36. Zendaya

Chapter 36

Zendaya

C eres cannot be?—

She cannot be?—

Two more Crows plummet from the sky and land below—Erwin and Reid. The latter kicks the head. I want to scream at the man for desecrating Ceres's corpse, but my scream morphs into a sigh of relief when I catch sight of the face, of the masculine jaw.

Not Ceres.

My pulse bangs against my eardrums in time with the slender boat accosting the embankment. Soldiers leap from it, palms crackling with magic directed at the crowd blighting the wharf.

I try to shout Cathal's name, but my throat is so tight that the two syllables emerge as an inaudible rasp, one that's drowned out by a feminine wail.

"Agrippina!" Ceres keens. " Mi cuori ! Nooo!"

Everything inside of me hardens and chills like the slate tiles biting into my cramping fingers.

Find Agrippina.

I might not have much power, but maybe, just maybe, I can heal her. Before my next heartbeat, I race back toward the tavern, then leap onto the fabric canopy to break my fall. I roll, banging into the man with a proclivity for glitter.

"So sorry," I tell him, scrambling to my feet and rushing toward Agrippina.

Agrippina who lays there, throat slit and body limp in the cradle of her mother's arms.

My name is shouted from the rooftop.

I don't bother answering since I've no doubt that Cathal, with his impeccable eyesight, will spot me in the crowd. I shoulder past onlookers. One of them tries to stop me, but a hiss, coupled with a glance at my eyes has him stepping aside. I push past Reid, who stands over the Rossi women, unmoving.

Ceres gasps when I crouch and touch her sleeve.

"Can I try to heal her?"

"Iron," she croaks, pulling her arm away.

I fathomed the weapon was made of that. After all, Agrippina is pureblooded. Ceres wouldn't be crying if it had been forged from any other metal.

I begin to lash at the warm, sweet essence flowing out of the yawning wound. Her blood gushes down my throat. I swallow and swallow until it feels like I've drunk all of what flows through her veins. Live! Come on…

When her skin begins to tauten, relief blooms within my ribs like an anemone, growing tentacles that snare every floating particle of hope. I wasn't too late. I got to Agrippina in time.

Find Agrippina.

This was why! Because the Mahananda knew an evil man would come at her with an iron blade. I suck in a breath at the errant thought, recalling her tremulous warning. Malo uomo . Did she foresee him, or did she merely see him?

As I keep laving her cut, thoughts puff like the grains of sand that Enzo sends floating upward when he slithers across the bottom of the Amkhuti, as he so loves to do. My little bottom dweller. Well, my humongous bottom dweller, for he is far larger than I am in scales. In skin too.

I hate how I left things with him. I picture his green scales, recall the pliant press of them against my body a scant few mornings ago. Enzo?

He doesn't answer me.

Please forgive me.

I pull away to check on Agrippina's wound. I must move too fast, because my head thumps against the bloodied cobbles. I lay there, blinking back the darkness, trying to muscle my neck back up. Why does my skull feel like a galleon anchor?

Perhaps Faerie blood is noxious to Serpents? What if someone laced her blood with that toxin? What if it wasn't the Mahananda that guided me toward her but Kanti? Could my cousin be so shrewd? She desires the throne so fiercely…

A cool splash startles my lids up. Cathal stands over me with an overturned bucket. His mouth moves over my name before moving over a barked command. "Reid, Erwin, more!"

More what? He tosses the bucket at the redhead and then drops into a crouch beside me, his charcoal stripes melting down his cheeks and into his facial hair like tears, his forehead slick with perspiration.

"Can you hear me, Príona?" He sweeps his fingers across my mouth, strokes a line down my neck.

I'm about to nod when another cool, delicious splash slicks over my torso. I can feel the salt trickle through my skin, vivifying my blood, rattling my muscles, crisping my mind and reminding me that I'm other. That to exist, I need salt, I need the ocean. That it wasn't Agrippina's blood or the substance of the weapon that drew me into the abyss, but my own physical shortcomings. When I'd healed Enzo, I'd done so in scales. Perhaps I must always heal people in scales, be they Crow or Faerie or human.

With a sigh, I drag my knuckles over my mouth to wipe away any lingering blood, then scrub my palms down my face and up through my hair. "Did it work? Is she alive?"

Cathal scowls. Why? Because he wished me to speak other words? Since he's yet to answer me, I glance at Agrippina's neck, at the skin that's hemmed shut, pink and puckered against the milky expanse surrounding it.

Ceres's cheeks shine with tears as she tucks a lock of hair behind the scarred shell of Agrippina's ear before curling herself around her daughter and rocking her.

I snap my gaze toward Cathal's. "It didn't work?"

"No." It's Reid who replies. He stands rooted to the same spot as before, his fingers balled into fists.

But…but I don't understand. Agrippina no longer bleeds. I hunt what I can see of her neck for a throbbing vein, hunt her face for a twitch of lashes. Agrippina lays wilted in her mother's arms, her skin so pale that her freckles resemble a crude paint splatter.

Find Agrippina , my mind nags.

I did! I want to scream. I found her!

But more importantly, my tongue patched her injury, so why isn't she waking? Why isn't her chest pumping? I mustn't have drawn out the iron…I must've sealed it inside her veins.

Though my sodden dress only sticks to my skin, it feels as though it swathes my lungs. I want to tear it off, to jump into the canal and shift.

I try to push away from Cathal but he clasps me like Ceres clasps her daughter. "Let go."

He doesn't.

I splay my fingers on his armor and shove. My muscles tremble so hard that my elbow buckles and my body ends up pressed to his.

Cathal's arms tighten around me. "Please let me hold you," he rasps into my hair.

With a sigh, I relent and press my Serpent away until it no longer niggles my spine. "You never came to see me," I murmur.

"I came."

"That was you in the gardens three days ago?"

"Ceres!" someone yells.

I twist away from Cathal to find Justus Rossi barreling through the throng of soldiers and halting beside Reid.

"Ceres?" he sputters again.

She picks her head off her daughter's forehead and blinks wetly at him. Her cheek is stained black. He asks her a question in their tongue to which she responds with a shake of her head. And then he's slinging his face my way, asking me something about the Mahananda. But I'm too distracted by the smudge on Ceres's cheek to respond.

"Still closed," Cathal replies in Shabbin, probably to keep the soldiers surrounding us in the dark about our lack of access to the source of all magic.

"Maybe we can place her on its surface!" Reid says with such vigor that his voice echoes over all the cobbles. "Maybe it would op?—"

A blue hue is enveloping Agrippina's strands, snuffing out the amber. I press away from Cathal. This time, not only do his arms soften but he also helps me sit up. I push a lock of hair off my face, feeling it ghost over my mouth and coat it with the metallic tang of blood and salt.

Her lashes flutter. Draw up.

The air freezes inside my lungs as I stare…and stare.

"What have you done to my daughter?" Ceres gasps.

I saved her.

I transformed her.