As though he feels his name on our minds, Dante glances over his shoulder, first at me, then at Lore’s airborne crows, before turning back toward the two ships incising the frothy sapphire.
Although no one tells me to hurry, I push myself up.
Slowly,Lore growls, flying dizzyingly fast around me as though to make sure one of his crows will be there to catch me should gravity fail me.
Syb winds her arm around my waist.
Lore’s crows flock higher, giving us space to maneuver, but his eyes, all four sets, stay on me.
To think that, soon, those eyes that have tracked me for days across forest, jungle, mountain, and ocean, from dusk till dawn, will no longer look my way. For all our verbal sparring and our inability to see eye to eye on essentially every subject, I’ll miss the stormy sky king.
I kneel in front of the package. Although Sybille wears a bead that protects her from obsidian, I make her stand back as I unwrap layer after layer. The bowl appears, its pewter and gold shine dulled beneath pooled wax.
“How do I pry you out?”
Turn the bowl over.
I do, and my jaw clenches. Obsidian nails are hammered through the pewter. Dozens upon dozens of them. I clamp my fingers around one and tug.
It doesn’t slip out.
Twist it.
I twist and it loosens. What I assumed were nails are long obsidian corkscrews.
“Maybe you should start twisting, Syb,” Tavo suggests. “You know . . . what with this being a race against time and all.”
I hiss at him. “She can’t touch iron, you fool.”
He sighs before copping a look at Lazarus. “Maybe Luce’s favorite healer has a special earring to counteract iron?”
Lazarus folds his thick arms and raises his chin. “Only Fallon can break the curse of obsidian.”
“Well then, I guess we’re fucked.”
I hurry, but not for Tavo’s sake; I hurry so as not to draw out the crow’s suffering.
Minutes later, I call out, “Last one.”
“That’s what you said the last three times!” Tavo exclaims, pacing.
I nod, combing over every millimeter of iron, first with my eyes, then with my fingertips. The only thing I feel are the holes that have yet to mend. As I toss aside the last corkscrew nail, Lore’s crow slips off the gold dish and lands on my lap. I scoop him up and hold him aloft, willing the perforations to fill and the pewter to blacken.
He watches me through the wax still clouding his citrine eyes, weight slowly lightening, shell slowly softening. His rapid heartbeats fill my palm and mingle with my own feverish ones.
A tear rolls down my cheek at the magnitude of what I’ve just accomplished. Me, a girl from the wrong side of the canal with curious blood and no power.
I press my shoulder against my cheek before the tear can drip onto Lorcan.
“She’s done!” Tavo screeches, tearing me out of the moment. “She’s finally done!”
I’m tempted to silence that one before I take care of the king.He retracts his wings, dragging his velvet feathers across my clammy palms.
I snort.Rein in the temptation.
A feat you’re asking of me, Behach Éan.
“DANTE!” Gabriele shouts, tearing my attention off Lore and flinging it on the sky, on the giant fireball coming straight for us. “Watch out!”
