conclude that Queen Catriona Ever-Bright wanted the Great Paragon for more than an elaborate showpiece at her next ball. The Queen was planning something. Inis pictured her with more than the might of the Queensguard and her sorcerers combined, then had to stop picturing it. She stared down at her sleeves instead, at her newly rough hands, callused and cracked, bruised and sunbrowned.
“Very well,” she concluded. “Once the thief—Rags—is recovered from his . . . indisposition, we leave to find the next fragment.”
“First, we will be brought before the Lying One’s benefactor,” Shining Talon said. “Although whether the Lying One is master or hound is a riddle I have yet to solve.” Though he was a fae, and not inclined to straightforward communication, his meaning was clear. Someone pulled Morien’s strings, provided him with coin and free passage.
Only a favored Ever-Family—or someone in the palace—would wield that much power.
Inis, about to escape her exile, didn’t intend to run back to the same brandished swords that had felled her father and brothers. She’d learned freedom could come at the cost of being torn in half, meant leaving behind who she loved most in order to protect them.
“I suppose we had better get cracking,” Inis said.
“I know not what we are cracking,” Shining Talon replied, “but you may be assured I will crack with vigor. We must act with conviction at every turn, even if the road we tread leads us to the darkest depths imaginable.”
If he had been a human prince, Inis would have assumed he’d memorized verse to impress her. But what she felt wasn’t impressed. It was the faintest breath upon the guttered ember she carried within, coaxing to life a wisp of curling flame.
Inis wasn’t alone. This was a nightmare, but there were others having it with her.
The gown Bute brought her to wear was one of Mother’s, one Inis had once loved best. Once. Silk puff sleeves and a square-necked bodice, trimmed with lace in plummy shades of red, regal without ornamentation. Around her neck she wore a finely wrought chain with the crest of House Ever-Loyal: two swords crossed over a broken blade, pinprick opals set into the hilts. One of a rare few pieces of finery they’d held in reserve after the first year of exile. A keepsake not yet ransacked for its parts.
If Inis was to return to the Hill, she’d have to make an impression. Tightening the ties at her waist so the dress wouldn’t gape around her chest, she felt like a child.
She’d escaped the Hill. One day, she’d escape her mother’s closet.
She said goodbye to Lady Ever-Loyal without expecting a reply. Leaned down, kissed her mother’s cool brow, found herself tickled by curls she’d inherited. Mother didn’t answer. Inis hadn’t expected her to, although that hadn’t stopped her from hoping.
Foolish girl.
Tucking her mother’s shawl more closely around her shoulders, Inis made Bute promise not to let Ivy run after her when she left. It was too dangerous. Ivy’s safety was what mattered, the only thing left to matter.
Morien knew where Inis lived, knew what—who—she loved. If she didn’t deliver what he wanted, he’d make her watch the last of her family suffer. She had no delusions about that.
She wouldn’t let him win.
“I’ll be back soon,” she promised Ivy.
Another lie, like the first one Inis had told while they hid in the closet, tangled in Lady Ever-Loyal’s finest ballgowns. With every soft scrape of the gem-strewn skirts against the wood paneling, Inis had grown more certain they’d be caught. Would be slaughtered, too. So she had lied through her teeth. We’re going to be fine, little egg. Everything’s going to be all right. Papa and Tomman will protect us.
“You’re leaving and I hate you.” Ivy didn’t shout. She said it coolly, eyes blazing, before she turned on her heel and ran back inside the house. “And I won’t watch you go!”
Good. Inis preferred anger to grief. Anger would keep Ivy alive, keep her from succumbing to the same torpor of sorrow that had swallowed their mother.
Morien waited for them on the front lawn, astride a black destrier darker than thunder. He led a string of exemplary, if nervous-looking, horseflesh, two shaggy pack ponies bringing up the rear. “Only the finest mounts, provided by Lord Faolan Ever-Learning for his friends and allies,” he said.
It made Inis’s skin creep, her blood curdle, to think he’d known exactly when to return, had arrived with the precise number of mounts required for their party. Through his