37. Zendaya

Chapter 37

Zendaya

J ustus's silence rings louder than Ceres's cries of outrage. Here I thought she might be pleased that Agrippina was alive, but, apparently, she'd have preferred her to be dead than a Serpent.

"Do not yell at her," Cathal grits out. "All Zendaya did was carry her back from the underworld. The words you are looking for are thank you, Rajka ."

"She transformed my daughter into an animal," Ceres snarls.

I flinch, which makes Cathal's arm tighten around my middle. Is that what she really thinks of me? As an animal?

"A shifter," Justus finally says, scrubbing a hand down his face. " Not an animal." Ceres opens her mouth, probably to argue, but she's interrupted by his next words: "Just like our granddaughter."

Though her pulse still flicks against her elegant neck at a harsh pace, her lips press together and she grows quiet.

"You should get away from her." Cathal's tone is as placid as his pulse isn't. It rages against my abdomen, its beats echoing the ones slamming against my own sternum. "If it's anything like last time, she's about to shift."

"Last time?" Ceres squawks, before shooting me a horrified look. "You've made others?"

"One," Cathal says.

Agrippina's thin eyebrows quirk as she observes her mother, then slant on Reid.

I move closer to her, garnering her attention. "It's going to be all right. I'll teach you everything. It's going to be all right."

She doesn't nod. Doesn't speak. Not out loud and not into my mind. Perhaps she won't be capable of the latter.

Can you hear me? I ask her, without drawing my lips apart.

If she can, she doesn't let on. Could her mind be too scarred to register words? How am I supposed to train her if she cannot understand me?

"What the fuck did you do to your hair?" she suddenly asks.

I know she spoke out loud, because everyone gasps. Save for Reid. Poor Crow seems to have morphed into obsidian.

Agrippina licks her lips, then says something about Meriam in Lucin before gasping Cathal's name and pointing to a place over his shoulder. Color leaches from her already pale face, and she hisses the word pappa , scuttling away from her still kneeling mother.

Cathal sighs, his breath soft against my ear, then replies in Lucin. Agrippina rolls those twin pools of black from the Crow holding me to the Faerie standing next to him. All the while, Ceres palms her mouth, stifling whatever sound is building in her throat—a gasp, another sob, an exclamation?

"She believes her father is still our enemy," Cathal murmurs softly.

"He's not the enemy, Agrippina," I tell her in Shabbin since she appears to be fluent. "You're safe."

My new Serpent frowns at me.

"As to what I did with my hair, it's a long story. One I'd prefer to tell you in Shabbe."

"Wait," Justus says in Shabbin. "What's your sister's name?"

Agrippina's head rears back. "Why? Have you forgotten it, Pappa?"

He snorts, swallows. "Just please say it."

She cocks a ruddy eyebrow. "Domitina."

In Lucin she says words that Cathal translates quietly. "She's asking him if he'll require the title of the book from which she plucked the name, since she apparently chose it for her sister."

Tears spill down Ceres's cheeks. " Rimena. "

" Si ." Justus walks over to his former mate and crouches, placing a hand on her shoulder. " Rimena ."

"She remembers," Cathal translates.

"You brought all of her back." Justus's voice is cluttered with emotion. "Thank you, Rajka. Thank you."

Ceres swallows and echoes the Faerie general's sentiment, buoying my heart.

Agrippina gapes. "You speak Shabbin, Mamma?" she asks just as another loud "Mamma" echoes in the night.

Fallon.

I twist around, thinking she's calling to me, but find her eyes locked on Agrippina. Of course. I'm not her only mother. How could I forget? After its brief climb, my heart plummets anew. It's unfair of me to be jealous, yet I cannot stifle the sentiment.

Cathal's fingers mold my waist and then his thumb strokes as though he senses my dejection.

Fallon comes to a stop right beside her grandparents, her gaze stilling on Agrippina's eyes and retracted tusk before hurtling toward me. "You transformed her?"

"She saved her." Cathal's tone is so abrupt that it draws our daughter's eyebrows low.

"I didn't mean it in a bad way, Dádhi."

" Dádhi ?" The pearl above Agrippina's nose dips as she lowers her frown to my abdomen.

My jealousy dwindles, for she doesn't remember the child my prior self nested inside her body for safekeeping.

"What the holy fucking Mahananda is going on here?"

Air funnels past my lips, because I'm almost certain her mouth didn't move. Not to mention she used the Shabbin term for the source of all magic instead of the Lucin one. Agrippina, can you hear me?

Her eyebrows slant as she whisks her stare back my way.

I'm speaking inside your mind.

Her lids reel up so high that her lashes smack her browbone. How? Her word, though noiseless, detonates inside my skull. Did you draw a sigil on my forehead?

I can no longer bloodcast, the same way I can no longer understand Lucin. It's a very long story that involves my demise and the Mahananda. I swear I'll tell you everything, but first you need to understand something about yourself. You're no longer…

Her body shimmers, expands, transforms.

Even though what she is no longer is evident, I finish my sentence anyway: A Faerie.