“Will there be another?”
“Many. After all, you’ve a tendency to stir up trouble, Signorina Rossi.”
“Surely that won’t merit an intervention from the king himself.” I smile at him, and although it doesn’t expunge the disappointment of his abandonment, it scrubs away one more layer of my pain.
Bronwen’s wrong. Dante and I, we may never be as close as we once were, but I could never end his life.
His full lips bend and separate around blinding white teeth. “Who else is as well equipped to cope with you than I?”
Lorcan snatches my biceps and hurtles into the sky. We rise so high so fast that my heart bangs against my balled stomach and my ears pop.
The princeling used you, Fallon. Has it already slipped your mind?
I know Lorcan won’t drop me, yet I wrap one hand around the cool metal of his legs, keeping the other locked around my rock.It has not.
Dante tilts his face to watch us, and although I hold his stare, I’m soon distracted by the sight of Luce from the sky. Liquid arteries sparkle like streaks of glitter around the twenty-five islands, which grow in width and breadth like the multihued houses and expanses of greenery the farther east we fly.
The same way that your exploitation of my candor has not slipped my mind, Lorcan Reebyaw.
Do not dare cast us in the same boat. Dante and I are nothing alike.
You’re both kings. You both love Luce. You’re both marrying foreign princesses. Shall I go on? I’m certain I can find many more similarities.
Lorcan mutters something in Crow that I don’t grasp as his body lists forward. Unlike Eefah, he sinks slowly as though to give me one more second to admire the kingdom that, once upon a time, I believed would become mine.
How gullible I was.
As we land, the sprites and Fae soldiers posted beside the apricot walls circling Antoni’s property move aside to make room for Lore’s giant crow. All have a hand on the hilt of their swords or dart pipes, and all have their eyes on us.
After he’s set me down, he bursts into his five crows.Aoife awaits inside. She’ll be staying with you for the duration of your visit. As soon as you’re ready to come home, let her know and she’ll fly you back.
I don’t point out that his home isn’t mine, and that I’ll surely never want to return now that he’ll be sharing it with Alyona of Glace.Give Phoebus my love and tell him not to hate me.
Three of his golden-eyed birds float higher while the other two stay at my side.If our paths cross, I will.
Why wouldn’t their paths cross? Is he planning on holing up inside his private rooms? Unless he’s planning an extended trip to Glace to visit his betrothed.
The questions scroll through my head on a loop as I walk over to the hammered bronze door to knock.
My fist meets air because the burnished rectangle grinds open.
Syb springs out, my name falling from her lips in a great rush of letters. “Antoni said you were coming, but I thought he was full of shit.” The girl who hates hugs winds her arms around my neck and pulls me to her tightly. “Flitter the fuck away before I blow the lot of you into Mareluce.”
I gasp at how she speaks to Lorcan, until I notice that it’s the sprites cinching us she’s warning off. I crane my neck, finding that no more black smudges the blue.
The Crow King has left.
Syb grabs my hand and pulls me past the threshold and inside a hallway made of glass surrounded on both sides by geometrically-manicured gardens.
“How did Antoni know?”
“Aoife.” She suddenly glances over my shoulder while I stare around me in awe. “Where’s Phoebus?”
“He’s back in the Sky Kingdom.”
“Back?”
I fill her in as we traverse the corridor bathed in sunlight and dappled by the shadows of the sprites buzzing about outside.
