You’ve stopped breathing.
I’ve felt embarrassment before but never like this. I whirl away from the velvet chill of Morrgot’s body, confusion crashing through my veins. He’s back in feathers. I whisk my gaze away from his before he can glean my insane train of thoughts.
Something on your mind, Behach Éan?
A million things are on my mind, and most have to do with the crow and my dream. Although I didn’t feel like going to a ball, I’m suddenly glad that I’ll be amongst my kind. “Will Dante be at the revel?”
The princess of Glace’s ship docked in the harbor a little over an hour ago. Your prince was on it.
My eyes widen. “He came withher?”
Why so surprised? Rumors abound Luce of their involvement.
My ribs feel like they’ve splintered and are now poking my heart. “And rumor has it I can converse with serpents,” I snap, striding toward the door. “But we both know that’s utter beetlepoop.”
Is it?
I stop in the doorjamb and shoot Morrgot a glare. “The only animal I can converse with isyou.”
His pupils shrink.
However petty, he hit me where it hurts, so it’s only fair I return the blow, and there’s nothing this creature hates more than being reduced to his primal nature.
As I streak through Sewell’s house toward the backyard where Furia awaits me, Morrgot says,You forget you’re Cathal’s daughter, Fallon, and he was just as much a Crow as I.
Chest heaving, I spin, my heavy dress billowing around my legs. “And what? He could morph into a yakking black bird with iron appendages?”
Morrgot soars over my head, lifting the fine strands of hair framing my upturned face. I’m expecting him to answer since he so loves to speak his mind. But he doesn’t say anything as he sails past me and dissolves into the darkness.
His silence bugs me.
Humans can’t possibly shift into animals . . . can they?
Fifty-Nine
Isense Morrgot, even though I haven’t laid eyes on him since we left Sewell’s home. The kindly male has been riding beside me for the last hour, but we haven’t spoken much because the streets are filled with busybodies.
Or so he warns me.
Most bodies look too busy and exhausted to be eavesdropping, even though almost all peer at us as we ride past them. I cannot help but clutch Furia’s reins a little tighter.
What they must think of me in this velvet dress . . .
Thank the Cauldron, my companion is one of them. Whispers still trail us, but they’re tinged with more curiosity than covetousness.
Women look up from their laundering, wringing the brown river water from their pile of clothes. The foamy runoff snakes toward the groups of bathing men scrubbing the grime from their faces with more grime, while swatting away hovering flies and splashing children.
The younglings are the only bright spots in Selvati. Everyone else is grim, wary. A red ball rolls right in front of Furia, who rears back.
“Sorry, Miss.” A needle-thin boy scoops his ball up before pitching it back toward other children dressed in rags.
Some have distended bellies; all have toothpick legs.
I haven’t wandered deep enough through Racocci to know whether the situation is better or worse or equal, but the abounding squalor coils my insides. How could Marco let these people subsist in such filth and with so little? Even if he didn’t go so far as to distribute riches, it would cost him nothing to send Fae to sanitize the water or grow crops.
I grit my teeth, trying to contain my rage before it bursts out of me, and I charge toward Tarespagia to put an end to Marco’s days without Morrgot’s help.
The horrid spectacle does comfort me in my recent choices. I feel zero guilt that the Crow King plans on dropping his fellow monarch on the queendom’s shores. Let him be mistreated and starved. It’ll serve him right.
