“An alliance,” Lorcan offers.
“You’re allying yourselves with the humans?” I ask.
“They could do with a friend in this Fae world, don’t you think?” Keeann’s voice isn’t quite as deep as my father’s, but it rumbles and rises just the same.
Before I can answer his question, which, granted, was surely rhetorical, Bronwen inhales a sharp breath.
“What is it,ah’khar?” Keeann whirls to face her.
“Pierre Roy is coming.”
Seven
“Pierre Roy, the King of Nebba?” I ask Bronwen, whose eyelids are still pried wide.
“Or the Butcher of Nebba. The man has many names.” Lore has sidled in so close that the heat of his skin and the chill of his mood lick up one side of my body.
I stare at the harsh cut of his face, made even harsher by the charcoal stripes he wears. “It seems to be a trend amongst kings.”
Lore smiles even though there really isn’t anything funny about our little aside. To Bronwen, he asks, “Is he coming to collect his daughter?”
“No.” Sweat dots Bronwen’s patchwork of creamy-brown and pinkish skin. “He comes for his daughter’s nuptials.”
Lore’s mouth flattens. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Bronwen, but I rather clearly recollect separating her betrothed’s head from the rest of his body.”
Bile lurches up my throat because I, too, recollect this.
“Eponine will marry Dante.”
My fingers go slack, and the little note Antoni slipped me flutters to the floor. “Dante?”
Bronwen’s white eyes shine like twin moons. “Yes.”
My pulse lurches . . . teeters . . . stumbles.
Dante will marry Eponine?
Although my love for the Fae ruler has wilted, the idea of him marrying the woman who was supposed to be his sister-in-law is farcical.
“I expect King Vladimir of Glace won’t be too pleased with this turn of events.” Lore’s comment draws me back into the deep stone well where sunlight penetrates but does not warm.
“Considering the track record of Bronwen’s predictions,” I mutter, “it may not come to pass.”
Although Bronwen is blind, her face veers toward me. “All of my predictions have come to pass, child.”
“And yet, here I stand, crownless and stateless.”
Bronwen opens her misshapen mouth—I assume, to tell me off—but instead, a sharp inhale stabs the weighted air.
“Ah’khar?” Keeann cups her cheeks between paw-like hands.
“They were looking.” She sweeps her fingertips across her forehead, grazing the new hair growths darkening her shaved scalp.
Her words dredge up the memory of something Lorcan had let slip during our travels. He’d told me Bronwen had struck a deal with the Shabbins: use of her eyes in exchange for the power to see the future.
The idea that a resident of the pink isle is currently spying on us causes goosebumps to bloom everywhere on my body.
“Can you tell who was looking?” I ask.
