“Yes,” Rags said again. “That happened when the, uh, glass exploded.”
“Your touch awakened me.” The fae sketched a formal, if cramped, bow with an impossible combination of near-liquid agility and steel-hard strength in his shoulders. The awkwardness he’d suffered at first was nowhere to be found. He’d rediscovered his mobility quickly and was already a master of it. Graceful, beautiful, powerful. Part of a vanished race of superintelligent beings obsessed with their superiority.
The same beings who’d created an obstacle course that had nearly killed Rags to get through. The same beings who’d been declared enemy forces by a queen dead for centuries before Rags ever slipped out of his mother’s womb. Humans and fae didn’t mix.
This obstacle course might still kill him.
“Okay,” Rags said.
Was this the part where he got turned on a spit and roasted for breakfast?
From the shimmering pool of broken glass, the fae extracted a shirt. Or Rags thought it was a shirt. The garment was spun from a fabric so light, it hovered in the air between them, delicate as spider silk and practically transparent. The fae pulled it on over his head. Once on, it clung to his form like it had been made for that purpose.
Maybe it had been. Who was Rags to comment on fae fashion?
Dressed, the fae took one of Rags’s hands, his touch startlingly cold. At once, feeling rushed back into Rags’s fingertips. He yelped, cursed. His hands were all that stood between him and starvation. If these cuts got infected, if they ran deep enough to sever muscle or affect sensation, he was fucked, he was so fucked—
His thoughts devolved into cursing after that, so deeply private and pained that he didn’t realize he was speaking them out loud.
“What does it mean?” the fae asked, beginning to diligently clean the blood from Rags’s right palm with his hair. “‘Pissing balls of fucking fire’? Is it your name?”
Rags tried to laugh but choked instead. His hands hurt, his back hurt, his face hurt, and he wished his name was Pissing Balls of Fucking Fire. It would suit the mood he was in.
“That’s not—no. It’s not my name. That’s some other guy.”
“My apologies to have confused you for someone else.” Rags searched the fae’s tone for signs of sarcasm but found none. “You who have awakened me have my respect and my loyalty. I would know you. What is it that you are named?”
Rags swallowed. “Uh.” This was going to be embarrassing. “Call me Rags.”
Instead of laughing—could fae laugh?—the fae simply nodded. “A short name, but one that is strong. In return, know me. I am Shining Talon of Vengeance Drawn in Westward Strike, and I am honored to be met by you.”
“Shining what of huh?” Rags pulled his hand back, alarmed by the way the fae’s touch had begun to numb it. He shook it out, winced as feeling and pain returned, then began to study the slices and gashes with grim focus.
“Shining Talon of Vengeance Drawn in Westward Strike, my lord Rags.”
“Oh, is that all?”
Somber resignation momentarily tugged the X’s tattooed at the corners of the fae’s mouth. He bowed his head. “It is all. I am young and have not yet proven myself.”
Rags sucked at a particularly deep gouge in his thumb, tasting blood. In the pause that followed, he levered himself up onto one elbow in order to look over the fae’s broad shoulder. He was met with the sight of cracked glass, the jagged remains of the coffin, its glow dulled by its collapse, and a small, grave-sized hollow in the wall. No chamber beyond. No further challenges, from the looks of it. No more doors.
No treasure.
Rags worked a chunk of glass free from his flesh with his teeth and spat it, stained pink, onto the floor at his side. Although his body tingled at the edges, a fuzzy feeling of uncertainty at the boundaries of his own skin, he got to his feet. The fae moved aside but watched him as he went. Rags swayed but managed to stay upright, lurching toward the thing that had rolled free of the coffin. Maybe it was a diamond. A big, not very sparkly, mostly dirty diamond.
He scooped the lumpy thing up in his hand. Because that was what it was. A lump of twisted ore, like raw silver before a silversmith got hold of it. Worth something, sure. There was never a shortage of men and women who wanted swords, and people who needed the materials to make