19. Zendaya

Chapter 19

Zendaya

A brax comes to stand beside me at the helm. He watches me watch the queendom. Everyone aboard the ship watches me. The same way the Shabbins crowding the shores of the Sahklare watch. Except, they cannot see the real me, for the queen gave me another's face—a female with eyes as pink as her own, skin the hue of toasted seeds, and hair the color of molten cocoa.

As she painted the transformation sigil on my forehead, Priya explained that she or Asha would refresh it as soon as it faded, so I need not be alarmed once we crossed into Lucin waters. No one would know I was amongst the procession attending Fallon's nuptials.

When I asked her why I needed a disguise since no one knew about me, she'd answered: "So you can reveal yourself when you feel ready."

Her reply had lengthened my breaths. That is, until the vessel ground to a halt and bumped into an embankment. Once I realized we'd stopped to pick up two new travelers—Ceres and Agrippina Rossi—the pressure in my lungs eased, however the one around my heart tightened. I was grateful to these women for having reared and loved Fallon, but dear Mahananda, how I ached with envy.

"So, what do you think of your queendom, Rajka?" Ceres asks, coming to stand beside me. Did she figure out who I was on her own, or did someone divulge my identity?

"Please refrain from using her title, Shrima Rossi," Asha murmurs.

"Forgive me," Ceres murmurs, her accent thick like Cathal's, but melodic, unlike his.

I smile to show her that she's forgiven, then say, "Great beauty, Shabbe."

"I think so as well."

"Fallon say Luce great beauty, too."

Ceres's emerald stare acquires both shadow and shine. "Yes. I suppose it is quite beautiful if you overlook its people."

I frown, not certain I understand what she means by this. When she doesn't elaborate, I say, "You home for good?"

"No." Ceres casts a look at her daughter, who sits on a chair that Abrax helped carry aboard and that Asha affixed to the deck with her blood. "Not until…"

"Until…?"

"Until Agrippina's ready to leave Shabbe."

Here I'd imagined she'd want nothing more than to leave now that the girl she and her mother raised had moved back to Luce. "Agrippina love here so much?"

Ceres's knuckles whiten around the railing as though she fears the ship's angle may send her toppling over. "Yes," she finally says. "We are both happy here."

"Yet you mate live in Luce."

Her black eyebrows spring up. "My mate?"

"General Rossi is mate, no?"

"Ah. Justus and I haven't been mates for a while now." She turns to look at her daughter.

I do as well. Abrax stands beside the redheaded female, pointing out birds and telling her their names. Apparently she's a great fan of birds. Or was, back before she took a knife to her ears to protest her lineage. I shudder at the idea of carving through one's own flesh.

Ceres watches me stroke my throat, something I do often, I realize. I wonder why I reach for my scar. Do I hope to coax a memory from my injured flesh, or does it offer me solace to know that I healed…that I survived?

"You no love old mate?" I ask.

"It's complicated." She pushes a lock of black hair behind her long ears.

To think I mistook her for Fallon's true grandmother. To think I mistook Agrippina for her mother. These two women look nothing like my daughter. Then again, both are here, sailing back to Luce to be at her side during the ceremony.

When my chest burns hot with that ugly feeling, I refocus on the wide, crystalline river that bursts with not only serpents and fish, but also with curious Shabbins out for a swim and tiny boats brimming with fresh produce.

Little by little, the heat swamping my chest climbs into my eyes and spills over. "Thank you," I croak, knuckling away a tear.

Ceres frowns. "For what, Rajka?"

"For raise Fallon. For love her." I knuckle away another tear, then heave a deep breath and concentrate on the land and its people.

"She was easy to love." With an easy smile, Ceres adds, "Not as easy to raise."

I laugh.

"Anytime you want stories, come to me and I will fill your ears with your daughter's penchant for misadventure."

With a grin, I say, "I ready to hear all."

So Ceres begins to recount Fallon's childhood while I watch the landscape tighten into slimmer dwellings and slighter gardens the farther up we sail. By the time we reach the tiniest abodes, I feel like I've salvaged some of the years of which I was robbed.

"The Queen!" a diminutive Shabbin yells, rushing to the embankment and diving in. Dozens more follow. Where many kick their legs and thrust their arms, a few grab onto tusks in order to keep up with our brisk cruising speed.

Ceres interrupts her storytelling when my grandmother approaches and opens one of the four trunks that were hefted aboard. The sun catches on a mound of gold coins stamped with the Shabbin crest.

