I suspected you were about to when you could be overhead. Almost had my cover blown once today, and I couldn’t risk it a second time.”
“—you’re a spy,” Somhairle concluded.
“What gave it away?” Laisrean eyed Three as he said it, already suspected it had to do with the owl.
“You met with someone she knows last night. It’s—complicated,” Somhairle said.
Laisrean folded his arms over his chest and leaned back against the door. “I’ll try to follow along,” he replied.
76
Rags
Since the moment they’d met, Shining Talon had been impossible. Rags couldn’t take a step without the fae in his shadow, couldn’t rise on a stormy day without Shining Talon shielding him from the rain. There was no telling him different. He was stubborn as he was regal, and it drove Rags to distraction that he couldn’t make the big lug see reason.
In earlier days, seized by extreme frustration, Rags had even wished that Shining Talon would climb back into the coffin where Rags had found him and go to sleep.
Until Shining Talon started doing his best impression of a Sleeping fae all over again.
Rags never thought he’d actually see this. But now Shining Talon didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He was so caught in his private misery that Rags suspected he could throw himself out the window and Shining Talon wouldn’t look up.
Which was fine. Really. Rags should’ve known better than to get used to something. Everything, good and bad, got snatched away in the end, since time was the greatest thief of them all.
That didn’t mean he was happy about it.
“You know, this is the last thing we need.” Rags paced back and forth in front of Shining Talon, barefoot on the fancy rug. On top of everything that was making him itch with frustration, there was another added weight: he couldn’t talk about what they’d seen. Not directly. Using the nap-and-blindfold trick required two people, and Rags’s partner in crime was currently out of commission.
Maybe permanently. This was why Rags always worked alone.
“You’re looking queasy. We should see if Prince Sunshine or Lady Fury can order you some soup. Do your people eat soup? Or is that impossible, given the way they feel about spoons?”
Rags had given up looking for any change in Silent Talon’s expression. The crossbones at the corners of his mouth stayed put. And what was the point of staring at what once had been animated, only to be confronted with the equivalent of a tragic oil painting?
So Rags looked out the window instead. Watched the Queensguard in their shiny plate armor running drills in the courtyard. Thought about how Shiny needed a better nickname. Forget stealing: this was the first job Rags had done where he was hoping to make it out of the place with what little he’d had when he arrived. Like still-breathing lungs. He wondered if Angry Inis was going to get through this in one piece after everything she’d lost. And if Somhairle was truly willing to throw his family over for the fae, because fuck what was right, he had blood and money to protect.
Rags belonged here least of anyone, and he’d enjoyed a lifetime of being stepped on to enforce that knowledge. Inis was new to it. She’d been born Ever-Noble, then had her world shoved into a smaller box, shuttering its bright expanse when it was packed away.
There’d been a time when Rags never would’ve worried about any of this shit. The fact that he did now had to be Shining Talon’s fault.
Evening passed into night, and the Queensguard drills ended late. Rags turned away from the window, disgusted with himself and the state of his life.
“Gonna lie down for the night,” he said, expecting nothing in response. “Make sure I don’t catch whatever’s got your tongue. Maybe the windlings are making a comeback.”
It wasn’t a ruse. He was exhausted by the prospect of throwing himself against Shining Talon’s stony grief for the rest of the evening while Inis and Somhairle were at a fancy dinner.
Rags, for the first time in his life, wasn’t hungry.
After closing his eyes, he had barely enough time to inhale before he felt the blindfold being pulled from his pocket and tied around his chest.
When Rags opened his eyes again, Shining Talon wasn’t looming over him. Instead, he was stretched out next to Rags, lying on his back with his hands folded over his stomach.
He looked like he had in the coffin. Like those fae they’d found trapped in the mirror room. The thought