tracks. He couldn’t help but feel as lowly as a glowbug, pulled in by the same light that had beguiled their tiny insect brains.
Except Rags was big enough that it was obvious when he stared.
“These are new,” Shining Talon said. About the bugs. Held up one finger while two of them circled each other around its tip. “I appreciate them.”
There was a fruit smell on the breeze, heavy and sweet. Peaches, maybe, though it was hard to tell, because the only peaches Rags had ever tasted were rotters thrown out after swelling unsold in the full-day sun of the market.
Maybe this answered one of Rags’s most burning questions: Do fae sweat? Maybe Shining Talon did, and this was what it smelled like.
Rags had slept on him all through the night and he still didn’t know the answer. That didn’t seem right.
“Are you well?”
Rags didn’t realize how close Shining Talon had gotten until it was too late and there he was, fingers on Rags’s chin, glowbugs haloing him like a theater’s limelights. Rags tried not to go cross-eyed watching the bugs instead of Shining Talon.
“What?” Rags’s voice betrayed him the way a squeaky hinge called out his thieving in the night. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve got mirror shards in two very important parts of my body, and I’m being haunted by mirrorcraft.”
Shining Talon looked at him, eyes narrowing. Rags felt himself swallow.
“You are not as skilled in concealment as I would have guessed,” Shining Talon said, “for a thief.”
“Say that to my face.” Rags tilted his chin up, breathlessly defiant.
The furrow of confusion in Shining Talon’s brow slung a jolt of heat low through Rags’s belly. It also brought him to his senses. Whatever he was entertaining, he needed to stop. Shining Talon took him too seriously, followed his whims too completely.
“I am saying it to your face,” he replied.
Like Rags had known he would.
“Come on.” Rags rapped his knuckles against Shining Talon’s shoulder, pretending it was a door. His attempt at camaraderie as they broke apart naturally. “They’re gonna leave us behind, and Morien will want to know how we lost two masters this time. I’ve had about enough of being tortured by my own reflection, thanks.”
Shining Talon nodded, though his gaze on Rags was piercing. Seemed pointed enough that he wanted Rags to know Rags wasn’t fooling him.
He knew Rags was running away. He was letting him do it. Which confirmed it was the right thing to do, since the right thing was always the not-as-fun thing.
“The Lying One’s powers seem to grow alongside his rage,” Shining Talon confided as he drew even with Rags. “Though it goes against our nature, we must give him no reason to find further displeasure with us.”
Because there was hope, if they could stay alive long enough to reach it. Another fae Enchantsy-something out there, who’d take the treacherous glass from Rags’s heart and his hand, maybe take his star lump, too, set him free to live his unremarkable thief’s life without the scent of fae blood on his knuckles, fae fingers in his hair.
Rags groaned and quickened his pace. The thought was supposed to make him feel better, not worse.
They came through the orchards to the edge of a crescent-moon lake, Somhairle’s manse in the near distance. The final traces of sunset still stained the hills in golds, softened, spread pink like spilled wine across the sky. Confusing, until Rags realized it was another sorcerer’s trick, magic always at work to frame Ever-Land as picture-perfect. He’d never missed his busy, dirty city more fiercely.
But he could agree that Ever-Land wasn’t all bad.
“Magic here,” Shining Talon murmured. As if they agreed with him, the glowbugs held back from the edge of the water. So did Inis, Rags noticed, like she was afraid of what she’d see in the lake’s smooth surface. Not that he could blame her. He hung back for a moment longer, then risked it. In place of fine breeding, he had curiosity to feed.
Across the lake drifted the reflected shimmer of so much precious metal that Rags started to drool, had to clamp down on a gut-punch of sticky-fingered desire. At least it made for a distraction from the other kind of desire.
He didn’t look at Shining Talon.
They faced a private carousel for one small prince to use, the cost of which could have gilded every room in the Clave dorms. Carved bronze garlands wove around the top, framing the wink of gold, the glitter of silver beasts affixed