ignore. Shining Talon glanced into the barn once, then nodded and stepped inside. Rags followed, pushing all thoughts of Shining Talon’s family and destiny out of his mind.
In the barn, One was licking a young man, sitting half on top of him and half curled against his side. The young man had a look like bliss and absolution on his face. Rags understood why Shining Talon had refused to let him inside. Whatever had happened in this barn was too private for intruders, so private that Rags looked away from the scene, despite his burning curiosity.
“Ah.” The stranger getting a tongue bath from One had a country lilt to his voice. “I think I know which of you is the fae prince and which of you is the little one who steals things.”
Rags whirled around at that. “Fae prince?”
“It’s the prince part that surprises you?” the country stranger asked. “Not the fae part?”
“We have much to discuss,” Shining Talon said. Rags could still feel the warmth and the weight of his hand, could easily believe that this fae was a royal member of the long-lost Bone Court, could have laughed at the ridiculousness that someone like that would want to look after someone like him. What Rags couldn’t do was form any words with his mouth. Or close it. It hung open, gawping. Fae prince? “But not here. Let us return to our quarters, where we will have more privacy.”
28
Rags
They got back into their room the way they’d left it, climbing the wall and in through the window, only this time Shining Talon led them. One was busy nuzzling her new friend’s throat, sticking close to his side and giving Rags the side-eye whenever he got too close, or snorted in confusion, or waved his hands at no one to release his overwhelming feelings of fuck you, fuck him, and fuck me most.
No need to convince their new friend to come with them. He went where One did.
No one came out into the streets or caught sight of them. Morien had concealed them well. Rags didn’t care.
Catch them, don’t catch them, what did it matter?
Shining Talon was a fae prince.
That made perfect sense, except in all the ways it made no sense whatsoever.
In the room, One’s new friend asked, “Something happen here?” He nodded at the stew splattered on the floor, the spoon in the corner. In reply, One hissed, a sound that was suspiciously close to a mocking chuckle. “Oh. I see.”
“See what?” Rags fixed the stranger and One with a glare, hoping to be accusatory, landing on puffy and indignant. “Is that— Are you— Can One talk?”
The stranger shrugged and refused to meet Rags’s eyes.
Rags shifted his focus to Shining Talon. “A prince?” Shining Talon nodded. “And you call me ‘my lord’? Ha!”
The chaos, the indignation, flooded out of Rags in a single gust. He slumped onto the bed, leaned back against the wall, hit his head a couple of times half-heartedly. Wished this whole trip was something he could knock out of his skull.
No luck.
He was still in the room in the public house, Shining Talon the fae prince still staring at him with a mixture of regret and adoration, One the silver lizard still cozying up to the stranger’s nearest hand like a dog reunited with its beloved master.
“It is the proper form of address,” Shining Talon explained, “for the one who woke me.”
The sincerity in his tone left Rags chilled.
“Okay, and who are you?” Rags asked the stranger at last, the fight sapped from his blood. A closer study of him revealed posture too good for your average farmhand, brown skin, dark hair lustered nearly auburn from the sun and grown long with neglect, a faint hint of stubble on his chin, and a light scar curving over his eyebrow. Stern gray eyes, a hardened mouth, an air of wariness—and weariness—that seemed more city than country. Calluses on his palms from years of swinging a sword, Rags guessed. He held himself as though the sword he’d once carried was gone from him like a missing limb. His gray shirt was speckled with dirt. “Who are you?” Rags asked again, more pointed this time, narrowing his eyes as he leaned forward.
Might have milked an answer out of the guy if the door hadn’t opened, bringing icy air with it.
Rags’s shudder let him know who was there without having to look.
“Hello,” Morien said. “Are we having a party?”
One snarled. The stranger dropped back into a defensive fighting