Since she’s still alive, I assume she was forgiven.
I’ll never forgive her, Behach Éan, but I will also never take her away from Cian.
His shadows firm into two giant crows that lift me from the careening surf, and it’s only once I’m airborne that I notice from where we emerged.
I grip his talons.How could you take such a risk?
What risk, Behach Éan?
To shift into your crows so close to the Tarespagian coastline.
Even though the Faeries staring up at us are as trifling as ants, and none are brandishing obsidian spears, I cannot help the spasms crimping my stomach at the sight of a beach dark with people, some turbaned, others with hair so long it flutters around their upturned faces like wild grass.
I dare because Tarespagia is ours, mo khrà.
Since when?
Since we strong-armed Tavo into drawing up an agreement. One that Dante signed just two days ago.
My brow furrows because it seems odd that Dante would give up the land under which he was hiding. Seems odd that he would give upanyland for that matter. Not to mention that, to my knowledge, he didn’t leave his grandfather’s home. Especially after I took out his eye.
What was that about Dante’s eye?Lore asks as we land amidst a dozen other Crows in front of Xema Rossi’s gaping front door.
I may have punctured it with an iron blade.I raise a proud smile as Lore morphs into his shadowy self.I was aiming for his throat, so it was a bit of a miss but not a complete fail.
My mate’s arms glide around my waist and tug me into him.Remind me never to get on your bad side.
I rest my cheek against his chest and drink in his strong heartbeats, wishing that my mate was whole and his skin solid.Where is your fallen crow, Lore?
He presses a featherlight kiss to my forehead.Let’s awaken Aoife and Imogen, and then we’ll deal with my fallen crow.
Six Crows in skin march past us into the home, probably to ascertain that no enemies lurk in a dusky corner.Couldanyone still be here? I spin around, anxiety nibbling at my insides.Lore, perhaps take to the sky, in case—
What part of ‘I’m never leaving your side again’eluded you, mo khrà?
I roll my eyes that sting from exhaustion, salt, and tears.Gods, I forgot how stubborn you were.
He brackets my face between gentle palms, tipping it up and up, toward those pools of liquid gold that have devoured me alive since the very first day they alighted upon me.I cannot lose you again, Fallon. I will not survive it. Theworldwill not survive it.
I stare at the hazy outline of his lips and press up on my toes to reach them. Lore must gather his shadows into his face because my mouth meets something solid and cool like the surface of Mareluce at night, like the glass of my windowpane in the dead of winter.
His mouth doesn’t move against mine; it just rests there, inhaling the breaths I exhale, fluttering my lips with nippy heartbeats, which I soak up and store inside every cell of my body.
“The house is secure, Mórrgaht.” The deep voice pulls me from the tranquility of my mate’s kiss and plunges me back into the damp and chilly here and now. Lore must ask something else of the man because he says, “Two. They’ve been removed.”
“Two what?” I ask as I pull away from Lore to peer at the giant, russet-haired male whose head barely clears the outsized doorframe.
I faintly remember him from dinner at the Sky Tavern. I dig through my mind until his name returns: Erwin, the man who went to Nebba with my father on that fool’s errand intended to keep my father distracted.
“Two bodies, milady.”
My blood goes as clammy as my skin. “Where did you put them?”
Out of your sight,Lore murmurs.
“The white-haired one.” When my lips begin to tremble, I lick them, and it somehow eases the cry bubbling inside my heart. “I want to—I want to give him a proper burial.”
Erwin stares beyond me at Lore, waiting for his command.
