I drop onto my haunches and clasp her clammy hands. “What,ah?”
Her stomach gurgles so violently that I think it will echo down the bond she shares with my father and alert him that his inept daughter has, yet again, bungled something.
“It’s nothing, Isla.”
Clearly, it’ssomething. I consider sketching the symbol to heal, but I’ve never drawn it correctly during my lessons, and now isn’t exactly the time to try. What if it makes it all worse?
“It’ll pa—” She inhales a breath that’s so sharp it sounds like a blade sinking into flesh, and then her eyes roll to the back of her head and she collapses right into my arms.
I scream out her name.
When she doesn’t react, I stick the jar back into my waistband, grab ahold of her lithe body, then carry her out into the hallway where I morph into my Crow. After carefully caging her body between my talons, I streak over the ocean toward Shabbe, my heart pounding so brutally that there’s no dip between its beats.
The guards surrounding the Cauldron startle when I land in the Vale.
“Is—is—did the Akwale—is anyone here?” I pant.
“Isla?” I hear Behati call out.
I whirl, my pulse still rioting against my eardrums.
The ancient seer tilts her head as she clicks over to me on her cane. “What are you doing here, child?”
“I p-p-poisoned my grandmother.” I lick my lips, tasting the salt of my sweat and tears.
“A tad extreme to attend a Jubilee.”
When I realize what she’s implying, I snarl, “I didn’t poison her to attend a revel, Behati!”
Her brows dip behind her heavy white and gold bangs.
“I didn’t poison her, period. It was anaccident. I was trying to heal her.” I dig out the jar. “She took ill all of a sudden yesterday, and?—”
“How convenient.”
“—I brewed her a— What do you mean,convenient?”
Behati moves over to Shoshair’s supine form and prods her stomach with her cane.
I streak between them and bat away the gold stick. “What do you meanconvenient, Behati?”
“Your parents don’t want you to go to Glace because of the prophecy.”
After thrashing, my heart turns into a lump of inert flesh. “The prophecy?Whatprophecy?”
“A prophecy that Bronwen foresaw.”
“That involves me?”
“Yes.”
“…In Glace?”
“Yes.”
“And what exactly do I do there?”
“You meet your mate.”
