Someone had wanted what her family had, and didn’t mind a little murder to get it.
She could believe it because she’d seen it happen to other families.
It made more sense to her than Tomman risking everything they had, everything they knew, without telling her. Without telling anyone.
None of this was helping her picture Ever-Land. Inis forced herself to think of laughter and rippling water instead of Ainle’s sharp, single, final cry. The scent of verbena flower and not fresh blood, the clack of practice blades instead of steel falling on bone.
Dawn in Ever-Land rose without urgency, a child without worry or care, decadently slow.
Sunlight warmed her cheeks. Tucked against Inis’s back in a shawl slung around her shoulders, Two purred.
Behind her, Rags gave a startled gasp at the change in scenery, his dark bay courser snorting in annoyed reply.
In Ever-Land it was ever summer, thanks to the sorcerers under the Queen’s command. The trees were full and lush, the flowers always in raucous bloom, and no unwanted clouds darkened the fair blue skies.
This had been Inis Ever-Loyal’s kingdom more than the Hill had: the sun-drenched fields of rippling grass and secret ponds secluded by crookback trees.
She’d taught Ainle to swim in one of the southern lakes. Led victorious assaults in countless war games. Dug holes, raced until breathless, buried trinkets for future explorers between gnarled roots.
She remembered braiding a wreath of hare’s bell and poppy for Tomman, who had refused to wear it. Wounded Inis’s feelings by doing so. She’d tossed the wreath aside; even then, her instinct had been to crush her humiliation. But Prince Laisrean Ever-Bright had rescued the wreath, said, “It may be the only crown I’ll ever wear,” as he set it crookedly on his head. Then he’d knighted Inis as his champion in a cathedral of white birch trees.
Inis recalled uncomfortably how it was then that she’d first noticed Laisrean’s black hair curling, damp with sweat against the nape of his neck. The way surprise had quickened her pulse, kneeling in the soft grass as the wooden sword kissed her shoulders. She’d been grateful to be seen, included. Glad that one of her friends still made sense, and Laisrean wasn’t prey to whatever moods haunted Tomman’s footsteps.
It seemed like an insult that the air in Ever-Land should still smell as grassy and warmed by sunlight as it did in her dreams, without the same turn to darkness those dreams took.
Her only relief was that the Queensguard had gone missing before she’d been forced to guide him to this sacred place.
Though there was a sliver of her that was sad for Two, who didn’t get to spend more time with something, someone, like him.
The nudge of Two’s triangular head in the small of her back, right as their horses crested a shallow hill, answered her concern.
With you, Two said, loneliness has no meaning. Look below.
Ever-Bright Manor and its three outbuildings lay cradled in the shimmering bowl of the Ever-Land valley, backed by a spiral of golden orchards and a crescent lake.
The first time Inis and Somhairle had found a wild apple tree on the borders of his estate, she’d filled her skirts with the hard, red fruit. But the first bite had revealed a metallic aftertaste that Somhairle blamed on magic, and though he had no proof, Inis hadn’t given any of her harvest to Ivy.
Even then, nestled against the red-feathered breast of the Queen’s acceptance, with a prince’s friendship to shield her, Inis had been uneasy about sorcerers.
For all the good that instinct had done her.
“Do you see, Sir Rags?” Inis had no quarrel with the thief, yet couldn’t seem to soften her tone, which tapered to a rapier point. “We’ll make the manor before nightfall.”
She urged her dappled gray palfrey forward and they descended into the valley below, where Somhairle Ever-Bright waited, not knowing how they were about to crash into his life and change it forever.
Inis should have learned by now not to anticipate a happy reunion.
52
Inis
Ever-Bright Manor’s main house was exactly as Inis remembered it: quiet, haunted by melancholy, as remote as it was stunning. Its balconies facing the slowly gathering sunset were reflected in the silver-skinned lake. Something dark passed over the water’s clear surface like a shadow on a mirror, but there were no clouds overhead.
“Fine, I’ll say it, since no one else will: this place is creepier than the fae ruins,” Rags muttered, not quietly enough to avoid being overheard. He snatched at an imaginary bug, flailing in the