After flattening us, the liquid muscle of our world plucks our bodies off the corals and floats us up. Justus blinks like a newborn babe as we rise, his knuckles whitening around Antoni’s log of a body when a serpent circles the three of us.
I part my lips. Timidly at first. When my lungs expand like sea sponges, I part my mouth wider and breathe in the deep. Wonder purls through my body and ripples through my blood. My extraordinary, magical blood.
Even though Meriam was the one to take away my gift, I cannot help but feel grateful that she’s given it back.
A shadow slinks through the copse of hoveringmareserpens, and although it holds no human attribute—or Crow one—I know exactly who’s drawing nearer. When that shadow breaches the distance between us and spirals up and down my body before assuming the human shape I glimpsed outside Xema Rossi’s front door, the corners of my mouth rise so high that my cheeks ache almost as terribly as my heart.
When my dress puffs like fried dough, revealing my myriad of wounds, Lore curses in Crow, then grows worryingly quiet as he inspects each and every one of them.
I will murder them all.He watches the widening crevasse beneath us, as though hoping that Faeries will start funneling out.
I’m afraid no one else will be joining our reunion.
Where’s Meriam?
Dante took her with him when he fled.
His gaze scrolls over the two men at my side, settling on Justus whose ponytail is being nibbled on by a large white fish. In the fish’s defense, my grandfather’s hair does resemble fire-hued seaweed.
Did you miss me?
With a gentle grunt, Lore murmurs,Did I miss you?He strokes the edge of my jaw, the curve of my cheek, the point of my chin, the tips of my lashes.
What? No smart quip?
No, Behach Éan. My mind and heart are too full of brutal deliberations for humor.
Attempting to ease the tempest tossing the gold in his eyes, I point to my neck.I canbreathe underwater thanks to gills I painted in blood on my skin.
His liquid shadows slick over my throat, raising goosebumps on the skin that absorbed my blood.I wish I could’ve been the one to make your dream of possessing magic come true.
I thread my fingers through the smoky wisps of hair, wishing they were solid.I have many other dreams, Lore. Most of which no one else but you can grant.
Good.His spectral touch dances across my collarbone before curving around my neck, and somehow clasping it. And then he presses his forehead to mine, and although he is but smoke, I can feel the strength of his bones and the silk of his skin.
My eyes slip closed when his shadows graze my parted lips, firm yet soft, eliciting a full-body shudder from me.Where is your fallen crow?
Instead of answering me, he asks,Are we keeping the Faeries at your side alive?
My lids slam up, my lashes carving through his darkness.Yes.My rapid intake of breath shoots bubbles into the sand-riddled water between us.The same way we’re keeping all of their limbs attached to their trunks.
Lore makes a low sound at the back of his throat that tells me he isn’t pleased with my request, nevertheless, he doesn’t slink over to Justus to instill fear in the general, who, considering the snow-white knuckles crimping Antoni’s ankle, has no need for an additional source of anxiety.
You left me. Not once.He gazes at the gutted ocean floor.But twice.
I thumb the velvet frame of his face.And I returned to you. Not once, but twice.
His eyes rove over mine, hunting their depths, for what . . . I’m not entirely sure. A promise never to leave his side again?
I will always find you, Lore.
One would have to be blind not to find something forever in their line of sight.
I grin.
I’m not jesting, mo khrà.
I know.I keep grinning even though he does not. I fear our time apart has eroded his ability to laugh.
