The wait is so endless that I sidle down one of the stone walls and gather my knees against my trembling chest. I don’t knowhow long I sit there, hunched in the shadows, watching shards of candlelight dance on the sunstone floor, but it feels endless. Like Lorcan’s earlier storm hasn’t just beat the sun back beneath the ramparts of Shabbe but extinguished it forever.
For the first time since my birth, I loathe the darkness.
Fallon does not get scales.I should feel relief; I don’t.
When she returns from her dip in the Mahananda, her eyes are bright, her cheeks even brighter. She exudes happiness. She is the only one who does, though. Priya seems to have aged a century, Cathal is as grim as he was when she left, and Lorcan…he is as taciturn as I am guilt-ridden.
His lips don’t even bend when Fallon skips through the ward, clutching the dagger between her palms. She presents it to him. He doesn’t take it.
She turns toward her father and urges him to seize it…totry it. Lips flat, jaw hard, he relieves her of the blade and rolls it between his palms, as though to test its weight, before strangling the hilt with his huge fingers and propelling the blade into his muscled thigh.
I suck in a breath.
I don’t expel it.
Even though I’m still crouched in the shadows, the fragrance of his blood reaches me, wrapping itself around me until my tongue tingles with the need to lap and seal his wounded flesh. I resist the urge. He is Crow. He will heal on his own. He does not need me.
Yet I picture myself kneeling in front of him and licking at his torn flesh. Would he grimace like Fallon’s friend, Sybille, the day I’d healed the scrape she’d gotten on her palm while climbing out of the Amkhuti?
Priya scans the obscure Kasha, presumably for me. Sure enough, when she spots my form, she takes off in my direction, asking Lorcan something about his fallen Crows. Did they awaken?Awaken?
He nods, and then he does something I never imagined him capable of: he walks right past Fallon and asks her not to follow him, before shifting into five crows and taking to the steel-colored sky. The pink flush of delight in Fallon’s cheeks recedes as she watches her mate leave. Cathal drapes his arm around her curled shoulders and gathers her into his chest. His lips move over a whisper, probably a reassurance that her mate will return.
Are Fallon and Lorcan still mates? He spoke aloud to her. Does that mean?—
The Shabbin Queen’s shadow drapes over me. With a sigh, she murmurs an apology for leaving me in the dark. Does she mean in the shadows of the Kasha, or by not explaining what was about to happen? She tells me that Fallon is safe. Unharmed. That she broke the Crows’ obsidian curse. Then she crouches before me and lays her scarred palms on my knees. “EmMoti,kaeneh shileh.”
I frown because I do not know what she’s asking menot to do. “Shileh?” I croak.
The sound of my voice makes her lids flutter. Her eyes begin to shine and then her mouth begins to curve. She reaches over and touches my cheek. And then she holds her fingertip in front of my eyes. It glistens with moisture. “Shil.”
I palm my cheeks that are as wet as when I surface from my swims. Where is this water coming from? Did my skin absorbthe Amkhuti? I lick the moisture…taste salt. Why is seawater dribbling from my eyes?
Priya must read my alarm because she offers me a gentle smile. And then she takes my fingers and brings them to her cheek. I frown until I catch a bead of moisture sliding out of the corner of her eye. “Shil.”
I blink, because she isn’t Serpent, yet the ocean also flows down her cheeks.
She places a kiss inside my palm, then releases my wrist to glide her hands on either side of my head. My mind fills with images of wet lashes.Everyone, I hear her whisper,shileh.
She must mean all land creatures, for if serpents shed water from their eyes, I’d have a word for it, and I don’t. She takes my hand once more, this time to steer me back toward the others. Fallon’s crimson-veined eyes and wet cheeks draw another sigh from Priya, who assures her that the male will return. The queen presses a kiss to my forehead, then to Fallon’s, before retreating to her chambers, flanked by her guards.
Fallon’s lips wobble. It hurts me to see her like this. “Soliya, Mádhi.”Sorry, Maji.
Why is she apologizing to me? Before I can ask, she races out of the Kasha.
Concern over the Lucin monarchs’ mating link takes precedence over her apology. I turn toward Cathal and tap my forehead, pointing between the blur of gold that’s his daughter and the gloomy sky. His eyebrows sink toward his crooked nose. I should use words, but it’s suddenly so quiet that I worry my voice will reach farther than just his ears.
“Foroshock,” he suddenly says.
Foroshock? What does that mean? He must be speaking in his tongue again.
I push a lock of hair off my face, trying to wrangle it behind my ear, but the strand refuses to cooperate. “Nahen behiboleh Crow.”No speak Crow.
He dips his chin, pinning me with a look that makes heat tiptoe up my neck and into my cheeks.
“Krehiya,” I add, feeling like adding the wordpleasewill soften his irritation.
For a couple heartbeats, he just glares, and then his mouth curls and laughter leaps out.
