I bark out a laugh.
Phoebus holds me tighter, pressing his cheek into the top of my head. I link my hands around his waist and return his hug.
“Thank you,” I murmur.
“For what, Picolina?”
“For loving me unconditionally.”
“It’s part of the friendship manifesto I’m penning. Remember?”
My ribs tighten as though a full-grown Crow was sitting on my chest. A stone one.
“You’re obviously required to love us back unconditionally”—Syb pops my ass—“wench. I mean, witch.” She snickers.
“Oh, Lore?” Phoebus fake-hollers. “Did you hear what Sybille just called your mate?”
“First off, you said it before me, Pheebs. Secondly, I’m almost his favorite person.”
“You’re really no one’s favorite person, Syb,” he teases.
Another wave of laughter surges from my chest, but it crashes over me in time with a wave of tears because, though my mother healed my superficial wounds, I’m still riddled with tiny cracks that will end up sinking me if I don’t find a way to plug them up, and quickly at that.
I cannot afford to sink.
I need to swim.
* * *
“You’ll getin the water here. And then you’ll direct your mother toward the trench.” My father, whose reddened eyes speak of another sleepless night, taps an area of the ocean that borders the Racoccin woods, the last piece of land under Crow dominion. “I attached your skirt to a tree trunk. When I left, your mother was circling the waters beside the tree. Erwin has stayed behind to keep track of her.”
The heart cramps brought on by too much emotion, too little sleep, and too much wine, ease at the mention that Min—my mother is waiting for me.
“I’ll carry you—” My father looks up from the map to glower at Lore, who’s been pacing his library at such a frenetic pace that his shadows never firm. “No.Iwill.”
Lore must growl something because Cathal narrows his eyes.
“Consider yourself lucky I’m allowing you to come at all.” Another beat of silence. “I know where you fell, too, Mórrgaht. I was there when you fucking flew in front of me to take that arrow. Which was fucking stupid, by the way.”
I blink at the two of them.
My father tosses his large hand in the air. “It was stupid because a giant piece of obsidian would’ve caught on the coral barrier, not slipped right past it like your puny iron bird.”
If I weren’t awash with nerves, I may have cracked a smile at hearing my father describe Lore as puny but my cheeks are incapable of doing much else than pump air in and out of my mouth. I’m not even in the water and I’m already hyperventilating. I need to calm down.
We’re not doing it.
Deep breath in. Deep breath out.We aresodoing it.
Look at you.
Look atyou.
Fallon,he growls.
Let’s go retrieve your puny bird,Lore.
My crack at him makes him still his pacing.I should’ve let your father be on the receiving end of that arrow. At least then his sense of humor wouldn’t be rubbing off on you.
