I drag my fingers through the steam filming my mirror and articulate the title she’s asked me to call her: “Taytah.”Mother of my mother. I suppose it’s appropriate since she’s the Mahananda’s keeper and I’m its daughter, though it admittedly feels a little odd to have a special word for her when she insists everyone else—save for Fallon—call her Priya or Sumaca.
I start over: “Taytah, I no desire Cathal; I desire other Crow—Aodhan.” I’ve noticed that if I add volume to my pitch, it abates my hissing, but powering my words means making them ring louder.
Am I ready for Shabbe to hear my odd voice?No. But am I ready to be rid of the male who doesn’t trust me?Yes.
Chapter 7
Zendaya
The queen sits at one end of a long banquet table, Lorcan at the other. Relief fills me when I glimpse Fallon at his side. Even though the tendons in the male’s neck are strained and Fallon’s eyes shimmer beneath her black stripes, the mated pair must’ve reconciled if they’re sharing a meal.
I twist a greeting around my tongue, but a snatched glance around the crowded table has me gulping it back. Every member of the Akwale has been invited to dine, as well as every Crow from Lorcan’s Siorkahd.
A chorus of “Good evening, Rajka” pronounced in thick Crow accents echoes off the tall sky-bloom hedges and glittery flagstones that hem in the garden dining area. I’m tempted to reply with words, but my breastbone grows hot and I smoosh my lips. I do, though, dip my head while folding myself into the seat beside Priya’s.
Just as one of the Shabbin attendants tucks my chair close to the stone table, Cathal makes his appearance and drops into the last empty seat, which he scrapes in himself. The conversation, which hushed when I arrived, resumes.
The Shabbin Queen leans forward and slides her elbows onto the table. Her split sapphire sleeves, bound around her wrists by jeweled gold cuffs, billow open around her sun-kissed arms. “You were saying, Lorcan? The Crows in the forest…they still bleed?”
Fascinated once more by my flawless comprehension, I almost miss the Sky King’s reply.
“That’s correct. They awakened on their own, but their wounds won’t seal.”
“Fallon’s did,” the Shabbin monarch replies, her pink eyes tangling with Fallon’s violet.
“Fallon was in the Cauldron, Sumaca.” The reminder’s spoken by the black-skinned, white-haired female who’s part of Lorcan’s inner circle.
I vaguely remember her attending my “rebirth,” but do not recall her name. The single detail that did stick with me is that she mothered Phoebus’s lover and grandmothered Reid, a male who comes often to Shabbe.
Kanti, who loves little more than discussing people, says he travels here to visit Fallon’s Faerie mother, Agrippina Rossi, who—still according to Kanti—has a broken brain. I’m unsure what this means, besides the fact that Kanti, who I’ve heard discussmyreptilian brain with the Akwale, seems to have a fascination with the insides of heads.
“The Crows back in Luce…” Imogen—Aoife’s older sister and one of the few people whose company Cathal enjoys—breaks off a piece of fried, phosphorescent algae and nibbles on its corners. “Their wounds are festering.” Though her coloring is the same as her sister’s, her features are sharper—bladed.
“Have your injured Crows tried serpent healing?” Behati asks.
“The serpents won’t approach them.” Lorcan flexes his jaw. “You know Crows and serpents have never been…” When hecatches me sitting up straighter, straining to hear his next words, he says, “We’re hoping that Fallon will be able to weave relations between our two species.”
“Fallon andme,” Kanti says. “Have you forgotten that I’ll be joining you in Luce?”
“How could we forget?” Fallon grimaces. “You’ve reminded us hourly since Behati foresaw how instrumental you’ll be at seducing one of our many enemies.”
“Have you foreseen which enemy, Behati?” Lorcan leans forward. “I have so many…”
“The Mahananda hasn’t given me a name or shown me a face. It’s only shown me that Kanti must head to Tarespagia.”
Two-legs’ politics is so tedious, everyone vying for power and control. Why can’t the world above the ocean be as simple as the one beneath, where minnows do not aspire to become barracudas, and barracudas do not desire to duel me?
“Cathal, your wound? Has it improved?” Aza’s query makes the Crow’s dark stare lift from his bare plate and settle on the strikingly beautiful Shabbin with hair the same sapphire-black as Crow feathers.
“It hasn’t worsened,” he mutters to the youngest member of the Akwale.
Priya snaps her fingers. “Call for my healer.”
Two guards whirl and disappear behind a hedge.
“There are plenty of serpents in the Sahklare.” Aza’s expression is alight with satisfaction, as though she’s singlehandedly solved the Crows’ tribulations. “You could go for a dip with your daughter while you wait.”
Cathal mutters something in Crow that makes the black-haired beauty narrow her eyes. “It’s not a trick. We do not trick people. The Mahananda does not trick.”
