I love you, sweet Asha.
“Have the children lost consciousness? Were we right about the curse of the shifter monarch?” Kanti asks, just as hair that’s too long to be Cathal’s coils around my bicep.
I whirl to find it’s Agrippina’s. I stroke her cheek, then touch the base of her neck to make sure her heart beats. The exhale that drifts through my teeth is so powerful, it manages to relax my jaw.
All of a sudden, two hands shape my waist. I must go rigid, because Cathal murmurs,It’s me, mo Sífair. Just me.
“I heard the boy’s voice, so I don’t think it applies to this new shifter breed.” Aori’s bright eyes tighten on Cathal. “Unless Daya’s not knocked out?”
“The boat’s hull was packed with Serpent poison.” Kanti grabs onto my ladder and climbs. “Not to mention I started dosing the Amkhuti the second we got home in case you couldn’t get the boat inside. There’s no way she’s conscious.”
I glance over Cathal’s shoulder at the red robe ballooning around the seer’s child-sized body, picture her white cane again, the dead barracuda, the colorless coral. Pity plaits with my anger and my thirst for revenge. They used her just like they used me. I kick away from Cathal.
Where are you going?he asks.
I’m going to wake Behati, for I could use a little guidance to shatter these wards.
“We’re coming, abi.” Water snakes into my flaring nostrils at the sound of my mother’s voice.
My throat tightens. I press my palm to my forehead and coax out my invisibility spell, done hiding.
“I see you, batee,” she murmurs.
The worddaughtergusts warmth down my spine. I don’t ask whether she sent me the corpses because I know it cannot be her, but I do ask, “You haven’t killed lots of humans recently, have you?”
“Humans? No.”
My ribcage swells with relief. The killer—killers—must’ve worn Meriam’s face when they committed their heinous crimes, which is why BehatisawMeriam. If only the Mahananda could’ve seenthroughtheir spell. I dip my fingers in my headwound, reawakening the sting which had abated, and stripe Behati’s throat. Her spine arches. Her lashes flutter.
“Your magic works underwater…” I hear a smile in Meriam’s voice.“How incredible.”
For a moment, Behati floats there on her back like the benumbed fish, like the corpses fanned around us. Though Cathal’s wings had driven them away, they’re closing in around us once more. Behati startles and kicks her legs. She must whack her head against the ward, because with a hard blink, she sinks, and air bubbles stream from her nostrils.
She flattens her hands against the red fabric puffing around her bowed, bony legs as though to keep a wall between her and the dead, and then she reaches up. It’s only when her fingers connect with the skin of magic that she sees me. Her mouth rounds around my name, then around Cathal’s.
I proffer my hand. When her fingers slide over mine, I tell Cathal,Hold on to me.
The instant his fingers pinch my waist again, I draw the lock sigil and flatten my palm against it. My heart slams with anticipation for the revenge I will reap.
But then it slams with something else: frustration.
Chapter 71
Cathal
Our three bodies don’t magically glide through the congealed surface. Zendaya draws a circle to shear a hole through the wards. The black ring of blood just sits there like a stroke of charcoal. I give my mate’s waist a squeeze.
Tell me, mo Sífair, how’s this water not affecting you?
I’ve been dosing myself.
…Pardon?
I’ve been ingesting flakes of the poison since Isolacuori. Asha read that taking a little each day can build a tolerance. And it has.
I cannot decide whether to growl at Daya for having taken such a risk or praise her farsightedness.How come Agrippina’s out?
Because, until I knew for certain whether it would work, I didn’t want to harm my Serpents.
