Shadow Thief - Eva Chase Page 0,26

only fragments,” he said after a while. “I think because it’s been so long—I’m sorry. A lot of happiness when she wore them. And… I get a hint of missing someone they reminded her of, someone who was fae like her maybe? Did she have shadowkind friends? Someone else who might have been taken?”

“I don’t know.” I was a little ashamed that it’d never really occurred to me to wonder about Luna’s social life or lack thereof. “Except when I was at school, she was always with me, and we never visited anyone. We never stayed in any city for more than a couple of years to make close friends.”

But maybe there’d been someone she’d left behind in one of those cities—or way back in the shadow realm—that she’d never mentioned to me. Another sacrifice she’d made, one without my ever knowing.

“This line of investigation does not appear to be very fruitful,” Thorn declared gruffly. He stalked over to the window to survey the street outside as if he felt he’d find more sense of direction there.

“It wasn’t a bad idea,” Ruse said more encouragingly. “When we’ve got this little to go on, can’t leave any stone unturned.” He flashed me a smile before getting up.

As the incubus slipped out of the room, Snap put away the shoes. He sighed, all this enthusiasm over contributing having faded away, and stood up. My stomach twisted, but if nothing else, he’d shown he could be respectful of my past traumas. Thorn didn’t appear to be paying attention anyway—and what did I care what he thought, the big grouch?

I touched Snap’s arm. “Wait. There’s something else—not to do with Luna. Just, for me… It’s even more of a longshot, but anything you pick up from it that doesn’t involve me would be more than I’ve got now.”

I pulled out the trinket box with its pearly shell casing. Snap took it from me with tentative fingers. He considered it and then my face.

“This wasn’t the fae’s,” he ventured. “It belonged to your parents?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s—it’s the only thing I have of theirs. They’d given it to Luna to keep for me, just in case.”

There was a letter inside, one I’d pored over so many times I couldn’t imagine it held any impressions that weren’t of me. Telling me that if I was reading it, they were sorry they weren’t there with me, but they hoped I was staying safe with Luna. That what was most important to them was me getting to live my life as fully as I could.

They’d known the hunters might retaliate. They’d been prepared. But I hadn’t been. I remembered my mother’s scream and the sound of my father meeting his death more clearly than anything else about them.

Snap dipped his head so low it was almost a bow. “I appreciate your trusting me with this. I’ll handle it carefully.”

He began his testing even more slowly than before, his tongue flitting here and there, his breath sucked in and expelled. I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I waited. Finally, he lowered the box.

“You’re right,” he said. “There isn’t much. But they had a lot of feeling around this object, so a bit of it clung on even across that many years. They were very sad about the thought that you might need to receive this. Afraid of losing their time with you—but not of the course they’d taken. They were proud of that, of taking risks…” He took another taste as if to clarify that thought. “I get the sense they felt they wouldn’t have had you in their lives at all if they hadn’t taken those risks.”

“Maybe they met through the Fund, through the shadowkind work they were doing,” I said.

“That makes sense.” He offered the box back to me. Our hands brushed as I took it, and he offered me a smile so soft but bright that I lost my breath like I had that first morning when he’d compared my hair to the peach. “The one thing I can tell for sure is they loved you more than anything else in all the realms.”

I choked up abruptly. “Thank you. For all of this. I’ll do whatever I can to find the people who took your boss.”

“I know you will.” He touched my hair again, just for a moment, still smiling. “I thought so when you broke into my cage, but I think it even more now. You’re meant to do good things, Peach.”

Then he