Something covered in yellow scales.
Sun Warrior releases another bleat, this one so shrill it vibrates the water and stabs my eardrums, as he drags me away from Crow and Queen.
Chapter 12
Zendaya
Sun Warrior swims so fast that the ocean froths and whitens. By the time I’ve gotten over my surprise at being violently bundled and carted away, the queen and Cathal are mere dots bobbing on the surface.
I try to wriggle out of Sun Warrior’s grasp, but his body is far more muscled than mine. I hiss. He doesn’t let go. I try to growl my discontent, but none of the sounds scrolling through my head spool out. Whatever language I think in mustn’t be Serpent speech since I cannot, for the life of me, craft intelligible sound in this form.
I resort to nipping at his scales with my teeth. Although stunted, they’re sharp and more numerous in this form than when I am Two-legs. Sun Warrior freezes, his spherical eyes rolling over the blood puffing off his scales like grains of burnt sand. As he swipes his forked, black tongue against my bitemark, healing the puncture wounds instantly, he sends me a scathing look.
I narrow my gaze right back on him, demanding, without words, what came over him. The only answer I get in responseis a low hiss. As brusquely as he wrapped himself around me, he releases me, pitching me far and deep.
I watch him swim away before heading toward the queen and Cathal. I’m tempted to lash the Crow’s thigh with my tongue, but remember our talk about consent. I will wait for him to be ready. Besides, considering how my stomach lurches as I drift nearer, I suspect I’ll need to be in my other form, the one where my senses aren’t as heightened.
Right before I crest the surface, I hear Priya mutter, “My child’s no longer your mate, Cathal.”
The wordmatestills both my thoughts and ascent. Cathal has a mate, or rather,hadone, and she is Priya’s child? Who is her child, and why is she no longer Cathal’s mate? I linger just beneath their fluttering feet in the hopes I’ll hear more on the subject, but the next thing out of the queen’s mouth is a threat to banish the Crow from Shabbe if he ever intercedes with my lessons again.
I will my body to shift, and it does, right before I crest the surface. I can’t even rejoice that I’m getting better at swapping forms, too agitated am I over the animosity that ripples around me.
When my head pops out, my caregivers both turn. Where Cathal doesn’t even attempt to mask his anger, Priya curls her lips into a smile that is clearly just for show, for it hides all her teeth.
“Already done?” she asks.
I nod.
“How was it? Were you able to communicate?”
I shake my head.
“Maybe next time.”
I doubt it since he speaks in resonances instead of syllables.
“Would you like me to remove him from the Amkhuti or would you like for him to stay so you can meet up later?”
Cathal mutters something in Crow that is as incomprehensible to me as Serpent bleating. The queen slices her gaze toward him, comprehending him just fine.
“Cathal, understand birds that no shift?” My question redirects the queen’s stare.
“No. I do not. Lore can transfer images into their minds through thought, but we possess no common tongue, so why Priya imagines you’ll share one with an animal baffles me.”
“I was hoping Daya would find comfort in her fellow creature’s company.”
“Shifters are her fellow creatures,” he growls. “Not animals.”
“You may share the power to shift forms, but Daya isn’t one of you.”
“How Crow made?” I suddenly ask.
“They mate the same way humans do,” Priya huffs. “In bare flesh.”
I frown.
“She asked how they weremade, Sumaca,” Cathal grumbles, “not how they fucked.”
