Phoebus drapes his arm around my shoulders. “Let’s go before we make Diotto’s day by perishing of pneumonia.”
“You’re a pureling, Pheebs. Human diseases cannot touch you.”
As he guides me back down the road, I glimpse the faintest streak of black in the eaves of the sunflower-hued house beside us.
I dart my gaze away before I can draw attention to the darkness.Is someone following us, Lore?
Many people follow you. You gather quite the crowd.
I don’t mean Fae; I mean Crows. Are you having us followed?
What do you think?
I think Lorcan Reebyaw didn’t listen to me when I told him to leave me be. And I think I’m grateful for his protection, even if it only lasts until Meriam is brought to justice.
I’m still terribly angry with you for keeping me in the dark, Lore.
Because the light has revealed such agreeable things?
You’re right. It hasn’t. But I prefer to see than stay blind. I prefer to know than be made a fool of.
When have I ever made a fool of you?
Really, Lore? Really?
I think of all the times I traipsed around in the buff before his eyes.
I think of all the relics I brought back to life believing they were just that—relics.
I think of how I called him Your Highness because I assumed it was his name, and he never set me right. Yes, it was to protect his identity, but I gave him everything, and he gave me nothing but evasions and lies.
I’ve given you back your freedom, Fallon.
And he has, but now I wonder if he returned it to me only because he knew my homecoming would be pitiful.
No, Behach Éan. I set you free because I understood that, although you were not a block of stone, you felt trapped, and there is no worse feeling in the world.
The return of my nickname breaks through the cloud cover of my mood, and apparently of Lorcan’s because patches of blue appear overhead.
Eighteen
My front door gapes, but that isn’t what roots my soles to the cobbles and my heart to my ribs. What makes me freeze are the swoops of red paint that have dried in drips.
Swoops that read:King Killer.
Fury suffuses me.
Fury against the Fae who desecrated my home.
Fury against Dante who’s yet to set his people straight. Yes, I brought about his brother’s downfall but the dying was all him.
On stiffened joints, I lunge forward and shove my door wide.
Phoebus calls out my name, calls out the words, “Stop! Don’t!”
But I don’t stop.
My blood becomes as pressurized as the water Nonna would boil in the kettle that sits askew by our disemboweled couch.
