toward his fingertips—paid him little attention. The only time One acknowledged their presence was biting the back of Shining Talon’s leggings when he came too close to what Rags assumed was a wrong door. Were they now following the lizard? Rags snuck a look at Morien and found him as inscrutable as ever.
When they met up with the Queensguard, Rags was struck again by their silence. Like toy soldiers left unattended between the first and second doors, they lined the dark corridor at eerie and empty attention, still blindfolded by Morien’s scarves.
Shining Talon bared his teeth at the sight of them but said nothing. They were backtracking now.
Heading out.
Rags was nearly free to get back to the city, find out who’d sold him into servitude to the Ever-Nobles, and make them pay. After that, he’d settle back into his old life. He’d never swear in the fae’s name. He’d get better at being bad and make sure he wasn’t caught again.
Yeah, and if he believed that, he’d believe anything.
There’d been a total lack of shock in Morien’s eyes when presented with a living fae. Had he been expecting this, not fae-glass lances or star ruby diadems?
“Guess it’d be too easy if one of these guys was the picky silver lizard’s master,” Rags muttered.
Shining Talon nodded solemnly. “The search could take decades, perhaps a century.”
Something about the way he said it made Rags wonder if he was stalling for time. Inflating Morien’s expectations.
Nah, it was a mistake for Rags to try to read him like a normal person.
“It would be in Rags’s best interest if you would share more information about this Great Paragon,” Morien told Shining Talon.
The only point of brightness piercing Rags’s foul mood was the way the sorcerer kept his distance from One, putting all six Queensguard, Rags, and Shining Talon between them. His posture wasn’t scared, but that detail suggested otherwise.
Rags snorted and sat. “Figure it’ll be a long story. Might as well get comfortable.”
Shining Talon settled beside him on his knees, his back straight, looking like a wary cat ready to leap at the first shifting shadow. “For the sake of my lord Rags, Lying One, I will answer your questions with words rather than steel.”
It would have been nice if Rags could genuinely not care about whatever fae secrets Shining Talon revealed. But he listened, breathless, with mounting appreciation for the light kindling in Morien’s eyes at the tale.
Because there was a treasure. The greatest treasure, if you valued unparalleled power above all else.
“Forged from the heart of all fae silver,” Shining Talon began, “the Great Paragon took an age for our best smiths to create. A second age passed while our Enchantrisks wove their magics over it. Then came the third age. . . .”
And it went on like that. Six ages to complete the Great Paragon, six fragments created together, which, when joined with their individual masters, would form an unstoppable whole, some kind of symbol for unity.
“Hang on.” Rags felt a stab of guilt at interrupting the flow of Shining Talon’s story, but also, his mouth had always worked a smidge faster than his brain. “Unity like, fae and humans working together? That kind of unity?”
Two pairs of eyes, one silver and one black, stared in his direction.
Rags fumbled with the hem of his shirt. “Didn’t know unity was ever an option.”
“There was peace,” Shining Talon continued, “promised between our rulers. The Great Paragon was a gift, five parts united under the command of five humans, with a sixth from the fae to guide them. It was too powerful to entrust to one wielder alone.”
So this thing was in six pieces. Of which One was . . . one.
Shining Talon was vague about what happened once all six beasts had found their masters and what happened when they were brought together—Morien seemed especially keen to learn that—but Rags suspected it was because Shining Talon didn’t know, maybe hadn’t seen it for himself.
“Wait, though,” Rags broke in again. “There’s a fae master of one of these beasties, obviously that’s fine. But the rest—the humans—they’re all dead by now. Ancient worm food.”
Morien cleared his throat, impatient about the interruption. Rags tried not to let it bother him. If he was going to be at someone else’s beck and call, he planned to make it uncomfortable on both ends.
“There is a master born every generation,” Shining Talon acknowledged, “to accommodate the realities of your brief, fragile human existences.”