“Shh! Shh,” she cooed, stroking and soothing it. Then she turned her frown upon Conall. “He was only protecting me!”
“What. In bloodyhell,” he hissed though clenched teeth, “is a bloodycrow…bloodydoing…in me bloodybed?”
Eve’s frown deteriorated into a glare. “Alinor found him this morn in the wood. He is wounded.”
At mention of her name, the wolf pounced gamely upon the bed—directly atop Conall’s cupped hands.
He couldn’t help but scream. At this rate, the bairn Eve now carried would be the last one Conall would be physically able to produce.
“As am I,” Conall wheezed. He could have sworn he tasted blood in his mouth.
Eve’s frown lessened only slightly into a sliver of concern. “Oh. Are you all right, Conall?”
He gave her a glare of his own and shoved at Alinor with one hand against her deep chest. “Alinor, off!” he croaked and struggled to sit, gasping as his bits were jostled. “Eve, you canna keep—damn!—a crow…in the house.”
“Why not?” she demanded. “I’ve bandaged his wing so he won’t fly about. It should heal soon, but if I turn him out now he’ll surely die. What if one of the grays get him?”
“Then mayhap he’ll be full ofcrowand not want to eatus,” Conall grumbled. He scooted to the edge of the box bed and slowly, gingerly, released his manhood to pull up the waistband of his breeches to his knees.
“Pay,” the crow cawed at him. “Pay!”
Conall froze, a ghostly voice whispering a memory of the curse in his ear:Let it be only their song to fill your ears…
“Mee!” the bird squawked. “Pay! Me!”
“Shh,” Eve hushed the wild, wiry thing who ducked its head near Eve’s breast. Its yellow eye stared at Conall warily. Eve looked back up to him. “’Tis what he was crying this morn, when I…when I suspected—” She broke off as if she could not bring herself to say it. Then she simply whispered, “Baby.”
Baby?
Conall looked askance at the hideous creature.
“Pay-me,” it croaked.
Conall looked back to Eve, a coil of dread winding tight in his stomach. That bird was a bad omen. The curse…
Not to mention its manner of introducing itself to Conall.
“Pay,” the crow insisted again, this time more quietly, almost languorously, greedily.
Conall got up immediately from the bed and fastened his pants. “Nae. It canna stay here, Eve. Put it out.”
“I will not.”
“Youwill. It’s filthy and noisy and…” He searched his mind for any other excuse. “Alinor doesn’t like it.”
“Alinorrescuedhim, sir.”
So he was back to sir, now, was he? “I’ll nae argue with you, Eve.”
“Good,” she said lightly. “Because he is staying.”
Conall growled. “Eve. You have”—he ticked off his fingers—“a wolf, a sheep, a mouse, a husband, and a bairn. Isna that enough pets for you?”
She shrugged a delicate shoulder and rose from the bed, shaking her skirts back to her ankles and carrying the blasted bird under one arm. “Let us get you a nice drink, lovely,” she said, ignoring Conall completely.
“He’ll shit the house full!” Conall said threateningly. “Eve, I forbid it.”
Eve poured melt water into a shallow bowl and the bird dipped his long, ugly, yellow beak into it. Then she looked up at Conall.
