a cracked laugh, rolling onto his side and putting his back to Shining Talon. He wished he had thrown the pillow at the fae prince’s big golden tattooed head.
“Everything’s gone to shit,” Rags said.
“As I said—”
“I remember what you said.” Rags remembered everything Shining Talon had said, every damn word since the start. “And like I said—shut up, Shiny.”
Shining Talon shut up.
Despite being the one to request—demand—it, Rags regretted it the moment he was left alone with his thoughts, missing the steady fae voice distracting him from everything he didn’t want to be thinking.
In silence, Rags practiced the techniques he knew to keep his fingers steady in a tough situation. Couldn’t be a thief with shaky, sweaty hands. Not if he wanted to keep those hands.
“Something troubles your heart,” Shining Talon said finally.
Rags snorted. It was rude, but he couldn’t help himself. “No shit.”
Shining Talon shook his head. “Something beyond the Lying One’s mirrorcraft. Like a shadow on your soul.”
Rags crossed his arms over his chest, feeling foolish as he did it. It wouldn’t help him hide.
“Stop looking into my soul,” he instructed bleakly.
“This is not something I can help,” Shining Talon confessed, a new, mournful note to his voice. Rags was behind that. Great. “My eyes work as they always have. There is no changing them.”
“Of course not.” Rags dragged his hands through his hair, tugging at the ends to jolt himself back to reality. He had to shift the topic, come up with something to keep from talking about himself. If Shining Talon expected an explanation for Rags’s behavior, he wasn’t about to get one.
“So.” Rags hoped the ragged snarl to his voice sounded husky and mature, not like he was completely out of his depth. “Next fragment of the Great Paragon, huh? You said something about how Cabhan can lead us to it?” Rags thought about One, who was an it but also a she, and how little he wanted to offend any of those creatures. “Or to her?”
Shining Talon remained shut up.
Was he sulking? He’d spoken before, so it wasn’t that he always followed Rags’s commands this strictly.
Rags rolled over to face the guy where he sat: in the room’s least-comfortable-looking chair, elbows on his thighs, hands clasped, eyes fixed burningly on Rags’s face.
“Stop worrying about me, will you?” Rags waved his hands to indicate health and energy. “I’m fine. Nothing wrong. Having a bad day.”
Shining Talon waited a moment longer, checking Rags’s expression to be sure the admission was genuine, then nodded. “You blame yourself for the fate of a companion. A noble sentiment.”
Remind me, how did noble sentiments serve your king? Rags bit back the words. Didn’t like being read so easily. Fae could probably see into minds, open them like Rags opened locked doors without needing keys.
And if they could, Rags didn’t have to tell Shining Talon that that kind of responsibility—that guilt—chewed a Cheapsider up into nothing.
He couldn’t survive on the streets and get this worked up over every sad-sack stranger who crossed his path. He’d buried those feelings deep, same as how the fae had hidden all their best shit.
“Whatever,” Rags murmured. “This is why I work alone. Hey, we were talking about the Great Paragon.”
“In answer to your question, my instructions are—were—vague.” Shining Talon bowed his head. “All I know is that One will be able to draw the truth from her master . . . somehow.”
“Somehow.” Rags shoved one pillow aside, only to bury his face in another. “Fucking great.”
The quiet went on long enough that he was nearly asleep before Shining Talon spoke again.
“You work alone to protect others from having to share in your fate,” he said. “I believe I understand you a little better, Lord Rags.”
“If you did,” Rags told him, “you’d stop calling me that.”
“I prefer your company to being alone,” Shining Talon confessed. “I have spent too long in the Sleep to bemoan companionship.”
Even that of a lowly thief? Rags didn’t know how to respond to that, couldn’t handle the weight of replacing an entire race of people, even if he wanted to.
Too tired to correct him, or acknowledge the statement, Rags exchanged his misery and hopelessness for a few hours of dreamless sleep.
Slipping away like a thief in the night.
34
Inis
Inis Fraoch Ever-Loyal didn’t mind banishment as a concept. Banishment kept her away from court, away from the constant wheeling and dealing of power. The gossip, the wickedness, the flirting.
The relentless backstabbing.
It was how banishment had come—brandishing unsheathed swords in the dead of night,