30. Zendaya

Chapter 30

Zendaya

" I 'm sorry," I whisper to Cathal as he stares at the coiled green monster on the black sand.

"You made a serpent, Mádhi." The wonder in Fallon's tone feels like iron talons to the heart.

I tremulously tuck my wet hair behind my ears, refusing to let Behati's vision seep into my thoughts. The Serpent isn't my mate; the Crow, devoured by gloom, who stands before me is.

"Can you hear him?" The bones in Cathal's face sharpen as he continues to scrutinize the boy. "Inside your mind"—his pitch is so grave it weighs on my heart—"can you hear him?"

I want to lie. I want to shake my head and pretend like I can't. Instead, I reach up and cradle his jaw to force his gaze to mine. "Look me. Please look me."

His eyes twitch.

I'm a Serpent. A freaking Serpent! Son of a biscuit eater. The boy sounds so horribly joyful.

How can he be jubilant? He'll now be hunted and reviled.

I was a human. The lowest of the lows. You just gave me magic, Princess. Magic!

I don't realize I've covered my ears until Cathal pinches my wrists between his large fingers and carries them away from my face. I steal my wrists from his grip and lace my arms around his torso, wishing there wasn't so much cloth and metal separating our bodies. "I choose you, Cathal Báeinach."

With a sigh, he props his chin atop my head and winds his arms around my waist to hold me. Not tightly enough. Not long enough. I burrow my wet cheek against his armor.

What are my odds of surviving Daddy Crow?

I spin around and hiss. Never call him that.

Sorry. I didn't mean—I won't. Sorry. A body thumps beside his, sending him recoiling toward the water.

I trail Imogen's boots to the yellow hair that's no longer bound in a tail. The captain sputters as he rises onto all fours, and then he blanches as his gaze trawls our loose circle of shifters.

Imogen asks something in Crow. When she gestures toward the Serpent, I imagine it has to do with his presence on the beach. Fallon must explain who he is, because the whites of her eyes expand.

"Is this the male who tried to gore you, Zendaya?" Cathal asks, his voice so dry it strips my blazing lids of moisture.

"Yes."

"Would your…" His throat bobs. "Would your mate mind if I severed his head?"

My heart shrivels. I suddenly hate the captain as much as my mother, for he's the reason I'm about to lose my mate. If he hadn't driven a spear through the boy's chest…

My lips tingle from Cathal's hot breaths. " You are mate. Not he."

The Crow's gaze finally rolls to mine. For several seconds, we stare at one another. Into one another. And then his lids sink, and he gives his head a small shake. "Ask him, Príona."

I don't want to ask the new Serpent anything.

Cathal turns toward my fellow shifter and reiterates his question in Lucin.

Tell him to go for it. Sami's a massive faehole.

"What is his answer?" Cathal asks.

"I decide! Not boy." I squeeze my scorched eyes shut. "Kill Yellow-hair."

The air shifts and then I catch the wet snap of flesh.

Remind me to never cross your husband.

I propel my fists into my eyes. What have I done? What have I done ?

No one will miss the guy, Princess. Not his wife, who he beats up on the regular, or his customers, who he swindles of coin every chance he gets.

I whirl and lock eyes with the scaly shifter's. "I no talk about dead man! I talk about you ." I fling an arm in his direction.

He falls quiet. Everyone does. The world's immobility is so profound that I hear water lap against wood a moment before my grandmother's voice grinds up the silence.

"Cathal Báeinach!" His name vibrates with a fury that pales in comparison to the one striking my heart. "I have half a mind to plunge an obsidian dagger into your…" Her voice fades as her attention locks on the Serpent, on the shimmer that envelops his scales before returning him to his other shape.

Though the moonlight is scarce, and his hair cropped close to his scalp, I don't miss its emerald hue as he scrambles to his feet to sketch an awkward bow. "Maezza," he all but gasps.

The queen's pink eyes linger on his dark ones. "How?"

"Mádhi turned him," Fallon says, twining her fingers through mine. She gives my palm a squeeze. "Serpents can be made, imTaytah."

"Blessed Mahananda." My grandmother blinks those heavy-lidded eyes of hers that are aglow with absolute wonder.

This is not wondrous. This is disastrous.

Ouch. My new mate rubs his nape.

I scowl at him. Quiet.

He presses his thick lips together, chastened.

"I'm sorry about—about the storm," Cathal murmurs.

The queen's chin tilts up. "I've no doubt you are." Her smugness incenses me.

