Aodhan toys with a button on his navy coat. “Why did you assume it was Alyona?”
“Because they look very much alike.” Taytah sets her black stare on her fellow monarch. “Which leads us to think it’s either another child your mother would’ve birthed with a fire-Faerie—perhaps before she was married—or?—”
“My mother has only ever been with one man, and that man was my father,” Konstantin snaps.
I tilt my head. “And you know this how, exactly…? Did she sit you down one day and walk you through her sexual history?”
The glower he lobs my way would’ve made me shrink had I not spent the better part of my evening with him. The male is protective and prideful of his family, to the degree that he’d likely execute anyone who dared insult one of his siblings.
Taytah tucks a lock of pink hair behind her ear. “Could the slain Faerie be a child of your sister’s? One of yours?”
The Ice King’s complexion turns mottled. “Neither Alyona nor I have a child.”
“We don’t know in what year the prophecy happens,” I say.
“This winter,” Taytah says with eerie firmness. “It happens this winter.”
I grip my grandmother’s wrists once more. “Show me her face again, Taytah?”
My ear’s buzz with my grandfather’s protest. I don’t waste energy on his sullen mood, giving the crime scene my full attention. Since I can’t pilot my body in the vision, I squint andscour the woman’s traits for a distinguishing feature. I look for freckles, a birthmark, anything that could?—
Is that?—
A shadow passes over the full moon, hampering its reach, casting my victim in darkness. I will the light to touch her again, but instead, the obscurity grows until it becomes so complete, I melt back into the here and now.
The surge of my pulse floods my tongue with the tang of blood. “Again!”
“Daya, please?—”
“Perhaps she saw something we didn’t, Cathal,” my grandmother says. When she presses her palms back to my forehead, I see only darkness. Why do I see only darkness?
“Have I exhausted the vision?” I ask my grandmother, finding her stare luminous like glass.
At least that explains why I see nothing…because the Cauldron has dragged Taytah into its inky depths. I hope it’s not angry with her for having shown me the vision.
“Any notable details, Isles?” Aodhan asks.
“The moon was full—or close to it.”
“She noticed the moon,” my grandfather mutters in Serpent.
I hike up an eyebrow. “Yes, Jaytair, I noticed the moon, like I noticed the hue of the woman’s irises. I’m perspicacious like that.” When he cracks his knuckles, I narrow my stare but then spring it wide. “It’s the ring that’s put you in a tizzy, isn’t it?”
“What ring?” Lachlano asks.
Since he speaks in Serpent, so do I. “In the prophecy, I wear a diamond ring.” My heart misses a beat. “I wear it on my annular finger!” I gawk at Lachlano. “Holy fucking shit, Lach, I’m going to meet my mate this winter!”
My grandfather is red in the face, as though he’s swallowed an iceberg. “We don’t know that the ring’s owner is your mate.”
I roll my eyes. “Not only do I wear the jewel on myannularfinger,” I repeat, “but also, do you really see me marrying a man who isn’t my mate?”
My grandfather grinds his jaw as though masticating unshelled walnuts.
“Who’s the lucky man?” Aodhan asks—in Serpent.
Jaytair freezes. “Since when doyouspeak Serpent?”
“Since Konstantin appointed me as the liaison officer for shifters in Glace.Allshifters.” Aodhan leans forward to peer at me around my grandfather’s large, vibrating form. “Though we still don’t have Serpents in residence, we’re open to welcoming them.”
