Rags nudged the root of his thumb against the lump in his pocket. It had shown no signs of transforming into anything magnificent. It remained stubbornly bloblike, the protective outer coating he’d begun to peel off still wrapped around its lower half, waiting for him to finish the job.
If what Shining Talon had said was true, then it’d been waiting hundreds of years. Surely it could afford to wait a little longer, until they found someone worthy to bear it.
What a joy that would be.
39
Inis
Inis had told herself she would have killed him because he held himself like a Queensguard and carried a royal sword. Because Ivy’s screams told her all she needed to know about who he was. It didn’t matter that she didn’t recognize him—Ivy did.
Inis would have torn him to pieces with her bare hands.
Then the voice had stopped her in her tracks, made her weep despite herself, hot tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
It wasn’t painful.
It was pain’s opposite.
It was wholeness, light, and hope. It soared through Inis in a single burst. Tasted like the first sweet raspberry of summer, felt like the first melting of hoarfrost when spring conquered winter, looked like the first leaf dancing in the autumn wind, red and gold.
It came from the silver beast in front of her, a cat with four eyes and a nose the shape of a spoon.
Hello, master, it said. A lilting voice with a masculine edge. Young, playful. A voice that sounded like one of her little brothers’, like Ainle’s, so similar that she almost thought he stood behind her in the garden.
He didn’t. Inis forced herself: Remember.
Ainle was dead. Inis didn’t know how to answer this voice that sounded too much like his.
Four cat eyes, reflective as silver-tinted glass, mirrored Inis’s face, her splotchy cheeks and swimming eyes. The face of someone who had no idea whether to scream or cry.
“You have four eyes,” Inis said.
The better to see our enemies with, my dear. The silver cat nuzzled her face, her throat, a touch that eased her pulse where it raced. It petted her with saucer-sized paws, butted its cheek into her cheek. With each touch, peace followed.
She still didn’t know how to answer. None of the forms of address she’d memorized over her years of etiquette lessons on the Hill seemed appropriate.
Searching its feline face for answers, Inis found only her own refracted image in each silver facet. A wave of panic overtook her, breaking against the blanketing calm. She needed her rage, had donned it like armor every morning to survive the loss of her brothers and father. Rage, so much hotter, so much lighter, than grief.
Anger had kept her strong when they’d lost their mother. Not in the massacre, but afterward, when she’d fled to safety in the far reaches of her mind.
Inis couldn’t lose her armor now. Not that, too. If she tried to remove it, it would come off with skin, muscle, bone. It was fused to her. She needed it.
Inis, the cat said, I know your name. And your favorite kind of soup.
Inis opened her mouth, croaked a wail.
You have good table manners, the cat added. I am Two, and I am yours.
Inis shook her head to clear out the last of her warring emotions. That voice held trust and warmth and safety. Just because these things had been taken from her didn’t mean they had ceased to exist. Or that she’d ceased to long for them.
The peace Two offered her settled on her shoulders like a cloak.
She turned to face the strangers who’d brought this with them, the Queensguard she hated and the others she hadn’t bothered with at first.
A short, scrawny boy with a tangle of black hair and an equally black, thorny gaze. A scar on his upper lip. Wiry arms and graceful hands.
The Queensguard—Inis passed over him, preserving the peace for as long as she could make it last. Stay strong.
A third man, or was he a boy? Inis couldn’t decide. He was taller than most full-grown men and broad across the chest, observing Two and the silver lizard with a shining, opaque gaze, his black hair long with a shock of white at the front. Tattoos in the shape of bones were drawn everywhere on his golden skin. Their ink caught the sunlight with a blue-black sheen, the color of a crow’s wing unfurled at midday. The bridge of his nose, his jaw, the long, tapered points of his ears, didn’t feel