As I make my way to Aoife, Lore rasps,Yes. One entire. Fucking. Month.Although his features are hazy like mist, his expression is as hard as glass. He looks about ready to shatter and rain shards all over Xema’s dresses.
I crouch beside my friend whose lips were frozen around a scream. I understand why Bronwen pushed me into the devil’s arms, but she had no need to steal a month of life from Aoife.
I push a lock of hair out of my eyes, then grip the arrow protruding from my friend’s side and pull. I don’t marvel when it slips free. I’m far too angry to marvel. I clasp her stone hand as her skin loses its onyx hue and softens. The horror trapped inside her lungs rushes past her lips, a wispy shout that clocks my heart.
I squeeze her fingers and murmur an apology. I don’t realize I’ve started crying until a tear drops onto our twined hands and races around my knuckles. When I feel her squeeze my fingers back, more tears flow down my cheeks . . . more apologies flow from my trembling lips.
Imogen kneels beside her sister, taking her face between her palms. Aoife’s lips part, but like her sister, she’s mute. As Imogen leans over Aoife to press their foreheads together, I release my friend’s hand and rush out of the closet, out onto the terrace. I grip the railing and tip my face up, allowing Lore’s rain to wash away my sadness, his thunder to drown out the thuds of my heart, his lightening to sear my murky thoughts.
Lore envelops me from behind, his chin falling against the top of my head, his arms winding around my middle.Not your fault, Behach Éan. Not. Your. Fault.
I may no longer bleed on the outside, but how I bleed on the inside. I bleed rage because everything is my fault!
Everything!
My desire to murder Dante expands along with a cry that finds its way out of me. Again and again, I scream, pouring my anger into the storm until my lungs ache and my throat feels as raw as my bruised body.
Lore waits until I’m done, stroking and caressing the wet column of my throat, gliding his mouth across my hair and his pewter nails across my waist.
Take me home, Lore.
He morphs into his Crow and crouches so that I may climb atop him. Once my arms are firmly secured around his neck, he springs away from Xema’s terrace and takes us high dizzyingly fast. I suck in the rain and the cold air as we rise into an ocean of clouds and black feathers.
Crows swarm the heavens, assembling under Lore, next to Lore, but none above him, because danger will never come from the sky, only from the land. Although my father doesn’t have a distinguishing feature in this form, I know exactly where he is, and not because he’s carrying Justus—on his back, this time—but because there’s something in his corvine expression, in the watchful, soulful gleam of his dark eyes that is unmistakably him.
Justus is just as pale now as he was when my father fished him from the ocean, but there’s a hint of awe in his face as he surveys the sandstone avenues dotted with giant palms and the neat rows of estates that sprawl down the coastline of Tarespagia in various shades of blue and white. Unlike in the east where houses are rainbow-colored, here, these seem to have been constructed as an extension of the great ocean that slaps the crescent of white sand in great, foamy rolls.
I cannot believe my father allowed Justus to sit atop his back.Not that the Faerie can do much without obsidian, but still . . .
He knows where your mother is and bargained with Cathal. He promised to lead him to Daya if he gave him and his son safe passage to Monteluce.
Sure enough, a few paces away, Vance dangles from another Crow’s talons, looking more Yuletide ornament than man.
Since he hasn’t shared her location with you yet.Although not voiced as a question, it sounds like one.
He struck a bargain with me for a tell-all after we emerged from the tunnels.I cannot help the admiration that curls within me. What a cunning man he is . . . Keeping all his aces close to his chest. I need to learn to do that.
Cunningness is birthed by chariness. The less you trust, the more secrets you horde to use as currency.With a great sigh, he adds,In a few centuries, you should be just as wily as the rest of us.
A few centuries. . . When I still believed myself a halfling, I imagined my life would span three to four hundred years. To think that now, barring any unforeseen blade to my aorta, or to my mother’s, or to Meriam’s, I’ll live far longer than that.
Forever,Lore murmurs.You’ll live forever.
Wewill live forever.
The scent of smoke punches up my nose.
I glance over Lore’s body to find flames gamboling over the white rooftop of Xema’s house . . . Costa’s home.
I owe you an apology, mo khrà.
For?
For not believing you when you told me that Meriam was in Tarespagia. For not exploring the possibility that the rodent tunnels the Fae spent centuries building under Luce could link to the refuge Costa built for himself after he stabbed me. But most of all, I’m sorry for my attempt at preserving the peace the day you made me whole. I should’ve eradicated the Regios from our world right there and then.
Except you would’ve lost your humanity.
Not if another hand than mine had accomplished the deed.
