The image shattered, splintering to pieces. Shining Talon stood between Rags and the shower of broken glass around his feet, having destroyed the balcony door with no weapon other than his body crashing through it.
“The Lying One.” Shining Talon’s keen gaze swept over Rags’s face, read the information he wanted from Rags’s expression. “I should have known, when Lady Inis spoke of the mirror, that he had found another way to torment you.”
Too startled to speak, mesmerized by the slide and clatter of glass shards falling from Shining Talon’s shoulders and hair as he straightened, Rags nodded. Felt like a shitheel for not saying something. Thanks for being my noble fae protector yet again when I wandered off and got attacked by my own reflection, the usual shit that happens to me these days.
Rags was starting to anticipate the noble-fae-protector bit. Enjoy it, even, which felt dangerous. He’d thought Shining Talon had moved on to bigger and better goals, but this was proof he was still paying attention.
“My apologies,” Shining Talon said, “for the destruction.”
Rags opened his mouth to tell him to shut up when Shining Talon shifted to kneel in Somhairle’s direction instead of Rags’s. The door was a twisted ruin of wood at his back.
Right. The fae prince acknowledging the other prince in the room. No concern for Rags, which was what Rags had wanted. Now that he had it, he needed to learn not to hate it.
“You saw something, too?” Inis’s usually hard voice threatened to crack. Shadows on shadows in her eyes as her mouth twisted into a sour smile. “Why is the Last haunting us? Aren’t we doing what he wanted?”
Rags’s knucklebones ached. Morien’s poisonous mirror shards might have wormed their way bone deep.
It said something about Inis that she thought anyone needed a reason to be cruel.
“Maybe it’s how he cheers himself up at the end of a busy day.” Rags shrugged, pretending to shake off Morien’s mirrorcraft as easily. “Maybe he’s still sore about Cabhan and wants to remind us who’s in charge. Keep us from letting someone else get kidnapped.”
“He’s a bully,” Inis said. “Hardly a surprise, considering . . .”
Her gaze drifted to Somhairle. Rags wondered if she’d been about to insult his royal mother.
“I have an idea.” The prince deftly cut the knot of tension in the room with the honeyed warmth of his voice. He braced himself with his good hand on the back of his chair, composed enough to smile at his guests. “Why don’t I lead you on a tour of the grounds? No glass to concern yourselves with out there.”
“Sure,” Rags found his voice. Grateful for the distraction. “Shining Talon here likes nature stuff. Might as well let him hug some trees.”
“Trees,” Shining Talon said, “do not like to be hugged.”
56
Rags
Off through the orchard, where glowbugs danced among roots in the dark, chaining their ankles like jewels. Or manacles. Somhairle kept their pace steady, probably faster than he’d go if he were taking a stroll alone, but he didn’t stumble or falter. The grace of his loping stride and perfectly balanced brace and crutch were like music.
That delicate silver contraption reminded Rags of something out of the fae ruins, the metalwork so thin and fine it resembled silk in places, but was sturdy enough to bear Somhairle’s weight. It twisted in interlocking geometries around his wrist and up to his elbow, and if it hadn’t been for the way the prince leaned on it, it might have been a bit of jewelry, a court fashion, not a vital support.
Yeah, for the countryside, this place wasn’t actually too bad. Except when the glowbugs gathered around Shining Talon, haloing his body, shimmering like the corona around the sun. It made him harder to disregard, like a great big signal fire lighting up exactly what Rags hoped to ignore.
Now that Shining Talon wasn’t looking for him constantly, his silver gaze had become more precious than gold.
Sometime between their arrival at the house and their departure from it to tour the grounds, Shining Talon had twisted his hair into a high tail like a horse’s, the white streak braided alongside the black and disappearing into whatever was keeping it tied up. Fae magic, Rags assumed. Why wouldn’t it apply to hair the same as it applied to anything else? The fanned ends brushed the back of his golden neck.
The sight of him like that had initially stopped Rags in his