“A shame. It was such a lovely sound.” The deep voice spurs my heart, hastening its beats.
“Àlo, Mórrgaht.” My sycophantic friend sketches a bow.
“So you’ve uncovered my favorite spot in the kingdom.” Lorcan glides out from someplace behind me.
“How funny.” Phoebus sweeps the branch he holds like a magic wand toward the trellises dripping with fruits and vegetables. “It appears to be Fallon’s favorite, too.”
I sear him with a glare that makes him wink. “My favorite place is my home in Luce.”
Lorcan looses an exaggerated sigh. “Because my kingdom is such a drab penitentiary.”
Phoebus swings the branch in my direction. “The stubborn streak is quite strong in this one.”
Where Lore affords him a pleasant smile, I grumble, “Should’ve shipped you back and kept Syb.”
Phoebus mimics his heart being broken, or whatever smooshing both palms over his chest and moaning like a sow in heat is supposed to mean. “I’m going to see if I can get your wonderful gardener to pick us some more delicious fruit.”
He plods across the airy space toward Arin who smiles before shifting and flying back up to fetch him another branch.
Lorcan links his hands behind his back, making his broad chest jut out. “So, how was your adventure?”
“I doubt you’re here to gather my opinion on your home, so get to the point.”
“You’re right.” One of his eyes narrows a little. “I’m actually here to visit my mother.”
I was, quite possibly, less shocked the day I learned Lore could transform into a man. “You have a mother?”
“Did you think I hatched from a cabbage?”
“No—I—” When a smile threatens the edges of his mouth, I mutter, “I know how babies are made, Lore. I know they don’t sprout in produce.”
“How fortunate for your future mate.”
A blush steals across my cheeks. “We call them husbands where I come from. And yes, I suppose he’ll be extraordinarily pleased when I spread my legs instead of hand him a trowel and a packet of seeds.”
Lorcan chokes on air, or perhaps on one of the bees cartwheeling about this magical greenhouse. When his face tips backward and laughter spills from him in deep, gravelly ripples, I realize he swallowed no bug.
I hate how much I enjoy his laugh.
A beautiful laugh does not a beautiful person make, I remind myself, before I can forget that the man standing before me has stripped me of one of my fundamental rights.
He sobers, yet his eyes keep dancing. “What am I going to do with you, Little Bird?”
It’s a rhetorical question, yet I say, “You could start by setting me free, Morrgot.”
That snuffs out the light in his eyes and turns the gold matte. We keep staring at one another, and although tension billows, there is no awkwardness. After all, how can one feel awkwardness before a man who’s seen one naked? Who’s heard all about one’s nipple burns and silly crushes on Faerie princes?
I deemed the Crow King a friend. Someone who merited my trust and my respect. Someone I could count on. But then he had to go and ruin it all by being greedy and selfish.
He must hear my thoughts because his lips flatten and his irises, which I considered matte, blunt like tarnished metal. His hands break away from their knot as he strides past me toward where Phoebus and Arin are attempting to carry a conversation.
Lorcan’s soundless footfalls peter out when he reaches Arin. The older Crow tilts her head to look up at him. Slowly she cups his jaw, drags his face down, and presses her cheek to his. I’ve come across many Crows in my hike across this rocky kingdom, and the only ones who pressed cheeks were mothers with their children.
Which means . . .
Which means that the woman Phoebus called a gardener is no horticulturist at all.
Ten
