She doesn’t meet my stare as she tucks her bleeding hand into the pocket of her wide-sleeved carmine robe. I start to ease her forward when she halts once more to grumble something that includes Cathal’s name and a nod at the cane she left behind.
What are you up to, Behati?
As Cathal goes to fetch her abandoned cane, Fallon steps out of the Kasha, drumming her fingers on her thigh, speckling the gold with vermilion droplets. Did she, too, just bloodcast? When she catches me observing her, her shoulders turn needle-straight and she gives the murky sky beyond the honeysuckle-laden trellis her full attention.
Behati tugs me forward, crooking her finger toward one of the female guards, who hinges to accommodate the seer’s shorter stature. Behati whispers something about gathering the Akwale that makes the guard spin on her heel and rush away. Why does Behati request the presence of the strongest sorceresses?
My skin begins to prickle, not with the need to shift, but to understand what?—
A tremor ripples through the air behind me. Brow puckered, I twist around. And then I gasp, because Cathal’s fist is sailing toward my face.
Chapter 3
Cathal
My fist connects with the ward that Behati must’ve conjured into existence to keep me locked inside the Kasha. From the way my daughter gnaws on her bottom lip, I sense she must’ve aided the seer.
I get confirmation of this when she murmurs, “Sorry, Dádhi.”
I roar at her to remove her magic. When she doesn’t, I smash Behati’s cane into the invisible wall, reducing the knobby wood to splinters that I cast aside before pummeling the air with my fists. When no fissure forms, I disintegrate into smoke and rush at the barrier.
A smirk tugs at Zendaya’s lips. I bare my teeth. Not at her. At Behati. But since Daya stands so near the seer, her delight stumbles off her pretty mouth and a good dose of fear soaks into her.
Remembering that Lorcan and Priya are locked in with me, I whirl. Though I see Lore break into five shadowy plumes, I don’t spot the Witch Queen. I soon understand why when a body shimmers into existence beside Zendaya.
After recalling her invisibility sigil, Priya lowers her palm from her forehead. “The Mahananda is always right and always just, Cathal. No need to act like an uncivilized beast.”
Are her words supposed to calm me? To reassure us that planting an obsidian dagger into my daughter’s chest and feeding her to the Cauldron holds zero risk? What if the Cauldron doesn’t release Fallon? Or what if it does, but altered?
“I’m the curse-breaker, Dádhi.” Fallon’s teeth-bitten lip glows as red as the tip of her seashell necklace.
She already broke one curse—Meriam’s. Who’s to say, besides two old crones with pink eyes and a magical basin, that my daughter is alsoour people’scurse-breaker?
Daya untangles her arm from the seer’s and reaches for Fallon’s wrists. I hold still as she rests Fallon’s palms on her forehead.
What does she want our daughter to show her? The reason why she painted a ward? When Daya rears back, eyes so big they devour more of her face, my eyebrows pitch low. Didn’t her grandmother show her Behati’s vision when she entered the room?
The Serpent Princess joggles Fallon’s wrists in an attempt to draw her backward, toward where I stand, trapped and quaking with fury, praying that Lorcan’s found a way out. My prayers are reduced to dust when the air churns beside me and five dark streaks bang into one.
I understand from his reddened stare and the purpling sky that the ward encapsulates every wall, window, and ceiling.
“What of the mind link?” I ask him.
Blocked.
Fuck.
Zendaya heaves Fallon back once more, this time, managing to make her stumble. Lorcan snaps his hands up to catch his mate, but all he catches is a palmful of air. I, on the other hand,catch an arm—Daya’s. Before she can snatch it away, I yank her inside the Kasha and gather her against my chest.
“Fallon,” I roar. “Get inside! NOW!”
My daughter doesn’t indulge me. No, she abuses the word “sorry” and her bottom lip some more. She isnotsorry. If she were, she would rethink this self-sacrificial insanity.
Daya writhes. In case her plan is to return out there, I tighten my grip on her biceps. She begins to shake like the sky over Shabbe. I imagine with irritation until I spot her fingers lifting to her scar and rubbing her neck manically. Perhaps sheisfrustrated, but mixed into her resentment is a weighty dose of panic. One that makes her pulse go so wild that it tramps past her silken sleeves and absorbs into my palms.
As Lorcan’s storm erupts into a deluge of raindrops, Fallon flattens one palm against the wall between them and murmurs, “Trust the Cauldron.” And then she repeats it in Shabbin, probably to quell Zendaya’s fear.
Trust the Cauldron to what? Keep her alive? Return her in one piece? Return her—period?
