I don’t dare speak, afraid my breath will blow her fingers off my skin.
“I’m aware that you didn’t stay behind in Shabbe to?—”
When her lips stop moving and her hand grows slack, I blow out an atypically nervy, “To…?”
But her eyes have gone bone-white. My heart damn near detonates until I remember the same thing happening to Priya’s eyes when the Cauldron conversed with her.
Still, I spin my hand and scoop Daya’s fingers before they can tumble away from mine and curl them into my palm. The trance lasts a fucking eternity. Cruaih wakes and stretches. And then she licks my quivering thumb. She must sense my anguish because she winches her neck and peers up at me.
“Everything’s okay, Misery,” I promise her. “Go drink some milk.”
She gives my thumb a quick cheek rub before traipsing toward the glazed ceramic dish heaped with crumbs which Asha set beside a bowl of milk. Though my kitten lapped at themilk, the dried food won her over, to Asha’s immense pleasure. Recalling how she gloated helps quiet my ramping nerves.
“Come back to me, Príona,” I murmur.In every way, come back to me, Zendaya of Shabbe.
Chapter 52
Zendaya
Iemerge from the darkness with the Mahananda’s words still prickling my temples.
Fingers tighten around mine—Cathal’s. He hasn’t left. And not only that, but he holds my hand.
I swallow, then squeeze his fingers and murmur, “I thought I’d slipped into the Mahananda.”
He doesn’t say anything, his gaze roving over my face, hounding each furrow for a sign of distress. Or perhaps he’s trying to extract what the Mahananda had to say. When its words scroll through my mind, I snare my bottom lip.
“What is it? What did the Cauldron say?”
“That it cannot—it cannot undo what Taytah led it to do.”
His eyebrows ruffle, bend, ruffle.
“It cannot immunize Lorcan to obsidian.” I lower my attention to our twined hands before he spots the lie. The truth is that the Mahanandacanmake Lorcan and his people impervious to the toxin, but it would cost Fallon her Crow magic, for the cure is braided into it.
“It’s more complicated than that, isn’t it?”
I nibble on the inside of my cheek. “It is.” I hesitate to tell him. He might be Fallon’s father, but would he pick her over his race? I hate the thought almost as much as I hate possessing the coveted solution to the Crows’ curse.
“It concerns our daughter, doesn’t it?”
I meet his shadowed gaze. “Don’t ask me to tell you, for I will demand an oath of silence from you if I do.”
He balks. “Do you think I’d endanger our daughter?”
“If it could benefit your people?—”
“What sort of monster do you think I am, Zendaya?” He sets down my hand and straightens, his knees clicking in time with his knuckles. “I wouldneverhurt our daughter.Never.” He jams a hand through his disheveled locks. “She’s one of the only reasons I didn’t ask Lorcan to turn me into a forever-Crow.”
Am I the other?As I roll up to sitting, I nip this query in the bud because this isn’t the time and place for it. “Swear that if you’re ever asked whether the Mahananda gave me the solution to your curse, you will lie.”
He side-eyes me, anger jostling not just the air between us but inside the entire throne room. “I wish you’d trust me.”
“This has nothing to do with trust, Cathal.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“No. This has to do with slips-of-the-tongue, torture sessions, or confessions whispered upon pillows. I’ve heard that people have a tendency to reveal all in the throes of passion.” When he gapes at me, I add, “I hold this fact from several different sources: Taytah, Asha, Agrippina, Sybille,andPhoebus.”