"Have a blessed journey, Sumaca!" one of the swimmers yells as their body is dragged parallel to our vessel by a serpent as large as Sun Warrior.

The queen thanks the small Two-legs with a majestic smile and a sprinkle of gold coins that makes them release the tusk and dive to pocket them.

Another glistening face pops out in the foamy wake of our ship. A small female with pink eyes and a coin tucked inside each hand. She displays her loot with great pride.

"What wrong with mouth?" I ask.

Ceres frowns.

But Asha comprehends my question. "Children lose their teeth before regrowing adult-sized ones."

Of course. Children . That is why they're so small.

Asha puffs out a laugh when a juvenile serpent bumps his tusk—more of a nub, really—into one of the little girl's hands, making her coin slip.

The child scowls at the serpent, then mutters an, "Oh, no you don't," before plunging after it to retrieve her prize.

"That's something you won't see in Luce," Ceres says. "No one swims there."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because they fear…" Asha must give her a look, because Ceres purses her lips. Even though she ends up saying, "Because they aren't taught," I know the reason the Lucins do not swim.

They fear serpents.

They kill them.

Like my mood, the air darkens. I think it's because of the Crow's shadows but soon find out the darkness isn't of any giant bird's making. No, what casts us in shade are the queendom's walls.

The trunk, now empty of coins, is clapped shut and carried away. No new one is brought out. Probably because no Shabbin splashes in the water here. A glance around reveals that not a single dwelling dots the tangle of trees and shrubs.

"Welcome to the Chayagali, where only the wildest prowl." Asha gestures to the eerie hoop of vegetation that races around the whole queendom.

According to my daily lessons with Behati, the Shadow Forest is the only part of the isle that never gets sunlight. As the vessel glides deeper into the darkness, lambent eyes peer at us from the obscurity and branches crack, trodden on by furred land beasts. Though they fight amongst themselves, they don't attack Pink-eyes. They do, however, occasionally attack serpents.

Little bumps rise over my skin. Though magic cloaks me, does it cloak my true nature, or can the beasts sense me like I can sense them? Movement on the shore of the Sahklare snares my attention. A beast in fur the same shade as the abounding shrubs, and with eyes full-black like mine, shoulders its way to the cliff overlooking the river and sniffs the air with its flat nose.

"The tendu better not try and jump aboard," Abrax mutters, reaching for his short sword.

I was so engrossed by the shifting landscape that I didn't even realize he'd swapped places with Ceres.

"Have no fear, Abrax," Asha singsongs. "Pink-eyes are near."

Tendus are the rulers of the Chayagali, and serpents' only predators in Shabbe. They're fearsome creatures with a single mortal flaw—sunlight. The faintest ray will singe their hide and boil their blood, so they never venture out from the shadows they rule.

The creature's eyes lock on mine, and it crouches with a low growl, its bladed shoulders digging into its fur. I spring my fingers off the railing. If only the Akwale could steer the boat away from the shore, but the river here is so narrow, and our ship so wide, that we'd bump into the opposite embankment.

" Periculo ," Agrippina suddenly says, proceeding to repeat the word over and over. " Periculo. Periculo. "

"What mean periculo ?" I croak.

"Danger. But it won't attack. Not with the queen aboard," Asha says while Agrippina repeats that single word.

Over and over and over. With each reiteration, my heart clamors louder.

She's right. There is danger. I can sense the tendu's malicious intent the same way it can surely sense my fear. It licks its wide mouth, flattening the fur around it. It isn't my fear it scents; it's the Serpent squirming beneath my skin.

The tendu leaps.

I stumble backward and bang into Asha.

The creature squeals. What I take to be a battle cry turns out to be a howl of pain, for only half of its body lands on the deck. Something severed it in half. I soon realize what that something is when iron talons dripping blood materialize out of thin air. The Crow accompanying us swoops low, squawking a warning to the rest of the predators lurking in the shadows that the same fate awaits them if they try to board our ship.

"We should get you inside the hull." Asha plucks my clammy hand and starts to tug me toward the front of the vessel where the Akwale are adding blood to the sigil that seals our ship to the flowing waterway when a bolt of smoke pounds into the deck.

" Corvo ," Agrippina gasps.

Ceres nods. " Si, mi cuori. Corvo ."

" Accipe me a Luce. Accipe me a Luce ."

Ceres shakes her head, then replies something with a nod in my direction, but it doesn't seem to quiet Agrippina, who keeps repeating the same four words.

"What she say?" I murmur as Cathal growls something at Priya in Crow.

