“Last time?” Ceres squawks, before shooting me a horrified look. “You’ve made others?”
“One,” Cathal says.
Agrippina’s thin eyebrows quirk as she observes her mother, then slant on Reid.
I move closer to her, garnering her attention. “It’s going to be all right. I’ll teach you everything. It’s going to be all right.”
She doesn’t nod. Doesn’t speak. Not out loud and not into my mind. Perhaps she won’t be capable of the latter.
Can you hear me?I ask her, without drawing my lips apart.
If she can, she doesn’t let on. Could her mind be too scarred to register words? How am I supposed to train her if she cannot understand me?
“What the fuck did you do to your hair?” she suddenly asks.
I know she spoke out loud, becauseeveryonegasps. Save for Reid. Poor Crow seems to have morphed into obsidian.
Agrippina licks her lips, then says something about Meriam in Lucin before gasping Cathal’s name and pointing to a place over his shoulder. Color leaches from her already pale face, and she hisses the wordpappa, scuttling away from her still kneeling mother.
Cathal sighs, his breath soft against my ear, then replies in Lucin. Agrippina rolls those twin pools of black from the Crow holding me to the Faerie standing next to him. All the while, Ceres palms her mouth, stifling whatever sound is building in her throat—a gasp, another sob, an exclamation?
“She believes her father is still our enemy,” Cathal murmurs softly.
“He’s not the enemy, Agrippina,” I tell her in Shabbin since she appears to be fluent. “You’re safe.”
My new Serpent frowns at me.
“As to what I did with my hair, it’s a long story. One I’d prefer to tell you in Shabbe.”
“Wait,” Justus says in Shabbin. “What’s your sister’s name?”
Agrippina’s head rears back. “Why? Have you forgotten it, Pappa?”
He snorts, swallows. “Just please say it.”
She cocks a ruddy eyebrow. “Domitina.”
In Lucin she says words that Cathal translates quietly. “She’s asking him if he’ll require the title of the book from which she plucked the name, since she apparently chose it for her sister.”
Tears spill down Ceres’s cheeks. “Rimena.”
“Si.” Justus walks over to his former mate and crouches, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Rimena.”
“She remembers,” Cathal translates.
“You brought all of her back.” Justus’s voice is cluttered with emotion. “Thank you, Rajka. Thank you.”
Ceres swallows and echoes the Faerie general’s sentiment, buoying my heart.
Agrippina gapes. “You speak Shabbin, Mamma?” she asks just as another loud “Mamma” echoes in the night.
Fallon.
I twist around, thinking she’s calling to me, but find her eyes locked on Agrippina. Of course. I’m not her only mother. How could I forget? After its brief climb, my heart plummets anew. It’s unfair of me to be jealous, yet I cannot stifle the sentiment.
Cathal’s fingers mold my waist and then his thumb strokes as though he senses my dejection.
Fallon comes to a stop right beside her grandparents, her gaze stilling on Agrippina’s eyes and retracted tusk before hurtling toward me. “You transformed her?”
