He hangs his head and palms the back of it, mussing his—for once—tamed locks. “For you to understand our tongue, our customs, the way the world worked. We were afraid that telling you too soon would confuse and frighten you.”
It still does. I am confused and I am frightened because I’m not sure what to do. How to act. What is expected of me now? Does Fallon even want a mother? She’s all grown up. Not to mention that I don’t even know what being a mother entails. I imagine it’s loving your child and not killing her.
I have a child.
Yet something keeps niggling me. “What Mamma mean?”
“It’s the Lucin way of saying Amma or Mádhi in Crow. Why?”
“Fallon call Agrippina Mamma.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“Yes…?” I prompt, when he still doesn’t shed light as to why Fallon would call someone, who didn’t give birth to her, Mamma.
“Agrippina and Ceres raised Fallon.”
Because I couldn’t. Because my mother ended my life.
I didn’t get to raise my child because of Meriam. Cathal didn’t either.
I swallow, suddenly mad, but not at Meriam. Mad at myself for not realizing who Fallon was. My hands land on that placeon my body that the queen showed me rounding when a female grows a babe. I feel hollow, like a shell that’s lost its dweller.
“I’m so sorry.” Cathal’s fingers sink deeper into his black locks.
I, too, am sorry. Sorry that Meriam stole so many years of his life. “Maybe, if ask kindly, Mahananda give me back memories.”
His face lifts, his gaze filling with surprise, but also hope. “You’d want them back?”
“I forgot daughter and Taytah. I forgot”—you—“Meriam.” Her name tastes foul upon my tongue, but speaking his will only feed the flames crackling between us. Besides, do I really want to recall my life with this man when I am destined for?—
“If the Cauldron doesn’t give you back your memories, Príona, I’d be glad to fill in all the gaps. I’d be glad to tell you aboutus.”
“No.”
“No?” he repeats.
“No tell me, Cathal.” If he reminds me of all the ways he loved me and I loved him back, because I imagine we must’ve loved each other a great deal if I bore a child, I might not leave for Luce in the morning. I might stray from the new path the Mahananda has traced for me.
A fissure forms along my heart, a hairline fracture that cracks farther apart when I catch Cathal’s eyelashes batting as wildly as his wings when he’s in his other form.
“You are free, Cathal,” I tell him to unshackle him from his past and from me.
Chapter 18
Zendaya
Aship bobs on the Amkhuti which the queen and the Akwale have filled once more. And not just halfway, but to the very brim. The limpid water that abuts the stone is smooth like a mirror, casting the illusion that one could step onto it without falling through.
As the guards load trunks onto the vessel, I stand on the rocky cliff turned shore beside my grandmother whose face looks carved out of the same sunstone as her land this morning. Although the skin around her eyes isn’t rimmed with fatigue, the shadows are there, crowding her expression, reddening her irises, ruffling the skin around her lids and mouth.
I try to locate a shred of excitement for this trip that I’ve longed to take since I learned there was a world beyond Shabbe’s walls, but the emotion filling me isn’t warm and light; it’s cold and heavy and sits atop my chest like a boulder.
I don’t think I’ve taken a proper breath since I woke up drenched and gasping for breath, clutching at my chest, convinced a sword protruded from my scales. Not only was I not in Serpent form, but also no weapon had sliced through mywhite gown. What stuck the silk to my skin wasn’t blood, but perspiration.
Though my heart had raced for some time after rousing, I’d flopped back onto my pillow, the wordsnot realclinging to my trembling lips. The scene had been a product of my imagination. A—what had Fallon called it?—night terror. One made of the images my grandmother and Behati had shown me the day before.
A shudder races up my spine and clacks the ivory inside my mouth as I picture the slaughtered serpents again. Another shiver follows suit when I picture the mate I’m about to meet. And yet another tremor racks my body when I recall the aggrieved shock and fierce hurt that warped Cathal’s features when I asked him to keep our past in the past.
