showing off every tooth in his head.
Let’s see how inspiration takes us when the moment comes, Inis replied.
There was the Queen behind Morien, always the Queen at the center of things. She was a problem without a solution, but Inis couldn’t get ahead of herself. She had to remain steady and stealthy, keep a level head and heart. With the blindfold tied around her chest and Rags cloaked in the sheet of red cloth, they filed out of Somhairle’s quarters and into the quiet halls.
She expected Queensguard at every step. But, Two told her, they were busy elsewhere. Striking early, when Morien was dealing with Laisrean and the Resistance threat, was their best chance.
Rags took the lead, shepherding them down the same path he’d taken before, while Shining Talon stayed at the rear, to protect them from the odd servant or Queensguard on nighttime patrol.
He’s angry, Two commented. Inis didn’t need to ask, could tell from the distaste in his voice that he meant Morien. The Queen wouldn’t allow shards in her sons, and this is what came of it. Ooh, he blames her, but he’s too scared to say it.
Good, Inis replied. Let him taste fear for a change.
Clanky guard friends, Two added.
Rags must have heard them.
He’d pulled Somhairle into a corner, throwing up the red cloth to further obscure them in shadow. Inis and Shining Talon ducked into an alcove opposite them and waited for the metallic stamping of the patrol to pass. Fat lot of good it’d do them to be caught huddling together under a sheet in an ill-used hallway, but waiting was torment. Every moment that passed was precious time squandered.
The Queen had chosen to protect her princes from mirrorcraft. That meant she still cared for them, in her own way, and there was a chance Laisrean hadn’t been executed. Yet. Inis’s heart soared, but she pushed the feeling away for later, once her surprise at the reaction had registered.
Deeming it safe to move on, Rags motioned for them to continue, then set off down the hall. Inis had an inkling Morien would know soon that something was wrong. They’d hidden from him for too long.
But preserving that secret no longer mattered. Nothing mattered, except for freeing the trapped fae children.
Inis knew what it was like to be driven by a single purpose. Ivy had been her lone focus this long year in exile. Now she had Tomman’s memory to lead her forward, Tomman’s cause to champion. She’d finish what he’d started, what he’d died for.
You’re not alone anymore. Not even in your headstrong pursuits, Two reminded her.
He was right, for better or worse. Not only was she linked to Two, a piece of her she’d always missed, but she was tied to the other masters of the fragments, too. Somhairle and Cab. One her old friend, one her old enemy.
Fate laughing at yet another Ever-Loyal.
Rags led them to the path of hands, black bones set into the tiles, fingers outstretched. Pointing, or pleading? They set the hairs on Inis’s arms on end, but she followed them.
Once, Shining Talon disappeared from the rear of their group, returned after subduing a Queensguard or a servant who’d been unlucky enough to stumble into the wrong place at the wrong time.
Inis was fairly sure he hadn’t killed them. The bleak look on his face made it difficult to be certain. The blindfold around her chest made it difficult to breathe.
With Shining Talon as their rear guard, they passed through the secret compartment in the window seat one at a time. In the dark beneath the Hill, Inis reached for Somhairle’s hand, so she wouldn’t feel as though the Queen’s castle was swallowing her.
Then her vision shifted. She saw with Two’s eyes, forms taking shape in shadows she shouldn’t be able to see. Carvings on the walls that were supposed to glow, but their power had been drained, no magic left to light the way. They made her sad—or made Two sad, and Inis by extension—then stoked her anger.
Down, down. Two smelled something that Inis couldn’t name, a foreign taste on her lips: black bones and blood that ran silver.
The fae children.
Inis and Two began to move faster, until they rounded a sharp corner and came into the chamber Rags had described.
It was worse than she’d imagined. She tumbled out into a room filled with mirrors, angled against each other, reflecting and capturing the natural light that shone from the imprisoned fae, who rested on white stone slabs. Eyes