16. Zendaya

Chapter 16

Zendaya

B ehati must hear the door opening because she turns away from the spectacle of the monkeys swinging from branch to branch in my garden. "Are you feeling better, Zendaya?"

I shrug. My body does, but my heart…my heart hurts, and I don't understand why. "Why here, Behati?"

"Because Priya refuses to be." Her pink gaze shines darkly amidst the sweeps of white-gold. "Cathal's right. Now that you understand everything, it's only a matter of time until you learn all of it. Especially since you'll be traveling to Luce tomorrow."

"I go?"

"Yes."

"Taytah go?" My hair bleeds water into my white silk sleeping gown.

"Naturally."

"She still mad?"

"Yes and no. She's not angry with you, though."

"Only with Cathal?"

Behati presses her lips together. I'm taking that as a yes.

"You go Luce also?"

Her mouth curves, which makes the outer corners of her eyes crinkle like crushed parchment. "Someone has to stay to guard the Mahananda."

I wonder if the Mahananda, like me, ever feels annoyed that no one believes it can take care of itself.

Cane clicking, Behati walks over to the sofa and lowers herself onto one of the floor cushions, then pats the spot beside her. "Come close, Daya."

I don't especially want to sit, but I do want to hear about Meriam, so I plod over and take a seat on the wide, coral-hued cushion.

For a long moment, all Behati does is stare at me.

"I listen," I say to remind her to speak.

"Priya is your grandmother."

"Yes. I know."

"Grandmother means the mother of one's mother."

"I know, too."

"I thought…" Her lashes flutter in surprise. "I thought you weren't aware that Meriam was your mother. Did Cathal tell you?"

My heart holds so still that I think it's stopped beating. "Meriam? No. Mahananda mother me." Silence. "No?"

Behati inhales a breath that makes her narrow ribs dig into her crimson robe. "Yes and…no."

"What mean yes and no ?"

"It means that the Mahananda had a hand in making you, but so did Meriam."

"Mahananda make me with Meriam?"

"Yes."

"Mahananda is father?" My question comes out as an exclamation.

"Not exactly. You had a father, but he no longer lives."

My eyebrows draw so close on my forehead that they jostle the root of my tusk. "I lost, Behati."

"I imagined as much. Your past is quite…thorny."

It must be another expression, because the past isn't flora or fauna.

"What I meant by that is that your past is a complicated thing to grasp, like a stalk full of thorns."

"Stalk full of thorns make bleed. My past make bleed?"

"In a way, yes." The curve of her lips holds such melancholy that it dims the air. "Your past made many hearts bleed, most of all Priya's. It filled her with such pain that she contemplated slumbering in the Mahananda."

I frown. "I no see bed when I went; only darkness." It had enveloped me like the ocean, swathing me in complete and utter tranquility.

A small laugh traipses from Behati's lips. " Slumbering in the Mahananda is the expression we use when we are ready to return our magic to the Mahananda. It's one of the only ways we, Shabbin women, can end our lives."

Oh. I make a note to stay wide awake if I'm ever submerged in the Mahananda again. "Why Taytah so sad?"

"For you to understand this, I'd need to start at the beginning. Well, at your beginning. Five centuries ago, Meriam had a baby with a Shabbin male. That baby was you. When you were very young—around four or five—your mother fell in love with a Lucin, a Faerie named Costa Regio, who was Lorcan's general."

I've heard the name Regio. Like Meriam's, turbulent silence ensues its mention.

"Costa betrayed Lore and, aided by Meriam, managed to subdue him by staking him with obsidian. You may now have an understanding of what obsidian does to regular Crows, but to their king, it transforms him to iron and knocks down all his people. In other words, if Lore is immobilized, so are all his shifters. This sparked the first Great War in Luce—the Magnabellum—after which Costa crowned himself king."

I feel like asking for a quill to squiggle all these names and events down, but obviously I do not…for I cannot. I stare at my hands, which are as useless as the blood inside them, and fold my fingers over one another in my lap.

"For years, we thought he'd made Meriam his queen, but then the serpents started arriving on our shores, carrying banished Lucins, who explained Meriam had disappeared."

"Disappear? Where?"

"No one knew at the time."

I imagine they have the answer now, and although I'd like to learn it, something else feels more essential: "Why you not go Luce and save Lorcan?"

"Because your mother had erected wards around Shabbe that kept us locked in. For five hundred years."

My mind feels as snarled as the tresses atop my head before my bath. If she left when I was four and this is five centuries later, then… "Why I no remember?"

"Because, when the Mahananda brought you back as a Serpent shifter"—Behati runs her finger along the seam of the velvet cushion against which she reclines—"it erased your memory."

"Why?"

She stares straight ahead at the prickly fruit with curved leaves that lords over the rest of the fruit like a juice-filled king. "We don't question the Mahananda, Daya."

Perhaps, we should. I wonder if I could ask it for my memories back. Do I even want them? "What about dead sister?"

"Hmm." Behati returns her attention to me. "Dead sister? Who's sister?"

"My."

Behati's thin eyebrows writhe beneath the stroke of hair. "You're Meriam's only daughter."

The pulsing beneath my ribs quiets again. If I'm Meriam's only daughter, then that means…

That means…

"How far did you get in Daya's history?" Cathal leans against one of the pillars holding up my ceiling, arms folded beneath a fresh shirt, his hair slicked back from a bath of his own, black stripes fresh and dark against his pale skin.

"I cannot tell her everything at once, Cathal," Behati says. "It would overwhelm her."

The Crow didn't stay behind to avenge his mate; he stayed because I am his mate.