I frown. “How would that benefit him?”
“Makes it swifter to pick off one’s dissenters. Also, it keeps him from ratifying the ‘land grant law’ that would give humans access to living in pureling neighborhoods.”
My mother hisses. “Not only would that make him cruel but also twisted.”
“No king likes to have enemies.” Though I cannot peer into my father’s mind, the anger that pours off him is so potent that I sense he’s reminiscing about the coup against him and our people, the one perpetrated by Costa Regio.
Unless he’s dwelling on theMahananda Yudh—or Battle of the Cauldron, as people outside Shabbe refer to the terrifying night when the first Akwale drained the source of all magic to protest Taytah’s coronation.
My mother purses her lips. “Konstantin’s nothing like the other Faerie kings you’ve known. He’s kind.” Under her breath, she adds, “Probably too kind for his own good, really.”
“If the Cauldron sees me unaliving Alyona, and not the other way around, then why are you two so worried in the first place?”
My mother comes to sit beside me and cocoons one of my healed hands between hers. “We’re worried because,ifKonstantin intentionally spared her, then that would mean he’s not a true friend to shifters.”
“You broke our obsidian curse, Mádhi.” I smile to show her that I’m not scared—because I’m not. What I am, though, is a tad confused as to whyItake Glacin justice into my own hands, but I trust the Cauldron has its reasons.
She strokes my knuckles with her thumb, her sparkly black varnish shimmering brightly in spite of the dull light dribbling from the domed window. “Remember when Aoife went missing for a month?”
I nod. I may have been very young, but I recall with perfect clarity the panic that had swept through the Sky Kingdom when my mother’s best Crow friend up and vanished from my father’s mind link reach.
At first, we’d all believed a Shabbin had cursed Aoife into becoming a forever-Crow—something which had been done before—and my grandparents had carried out nonstop interrogations. But then Imogen had caught wind of aconversation between two Faeries in our own kingdom about a new cage.
My mother glamoured Imogen and herself in order to infiltrate the group of antimorphs and be led into a dungeon. There, they’d found Aoife, speared through the chest onto a rod of obsidian welded on both ends to the sides of a cage. Their rage had been so unbridled that, by the time my father arrived with Erwin, the dungeon’s floor, walls, and ceiling were crimson with blood.
They’d freed Aoife, whose body couldn’t heal as long as the volcanic stone was wedged through the organ that sustained her. For weeks after her liberation, Imogen’s sister had remained in a coma. Her convalescence had lasted so long that many feared the spear had caused irreparable damage.
It hadn’t.
Mádhi shudders, no doubt reliving the atrocious memory. “Itistime to claim my bargain.”
Is she imagining Konstantin and Alyona dragging me into a dungeon and goring me with obsidian?
“The second we claim it,” my father says, “he’ll know we suspect him.”
“Actually…” My mother’s eyes shimmer with relief. “If he’d never met Isla, then asking him to spare her would’ve been suspicious, but now that she’s no longer a stranger…”
My father’s eyes squeeze as though he’s not quite convinced, but then the severe line of his shoulders relaxes. “You’re right. But I want to work on the wording. I want it to be airtight. Not a single loophole to be found. In case heisthe reason Alyona survived.”
“How do I do it?” I ask. “How do I kill her?”
“With a dagger similar to the ones the twins carry on their persons,” Mádhi answers.
I frown. “Why in the world would I use a dagger when I have talons and nifty blood?”
“We’re guessing that something will block your magic,” Dádhi says.
“Like a ward?” I ask.
Mádhi rolls her lips.
Dádhi rolls his harder. “Like an amulet.”
My head jounces. “An amulet?”
“For his coronation, Meriam cast an amulet in the Cauldron and gifted it to him to protect him from being harmed by iron.”
“I still don’t understand why she had to go and make him a hallowed bauble,” my father grouses. “Could’ve given him a new quill and inkwell festooned with precious stones. Faeries love shiny things.” He gestures to the ornamental detailing inside the suite as though it had been crafted by some inebriated sprite with a grudge against sophistication.
