us. Maybe still is. And somebody removed the mirror from his heart.”
Again, no shock registered in Inis’s eyes, but she said, “Is that possible?”
Somhairle nodded. “Another sorcerer could do it. But they’re all loyal to the Queen.”
“She’s your own mother and you call her ‘the Queen’? Woof.” Rags felt the time ticking away and pushed along. “Anyway, whoever it was, we’re gonna find ’em,” Rags continued. It wasn’t his place to bring fae Enchantrisks or any other kind of risks into the equation. Let them see for themselves who it was when their group finally tracked down Cabhan. “We’re gonna ask for the same treatment. Once we know who it is.”
Rags watched the realization seep from him to the others, traveling like blood through cobblestones, flowing downhill.