Since Morrgot finds me as charming as a wet sock, I snort.
“Something the matter?” Dante offers me his arm.
I school my features. “Just imagining the look on everyone’s faces when I walk in.”
A smile edges over his lips.
“On your arm no less. Will you be requesting the bounty?”
His tendons shift beneath my fingertips, and I realize I’ve just put my foot in my mouth, and deep at that. I pretended not knowing I was on the king’s most wanted list, yet I’m aware of a reward?
Merda. Merda. Merda.
Yes, this deserves three shits. Before Dante can say anything, I pile a lie atop my previous one. “Am I wrong to assume money was offered for my retrieval?”
“You’re not wrong, but—”
“I’m curious . . .” I plow on. “What was my worth? At least one gold piece, I would hope.”
As two turbaned servants heave open a double-wide door with the same inserts of mother-of-pearl and glass, Dante turns me toward him. “He offered a hundred gold pieces for you, Fallon.”
I fake-gasp and smack my palm over my heart. “Forme?”
“Marco’s dream has always been to take the island of Shabbe.”
My hand slips, coursing over the velvet. “You mean, queendom?”
“It’s an island with a self-proclaimed monarch. Hardly a kingdom.”
Even though his insistence on refusing to call it a queendom bothers me, I avoid contradicting him in order to hear the rest of Marco’s dream and how I play into it.
“Our ships cannot near the wards without those savages commanding their serpents to sink us.”
“Theirserpents?”
“It’s rumored serpents answer to the Shabbins.”
My heart flounders around my rib cage like a trapped fish.
“The same way they answer to you.”
Sixty-One
My open-mouthed shock is not an act this time.
“My brother believes your mother had an affair with one of the Shabbin males who breached our shores when the wards weakened two decades ago.”
Oh. My. Gods.What?!
I almost tell Dante that can’t be true since my father is Kahol Bannock, but thankfully, I’m physically unable to shift my lips. Explaining my mother laid with a Crow is assuredly no better than with a Shabbin.
“Of course, it’s impossible, or the wards would’ve thrown you out of Luce, but if youcancommunicate with serpents, we could approach their shores and”—he leans over until his mouth is flush with my ear—“beginnegotiations.”
Negotiations?
“Do you understand why you’re so valuable to him?”
Glass shatters, its tinkling sound overpowering the white noise buzzing between my temples.
