“Lock the door,” Giana says as Riccio, the only fire-Fae in the group, takes care of igniting the wicks on a few oil lamps.
Tarelexo is so empty and quiet, it feels as though the five of us are the only Fae alive in the entire kingdom. Even the sprites, usually buzzing about the wharf, are absent.
Because everyone’s at the palace.
The palace that could be mine.
Me, a queen . . .
It’s so completely absurd.
And yet . . . and yet I can picture myself at Dante’s side, and I don’t hate the daydream.
My reverie takes epic proportions as I help Giana lug five glasses to a round table in the back of the tavern, behind the curtain that shields us from the windows and the rest of the room. I take the seat between Antoni and Riccio.
Although he weaved more than walked back to the boat, the black-haired Fae drags a glass of faerie wine toward him and chugs it down.
“Your manners are appalling, Riccio.” Antoni hooks the stem of the next full glass and places it in front of me. “Ladies always come first.”
“And he wonders why you get all the action, and he, so little.” Mattia’s innuendo isn’t lost on me, but my mind is too full of metal birds and Dante for it to warm my cheeks.
Iron crows. Iron crows. Iron—
Something clicks. “You all fought in the Battle of Primanivi, correct?”
My question rids my tablemates of both breath and smile. They glance around at each other, lips bloodless, necks stiff, spines straight.
“I didn’t.” Giana is the first to twitch back to life, leaning over the table to splash wine into three more stemmed cups. “Women aren’t allowed to become soldiers, remember? Our sex is too feeble.”
Neither her sarcasm nor her social commentary is lost on me. The inequality between genders is as ridiculous as the inequality between races. However much I’d enjoy discussing both at length, I have a more pressing concern. “But you were around, right, Giana?”
Her eyes are as guarded as her voice. “Yes.”
“In school, we learned that the tribesmen equipped their birds with iron talons and beaks to turn them into weapons.”
No one speaks.
“Were any of their birds equipped with full iron suits?”
Antoni’s brow furrows with the same frown that touches his mouth. “Suits?”
“Armor.” I gesture to my torso. “Full-body armor?”
“Armor for birds?” Mattia leans forearms covered in blond fur on the round wooden table—I swear, the man is part boar.
Riccio smirks. “Here I thought all you’d consumed in Rax was Antoni’s spit.”
My cheeks prickle.
“Leave her alone, Riccio. And, no.” Antoni tips his head from side-to-side, eliciting a series of little pops and cracks as though his body were full of tension. “Only their beaks and talons were made of iron.”
Could Bronwen have referred to them as iron crows because of their metal appendages, or am I supposed to find statues fashioned after lethal birds? “Did any of them survive?”
“The ones who lived flocked to Shabbe,” Riccio says.
I startle. “Shabbe?”
“You know . . . that tiny isle in the south our dear and equitable king would do just about anything to conquer?” I take it Riccio really doesn’t like Marco.
