I’m starting to wonder whether Cathal visited me at all while I convalesced or if Asha made that up—but why would she?
“So Kanti’s in Nebba?” I ask Taytah one evening, peering over her shoulder at the parchment she’s inking with her signature.
“She needed a change of scenery.” She folds her letter to Eponine, the one thanking her for hosting Kanti in this time of great unrest. “Aren’t you glad I sent her there instead of urging her to come home?”
“You’re not keeping her away because the Mahananda has yet to make me immortal, correct?”
Her mouth remains so immobile that it seems as though she doesn’t even breathe, but then it moves over a quick promise: “Your cousin would never harm you.” She picks up a stick of blood-red wax and her royal stamp.
Though a sigil could melt the wax, she holds it over one of the large candles burning on the middle of the enormous slab of sunstone. Once the wax is soft, she drips some over the creamy seam of her folded parchment before pressing the Shabbin crest into it.
In seconds, it’s dry, yet she doesn’t lift her metal stamp immediately.
“I’d like to go to Tarespagia, Taytah.”
I expect a categorical no, but instead I get a, “Why?”
“Agrippina would like to see her father and I’d like to see Cathal.”
“I’ll send for them both.”
With a sigh, I say, “Taytah, you cannot keep me locked in a bubble for the rest of my life.”
“It isn’t for the rest of your life, emMoti.”
“No, it’s only until the Mahananda grants me immortality. What if it never does?”
Again, she drifts into a harsh silence. I’m about to ask about Enzo to distract her from the touchy subject of my immortality—or lack thereof—when she says, “Every Shabbin Queen has been immortal.”
“What if I don’t become queen?”
“You will.”
“What if I don’twantto become queen?”
She holds my stare. “You are my heiress, Zendaya.”
“So is Meriam.”
Again, she hisses. “Never speak her name?—”
Her eyes suddenly blanch. I remain silent, wishing the Mahananda would reach out to me again, but since guiding metoward Agrippina, it hasn’t poured any more words into my mind.
The queen blinks the haze away, the line of her mouth hardening as her gaze tightens on the wax seal.
“Any chance it told you how I’m to become immortal?” I ask, when she hasn’t volunteered anything.
She stays quiet for so long that I think my question doesn’t register, but then she shakes her head. “No. It merely informed me that it’s almost ready to receive Lorcan or whichever Crow needs his curse removed.”
“No!” someone shouts.
I jump and my heart misses a beat. I twist toward the doors of the Kasha only to find them closed.
As I squint around the room and then at the glass ceiling, new words shatter the stillness: “Your mother holds the key to your immortality. Find her.”
My eyes widen and my skin tingles, because I suddenly realize who the voice belongs to. I lick my lips. “Taytah?”
She’s carefully putting away her wax stick and seal in a box inlaid with nacre. “Yes?”
