It is both disconcerting and mesmerizing. Sure, most Crows are waist-deep in water, but many are lounging around the many basins, just yakking it up—naked.
Does Lorcan hang around here also?
I stare around the pools for a tall blond with pointy ears. Phoebus should be easy enough to spot, what with his light-colored mane, but it’s dark and there aremanypools and many large rock formations separating them.
The noise level suddenly plummets, and I realize why when hundreds of eyes turn toward me. I take a minuscule step back, deciding it best to wait for Phoebus where people are clothed, but then I see him, and I stop retreating because the look he casts me . . .
It shatters my heart.
Forty-Eight
Phoebus’s beautiful face is warped in anger, dejection, and disappointment. All feelings I put there. All feelings I was expecting, yet the sight of them isn’t any less jarring.
I plow through the steam to reach where he stands by the wall with a towel slung around his neck.
“You’re back,” he says, and his tone is so flat that it makes me want to cry.
“I’m so sorry, Pheebs, but I was scared.”
He folds his arms in front of his bare torso. “So you shipped me back without my consent?”
“You were safer here.”
“Not your decision to make, Fallon. Not. Your. Decision.”
“I know.” I push my hair back, but the humidity makes it cling to my cheeks. “And I feel horrid.”
“If you’d felt horrid, you would’ve returned sooner and apologized.”
“I was trying to find Meriam.”
He turns. “Not interested in your excuses.”
I try to circle him without getting blasted by the ropes of water jetting from the wall. “Pheebs, please forgive me.”
“Why should I?”
“Because I’m your oldest friend.”
“I’ve made many old friends. Centuries old, for that matter.”
“I meant our friendship is old, not—”
“I know what you meant. Still not interested. Go back to yourotherold friends, none of whom you sent back to this mountaintop.”
“Pheebs.”
“Don’tPheebs-me.” He raises his face and shuts his eyes, letting the water sluice over his clasped lids and rigid jaw.
My pulse quickens. I deserve his anger, but I refuse to let it fester. They say actions speak louder than words, so I step behind him and hug him, pressing my cheek against his shoulder blade.
I hope my hug will clang through him. “I love you and will forever shorten your name.”
He doesn’t toss off my arms. I take it as a good sign.
“Please find it in your squishy heart to forgive your favorite maiden.”
“Maiden?” He grunts. “You’re almost a doxy.”
