2. Zendaya

Chapter 2

Zendaya

W hen the silvery light of a new dawn finally slashes the horizon, I stride across my bedchamber and wrench open the heavy door.

Abrax must've just arrived, for my guard is still tying the wide carmine sash that all royal guards wear around their cream-colored tunics and pants. " Rajka ." He blinks at my salt-crusted hair that has set in stiff waves.

I should've probably bathed after Dádhi Cathal escorted me back into my bedchamber and urged me to rest, but I'd been too distracted by the Crows' tense expressions.

Abrax asks whether I need anything. Yes . I need to learn why Reid and Aodhan flocked to Shabbe in the middle of the night.

I hurry past my guard in the direction of the Kasha—the wing of the palace where the queen holds court. I squint past the tall wooden doors that are chiseled like sea fans to find the queen and Behati seated in their usual spots on the circular carmine divan.

Fallon's there as well, but she does not sit. She stands between her father and Lorcan, her shoulders squared beneath a silk dressing gown that gleams gold like her mate's eyes. Her fingers cut the air while her lips move over a flow of words that do not reach my ears because of the sigils painted into the walls to keep sound from escaping the Kasha.

I nod to the doors, but the two female guards stationed outside do not let me pass. Luckily, Abrax has followed me. He translates my desire to enter with a command that the sorceresses shielding the queen don't heed.

I'm so desperate that I consider letting my voice squeak past my teeth, but I'm saved from having to do so by Abrax, who hardens his pitch. It's the first time he uses a tone that isn't as placid as the Mahananda's surface. Though both guard's eyebrows arch at his outburst, neither relents.

I cross my arms and tap my foot against the buffed sunstone. If I have to stand outside the Kasha until the meeting adjourns, then so be it. Fortunately, Behati spots me through the lattice doors and alerts the queen, who turns and crooks her finger, signaling to let me pass. As her guards open the doors, she chides them for keeping me out.

She pats the cushion beside her. " Haneh, emMoti ." Come, my Pearl. She calls me that because my retracted tusk reminds her of the iridescent beads that sprout inside oysters.

Like Fallon, Priya still wears a nightgown. Unlike the Crow Queen, the Shabbin one tamed her hair into pinned swirls.

I kneel at her side while Dádhi Cathal mutters something under his breath in Crow, leveling me with his lightning-bright stare. I truly must've imagined the soft look in his eyes earlier, because there is nothing gentle about him now.

Louder, he addresses the Shabbin Queen—still in Crow. I circle her wrists and lift them to my forehead, entreating her with my stare to show me what troubles everyone so. Dádhi Cathal shakes his head. Priya quietly but sharply tells him that I should see. Fallon agrees. Behati doesn't give her opinion.

Dádhi Cathal glances at Lorcan, probably for support, but the Crow King's eyes are glazed, harboring the same sheen as the giant gold platter heaped with plump fruit. It's possible he's communicating with his shifters. I hear he's capable of this in both skin and feathers, whereas his people can only mind-speak when in their beast form.

When the queen sighs, I pivot my head back toward her, the three syllables for please — krehiya —warming my tongue. I rein them in behind my teeth, flattening my palms over her blistered ones, choosing a silent entreaty instead of a hissed one.

I draw in a breath when a twilit forest develops on the back of my lids, one that mustn't be in Shabbe, for the trees that line the queendom's ramparts have thin trunks and broad, glossy leaves. The ones in the queen's vision have fat trunks impaled with slender branches dappled in thumb-sized, papery leaves.

I slither through the forest like a serpent, stopping only once I reach a clearing strewn with three black boulders. The queen glides me closer to these dark mounds, close enough for me to realize that they are, in fact, effigies of giant birds.

I wonder why she shows me these statues. Do Crows not appreciate replicas of themselves? She must feel my brow furrow, for she directs my stare toward striped brown feathers that protrude from a splayed wing. Before I can comprehend why feathers have been glued to stone, the landscape of her mind changes and I catch her hand folded around a dagger tipped in black stone. I see her stabbing it through Lorcan's heart and his skin hardening to iron.

She yanks her palms off my forehead, her gaze wide with what resembles fear, while mine is narrowed with a frown, one that grows when Fallon points to herself and says: " batara azish ." I know the meaning of azish for it's been used many times to describe my condition— curse —but I'm unfamiliar with the term batara .

As I sit back on my heels, my temples buzz as though a bee were trapped behind them. What link exists between the forest statues and Lorcan's stabbing? And why does the queen's hand tremble as she reaches for her glass of steaming date tea?

When her gaze flicks to Behati's, the buzzing grows so insistent that I knead my temples. Were those visions? Did she not intend to show me the one of her stabbing Lorcan? Was it even her? The Two-legs holding the dagger had long white hair. Behati's is also white, though hers is streaked through with gold.

