Steeling himself, narrowing his eyes, Rags peered out into the burning white space a second time. It was dizzying. His vision swam. He was seeing too much at once, too many of the same shapes, like he’d stumbled into Whisper William’s Horrific House’s Room of Mirrors.
Mirrors.
That was what Rags saw: countless mirrors set at different angles. A mirrored wall. A mirrored floor and ceiling. The bright light in the room’s center was reflected a thousand times, had blinded Rags when he first looked in.
There was more than light at the center of the room. There were bodies, unmoving—dead?—lying side by side, black hair like crows’ wings and silk, pale silver eyes open but unseeing.
A better person would’ve retched. Had tears prickling at the corners of their eyes. Their knees would’ve buckled.
But Rags only felt a roaring in his ears, the rush of Old Drowner separating him from the shock someone was meant to feel when they saw something like this.
Of course, whispered the boy in his head, the one who’d kept Rags alive all those years on the street. The hard cockroach shell of protection he’d donned to survive. Of course this shit exists in the world.
Acceptance trickled down his spine like runoff from a stalactite overhead. But it was a different kind of dirty, rippling underneath his skin and staying there, becoming a part of him.
Rags wasn’t surprised by the sight. No disbelief, but belief. Undistilled.
Mirrorcraft.
And at least twenty small fae trapped by it. They’d found more of Shining Talon’s people alive, all right.
Only Rags wasn’t sure this counted as living.
71
Inis
After exile to the Far Glades, Inis had imagined there would be nothing more difficult than a return to the Hill.
But that had been before Somhairle told her who they were meeting in the fall garden by the Palisades.
Laisrean Ever-Bright. Tomman Ever-Loyal’s best friend, when Tomman had still been alive to have one; before his best friend’s mother had ordered him killed. Laisrean had been Inis’s friend, too, up until he wasn’t.
The depth of Inis’s fury held no room for distinctions, like if Laisrean had known about the attack on House Ever-Loyal before it had happened, or if he could have warned his friend and didn’t. Even if he could have done nothing to prevent it, where had he been all this time? What had he done to honor Tomman’s memory? If he’d missed Inis or mourned with her, what had he done to show it?
Nothing.
Is that why you never wrote your little summer prince? Even knowing he couldn’t have been aware of his mother’s plans? Two’s voice was wry in her mind. Easier to blame them all by association, I know. But there’s strength to be found in focusing your anger where it truly belongs. Where it can strike its deadliest blow.
I’m trying, Inis promised.
So she accompanied Somhairle to the fall garden, leaving the thief and the fae behind, if not her worries.
Because she didn’t want to make Somhairle uncomfortable, she couldn’t stare at him.
Because she didn’t want to fall into a pit of grief, she couldn’t stare at anything other than her feet on the grass.
Summer parties she had attended here once upon a lost time. Garlands of light and silk ribbons threaded through trees. Ivy’s first time to one, clutching Inis’s hand. The swish and laughter of skirts, a favorite pair of silver shoes, being complimented by princes who’d suddenly grown taller and broader of shoulder and looked like strangers, not the children she’d chased between rows of flame-colored lilies.
Impossible not to remember all of it when she smelled the roses.
They stopped to rest beneath the Oak, the Hill’s oldest tree. Its roots had grown around the bodies of the conquered fae where they fell, twisted in the shapes of their bones. A few of those bones, black and bare, peeked out from the soil.
Strange to be back. Two curled up at Inis’s side. At least no one’s eating hot porridge out of me.
“I’m sorry,” Somhairle said.
“For what?”
“I don’t know what we’ll find here. And it can’t be easy for you, being back, but not yourself.”
Inis shrugged, fixing her focus on her hands. Not a proper lady’s hands anymore, although Morien’s glamour had made them look like they were.
“And the longer it takes me, the longer you have to stay here,” Somhairle added.
“Don’t,” Inis began.
Someone’s coming, Two said. Never ate porridge out of me, though, so I don’t know who he is.