Cathal stands and steps gingerly toward the railing, his talons clicking against the wood. And then he jumps off the stern of the ship. For a heartbeat, we’re in freefall, but then his wings fan out and we soar. My fingers tremble, but not with fear this time, with exhilaration. He rises slowly, as though to give me time to drink in the beauty spilling around us—a pink jewel veined with liquid silver and vibrant greens with a shimmering heart, no larger than a dot, that holds more power than the world it hatched.
If only the Mahananda had given me?—
I press the ungracious thought away before it’s fully-formed. The Mahananda gave me the power to shift from scales to skin. How dare I complain.
Cathal whirls away from the land of my birth and rebirth and flies up the length of the waterrise. The angle of his climb is so vertiginous that I flatten my torso against his spine and strangle him with both my arms and thighs. I must hurt him for he rights his body.
“Sorry,” I murmur.
I squint past his plumage at the ship that bobs like a tree nut down the sinuous shadows. How long will it take it to reach the top? And once they do reach it, will the ocean be right there? I find out the answer to my second interrogation before the boat penetrates the waterrise: the ocean isn’t right there. The ocean isfarbelow. Not as far down as Shabbe, but still…
Even though the sun is hot on my skin, a shiver courses down my spine. Cathal does one more loop of the sky above Shabbe before cresting the shimmering pink walls. My lungs slackenaround a gasp as I lay my eyes on the world beyond—a bolt of sapphire capped with golden foam that stretches and bleeds into sky on one end and land on the other.
Luce.
A land I’ve traveled to in the past but of which I’ve no recollection. A land where I awakened a dormant king and gave birth to a violet-eyed child. A land where I met my first mate and will now meet my second.
Instead of smooth beats, the pounding in my chest is erratic and causes me to tremble. Cathal must feel it for he twists his face toward me. I swallow and try to smile, but it won’t hold.
Why do I feel so…so…restless? Why do my lids burn and my heart ache? Because I’ve lost my grip on the past, or because I fear the future? The pink sand, that rings the sunstone walls like a stroke of paint, blurs. I blink back my tears before Cathal can see them carve down my cheeks.
A wave claps the ramparts and swallows the sand, then remains there, lapping at the stone as it darkens, blackens. I frown until something shimmers out of the blemish: the ship. Is the channel always there or did the Akwale make it appear? And if it is the latter, how do serpents come and go? If I ask, will I be told?
Cathal shoots forward with such speed that Luce comes into sharper focus, a rolling land of green and gray. My Crow sentry—not my sentry—hasn’t, to my knowledge, gone home since I stepped out of the Mahananda. How eager he must be to return to his friends and sleep in his rock chamber in the clouds.
“Cathal?”
He slows and rolls his head.
“Put me on boat.”
Though he has no eyebrows, I can sense them slant.
“So you can home.” I nod to the rising gray rock which Fallon explained houses Lorcan’s castle.
I tighten my grip around Cathal’s neck, expecting he will dip now, but instead, he beats his great wings, sending us careening forward, straight for the tower of rock and clouds.
Did the wind distort my words or did Cathal Báeinach decide to squeeze in a visit of his home? I glance over my shoulder, and although I cannot see Taytah Priya, I can feel her glower cutting through the growing distance between us and them.
When we swoop over jagged rock, I stop looking back and begin to look ahead. Might as well, since I’m at Cathal’s mercy and will be going wherever it is that he goes. Perhaps Lorcan instructed him to bring me to the Sky Kingdom before the nuptials?
I soon find out that the Crow King had no hand in Cathal’s decision.
Chapter 20
Zendaya
After plunging into a notch in the rock, we soar down a hallway wide enough to accommodate Crows in their beast form. Torches grip the walls, splashing an amber glow over the gray. Below us, Crows traipse in human form, toting baskets filled with produce and soaps and cloth as though they’ve just come from a market or are heading to one.
A small Crow jabs a finger our way, and then he’s racing underneath us, repeating Cathal’s name and the word Shabbin. Cathal slows and swoops low, allowing the child to catch up. And the juvenile does, which earns him a brush of Cathal’s wingtip. Like the little girl in the Sahklare, the boy smiles, revealing a mouth full of missing teeth.
I relax my hold on Cathal’s neck and straighten, and then I curve my lips. The small Crow blinks, then pushes a lock of black hair off a face still bare of feather tattoo and gapes at me. I assume it’s my temporary pink eyes that are giving the child pause, but a glance at the braid that’s slipped over my shoulder reveals it’s the sight of my uncommon hair color.
Did my grandmother’s magic wane already?
When more Crows begin to gather and gape, I sink my fingers into the feathers of Cathal’s neck. Cathal must sense my anxiety for he rises and increases his speed, leaving the crowd behind. We fly for long minutes before he drops again. This time, his talons click against stone.
He morphs into smoke before I can climb down, then winks into skin and encloses me in his arms. For a long moment, he doesn’t speak, just stares, and I stare back. So distracted by the tendu’s attack, I hadn’t paid attention to the Crow’s appearance. He looks ravaged by fatigue. His hair pokes out in black tangles that halo a face as pale as the child’s, but smudged with purple. What holds my attention isn’t so much his pallor, but the crimson veining the whites of his eyes.
