“Laisrean?” Somhairle called out, stepping over the threshold. The mirrors could see him doing what looked like Morien’s bidding.
But it wasn’t Laisrean dressed in blue. It was Lord Faolan Ever-Learning, slouched in a handsome chair, and he didn’t look happy to greet an old friend. Not even one whose home he’d recently invaded.
“Your Highness!” Faolan didn’t stand, though his gaze slurred warmly from Somhairle to Inis. “And treasured guest! Please, sit, if you’d like. I can’t say much for the company, but the drinks are excellent.”
“We really can’t stay.” The edge of hostility in Inis’s voice, the arch of one of Faolan’s dark brows over his long, sharp nose, the glare of mirrors set along every paneled bookshelf, made Somhairle light-headed.
“Speaking for a prince? Even a mostly exiled one? Tut.” Faolan swept a gloved hand over the books in front of him, spilling a glass of wine in the process and splattering his nearby papers. Old, precious maps, sections of fae designs, the stuff Somhairle’s dreams were made of, blotted at with a silky handkerchief, smeared rich red. Destroyed. “You forget your manners. Too long from court. Well then! Don’t allow me to detain you in your important business.”
Faolan stood, swaying and clasping Somhairle’s shoulder to do so. His breath wine-sweet, then wine-sour. Inis looked away in disgust and missed the intimate press of paper from Faolan’s palm to Somhairle’s.
Faolan staggered away, deeper into the library.
“Ah, another shining example of Queen Catriona Ever-Bright’s court,” Inis muttered.
Somhairle turned his back to her for the moment it took to fumble open Faolan’s note. Written not in the impeccable hand Somhairle recalled, but hurriedly, almost blindly. As though he hadn’t been looking at the words as he wrote them. Or as though he couldn’t, for fear of who might see them through his eyes.
It was signed only with a fingerprint in red, a smudge from the spilled wine.
JUST BECAUSE THERE IS NO SHARD IN YOUR HEART DOES NOT MEAN SHE IS NOT WATCHING. THERE ARE EYES ON EVERY PRINCE. ALWAYS.
Somhairle twisted the note away into a fold of one sleeve, to be burned later. After he decided how to share Faolan’s warning with the others.
Preferably once he’d figured out what it meant.
“We should find Laisrean,” Somhairle said, cheeks hot, “without further distraction.”
75
Inis
Laisrean was only available for dinner later that night, though the delay heartened Somhairle greatly once he learned of Two’s origins. He seemed hopeful that Laisrean’s silverware would undergo a similar transformation.
“Eat extra for me,” Rags said sulkily, flopping down on the arm of the chair in which Shining Talon sat silent. “I’ll keep an eye on this one. Show him how it feels to have somebody clucking and fussing and not letting him breathe.”
Inis reached out to Shining Talon, thinking to take his hand. To show him compassion. To explain that she was afraid they would be easily defeated if they weren’t in this together, that she was afraid they would never leave the palace if they didn’t act quickly.
What she saw in his eyes was a reflection of her own loss, and she recoiled.
Yet away from them, alone inside her dressing room, without Rags and his loud mouth filling her head with noise, there was nothing to distract Inis from the promise of seeing Laisrean again.
There was no way he could recognize her.
A piece of her wished he would. Managing her rage was as much a part of her day-to-day as breathing, but the beast that stirred when Laisrean took her hand was an enemy she no longer understood.
Maybe, if he had to look her in the eye, he’d explain to her why her brothers and father had been taken from her, murdered in cold blood in the middle of the night. How he could still wear those leather cords around his wrist when his mother’s Queensguard had been the ones to execute—
Inis shook her head, dabbing extra powder over her nose. Her hand shook, a dusting of snow white spilling onto her chemise.
It was next to impossible to get dressed without a mirror, but she couldn’t trust her own reflection these days.
“Are you sure this isn’t asking too much of you?” asked Somhairle at her back, as he watched her fumble in front of the cloak-obscured vanity. He looked so concerned for her. Had the face she was making been that awful?
She turned and dusted his nose with her powder brush. He sneezed. “I’ll be fine. You know, no matter how much you wish for it, it might not