“Go.” The word blusters out of Justus’s mouth like a grunt.
I yank. Gabriele sucks in a sharp breath that transforms into a weak whimper when I skate his body out from underneath Colm’s. The second his mangled leg is free, Justus releases the obsidian wing and the bird settles with a harsh thud against the deck.
Justus inspects the Faerie’s leg, then roots through his jacket pocket.
When the sun catches on his ruby-encrusted snuffbox, I frown. He cannot possibly think this is a good moment for salt oaths. Besides, what confessions is he after? It isn’t as though Gabriele colluded with Dante and Tavo . . . Oh my Gods, isthatwhat Justus thinks?
He turns the little case over in his hand, then flicks a little latch that pops open the bottom. My eyes draw wide. The secret compartment shines with a rainbow palette of Shabbin crystals. He leans over Gabriele, then gently peels the slashed black leather off the male’s mangled calf, selects three ochre crystals, and packs them into the wound.
A hiss falls from Gabriele’s lips as the crystals dissolve into his blood and work their magic on his flesh.
“Stick out your tongue, Moriati.” Justus roots through his little stash for another bead.
As he feeds him a purple crystal, I scale Colm’s obsidian body. The pellet’s embedded so deep that I’ll need a tool to pinch it out. I’m about to ask for one when a scream rises from the galleon’s belly. My heart vaults into my throat and expands there.
LORE?
All’s well, Little Bird.
It does not sound like all’s well.Who screamed?
The last of the crew. Your father was collecting information on Diotto’s whereabouts.
Tavo’s not on the ship?
No.
“Ínon, can you come down here and wake Fionn?”
I scramble off Colm and traipse over to the Crow-shaped crater.
My father extends his arms. He’s so tall that his fingers crest the lip of the deck. I spear my hands through his and hop. The hull is dark, the air sticky with the metallic scent of blood and tangy reek of piss.
Someone must’ve kicked the bodiless head on which I threw up aside because it’s no longer rolling around. Thank the Cauldron.
As my eyes adjust to the gloom, I pick out six Crows in skin milling about, heaping corpses. I don’t bother tallying up the number of dead, but I’m admittedly stunned to find so few. “Have you tossed some of the soldiers overboard?”
“What?” My father blinks away from the hillock of white stained with so much red, the Lucin uniforms appear patterned.
I gesture to the dead.
“No.” My father’s lips flatten. “That was all of them.”
“Lore said Diotto wasn’t amongst them. Did Alyona lie about meeting with him?”
“No.”
I raise my gaze to one of the portholes and gaze out at the sparkling blue beyond. “Did he board another ship?”
“No.”
I swing my attention back to my father. “So he stayed in Glace?”
My father nods just as Erwin, the man whose boots I soiled earlier, tosses one more body atop the growing mound.
“Did you get their location?” Cathal asks.
I hitch up an eyebrow.
