My mate’s chest expands with a desolate sigh.
How does it work?
I will speak a spell into his mind.Lore’s voice is rough with sorrow.Like the one I use to awaken my people. Except—except, these words will lay his humanity to rest.Another sigh rolls from his chest and into mine.Fuck,he murmurs.This is one of the times where I would give anything not to be king.
Cian’s black gaze rolls toward Lore, and he nods. My mate’s pupils tighten, giving more space to the gold, but it doesn’t glow tonight. His irises are as murky as the forest we once galloped through after Bronwen gifted me Furia.
I hold onto that memory as glittery shadows swath the man she adores. When they disband, the gentle beast is reborn into a bird so slight it could perch on my finger.
This new version of Cian peeps upward. I wonder if he holds any memory of his past life.
No,Lore says.Cian is gone.
Nevertheless, my heart twangs as he drifts away like a plucked feather.
To think my mate—to think every Crow flocking beside me almost incurred this fate.
Though the air is warm tonight, I shiver as though I was back in Glace, back in that ice cavern beneath the mountain.
I shake my head, replacing the nightmare of yesterday with the dream of tomorrow.
A tomorrow where birds can no longer be reduced to stone and steel, and where a serpent will molt from her cloak of scales and mend my father’s wrecked heart.
Ninety-Two
Ibeat my wings under the forever vigilant stares of my father and mate. Sybille and Phoebus also gape, but soon their eyes swivel toward the pink beaches that loom just ahead, while mine lower to the sea, to the pink shadow beyond the blue.
Lore slows as we approach the place where the invisible wall used to divide our world. He must ask Aoife, who carries Meriam, to take the lead, because she soars in front of the lot of us. As soon as she breaches the Shabbin airspace, the tension in Lore’s body begins to melt.
Still, he says,Fly ahead of me, my love.
Does he not trust I will be able to penetrate?
I give my wings a great pump and carve through the azure without a hitch. The second my body casts a shadow on the beach, Lore rushes to my side, while my father sinks toward the lapping waves where a massive tusk pokes out of the foam.
How do we get my mother past the ramparts?
Your father will take care of guiding her to the heart of Shabbe.
I wonder if he will need to carry her or if there’s a canal that leads inland.
Sybille whoops as she soars over the pink ramparts atop Arin and then she grows so slack-jawed that not a sound escapes from her parted mouth, only air. As Phoebus passes the great sunstone walls, his fingers tunnel into Connor’s feathers, and his bottom lip, like Sybille’s, drops.
My father told me what to expect that one carefree afternoon we spent together, but nothing could’ve prepared me for the wonder that is Shabbe. Giant waterfalls roar down the ramparts that seem to stretch and stretch until they bite into the very sky. Unlike Luce, whose topography can be likened to an open book propped page-side down on a table, Shabbe resembles a Cauldron with its curved walls and scooped valley.
Serpentines of water, edged with emerald vegetation, lace around the sunstone homes, carrying vessels from the foot of the ramparts to the valley and back. How is it even possible for boats to sail upstream? Are they powered by blood magic?
Yes,Lore says, forever attentive to my thoughts.
Astonishing.Where’s the Cauldron?Though my eyes sting from a sleepless night, I keep them peeled to absorb the abounding splendor.
In the lowest point of the valley, at the heart of your family’s castle.Lore nods to the spherical palace fashioned from the same peach sunstone as every other home in the queendom.
As we soar toward it, the sun hot on our outstretched wings, Lore regales me with tales of his first voyage to Shabbe, and how Mara sent him on a quest to prove his valor. One that included scaling the ramparts with nothing but his hands and feet.
Apparently, my father was very much against this mad quest and wanted to head back to Luce to conquer the land with swords instead of magic, but his friend refused to turn back empty-handed, so he scaled those ramparts under a sea of watchful pink eyes and glaring black ones.
I side-eye my intrepid mate.You never back down from a challenge, now do you?
