But you didn’t mind harmingyourself?Anger rides me so hard that my molars click.When were you going to tell me that you were ingesting fuckingpoison, mo Sífair?
She snorts.Never. Look at your reaction. You would’ve made me stop. And if you had, I would’ve been unconscious like Enzo and Agrippina.As she draws waves atop waves, she adds softly,That wasn’t him on the boat. Not only did he call me Daya and never once answered through the mind link, but he didn’t stutter.Her gaze suddenly snaps upward.
I think the Crows must’ve breached their ward, but a glance upward shows my daughter, Meriam, and Justus still swirling blood.
While I rake aside corpses, Daya attempts to tame her cloud of pink hair.Mara’s sling!she says suddenly.Amma says that’s the sigil I need to paint. How do I ask Behati to guide my hand? She can’t hear me.
Yourmothersays?
She and I can communicate.
Crafty Meriam. For once, I’m glad for her slyness.
How do I ask Behati, Cathal?
Write your query in blood.
And so she does. And then Behati wraps her fingers around Zendaya’s wrist, touches them to the wound atop her head, which I’d really like to see gone, and begins to paint. Whorls and whorls bisected with lines.
As they bloodcast, I keep the surrounding water clear of dead fish and dead humans, save for Agrippina. I keep her near. I suddenly see the woman Enzo “turned.” Daya was right. The unhinged boy on the boat was a sorceress playing pretend, for the Lucin female’s face is bare of tusk and her eyeballs have marked irises. The sorceresses must’ve been hiding amongst the cadavers, biding their time. The weight of a stare prickles my nape.
The Faerie healer who stabbed me in the back—fucking traitor—is watching us.
Not wanting to worry or distract Daya, I ask,Almost done?
I don’t know.
Behati peers past her intricate sigil at the one Meriam, Fallon, and Justus are doodling, and readjusts a swirl here, a line there.
Come on, come on…I shove a corpse so hard that it repels four others. Lazarus flexes his finger, pointing us out to Kanti’s inner circle. Behati must take notice, because her speed augments considerably.
Just as a dozen guards leap off either side of the embankment onto the Amkhuti’s rigid surface, Daya’s extraordinary blood ignites, its beam shooting so high that it strikes the glowing sigil above, creating a radiant column.
A heartbeat later, a tremor like I haven’t felt since Meriam vanquished her wards shakes Shabbe and propels us beneath the water.
Daya!I scream.
Right here.
Where the fuck ishere?
A ray of light nicks the obscurity. I trail it toward an elegant hand. My clever mate. I shift into my Crow and scoop her onto my back, erupting from the chaotic, toxic moat like a creature from the underworld.
Behati!she says, directing her beam toward the pale hair of the seer, who’s getting accosted on all sides.
I dip and hover my talons in front of Behati until she latches on, and then I take off just as one of the guards manages to snare the seer’s ankle. Since the former hangs strong, I fly right for the Vale, swooping just high enough so that Behati clears the cliff but not the female dangling from her foot. No, that Shabbin gets well acquainted with the flavor of sandstone.
I’m a tad tempted to head straight for Lazarus and plant a talon through his neck, but Daya asks me to carry her to the Cauldron.
Had a pleasant dip, brother?
Though hearing Lorcan’s voice gores me with relief, I’m not in the mood for humor. Not yet.Lazarus stabbed me with obsidian. He’s working with Kanti and the others. Anyway, keep him alive for me, all right?
After a beat, in a voice crackling like his sky, he says,He will be kept alive.
I’ve got Behati,Aoife says, diving beneath me.
We both hold still until the seer has taken a seat atop Imogen’s sister, and then in tandem, we set sail toward the lowest point of Shabbe.
