“You’re too close,” she tells him, trying to pull her hands from his grasp. It has no effect.

“Please, I beg you. Wake one of my brothers. Let me ask him what has happened to Bearach.” Croi looks at his pleading eyes, not knowing how to refuse him. Unlike the Hag, she has a heart.

“Could you answer some questions before I do?” she says.

“Ask. I’ll answer them all,” Caolan replies immediately, finally letting go.

Croi rubs her hands. “Who are these Redcaps? Who controls them?”

“No one controls them. They choose who to serve. Right now they’re the Robber Queen’s soldiers.” He looks grim. “She must have offered them something they couldn’t resist.”

“How do you know they serve the Robber Queen?” Croi asks, feeling uncomfortable with his continued assumption of the monarch’s guilt.

“Everyone knows!” Caolan insists, not answering her question.

Just like everyone knows the kin are taken to the mines to dig for jewels?

“How do you know where the kidnapped kin are being taken?”

“I’m not certain, but there have been rumors.…” Caolan trails off and his jaw clenches. “All the blue horns died suddenly, and there’s no one to work the mines. The strong and able Lesser Fae are being taken to provide labor and supply the Robber Queen with the precious gems she so loves.”

His words are hollow.

“Yeah, but he believes in them,” Croi thinks to her inner self.

His truth is not necessarily the only truth.

“You want to tell him that?” Croi retorts.

I don’t want to poke a wounded tiger.

The catkin snarls soundlessly. “Are we done? Can you wake Diarmaid? He’s the oldest among them, so he’ll know what happened to Bear.”

“Wait. I’m not done yet. I want to ask about the magick—”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know, kitten. I’ve kept my end of the bargain. Please, before I slip further into mad worry, wake my brother.”

Croi is about to protest, but a look at the cat’s face has her giving in. “Which one do you want me to wake?” She steps on a foot and someone’s hairy hand to get to the kin Caolan is pointing at. He looks about fifteen winters old and has black hair peppered with white. His skin is dappled with cream-and-black stripes in a manner identical to Caolan’s. His sleeping face is tearstained and hollowed.

A feeling whispers tragedy to Croi, so she avoids Caolan’s eyes just in case he reads hers.

“Go keep a look out for the Redcaps,” she commands Caolan’s chin. She waits until he has moved to the side before she kneels by the younger cat. She locates the black patch on his inner wrist. It seems to have sunk deep into his skin, leeching the color from the surrounding area, leaving it pale and magickless. Hmm. Croi lifts the hand of a neighboring kin, and the magickless area around the patch of that kin is larger. She checks the skin around other patches on other kin, and they all tell the same story. The night crows are consuming the magick in the kin bodies. Is that why everyone is sleeping? Because they don’t have the magick to do anything else? If so, Croi wonders why she didn’t stay asleep. What’s so different about her? Not that she’s complaining about being awake.