I palm away the tear and shoot him a smile that does nothing to soften his worry. When Lorcan’s gaze slips to his mother’s and their heads bend close, Phoebus props his mouth beside my ear and hisses, “Are you crying? Why are you crying? Did Ríhbiadh make you cry? I don’t even care that he’s outfitted with iron appendages. If he’s hurt you—”
I turn my head, our noses almost colliding. “He showed me a memory of my mother.”
Phoebus’s pupils shrink against the green. “Oh. Good. I do prefer to engage in fights I have a chance of winning.”
I smile.
“Which mother did he show you?”
“Zendaya.” A current races down my spine as I picture her hand resting on . . . me. “I think I take more after my father. Speaking of whom . . .” I turn toward Lorcan and wait until Arin finishes whatever she’s telling him before asking, “Will I get to see him before I depart?”
“Depart?” Phoebus’s voice hits a note he hasn’t reached since puberty.
“Lorcan’s allowed me to return home. Isn’t that wonderful?”
My friend’s lips part and his fingers, too. His open-faced sandwich topples onto the plate he’s piled high with a little of everything. “You don’t sound as though you find it wonderful.”
“And yet, I do. I find it very wonderful.”
He rubs his fingers on his napkin, eyebrows bending like windblown fronds.
“Will you be coming home with me or staying?”
He hesitates, frowning at Lorcan. “I’ll go back with you, Picolina, but in my opinion, it’s a shit decision.”
I swallow at his reproof but remind myself that it comes from the heart. Phoebus is worried, and for good reason. Before departing from Monteluce, Dante told me I’d be safer away from Luce because the Fae would see me as the traitor who murdered their king.
Those words had pounded the last nail in the coffin of my feelings for him. After all, he was the one who’d demanded his brother’s head, not I, and yet he blamed me. I wonder if that’s the story he told upon taking the throne in Isolacuori and anointing himself king with a crown soaked in blood.
I hunt the depths of Lorcan’s eyes for the answer, but he reveals nothing, so I attempt to penetrate his mind but bang into an obsidian wall with no beginning and no end and not a single fissure. I almost ask for him to let me see what he’s seen and heard, but deep down, I don’t want to know, for it may influence my decision.
I turn back toward Phoebus. “Good thing I didn’t ask for your opinion, Pheebs.”
He launches the smeared bread into his mouth and chews on it like a rabid animal, then seizes his berry wine and slugs it down, the apple in his pale throat moving like a razor blade. “When are we to leave?”
“In the morning,” I say,
He nods. “Good. That gives me some hours to yell at you.”
“Phoebus,” I sigh.
He holds out a palm. “Save it for the conversation we’ll have behind closed doors.”
Another sigh balloons through my aching chest. “It doesn’t sound like it’ll be much of a conversation.”
He pivots his body so that it’s angled away from me and gives Arin his undiluted attention. Although Lorcan doesn’t pat Phoebus’s back, I can tell my friend’s irritation pleases the shifter.
“Nothing and no one can change my mind.”
“Oh, I’ve no illusion you’ll be staying, Fallon,” he says. “As for your father, you asked if you’d see him. He’s scouring the three kingdoms for Daya, so I fear he may not return in time to see you off.”
I’m so shocked by this news that my fingers loosen around my makeshift cloak. The heavy fabric glides down my arms and settles like a shawl in the crook of my elbows. “Isn’t that dangerous?”
“He isn’t alone.”
I’m glad to hear my father didn’t charge into this reconnaissance mission all by himself, but still . . .
The gold in Lorcan’s irises shivers before it hardens, along with every line in his body. “Crows do not do well without their mates.”
