if you want to kiss me. Not really. Not when you do everything I tell you to. Obey my every command.”
“Truly?” Tal arched one black brow. “But I have never lied to you.”
“That’s not what I mean.” Tal’s shirt was as slippery as it looked when Rags seized it. He tugged, but Tal stayed in place. It was Rags who came forward. Tal’s hands caught him above the hips and Rags tilted his face up. Like colliding chest-first with an oak tree, so it was totally reasonable he felt winded.
He couldn’t tell who kissed who. Maybe that didn’t matter. Relief and sorrow broke over Rags like the first shock of cold when they’d jumped into Old Drowner. They were free, but they’d lost people. Fae children were still under the Queen’s control. One of them had died to get the shards out of their hearts. They’d be hunted until the end of their days, probably.
But they’d slipped Morien’s grip, and Tal was holding Rags up. Rags’s fingers slid into Tal’s silky hair, mouth softening under his. For one long honey-drop moment, Rags stopped thinking, and everything inside him turned to want.
Fucking fae.
It was Rags who found the breathless will to break away first, though really, he was on fire with the desire to go back and give in.
“Listen,” Rags said sharply, though he was still using Tal for balance, “listen. I want you bound to me by choice. Not circumstance or fae prophecy.”
“You object to our bond?” The restraint in Tal’s voice, the disarray of black hair, the heat in his silver eyes: striking match after match in Rags’s gut.
He thought he’d already been set ablaze.
“Yes.” Rags nodded deliberately. Tal didn’t have to know he was trying to convince himself in the same measure. “I can’t kiss someone under my command. It’s creepy.”
Tal frowned. “To the fae it is not creepy.”
Rags buried his face in Tal’s shoulder. “To the fae it should be creepy, Tal. We’re gonna work on that. Together, I guess.”
Everything shifted as they faced each other. Rags felt like all the pieces of him had been there all along, obviously, but he’d been waiting for something else, a big lug who had perfect shoulders, to bring those pieces together the way they were meant to be. To feel so damn right. So powerful.
Ready to make his world a better place.
“When the remaining fragments of the Great Paragon are located,” Tal said, “my duty will be fulfilled.”
“And we won’t be bound by anything then?” Rags squinted. Fae were tricky, trickier than Cheapsiders during a lean year.
“Nothing but our personal will.” Tal brought Rags’s scarred hand to his mouth.
Against the rules. Rags allowed it.
They only had to find two more fragments: the one destined for Tal and the one for Rags, which maybe Rags’s map could lead him to. Considering they’d started with one and now had four, those weren’t overwhelming numbers.
Planning that far ahead should have made Rags want to bolt. It meant a lifetime sentence of working together. Rags wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t passed the verdict himself.
With the pad of his thumb, he smoothed back Tal’s stray white hairs, the streak that had only just formed.
“Humans have a saying about this,” Rags said. “Stress makes our hair turn gray. Your people probably don’t know shit about stress, so I’ll call it trouble. And since your Folk aren’t around to disapprove of me, I’m telling you before you hear it from someone else: I’m trouble. That’s why you’re getting all this white hair.”
Tal frowned. “The loss of color is due to a healing ritual of my people. I thought I explained—”
Rags sighed. “Easier not to kiss you when I remember you have no sense of humor.”
Tal touched the back of Rags’s head, making him straighten up. There was either a faint sheen of sweat coating Tal’s skin or Rags had never noticed the way the gold glimmered below the surface.
“We are free,” Tal said, “but there are yet those who lack the same freedom.”
“Yeah,” Rags agreed. No time to relax. Letting his guard down meant getting pinched, no matter who was doing the pinching. And he was looking out for more than himself now. “You might need an expert thief to track the last two fragments down, so.”
“Have you forgotten that you are the one who saved me? This means you are Master of Five.” Tal’s hand settled big and warm on Rags’s shoulder. Was he imagining it, or was that warmth and strength flowing