Master of One - Jaida Jones Page 0,127

what couldn’t he do?”

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

readonlinefreenovel.com Copyright 2016 - 2024