Prologue

Cathal

T he pink ramparts of Shabbe and the placid waters of its climbing rivers shimmer gold in the light of a new dawn. Though the rising sun's radiance fans across my sweat-glossed brow, it doesn't breach my mood.

I cross my arms and glare at the moat that loops around the palace gardens, my trepidation rising like the limpid waters that Priya's coven—or Akwale, as they prefer to be called—is coaxing upward. Thank Mórrígan I'm immortal, for my poor heart would've stopped ticking long ago. It's a wonder it hasn't, between my daughter's misadventures and the fate that awaits my?—

I swallow and replace the word titillating my tongue with the name of the woman the Cauldron birthed from serpent scales a fortnight ago: Zendaya.

Lorcan steps up to me, the contours of his body firm, unlike mine, which bleed smoke. "Priya has conferred with the Cauldron, brother. There's no risk of Daya remaining in scales."

Kanti, my daughter's cousin and a prominent member of the Akwale, glances up at us from where she kneels at the moat's edge, luring the waterline higher. "If it makes you feel any better, she might not even be able to shift."

No, it does not fucking make me feel better. If anything, it tautens my skin and tenses my muscles, for if the Cauldron stripped Daya of her ability to shift, then why did it bring her back so physically altered? Why did it leave an ivory bead between her eyebrows and paint her eyes lid-to-lid black?

"She'll shift," whispers Behati, the queen's advisor and seer, who also happens to be Kanti's grandmother.

I look away from Zendaya just in time to see the veil of clairvoyance clear from Behati's pink eyes.

"You saw her shift, Taytah?" Kanti pushes her long black hair behind an ear that bears more piercings than Lazarus's.

"Yes," Behati says. "The Mahananda has just shown me."

The knot of my arms tightens in front of my stiff chest. "What else did the Cauldron show you?"

"That is all I foresaw, Cathal. Daya in her Serpent form."

"Did you see her shifting back into skin?" I press.

"I only saw her transform into scales."

As long as she desires to shift back , Lorcan says through our people's mind link, I'm certain she'll return.

"As long as she desires ?" I snarl at my oldest friend and king. "What if she doesn't care to remain two-legged, Lore?" My muscles punch against the cage of black fabric that was stitched to measure but which, at the moment, feels maladjusted and shrunken. "What if she longs to return to the ocean for good?"

I've changed my mind. I suddenly wish for Behati's vision to be erroneous. For Daya not to shift, for what if she loses herself to the ocean and chooses scales over flesh? I crush my lids closed to bury the selfish thought. How dare I worry that she might not shift back? My self-absorption is repugnant. If I could no longer sprout wings and take to the sky, who would I be?

Fingers wrap around my arm. I startle until I notice the hand belongs to my daughter. She places her sweet cheek against my twitching bicep.

"Is everything all right?" I ask her when I notice how wildly her violet eyes shimmer.

"I just wanted to stand beside you."

Perhaps it's the truth, or perhaps her empathy springs from the same marrow-deep fear that gnaws on my soul.

I stare over at the pink-haired woman whose forehead rests in her grandmother's palms. "What is Priya showing your…" I swallow down the word mother , replacing it with a pronoun that won't sadden Fallon: "…her?"

"What might happen to her body."

"What will happen," Kanti says, before gesturing to Behati. "Taytah had a vision of her shifting."

Fallon blinks at her fellow Shabbin, then at me, before finally locking eyes with Lorcan. "She truly is a new breed of shifter." Wonder brightens my daughter's pitch.

If only some of it could breach my heart.

The briny moat has risen so high, it now spills over the lip of the sunstone cliffs and froths around Daya's bare feet. I squint, scrutinizing her deep gold skin for bright pink scales, but none appear. I loathe the relief that floods my veins, loathe it with every beat of my bestial heart.

As the sun climbs higher, the swoop of dwellings that blanket the hollowed land begins to shimmer as though crafted from gold instead of sunstone. Shabbe is awakening, and the Shabbins along with it. I spy many trickling down to the moat's razor-sharp cliffs, gazes pinned to the recessed vale, to the white-haired queen and pink-haired princess. I spy some contemplating the water's surface, which glistens a mere dozen feet away for once.

"It seems that word of the princess's dip has spread," Kanti murmurs.

My jaw feels like granite. "They better not be thinking of jumping in."

"The fine for swimming in the Amkhuti would drain their savings." Kanti's pink eyes scan the distant shoreline. "Besides, who truly wants to dive in with a wild creature?"

I snap my attention back to the tall Shabbin female. " Wild creature ?"

"Yes, Cathal." Kanti narrows her eyes on me. " Wild . For all we know, the serpent version of Zendaya will be a ruthless carnivore."

