But then he says something that makes a lot of sense. “I will kill Abrax and Asha.”
I snap my rope of hair behind my shoulders, then stalk up to the Crow and hiss, “If harm them, I kill you.”
That knocks his lips shut. It also knocks his eyebrows low. So low that the black arcs of hair tangle with the swoop of his thick lashes.
I poke him in the chest with a finger—it feels like poking a wall—and warn him that I’m serious, then toss my hands in the air and bellow, “Look me. I safe!”
My exclamation gives me pause. In which language are we arguing? It’s the first time the syllables pop so naturally off my tongue that I cannot tell.
I stretch my lips over more words, speaking slower this time—not for the Crow’s sake, but for my mind’s. “Glad you leave tonight.”Shabbin.Definitely Shabbin.
It’s as though anger has made all the words I’ve learned layer themselves over their Serpent equivalents.
I’m still reeling from this phenomenon when Cathal’s mouth slits into a crooked smile that demolishes my wonder.
I fold my arms. “Why you smile?”
“Because,Príona”—he takes a step into my body, the leather cuirass he wears over his long-sleeved black top punching into my little beads—“I’m not going anywhere.” The corner of his mouth that hadn’t yet lifted flips upward.
“But Abrax say all Crows?—”
“Except me.”
“But you second to King.”
“You hid your hand well, Daya.”
Though both my hands are buried beneath my elbows, I don’t understand what their position has to do with our conversation.
“Barely one full moon cycle, and you’re fluent in Shabbin. Is that how long it will take you to master Crow?”
I still don’t grasp the connection between my hands and my understanding, but I choose to focus on a more pressing matter. “Why you no leave?”
“Because I do not trust Asha and Abrax. Or you, for that matter.”
My arms tighten. “You no trust towhat?”
“I don’t trust them to keep you safe, and I don’t trust you not to find a way into the ocean.”
“I belong to ocean,” I remind him.
“No, you belong to—” He stops talking so suddenly that I peer around the tall shrubs aglow with star blooms and phosphorescent moths, assuming that we have company.
We don’t.
I cant my head. “Where I belong, Dádhi Cathal?”
He blinks. Then blinks again. And then he grimaces. “Dádhi?”
“Isn’t that name?”
His lids squeeze so hard that his lambent gaze becomes a striation on his kohl-striped face, like those iridescent veins in sunstone. “It’s not a name anyone but Fallon should be using.”
“Why?”
“Because it means Father in Crow.”
Oh.
