felt rough, as if he’d been shouting orders. No matter how he tried to call his mind to attention, it wouldn’t heed.
He was aware of a bruise on his head. Chafing on his wrists. He’d been bound at some point. The knot on his blindfold was too tight, and his head ached beneath it. Other than that, he was unharmed.
He tried not to think about the obvious. The shard of mirrorglass in his heart—now the empty space its removal had left behind.
Whenever Cab pushed the stray thought aside, it roared back to the forefront of his mind, twice as demanding.
He heard One tsk in chastisement, so he left it alone. Felt like he’d swallowed a flaming bramble.
Whatever happened now to Prince Shining Talon, Rags, and the Ever-Loyal girl was beyond him.
His mirror shard was gone. No matter how much it hurt, whatever damage the extraction had done, Cab was grateful. He was free.
He didn’t have to decide what to do with his freedom alone.
Left a scar. One’s voice again. How much time had passed? A trickle of sweat beaded in the hollow of Cab’s throat, dislodged when he swallowed. On your heart. I’m looking forward to meeting the Lying One again, getting the chance to repay him for that.
Where am I? Cab asked.
A dark place.
You don’t know, Cab realized.
We were separated. I have decided to remain undetected for now. Try not to get into too much trouble without me, my pretty.
Prone and blindfolded on a hard surface. Where to go from there?
Cab waited. He relinquished control. Either someone would come to free him, or he’d regain his strength and make his escape. Eventually, the blindfold would come off.
When it did, he was half dozing again. Listening to an unfamiliar melody hummed with a metal edge, One sharing a fae lullaby with him. He got lost in its repetitions and only caught the last few steps approaching. Had barely a moment to brace himself before the edge of the blindfold was lifted and pale light flooded in.
Above him, an inhuman face. Black stars at both corners of its mouth. Silver eyes. A long, thick fall of stone-white hair. Golden skin.
Cab recognized the features, what they meant, but not who wore them.
Another fae. Not Shining Talon.
How many of them were there? And what had happened to them, if they hadn’t been wiped out?
Cab’s heart tried to race but couldn’t move around its wounds.
“I am so sorry for what you have suffered,” the fae said. Clear tones. Young. Very. “I have done what I can to heal your heart, but the Lying Ones have grown strong feeding on our power.”
“Fae.” It was all Cab could squeeze out of his tight throat.
“Yes. I am Last Beacon of Silent Burning,” the fae told him. “But my human friends call me Sil. You may tell your One she is free to join us. I already know she is here.”
46
Inis
While Rags was unconscious, Inis ran downstairs to take stock of the bodies on her lawn.
It was barren. The overgrown grass billowed in the breeze, unbent by the masked raiders she’d seen swarming her home. Gooseflesh crept up Inis’s bare forearms, and she hugged herself around her chest.
Sorcerers had beaten the fae with mirrorcraft, so it made sense that they could kill a host of mere human enemies, then make all proof disappear. Inis had once trusted the joyful side of magic: the intricate displays of light and water created for Summersend; Ever-Land’s fragrant fields of ever-blooming wildflowers.
But this—the eerie calm after a massacre, bodies gone, death lingering—was too much like the night the Queensguard came for Inis’s family, even without the bloodstains and charred frame.
Remember, your kind needs to breathe every now and then. Two’s voice plunged through the wreckage of her thoughts. Her family lived, and that was what mattered.
This time, Inis told herself, she’d seen the enemy coming, and no one had to dig any graves.
Did that make a difference?
No.
She tapped her mother’s door. Behind it, Bute had barricaded himself and Ivy. Inis used the secret knock she’d made up for Ivy to memorize—two swift taps, two slow, then three more swift.
The door creaked open an inch before Ivy practically exploded from within, crashing into Inis, bunching her hands tight in the bundle of Inis’s aproned skirts. She scrubbed her face angrily against Inis’s abdomen, but wriggled away before Inis could return the embrace.
“I’m sorry about that, little—”
Ivy snubbed her, turning to beckon for Bute’s ear instead. As he bent to indulge this display of