A cool drift flutters my hair and relays another haunting whisper. “He waits for you, Fallon.”
“Who? Dante? Antoni?” My exasperation resonates against the cypresses’ trunks, against their gnarled roots and the inky sky itself.
I want to growl and claw through the darkness until I reach the infuriating woman who speaks in riddles.
“Are you all right?” Antoni’s voice makes me spin around.
I exhale raucously, my fingers jerking to my hair and sailing through the thick locks. “Yes,” I lie.
“Who were you speaking with?”
“Some human woman.” Although,isBronwen human? The notion that she may be something else raises the fine hairs along my arms.
Antoni sidesteps me, hollering for the woman to show herself. Unsurprisingly, Bronwen doesn’t.
As he delves deeper into the shadows, I realize I got what I came to Rax seeking, and yet . . . and yet I am soutterlyconfused that I want to grip my hair and tug at the roots. Instead, I ball my fingers at my sides and focus on Antoni’s broad figure cutting through the abounding blackness back toward me.
“I shouldn’t have let you come out here alone,” he mutters.
I grip his biceps to calm him. “I’m fine, Antoni.”
His teeth grind.
“What did she tell you? What did she want?”
“Money.”Lie.
“Did you give her any?”
“One copper. So she could feed her child.” I’m just bursting with falsehoods tonight.
His arms twitch and then metal jangles. “Here.” Even though my fingers still cinch his upper arms, Antoni’s managed to produce a coin from the leather purse hooked onto his belt.
I shake my head. “I already owe you for tonight.”
“Fallon—”
I release his arms to fold his fingers back over the proffered coin. “Please, Antoni. I may not be rolling in Tarecuorin gold, but I’m not destitute either.”
In the end, he relents and stashes it back inside his drawstring purse. “We should go home.”
This time, I readily agree. And not because I intend to crash the royal revel to find a statue, but because I need distance from this place . . . from the blind woman who just informed me I could be queen if I located and freed five metal crows.
Why would anyone trap a statue? Several, at that? Because they’re made of iron? And why in the world would a blacksmith model them after the pet birds of the mountain tribe that attacked us two decades ago?
Ten
I’m so lost in thought that I barely register that we’ve crossed the canal until I’m standing on the wharf, and Giana’s hand clasps my upper arm and pulls me away from the three men, who are tying up the boat.
“What’s going on with you?”
How I wish I could tell her, but I’d apparently be damning a bunch of strangers.
I stop nibbling the life out of my lip. “Just wondering about . . . things.”
“Thingsbeing Antoni?” Her eyes are alight with something. I cannot tell if it’s worry or amusement, which, I’m aware, are vastly different sentiments, but my mind is currently not at its most discerning. “If you don’t care to take things any farther, tell him. He’s one of the few who’ll listen.”
My tryst with Antoni is the furthest thing from my mind, but now that she’s brought him up, our kiss comes back front and center, and on its heels, what he may expect. Over Giana’s shoulder, I watch him emerge from his boat with the seasoned grace of a male used to existing between land and sea. He catches my eye but doesn’t smile. Like me, he’s been on edge since we left Rax.
