Morrgot has single-talonly destroyed everything I know about the dawn of Luce.
A bird kingdom . . .How crazy.
Once word of my growing aviary reaches Marco and my grandfather . . . I shudder as I picture Justus scaling the other side of the mountain to greet me with the steel blade of his jeweled sword.
“My grandfather is going to murder me,” I muse out loud.
The dead can hardly murder.
The blood deserts my upper body. “My grandfather—he’s . . . you—you killed him?” Is that what Morrgot stole off to do in the middle of the night? I cannot decide if I’m relieved or appalled.
Not yet, but rest assured, Fallon, that anyone who so much as wishes you harm will be dealt with accordingly.
I blink at the crow, who flutters his dark wings with the languor of a nectar-sated butterfly. I’ve come to know Morrgot enough to realize that his calm is an illusion and thatdealt withis a euphemism forkilled.
“I suppose I should be grateful that you’ll act as my weapon and shield, but I’d appreciate if you didn’t mete out murder impulsively, especially on my behalf. Because once we part ways, those deaths will reflect upon me.” Dante will forgive a traitor, but he’s too wholesome to forgive a murderess. “It’s one thing to have feathers on my hands, Morrgot; it’s quite another to have blood.”
The crow stops beating his wings, yet he remains suspended, drifting like the clouds ringing the mountain. The ensuing calm is harsher than the earlier uproar.
The heat will become stifling soon, and the stream I promised is still a ways away. We should go.
“I don’t get a tour of your city?”
And run back to your princeling with all our secrets? I think not. Besides, you don’t have wings.
“I have two functioning legs.”Somewhatfunctioning.
The only way into my city is by flight.He’s already floating away on a breeze that carries the scent of the tropics—hot sand, wet fronds, and sweet fruit.
“Then how do all your human followers get up there?” I scan the ceiling for a latch, before chasing his darkness amidst the gilded blue and lush green.
I thought the view of the east was breathtaking, but the view of the west beyond the clouds . . . it’s unlike any landscape I’ve ever laid eyes on. The emerald is carved into giant fronds instead of small leaves, the aquamarine froths against crescents of sand so pale they resemble spilled sugar, and the bright hues—magenta, tangerine orange, and sunshine yellow—battle to outshine each other.
Tarespagia glistens from its lacquer of clear sunlight and sways in the tepid air.
A velvet muzzle nudges my shoulder, startling me out of my contemplation. I stroke Furia’s nose, and the horse leans into my touch.
I sigh. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
The horse flutters its nostrils. I take it as an agreement.
Any day now, Fallon.
“I’m glad you’re not as moody as he is. I don’t think I could’ve dealt with two grumpy companions.”
Dragging my hand from the hinge of his jaw to the cusp of his shoulder, I put my foot in the stirrup and heave myself up. My skeleton creaks like a boat hull in rough seas, eliciting a fathomless groan from my lips.
I’m glad we’re heading to a stream but what I wouldn’t give for a feather bed. “Hey, Morrgot, you mentioned the sun was hot.” Furia takes off at a brisk trot that jangles my sitting bones. “Any chance we could stop in a patch of shade for a nap? Or better yet, at an inn with bedrooms.”
We’ll rest.
“At an inn?” I will him to say,yes, but willing Morrgot to do or say anything is like expecting a sprite to unhand a stolen copper.
Because I’m violently optimistic, I decide to take his silence as a strongmaybe.And then, as my body sways like the thickening tropical forest, I start dreaming of this inn, and I swear I can smell oil sizzle beneath bubbling eggs and taste sweet buns browning in a nearby oven.
Please let it not be a figment of my starved imagination.
Although the scent of bread and eggs lingers, I realize it’s in my mind as we traipse through luxuriant groves cloaked in mist and find neither hut nor human for kilometers on end. Unlike in the east, the cloud cover doesn’t appease the heat, which feels like a damp cloth pressed against my mouth and nose.