"That the Crow takes her to Luce. I think she believes Cathal is here for her."

My lips flatten. Why would she think this? Because he's Fallon's father and she considers herself Fallon's mother? The Crow isn't here for her. He's here for me. I know it even before I become the object of his scorching glower.

The male is furious. Because of yesterday? Because of the tendu? Because of something else that has nothing to do with me? Has his infection returned? I drop my stare to his thigh and try to concentrate on his scent when he snaps, "Help Zendaya climb onto my back. She'll be flying the rest of the way."

I blink as he shifts and crouches like the tendu. I'm going to fly? My heartbeats quicken and remain elevated as I peer over his shifting body toward my grandmother, waiting for her assent. It's slow to come, but she nods. Because she senses more tendu attacks?

"You land back on board before we reach Tarecuori so I have time to refresh her sigil. Understood?"

The Crow nods as Asha and Abrax help me scale his massive form.

"Hold on to his neck," Abrax instructs me, which makes me think he must've already ridden a Crow.

I do as I'm told.

Cathal stands and steps gingerly toward the railing, his talons clicking against the wood. And then he jumps off the stern of the ship. For a heartbeat, we're in freefall, but then his wings fan out and we soar. My fingers tremble, but not with fear this time, with exhilaration. He rises slowly, as though to give me time to drink in the beauty spilling around us—a pink jewel veined with liquid silver and vibrant greens with a shimmering heart, no larger than a dot, that holds more power than the world it hatched.

If only the Mahananda had given me?—

I press the ungracious thought away before it's fully-formed. The Mahananda gave me the power to shift from scales to skin. How dare I complain.

Cathal whirls away from the land of my birth and rebirth and flies up the length of the waterrise. The angle of his climb is so vertiginous that I flatten my torso against his spine and strangle him with both my arms and thighs. I must hurt him for he rights his body.

"Sorry," I murmur.

I squint past his plumage at the ship that bobs like a tree nut down the sinuous shadows. How long will it take it to reach the top? And once they do reach it, will the ocean be right there? I find out the answer to my second interrogation before the boat penetrates the waterrise: the ocean isn't right there. The ocean is far below. Not as far down as Shabbe, but still…

Even though the sun is hot on my skin, a shiver courses down my spine. Cathal does one more loop of the sky above Shabbe before cresting the shimmering pink walls. My lungs slacken around a gasp as I lay my eyes on the world beyond—a bolt of sapphire capped with golden foam that stretches and bleeds into sky on one end and land on the other.

Luce.

A land I've traveled to in the past but of which I've no recollection. A land where I awakened a dormant king and gave birth to a violet-eyed child. A land where I met my first mate and will now meet my second.

Instead of smooth beats, the pounding in my chest is erratic and causes me to tremble. Cathal must feel it for he twists his face toward me. I swallow and try to smile, but it won't hold.

Why do I feel so…so…restless? Why do my lids burn and my heart ache? Because I've lost my grip on the past, or because I fear the future? The pink sand, that rings the sunstone walls like a stroke of paint, blurs. I blink back my tears before Cathal can see them carve down my cheeks.

A wave claps the ramparts and swallows the sand, then remains there, lapping at the stone as it darkens, blackens. I frown until something shimmers out of the blemish: the ship. Is the channel always there or did the Akwale make it appear? And if it is the latter, how do serpents come and go? If I ask, will I be told?

Cathal shoots forward with such speed that Luce comes into sharper focus, a rolling land of green and gray. My Crow sentry— not my sentry —hasn't, to my knowledge, gone home since I stepped out of the Mahananda. How eager he must be to return to his friends and sleep in his rock chamber in the clouds.

"Cathal?"

He slows and rolls his head.

"Put me on boat."

Though he has no eyebrows, I can sense them slant.

"So you can home." I nod to the rising gray rock which Fallon explained houses Lorcan's castle.

I tighten my grip around Cathal's neck, expecting he will dip now, but instead, he beats his great wings, sending us careening forward, straight for the tower of rock and clouds.

Did the wind distort my words or did Cathal Báeinach decide to squeeze in a visit of his home? I glance over my shoulder, and although I cannot see Taytah Priya, I can feel her glower cutting through the growing distance between us and them.

When we swoop over jagged rock, I stop looking back and begin to look ahead. Might as well, since I'm at Cathal's mercy and will be going wherever it is that he goes. Perhaps Lorcan instructed him to bring me to the Sky Kingdom before the nuptials?

I soon find out that the Crow King had no hand in Cathal's decision.