Lore slips out of my hands and slams into his crows. Before my next heartbeat, a bird the size of a man streaks through the air, right for Marco’s missile. I stagger to my feet and race to the cliff’s edge.
He better not be about to do what I think he’s about to do.
Large hands wind around my biceps and tug me back, but I drag my feet, fighting the person’s hold. “My apologies for restraining you, but His Majesty threatened to return me to Isolacuori if you receive so much as a scratch, and I’ve no desire to return to Fae court.”
Nothing he says makes sense. Which Majesty? Dante?
I must speak the prince’s name out loud because Lazarus bends his head nearer mine and whispers, “No, Signorina Rossi. Lorcan.”
Seventy-Eight
Iglance up at Lazarus with a raised eyebrow for a half second, but then Sybille gasps, and my eyes are back on Lore.
Lore, who’s plucked the ball of fire right from the sky and holds it between his talons. He whirls and releases it. The screams that rise from the king’s vessel threaten to derail my heart and shatter my eardrums. Every air-Fae on deck must be blowing wind into the sails, because they bloat and shoot the vessel out of the fireball’s path.
Arrows rise. Some gold; some black.
I scream.
“Shh, child. Don’t distract him.” Lazarus presses his meaty palm against my quivering lips as Lore breaks into his five crows and ascends so dizzyingly high that I lose track of him behind a thin cloud.
The arrows plummet like toothpicks just as a wave smashes into the ship’s hull. It’s nothing like the one Marco had his air-Fae fashion, but it makes the boat list, and the mast skim the water. When it rights itself, half of the Fae on the deck have vanished into Mareluce while the other half are scrambling around a man dressed entirely in gold and another garbed in gilded burgundy with unbound orange hair.
“Why hasn’t the Crow army risen?” I hear Sybille ask Antoni.
Both stand beside me, eyes riveted to the spectacle, while mine remain locked on Justus Rossi’s. Even from this distance, I can feel my grandfather watching me, reviling me.
“Because he must voice the old words out loud,” Lazarus explains. “Which he can only do in his human form.”
“Maybe he should take a minute to shift, then,” Syb says before gasping as more fireballs surge, this time from the vessel commanded by Dargento.
As though he sees the attack as a game, Lore’s crows bat the flaming spheres with their wings, sending them hurtling into the sails of both ships.
One scorches the mast of the king’s vessel; another tears through the sails of Silvius’s. Although the Fae stream water onto the fire, the boats become flaming rafts.
“How many purelings do you suspect are pissing themselves?” I hear Riccio ask Mattia, who murmurs, “Not as many as halflings.”
“There are no halflings in the royal ranks, Matt. We’re not good enough for the royal guard.”
“Done!” Tavo exclaims. “It’s done!”
What is?
I squint and make out one of Lore’s crows shooting away from the sinking vessel, something gold glinting between his talons.
Something gold and—
Is that—
I swoon, and the world becomes as black as the crow carrying the king’s head.
Seventy-Nine
Icome to, just as Lore reaches the cliff and drops Marco’s severed head at Dante’s feet. The crown is still tangled in the fallen monarch’s braids.
“Oh . . . My . . . Gods.” Sybille heaves, and then she spins around and sprints toward the tree to retch.
I scrutinize Dante’s face, looking for remorse, or disgust, or something, but the male is stone-faced and so calm, it raises every hair on my body. He crouches, stares into the amber eyes that are already clouding with death, then pries the sunray crown from his brother’s hair, scrubs it against his dust-streaked white pants and sets it atop his head.
