“Look at her damn eyes.” Dante is still shaking his head, gaze on Tavo, who’s slowly peeling himself out of the shallow indent his body has left on the moss. “Fucking look at them! Who has violet eyes?”
Gabriele frowns. “Fallon.”
“Who. Else?” Dante bites out.
Gabriele’s eyes go so wide, his silver irises are fully outlined in white. “The Shabbins.”
“Don’t those female savages have pink peepers?” Tavo sits now, one hand rubbing his forehead, the other whisking away clumps of dirt from his white jacket.
“Only the pure-blooded ones,” Dante spits out.
“But the wards?” Gabriele exclaims.
“Mustn’t be as impenetrable as Marco believes,” Dante mutters.
I guess it’s better to let them believe I’m Shabbin, right?
Black smoke drapes over my shoulders, cool and slick, like mist and somehow, also like feathers.
“No harm will come to Fallon, Corvo.” Dante snarls the Lucin word for crow, making it sound like an insult.
So what terms did you and Dante agree to, Morrgot?
I have something your princeling wants.
I’m shallow enough to think,me, but not foolish enough to believe Dante would accept to work with Morrgot for my sake alone.What is it you have?
His answer takes a moment to come, and when it does, it’s spoken with a heavy coating of acrimony.The power to put him on the throne.
“Beau’s here!” Gaston soars toward Tavo.
Although the dark wisps of Morrgot’s body don’t vanish entirely, they shrink. I understand why when something thumps at Dante’s feet.
A headless parrot.
I swallow at the sight of another dead body.
Not that I’ll miss this one, but still . . .
The prince lurches back in time with Gabriele’s frisky mare. The sprite gasps, then projectile vomits over Tavo’s cheek.
The redhead slugs the small, winged man, knocking him out cold. And then he stares at the life leaking out of the bird, probably imagining himself lying there. “What terms did you agree to?” He raises eyes that glitter with both dread and anger onto me and the smoke stole wrapped protectively around my bare neck.
I want to tell Morrgot that he’s wrangled the overconfident Fae into submission. That his protectiveness is a little over the top, but until I hear Dante swear to me he’ll play nice, I’ll take Morrgot’s protection.
My winged guardian snorts.
What?
Nothing, Behach Éan. Nothing.
Liar,I whisper.
Our beginnings may have been rocky, but I feel as though Morrgot and I have reached a good place. Not quite friendship, but a certain camaraderie.
Tavo eyes me, a glop of sprite vomit dripping off his ticking jaw and onto the rigid collar of his uniform. “What. Terms?” Tavo repeats since Dante still hasn’t ingratiated him with an answer.
Dante scrutinizes the shadow cloaking me. “We’re going to aid Fallon—”