The seer directs words to Fallon in Crow. She usually always speaks to her in Shabbin. Has she switched languages to thwart me, or is it simply for her audience's benefit?

Smoke slithers around Lorcan like vines as he growls something at the Shabbin Queen that must concern Fallon since he uses the Crow term for mate. Fallon sidles in front of him and brackets his cheeks between her palms. His complexion, usually moon-pale, currently resembles the berries clustered in the platter before him.

Lightning cracks and thunder grumbles over the window that stretches almost the full length of the Kasha's ceiling. Fallon once told me that her mate can control the sky. Is the incoming cloud front Lorcan's doing?

Out loud and in Shabbin—for my sake, I imagine—she asks why he and Dádhi don't trust the Mahananda. My frown deepens, for what does the Mahananda have to do with the bird statues and Lorcan's stabbing?

Dádhi Cathal Báeinach folds his thick arms and slits his dark gaze. What? I want to ask. What did I do wrong now?

I hear Fallon murmur the name she sometimes calls me to Lorcan—Mádhi. I'm not sure what it means, only that it sounds vaguely similar to how she refers to her father. Since I'm not a mother, I suppose the likeness is coincidental.

" EmAzish ," Lorcan murmurs. My curse . And then he says something else that starts with -em but finishes with a word I'm unfamiliar with.

His curse? What is his curse?

Fallon shakes her head and murmurs that it's hers, that she's the " batara azish ."

I blow out my cheeks, my frustration mounting. What does batara mean?

As the queen takes a sip of her tea, her eyes whiten like Behati's. Except, in the Shabbin monarch's case, it happens when she convenes with the Mahananda. A moment later, she proclaims, " Mahananda keteh ab ." The Mahananda says now.

Lorcan closes his eyes and shakes his head, repeating the word "no" in both Shabbin and Crow.

The queen sets down her glass of tea. " Ab va kada ." Now or never .

Lorcan's jaw turns bladed. " Kada ." Never.

Never what?

A meaningful look passes between the queens that makes Priya climb to her feet. As she strides toward Lorcan, she asks everyone to depart, save for the Crow King. Does she believe he'll change his mind if we're gone? And what of the dagger? Is she planning on hurting him? I reassure myself that she'd never harm her descendant's mate, for it would hurt her beloved Fallon.

For some reason, this is when I comprehend the second part of her vision. The stabbing had been an explanation of the forest statues since, when the dagger had breached the Crow King's skin, it had hardened his flesh like theirs.

"Daya?" Behati holds out her arm to me.

I stand, then pad over to where she sits, take her forearm, and boost her up. Once she's stable, I reach for her cane, but she shakes her head and curls her callused fingers around my elbow.

All right…no cane.

Behati's body might be brittle, but her mind's alarmingly firm. There's no changing it once she's decided something. And apparently, today, she's decided I will be her crutch instead of the gnarled branch carved to resemble a coiled serpent. I suppose that if Kanti had been present, Behati would've taken her arm.

Fallon catches up to us, her features blurring and writhing behind the gossamer veil of smoke that envelops her. I wonder if it's her mate's smoke or her own beast pushing against her flesh, desirous to emerge. She says something to her father in Crow that has the umber rings surrounding his pupils shrinking and his scowl darkening as though his smudged stripes had penetrated into the pale canvas beneath.

He shoves open the door just as Fallon pricks her finger on the shell she wears around her neck and sketches a motif in blood. Though my stance is solid, Behati teeters and grabs ahold of the wall on our way out. I try to ease her away but she resists. I soon understand why when I catch her finger traipsing over the door frame, leaving behind knots of blood that quickly absorb into the stone.

She doesn't meet my stare as she tucks her bleeding hand into the pocket of her wide-sleeved carmine robe. I start to ease her forward when she halts once more to grumble something that includes Cathal's name and a nod at the cane she left behind.

What are you up to, Behati?

As Cathal goes to fetch her abandoned cane, Fallon steps out of the Kasha, drumming her fingers on her thigh, speckling the gold with vermilion droplets. Did she, too, just bloodcast? When she catches me observing her, her shoulders turn needle-straight and she gives the murky sky beyond the honeysuckle-laden trellis her full attention.

Behati tugs me forward, crooking her finger toward one of the female guards, who hinges to accommodate the seer's shorter stature. Behati whispers something about gathering the Akwale that makes the guard spin on her heel and rush away. Why does Behati request the presence of the strongest sorceresses?

My skin begins to prickle, not with the need to shift, but to understand what?—

A tremor ripples through the air behind me. Brow puckered, I twist around. And then I gasp, because Cathal's fist is sailing toward my face.