I must roll my fingers too tightly to Fallon's liking because she murmurs, "I won't let her take you away if you don't want to go to Shabbe."

"That isn't what's troubling your mother, now is it, Zendaya?" Priya asks.

Fallon frowns. "It isn't?"

My teeth chatter too hard to explain.

"I don't understand." She turns toward me. "You dreamed about there being another Serpent shifter, and now there is one. And there could be more. You could have an entire den if…"

The sob that notches my throat quiets her.

Please don't cry, Princess. If you don't want me to exist, I'm sure Fallon's father will be only too glad to give me the same fate as Sami's. He wrinkles his hooked nose and looks down at boots that are so scuffed I can see a hint of toe. Just ask him to do it quickly. He kicks a shell.

I'm not going to ask him to kill you, I murmur.

He blinks as though my mercy genuinely surprises him. Thank you.

"I won't take you by force to Shabbe this time, emMoti, but I urge you and…" The queen switches to Lucin to ask the male a question to which he replies: Enzo .

I surmise this is his name. Enzo . Enzo the Shifter.

"I urge you and Enzo to head to Shabbe with us. Especially now ."

Now that I've made a shifter.

I made a shifter.

If it wasn't for the mind link, I would, like Fallon, find this most extraordinary.

Mind link, Enzo murmurs in wonder. That's why I can talk without moving my mouth. What language are we speaking? It's not Shabbin, is it?

I grimace.

Sorry. My mind is just… Enzo kicks another shell. Sorry.

Stop! Stop apologizing! I growl.

His eyes grow as wide as the stupid wound I healed. That'll teach me to keep my tongue off foreign bodies. The second the thought enters my mind, I turn toward Cathal. When our eyes collide, my lungs tighten.

Ask me to stay , I think, but unlike Enzo, Cathal cannot penetrate my mind—only my heart—so he doesn't hear my silent entreaty.

I realize I could ask to stay, but what if he refuses and turns his back on me? Or worse, what if he seeks a mate of his own?

Ask me to stay , I beg.

"You should go with your grandmother." His words are a blade that flay me open from collarbone to navel. "She's the only one who can truly keep you and your—" His jaw flexes. "You and the kid safe."

I blink back the wetness pooling behind my lids.

"I won't seal off Shabbe," Priya says. "Not unless the toxin spreads. If it does, though, wards will go up, but in the meantime, you may come and go as you please."

It doesn't matter whether she puts up wards or not. Cathal will not visit.

Fallon gives my fingers another squeeze, forcing a smile. "We'll come every day. Right, Dádhi?"

He stares at the mirror-smooth ocean that unspools toward my birthplace. "I'll go inform the Siorkahd of this new development. Imogen, dispose of the deceased, and please fucking remind everyone that they will incur the same fate if they so much as look sideways at a serpent. Evidently they didn't think we were serious when we passed the edict."

Without so much as a backward glance or a goodbye, Cathal dissolves into smoke before morphing into his winged form. I press my palm against my chest that feels hollow, as though he left with not merely a piece of my heart but the entire thing.

I'm going to Shabbe! Enzo's exclamation clangs against my eardrums.

I stare at his excited face, at his cheeks that are high in color, at his mouth that is round with wonder, at his gangly limbs he's yet to grow into. Why in the world would the Mahananda match me with a juvenile?

Was this how Fallon…or rather Lorcan viewed his match when they first met? Like an unappealing child?

I don't think Enzo hears my deliberations, entranced as he is by the queen growing a gang plank from the bow of the ship so we can climb aboard.

"You made a Serpent. I can still hardly believe it," Fallon murmurs as Enzo walks up the plank toward my awaiting grandmother. "I'll come for breakfast." My daughter drops a kiss on both my cheeks. "I love you."

"I love you, too, Fallon. So much." I turn my gaze toward the starlit heavens, hunting its infinite depths for the male who, once upon a time, would never have left me.

"I think Dádhi's a little bit in shock." Of course, she guesses who I seek. "But you know him…a restorative stroll through the clouds, and he'll be right as rain."

Though I've never heard the expression, I twig its meaning. I give her a sad smile and hesitate to tell her that nothing will ever be right as rain again, but I cannot get my throat to move around more than a distressed swallow.

I stroke her cheek that is perched as high as her father's, even though it's curved like mine. Cathal and I might not share a mind link, but we share something even more precious. We share her .

I give her one last hug before finally turning toward my grandmother and the life the Mahananda has in store for me.