I turn and crane my neck to look into my mate’s face. “Please, Lore.”
I’ll have his body wrapped in a bedsheet and carried out of the house before we burn it to the ground.
You’re going to burn the house down?
I want to wipe Costa from the face of this Earth.His smoky fingers tighten around my hip.I want everything he ever touched gone. Everything he ever made removed. The only place he’ll exist will be in the history books we will write, so that his malevolence is never forgotten.
“Fallon!” The gruff voice makes me jump, but it also makes me smile, because I know exactly who’s speaking.
Thirty-Nine
Although crossing the threshold into the house of horrors shoots a shiver into my spine, the sight of my father striding across the foyer in all his leather and iron regalia whisks it away. Without hesitation, he opens his arms and I fall into them.
I twine my own arms around his waist, barely reaching fully around what with his cuirass, armor, and girth.
“Ínon. . .” The whispered word fordaughterin Crow is a raspy murmur so full of grief that it quivers like the thick fingers sailing through the wet mass of my hair. He murmurs my name a great many times, gathering me into his large body like a mamma bear gathers her young.
Strange how an embrace, a scent, the timbre of a voice can kindle familiarity even though our interactions have been so few and far between.
“I’m sorry for disappearing again, Dádhi.” His heart thuds hard against the cheek I’ve rested on his chest.
“Not your fault. Not your fault,” he murmurs.
But isn’t it a little? Yes, Bronwen told me Lore needed saving, but I could’ve sought a second opinion. I could’ve asked my father to accompany me. I assume she’d have found a way to impede me from doing so, but I didn’t even try.
My father gives me one last bone-crushing squeeze before letting go.
How I wish I could’ve returned with my mother.Just as I’m about to tell him that Justus knows where she is, Erwin passes by us, a lumpy white form hooked over his shoulder. A whimper slips from my lips because a white braid peeks from the bedsheet.
Fallon, go wake Aoife and Imogen so we may go home.
Lore must tell my father to lead the way because he wheels around, tracking mud across Xema’s white floors. “They’re upstairs in the Rossi matriarch’s bedroom.”
Guilt drips under my skin as I realize that leading Dante into the Rossi household could’ve turned out deadly for Vance. I brush away my remorse and focus on the sprawling seaside manor, on the mammoth living area with its white velvet couches and turquoise throw pillows.
When we pass in front of the seashell mirror, I stiffen. Although Dante’s no longer clutching me to him, I see him there, standing beside me, and it chills my blood. The mirror blackens, then shatters, and I think I just made that happen, but I don’t possess that sort of power. Lore does, though.
We pass the bedroom in which I . . . in which I killed a good man.
Don’t.Lore’s single sharply-spoken word drags my eyes away from the closed door but does little to drag my guilt from where it festers beneath my ribs.
A moment later, one of the Crows bringing up the rear says, “Immediately, Mórrgaht.”
I wonder what he’s asked.
That they gather oil from the kitchen and douse the house.His cool fingers stroke the faint groove between my eyebrows.I may not be able to obliterate your nightmares, Behach Éan, but I can eradicate their source.
My heart swells and my eyes prick for a whole other reason than the memory of driving a sword through a friend.
But of course, the second I think of Cato, a flash of white, of red . . . of so much red brightens my lids. Though Lore’s shadows blanket me, the memory of Cato’s bleeding throat hits me hard and fast, scraping what little warmth Lore managed to ignite within me.
To keep the tears at bay, I focus on the glossy white marble stairs framed by golden mosaic that gives it the look of a carpet. The first-story hallway is large and airy, with a skylight cut through the ceiling. The dull dawn grays the marble but polishes the golden squares of glass that border the white up here as well. It’s objectively a lovely house, the sort of oceanside home I would’ve dreamed of living in.
The oceanside home I will build us will be far lovelier, mo khrà.
Oceanside?
You may not have scales, but you’re part Shabbin, and Shabbins need the ocean.
