Gods, this is the inanest evil spirit in the history of evil spirits. I’m giving it a way out, and it won’t take it.
Without thought, I hurl the stakes into Mareluce. After the dark canal gulps them down, I lift my gaze and am about to turn back toward the bird when I spy a figure standing on the black shore of Rax.
Perhaps I’m imagining the turban and the snapping skirts, but it doesn’t stop me from yelling, “Find someone else! I’m done with your fool’s errand.” My eyes sting. From sweat. From tears. From complete and utter frustration.Why me?
“Why me?” I whisper out loud.
Because you’re a magicless silly girl, whose will is as easy to bend as her heart, that’s why.My mind is a pitiless critic.
I drag my burning gaze away from Bronwen, or whoever stands on the other side of the canal, if it’s even a person, and rake it over the gloomy corners of my bedroom. I’m expecting the assessing glint of golden eyes but nothing shimmers.
Nothing moves.
The crow’s gone.
It fled.
Finally.
In the old myths, there exists a tale the Fae enjoy whispering to their children to warn them against befriending curved-ear Fae. It’s the story of how halflings lost the points of their ears. I never believed this perpetuated tale. That one impulsive girl could doom an entire race by opening a sacred box filled with Fae secrets and spilling them across the three kingdoms. But isn’t that, in a way, what I’ve just done?
Released something that has the power to doom our race?
“Fallon, what in the Cauldron is going on up here?”
I whirl toward my bedroom entrance.
Nonna’s tall, thin figure is backlit, and yet I don’t miss the furrows crosshatching her face or the direction of her eyes as she takes in my toppled desk chair, gaping armoire, rumpled bedsheets, and tipped vase dribbling water and peonies.
“Are you . . . redecorating?”
I snort and scrub the moisture webbing my lashes.
“Goccolina, what’s wrong?”
“Have you ever done something stupid for love, Nonna?”
“I married your grandfather.”
“You—you loved him?”
“Once upon a time. What’s this about?”
As I stare at the stars swathing the cobalt sky, the desire to confide in my grandmother bloats my tongue.
“What is it you’ve done?” She must’ve padded closer because her floral scent envelops me even though her arms don’t.
And they surely never again will once she learns of my gullibility and complicity.
It’s this fear that she’ll stop looking upon me as though I’m precious that pricks my tongue and deflates my rising yearning to unburden myself.
Because she’s expecting me to say something, I murmur, “Dante will be taking some time off next week.”
Nonna’s eyebrows cant as she scrutinizes me and then my bedroom, obviously puzzled as to the connection between Dante’s break and the disheveled state of my room.
“He’s asked me to spend it with him. Just the two of us.” I lick my lips. “I said yes.”
Never in a million years did I picture myself sharing this with my grandmother, but it beats explaining the true source of my anxiety.
