mudjackets. Screaming so desperate it might never stop. Rags was ashamed to find himself cringing, sick to his stomach, sick to his heart.
He’d seen plenty of death in his time, watched it claim friends, strangers, enemies.
And he knew what the mirrorglass felt like in his heart. Couldn’t imagine how much worse it’d feel piercing every part of him at once.
His arms shook. His throat ached when he swallowed. The worst was the silence, the moment every scream died. The bloody shards of mirrorglass and mirror-dust drifted back to Morien on an invisible breeze like pollen blown off a wisher-willow in spring. The air was still and thick with death.
Rags looked up, nose brushing Shining Talon’s chin. Only Shining Talon’s heartbeat anchored Rags in place. The arrow remained embedded in his shoulder.
Rags was gonna kill him.
But then Shining Talon pulled Rags up with him, his long hair brushing Rags’s lips as he stood. He proceeded to pat Rags down in search of injury, which left Rags too scrambled to grumble in protest.
Much.
“You’re the one with an arrow sticking out of him,” Rags muttered. “Why don’t you look after your own self?”
Shining Talon ignored that reasonable question and turned to face Morien, keeping himself between Rags and the sorcerer. “These warriors could have been questioned as honorable prisoners. I fought to incapacitate, not kill, for this reason. Now they are dead, and the dead cannot speak.”
Shiny had been thinking about honor. Meanwhile, Morien the Last had downed—Rags counted quickly, breath hitching—twenty-two fighters in masks. They looked smaller now that they were unmoving. A couple were Rags’s size, if that. Meaning they might be kids. Laid out across the front garden of the Ever-Loyals’ grounds, never to move again.
“I protected you from the Queen’s enemies.” Rags would swear later that Morien had yawned, bored by the proceedings.
The muscles in Shining Talon’s back twitched and clenched under his shirt. He was about to call Morien a Lying One again.
A shout from the other side of the Ever-Loyal house kept that from happening. Inis and Two appeared—Bit late, Rags thought darkly—the former holding Cab’s muddy shirt in one hand. The wind picked up, air finally moving, Morien’s mirror bullshit no longer keeping it at bay, and twitched the corners of the garment like a peace flag.
“Cabhan of Kerry’s-End is gone,” Shining Talon murmured quietly, for only Rags to hear. “And One has gone with him.”
“Shit,” Rags said.
“Indeed,” Shining Talon agreed.
Rags was clearly a bad influence on him.
43
Inis
Violence and slaughter had come to Inis Ever-Loyal’s doorstep once again. Only she wasn’t helpless this time, and she wasn’t alone.
The one you don’t like is missing, Two said as he shot ahead, slinking past her ankles to patter down the stairs.
“Bute!” Inis hissed. The man poked his head out of the kitchen, hands still busily drying a kettle. Hands that stilled when he saw the look in her eye. She cleared the tightness from her throat. “Find Ivy and take her to Mother’s room. Barricade yourselves in and block the windows.”
“And you, Miss Inis—” Bute began. Inis held up her hand, and he honored her by falling silent.
Perhaps you think it doesn’t matter if the one you don’t like is missing? But it does. Two was waiting patiently for Inis at the back exit, expecting Inis not to question him.
“What’s happening?” Ivy burst from beneath the coatrack, where she’d been eavesdropping by the door. Listening in on the fae, the small thief, and especially the small thief’s gutter mouth. Just as Inis had suspected.
She smiled tightly, swept Ivy up in her arms, and passed her off to Bute. Let go of her with fingers that never wanted to let go of anything. “Bute’s taking you in to see Mother, little egg.” Though it had been Inis’s instinct to run out front and confront the charging army, Two was poised by the back exit, and Inis trusted him. He was the only one Inis trusted.
“Where are you going?” Ivy’s eyes narrowed with the realization that Inis wasn’t coming with them as Bute steadied her in his arms like a sack of grain. One that kicked, bit, scratched.
“It’s not his fault,” Inis hissed after them, insistent that loyalty not be repaid in unpleasantness. “I told him to. Don’t you hurt him, Ivy!”
Worse than the struggling: Ivy going limp in submission, her tiny body laden with despair and hostility.
She’d recover from this injustice. An Ever-Loyal could recover from anything, save death.
Nonetheless, Inis winced as she turned and opened the door for