When Aoife’s wings still, I know it’s worked.
“I’m still here, Aoife.” Though it would be a stretch to say that the sound of my voice settles her, it does make her wings stir. “Your turn.”
I plow through the feathers covering her head—as far from her heart as I can reach—and adorn her skin with the same spell.
When she becomes one with the air, I say, “Fly us to the ship. They won’t see us.”
I feel her head shake beneath my palm.
“Lorcan is down there, Aoife, and he’s not answering me. Please.” I try to gauge the ocean’s distance through the covering of clouds. “Fine. I’ll jump.”
She must decide I’m mad enough to go through with my threat because she tucks in her wings and pitches downward. Though I cannot hear her in this form, I can just imagine her muttering to herself how Lorcan will turn her into a forever-Crow if Diotto’s little army doesn’t beat him to it.
The second we emerge from the clouds, my heart holds still. The galleon rocks in the churning sea, an obsidian Crow embedded inside its deck between giant wheels that smoke as they turn, launching pellets—not arrows.
Not a single Faerie, besides my fallen friend, darkens the deck. Gabriele’s crumpled body is haloed in blood, his limbs bent at awry angles, one of them pinned beneath Colm’s splayed obsidian wing. Though a scream claws at my throat, I wrangle it back. Gabriele is a pureling, and pure-bloods don’t perish from mortal wounds.
The boat rocks, and though his upper body twists, his crushed leg keeps him from rolling into the gaping Crow-shaped hole that splinters the deck beside him.
Another spray of pellets rockets into the air. I guide Aoife’s shuddering body to the right, out of their trajectory. Another burst is set free. And then a third. They’re shot at intervals. I count the seconds separating each launch, and as I count, I realize that I will have mere heartbeats to board the bridge.
Unless I board the vessel from the railing . . .
The galleon lists, its masts skimming the waves. Lorcan will end up sinking the ship with his storm if he doesn’t let up. I call out to him but he must’ve walled off his mind to avoid distractions because my voice echoes in the void.
I curl my legs tighter around Aoife’s haunches as she swoops low to avoid a hail of pellets. “The second the ship rights itself, fly me down!” I scream over the creak of wood and slap of water. “Nod if you understand me.”
Her nod is slow to come, but it comes.
“The moment I’m off your back, you bolt back into those clouds and you fly high, you hear me?”
The ship rights itself. She swoops low. A heartbeat before it begins to tip the other way, I jump off her back and onto the bridge. I brace myself as I smack into the rain-slicked wood and reach out to the railing.
My arm shrieks as the boat tips, my knuckles whitening as I grip the wood. I may love the ocean, but I don’t want to end up in it right now. A Crow swoops nearby. Since I can see its massive dark shape, I assume it’s not Aoife. Unless the rain has washed away my spell.
Lore, call off the clouds and rain, and command every Crow to fly out of the Faerie contraption’s reach, all right?
Several long minutes pass.
Lore?
Ugh . . .If only I still had a bargain to call upon.
Lorcan Ríhbiadh, stop this storm immediately.
Fallon, where are you?
On the ship.
Lightning forks into the raging ocean.And what are you doing on the ship, mo khrà?He speaks so slowly that his words creak like the wooden galleon.
You weren’t answering. I got worried.
Silence, then:Where are you exactly?
Why?
So I can carry you the fuck away, that’s why.
