I step nearer to Ceres. “No. And don’t youdaretry to cart me off.”
I’ve no need to peer into his mind to see how he itches to clamp his iron talons around my shoulders instead of around the cobbles he is, at present, reducing to dust.
I take another step toward Ceres, who lingers beneath the flapping awning with a trembling Agrippina. I suppose it’sbecause of our altercation, although it could possibly be due to the bitter chill of the night, which, thanks to my altercation, doesn’t penetrate my overheated skin.
A cool shadow glides along my arm before solidifying into a man. “Fine.” Cathal’s breath is a fiery jolt against the shell of my ear. “You want to stay in the Fae lands and get gored by a fucking Faerie, fine.Fuckingfine.”
While I appreciate his regard for my safety, I don’t appreciate his tone or the anxiety it piles upon my shoulders.
“Don’t worry,” Ceres says as he dematerializes and takes to the sky. “The Fae lands aren’t that bad. At least not on this side of Monteluce.” As we begin walking, she says, “My husband—well,ex-husband—is doing an astonishingly good job at keeping the peace.”
“Malouomo,” Agrippina suddenly says, voice warbling with frenzy. “Malo uomo.”
Ceres taps her daughter’s hand. “Tiu pappa no malo uomo, mi cuori.” Then in Shabbin, she explains that Agrippina still believes her father is evil—“malo.”
Pity overtakes my unease. “I hope the Mahananda will welcome her soon.”
Ceres sighs. “You and me both, Rajka. You and me both.”
“Malo uomo,” Agrippina says again, her blue eyes as turbulent as the amber waves caught in her fur collar. She digs her boots into the cobbles, dragging her mother to a standstill, then points to a spot over my shoulder.
Swearing softly, Ceres plunges her hand beneath her coat and extricates a dagger.
I gasp, then gasp again as the ground vanishes from underneath my feet. Still, I don’t miss the cloaked figure dashing toward Ceres and Agrippina, brandishing a blade longer than Ceres’s. I grip one of Cathal’s talons and shout, “Go back! We can’t leave them!”
He stops ascending. I know the moment he sees the cloaked figure because he drops like a stone, halting for a heartbeat over a flat rooftop upon which he deposits me before flashing away. I rush toward the edge of the building, my breath stabbing my lungs, shredding my throat. When I see a head roll, I wheeze.
A head.
Without a body.
Just a head.
My chest burns when I catch the shock of black hair.
Chapter 36
Zendaya
Ceres cannot be?—
She cannot be?—
Two more Crows plummet from the sky and land below—Erwin and Reid. The latter kicks the head. I want to scream at the man for desecrating Ceres’s corpse, but my scream morphs into a sigh of relief when I catch sight of the face, of the masculine jaw.
Not Ceres.
My pulse bangs against my eardrums in time with the slender boat accosting the embankment. Soldiers leap from it, palms crackling with magic directed at the crowd blighting the wharf.
I try to shout Cathal’s name, but my throat is so tight that the two syllables emerge as an inaudible rasp, one that’s drowned out by a feminine wail.
“Agrippina!” Ceres keens. “Mi cuori! Nooo!”
Everything inside of me hardens and chills like the slate tiles biting into my cramping fingers.
Find Agrippina.
I might not have much power, but maybe, just maybe, I can heal her. Before my next heartbeat, I race back toward the tavern, then leap onto the fabric canopy to break my fall. I roll, banging into the man with a proclivity for glitter.
