One you accepted?
I did. The male suggested returning to the tunnels with Mattia and blasting them. The entire grid of them.
This draws my eyes wider.At what price?
He wants an official seat in the Siorkahd.
So he gets the political power he so longs for . . .
Once he crumbles every last tunnel.
He knows that he cannot kill Dante, right?
He does.
I wonder how long this endeavor will take him.
Mattia and Gabriele have already blasted through all those under Monteluce. If Dante wants to reach Tarecuori, he’ll have to emerge in the jungle and scale my mountain.Lore sounds like a cat playing with a mouse.
Can you please make sure to watch your back though? Like you said, Antoni’s cunning.
Worry not, Behach Éan.
The desire to roll my eyes is really strong. How does he expect menotto worry? His back was stabbed once before.
By a friend.Antoni’s no friend, nor has he ever pretended to be.After a beat, he adds,Contenders for my throne, my love, never get to see my back; they barely get to glimpse my front before they taste my shadows.
I’m still not reassured, and I doubt I will be until the Cauldron allows me to curse-break. The thought yanks my mind off one foe and places it on another. I think of the plan my grandfather wants to enact once Lore is whole and desperately attempt to think of another, one that will not transform my mate to iron, but get distracted by the sight before me.
Against the pitch-blackness of a steep drop, amidst a knot of bright scaled bodies, glows the white marble likeness of Dante’s mother.
We’ve arrived.
Fifty-Six
My mother swims us to the statue before coming to a complete stop. We begin to sink into the trench, but a flick of her tail makes us rise back to the statue’s level. A divinely warm current wraps around my bare legs and arms, smoothing away the chills that pebble my skin.
Many serpents approach, curiosity alight in their huge ebony eyes. The older ones nudge me with their long noses, the younger ones, with their ivory nubs. All collect a resounding hiss from my protective mother. I pat her long, scarred neck, and press a kiss to one of the bands of white.
The feel of the rubbery skin makes me wonder if, in human form, she’ll wear the mutilations inflicted by Nonna the day I fell into the canal. I briskly shake off this deliberation. I need to focus on the reason I’m hovering over the infamous furrow that’s said to be the resting place of many a dead Lucin dissident.
You won’t find any corpses.
I glance toward Lore, whose golden eyes must be shut because they don’t gleam amongst his shadows.Throughout the centuries, serpents have carried bodies that fall into Mareluce to Shabbin shores for healing. Even when there’s no healing to be had.
Though Meriam mentioned this the day of my unbinding, I’m glad for Lore’s confirmation. How I hate that I fell for yet another lie propagated by the Regio regime. The Crows cannot rule this land soon enough.
Can you feel your crow?
Silence.
Lore?I press away the curious juveniles oblivious to Zendaya’s hissing to peer through the dark water for the elusive shadow of my mate.Lore, your crow?
When he fails to answer me—again—my pulse begins to slam against my ribs. Min—My mother senses my disquiet but misinterprets it because she cages me between the coils of her huge body. I stroke her before she snatches me away from the trench and my mission.
Lore, if you don’t answer me right this minute, I’ll—
I’m here.
