“The tunnels . . . Are you planning on storming them?”
“We tried.” He swallows. “We cannot enter them.”
I pick my head off his arm and twist to look up at him. “Why not?”
“Obsidian doors. Antoni was trying to blast through them when he went missing.”
The information floats inside my skull before settling like silt. “Do you believe he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.” He squeezes the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes for a long moment as though worried I may try to tiptoe into his mind to glimpse his true opinion on Antoni’s state of existence.
“You told Sybille you had no news from Cian. Was that the truth?”
“No.” He stares at the timbered beams over my bed, his fingers drifting off his face.
“You have news?”
“The negotiations continue.”
“Can you be any more vague? What did you offer Tavo?”
“Gold.”
“What does he want?”
Shadows puff off Lore’s skin like grains of Selvatin sand during my furious gallop across the desert with Furia. “Nothing I am willing to give.”
My fingers pause against one of his many scars, one that is perfectly round and slightly concave, probably leftover from an obsidian spike. “Tell me.”
“We should sleep. In case your father decides to beat down your door again at fuck o’clock in the morning.”
“For someone so intent on making me speak properly, you’ve a filthy mouth, Your Highness.”
“You love my mouth.”
“I do love your mouth, Lore, but I’d love it even more if it offered an answer to my Gia question.”
“Fallon.” His sigh lifts his chest, which in turn lifts my hand.
“Did he ask for Gabriele? Is that it?”
Lore’s lips flatten, and his fingers halt their slow-slide through my dark locks. “He asked for a pint of your blood.”
“I thought he believed me dead?”
“Giana, under the influence of salt, let it slip that you weren’t.”
Ah . . .“Does Dante know of myundeadness?”
“I’d imagine the news has found its way to wherever he hides.”
I roll fully atop him. “Does my blood have a special scent or taste?”
“We’re not giving Tavo—or any fucking Faerie, for that matter—your blood.”
“I repeat, you obtuse man, does my blood have a special scent or taste?” I remember his crow darting out his tongue to taste his bloodstained talon the first time we met.
“It contains iron, so it tastes metallic, unlike Faerie blood.”