"Like us Crows?" My brusque tone must reach Zendaya, for her gaze slides over me, then over Kanti who doesn't even bother looking her way, much less smiling at her.

Ever since the wards crumbled and the Cauldron brought Daya back, Kanti, who's of Priya's bloodline, is no longer next in line for the throne.

"In her human form, she doesn't eat meat, so I doubt she'll have a taste for it in scales." Fallon's tone sparks with antipathy.

"You're probably right," Kanti concedes. "I wonder if she'll be larger than she was the day Cathal plunged her into the Mahananda."

I shudder at the reminder of how we got here.

"Do you think she'll be able to communicate with fish?" Kanti asks.

"I can't communicate with pigeons," Fallon snipes, "so I doubt my mother will speak Minnow."

Kanti snorts as though Fallon had cracked a joke. "Oh, you know what I mean, chacha."

Fallon scowls, loathing when Kanti calls her ‘cousin,' for it reminds my daughter that the same blood flows through their veins.

"Technically," Kanti continues, evidently not done giving her opinion, "your mother was born a serpent and you were born human, so maybe I'm not entirely off the mark."

Could Kanti be onto something? Even though Zendaya's shown herself an avid listener, she's yet to utter an intelligible word. Or even a sound, for that matter.

Where most believe she'll never be capable of talking, Fallon and I are convinced it's a matter of time before she proves the world wrong. Then again, I still believe that I'll wake up to the sound of Zendaya's voice in my mind.

My nostrils flare, cycling a ragged exhale against Fallon's dark-auburn locks. I've become delusional. The bond I shared with Zendaya is gone, and forever at that, according to Priya, who conferred with the Cauldron on my behalf.

Gone, like my brother Cian.

Like his mate Bronwen.

Like the Regio dynasty.

Like the wards around the queendom.

I'm tempted to kneel beside the source of all magic and barter a piece of my soul for another chance at being Zendaya's mate, but I'd be wasting my breath for the Cauldron only listens to its guardian.

The belt on Daya's twilight-blue robe falls like a pitched snake at her feet. Although it makes no sound, I feel as though it smacks the earth like an anchor chain. She parts her robe, letting it drift down her shoulders, her back, her ass, her legs. Lorcan glances away, but everyone else, men and women alike, stare. I want to gouge out their eyes with my iron talons. I want to choke her perfect hourglass figure in my smoke.

I do neither, for her body isn't mine to shield or possess.

Her body isn't mine, period.

I grit my teeth. Even though the woman inching toward the water is different than the one I fell in love with two decades past, when she's near, my heart beats fiercely and my skin burns. How I long to shape her waist like I did the day she teetered out of the Cauldron. How I long to feel the probing scrape of her fingertips against my beard.

"Breathe, Dádhi," Fallon instructs as she trails her mother's progress.

I haul in a breath, hold it until my lungs ache, and gasp it out only when Zendaya jumps. I move away from Fallon to shift and take to the skies. My heart misses a beat. Two. Three. Four.

Another Crow circles the liquid trench—Fallon. Her violet eyes are trained on the moat, on the serpent undulating through its limpid waters, pink scales refracting the rising sun. I soar as fast as Daya swims, dread coalescing beneath my feathers that she will dart sideways, toward one of the rising falls.

Would it be strong enough to lift her giant body into the rivers that flow upward, toward the ocean? I'm guessing it's a possibility, considering Priya has stationed sorceresses at every junction. Sorceresses who dribble blood into the water. I vaguely remember the Shabbin Queen mentioning nets during supper last night. Is that what they're doing? Casting a spell to keep the female serpent caged in the moat?

I flick my attention to the white-haired monarch, who kneels at the water's edge and wriggles her fingers. Daya swims up to her, her giant white tusk carving through the surf. I spy her forked black tongue emerging from her maw and wrapping around her grandmother's fingers.

The words shift back stick to my iron beak, tacky like the humid air.

Priya tries to seize her granddaughter's equine-shaped head. Her movements must be too abrupt for Daya's liking because the latter lunges back, then sinks so deep, her color dims.

I jolt as Fallon shifts in mid-air, her fingers swiping against the sides of her neck a second before joining in front of her. Even though I sense she must've painted gills on either side of her neck, I drop lower, ready to dive in after her if the creature that my former mate has turned into decides to…to hurt our… my daughter.

Calm down. Lorcan's voice blisters my temples.

I send him a scathing look.

Fallon's reminding Daya of her human form. Daya's calm. She listens.

The circles I fly tighten until I'm all but spinning on myself like a top, dizzy with panic. Come on, Princess. Come on.

Like a tree riven by lightning, Daya's pink tail splits and retracts into legs, and then the water around her body shimmers and foams. When its radiance dulls, two women tread water.

My daughter.

And my…my nothing.