Dead witches cannot cast spells.His voice echoes between my thrumming temples just as I reach my bedroom door.
After I slap it shut, I yell through the bond,Immobilized Crows cannot murder witches.
Are you threatening to stake me, Behach Éan?
Better keep your distance.
Although he neither answers nor shows up in my bedroom, I can somehow feel him smile through the mind link. I doubt he will smile when I head to the harbor market and procure myself an obsidian blade at first light.
I flop into bed, believing that sleep will elude me, what with a churning mind and an empty stomach, but sleep comes and closes over me like a wave. At some point, I wake to find Sybille lying beside me, hands laced over her middle, fingers drumming the stained fabric of her pretty teal dress.
I pluck a lock of hair off my sweaty nape. “How long have you been here?”
No light spills around the edges of the curtains, but the material is so thick, it could be midmorning, and I’d be none the wiser.
As I rub the sleep from my gritty eyes, Syb turns her head and slides her lips together. “All night.”
“Making good on your threat to Mattia?”
“Your grandmother is after you, Fal!” Her voice is so loud it clangs against my barely awakened eardrums. “Your grandmother—theevilestwitch of all time—is after you!”
“I’m aware.”
“That’s all you have to say? You’re aware?”
“What more do you want me to say?”
“That you’re sorry for not telling me! That you’re heading back to the Sky Kingdom immediately!”
“I’m sorry for not telling you, Syb.”
“Go on . . .”
I fluff the pillow beneath my head. “I thought Lorcan wanted to keep the fact that she was alive a secret. I didn’t know the others knew.”
“The otherscanandhaveapologized for keeping me in the dark. I’m still waiting for you to speak the second half.”
“The second half of what?”
“Of what I asked of you earlier. To return to the Sky Kingdom immediately.”
My chest prickles. “No.”
“You are.”
“Never.”
“She is out there, just itching to murder you.”
My hands curl into fists beneath my pillow. “You don’t know that, Syb.”
“I don’t—” She scoffs. “You can break Lorcan’s curse, which will make him unstoppable. Honestly, I’m surprised Dante hasn’t put out a kill order on you. If I were him, I’d murder you on the spot.”
“Glad you’re not him.”
She shoots me an eloquent side-eye.
I smile; she doesn’t.
