5. Zendaya

Chapter 5

Zendaya

S hock ripples through me as the Shabbin Queen buries the black stone dagger inside Fallon's chest.

The brutality of the act cinches my lungs, and I think I'll never be able to draw breath again, but I'm wrong, for a second horrified cry escapes me as Fallon turns to stone and sinks. I slap the ward, claw at it, desperate to find a breach so I can race over and dive into the Mahananda to retrieve her.

If only my blood carried Shabbin magic, but all it does is stain. The only part of me that possesses any power is my tongue. Useless, since it cannot carry me through wards. Or can it? I lick the transparent barrier. Though it captures the attention of Kanti, who grimaces as she stands, hand-in-bleeding-hand, with the rest of the Akwale, it fails to soften the wall.

I freeze as Cathal's earlier question tumbles back into me. He'd asked what would happen to Fallon after she was stabbed, not if . After . I thought he'd mistaken the two words. But he hadn't. He'd known the queen was going to stab Fallon.

I spin around, riffling through my mind for the words to ask how and whether it had been Fallon's choice to take Lorcan's place. However deep I dig, though, I cannot produce any intelligible sounds; they've all deserted me.

Dádhi Cathal and Lorcan stand so still that I suddenly worry they, too, have morphed to stone, but then Cathal's throat bobs around a murmur that makes the Crow King's golden stare flare with rage and heartbreak.

Cathal must sense me gaping, because he dips his chin and meets my distraught stare. I wish he could perceive my interrogations and give me the answers I so desperately crave, but his mouth remains unmoving. Only his pupils move, retracting to the width of a seed.

For the first time in my existence, I feel pity for the male whose daughter has vanished inside the Mahananda. His cheeks hollow as though he senses my pity and loathes it more than the wait. Stomach spasming, I spiral back toward the courtyard and peer past the tight circle of the Akwale for signs of Fallon. She hasn't emerged.

Where worry rucks the queen's face, the members of her Akwale—those whose faces I can see—seem unconcerned. Kanti is downright grinning, lips curled around teeth that shine white in the gray light. Can she see to the bottom? Is the Mahananda transforming Fallon from stone back into skin? Is Fallon still stone?

What if…what if?—

I shut my eyes and give my head a harsh shake. How dare I so much as contemplate this?

Warmth seeps into my cheeks as though the sun were blistering them, but there's no sun. Only hot coils of shame. I roll my fingers and retreat into the farthest, darkest corner of the Kasha, so that the two males I'm trapped with cannot spot how, for a fragile moment, I wished to curse Fallon with scales.

The wait is so endless that I sidle down one of the stone walls and gather my knees against my trembling chest. I don't know how long I sit there, hunched in the shadows, watching shards of candlelight dance on the sunstone floor, but it feels endless. Like Lorcan's earlier storm hasn't just beat the sun back beneath the ramparts of Shabbe but extinguished it forever.

For the first time since my birth, I loathe the darkness.

Fallon does not get scales. I should feel relief; I don't.

When she returns from her dip in the Mahananda, her eyes are bright, her cheeks even brighter. She exudes happiness. She is the only one who does, though. Priya seems to have aged a century, Cathal is as grim as he was when she left, and Lorcan…he is as taciturn as I am guilt-ridden.

His lips don't even bend when Fallon skips through the ward, clutching the dagger between her palms. She presents it to him. He doesn't take it.

She turns toward her father and urges him to seize it…to try it . Lips flat, jaw hard, he relieves her of the blade and rolls it between his palms, as though to test its weight, before strangling the hilt with his huge fingers and propelling the blade into his muscled thigh.

I suck in a breath.

I don't expel it.

Even though I'm still crouched in the shadows, the fragrance of his blood reaches me, wrapping itself around me until my tongue tingles with the need to lap and seal his wounded flesh. I resist the urge. He is Crow. He will heal on his own. He does not need me.

Yet I picture myself kneeling in front of him and licking at his torn flesh. Would he grimace like Fallon's friend, Sybille, the day I'd healed the scrape she'd gotten on her palm while climbing out of the Amkhuti?

Priya scans the obscure Kasha, presumably for me. Sure enough, when she spots my form, she takes off in my direction, asking Lorcan something about his fallen Crows. Did they awaken? Awaken ?

He nods, and then he does something I never imagined him capable of: he walks right past Fallon and asks her not to follow him, before shifting into five crows and taking to the steel-colored sky. The pink flush of delight in Fallon's cheeks recedes as she watches her mate leave. Cathal drapes his arm around her curled shoulders and gathers her into his chest. His lips move over a whisper, probably a reassurance that her mate will return.

Are Fallon and Lorcan still mates? He spoke aloud to her. Does that mean?—

The Shabbin Queen's shadow drapes over me. With a sigh, she murmurs an apology for leaving me in the dark. Does she mean in the shadows of the Kasha, or by not explaining what was about to happen? She tells me that Fallon is safe. Unharmed. That she broke the Crows' obsidian curse. Then she crouches before me and lays her scarred palms on my knees. "EmMoti, kaeneh shileh ."

I frown because I do not know what she's asking me not to do . " Shileh ?" I croak.

The sound of my voice makes her lids flutter. Her eyes begin to shine and then her mouth begins to curve. She reaches over and touches my cheek. And then she holds her fingertip in front of my eyes. It glistens with moisture. " Shil ."

I palm my cheeks that are as wet as when I surface from my swims. Where is this water coming from? Did my skin absorb the Amkhuti? I lick the moisture…taste salt. Why is seawater dribbling from my eyes?

Priya must read my alarm because she offers me a gentle smile. And then she takes my fingers and brings them to her cheek. I frown until I catch a bead of moisture sliding out of the corner of her eye. " Shil ."

I blink, because she isn't Serpent, yet the ocean also flows down her cheeks.

She places a kiss inside my palm, then releases my wrist to glide her hands on either side of my head. My mind fills with images of wet lashes. Everyone , I hear her whisper, shileh .

She must mean all land creatures, for if serpents shed water from their eyes, I'd have a word for it, and I don't. She takes my hand once more, this time to steer me back toward the others. Fallon's crimson-veined eyes and wet cheeks draw another sigh from Priya, who assures her that the male will return. The queen presses a kiss to my forehead, then to Fallon's, before retreating to her chambers, flanked by her guards.

Fallon's lips wobble. It hurts me to see her like this. " Soliya, Mádhi. " Sorry, Maji.

Why is she apologizing to me? Before I can ask, she races out of the Kasha.

Concern over the Lucin monarchs' mating link takes precedence over her apology. I turn toward Cathal and tap my forehead, pointing between the blur of gold that's his daughter and the gloomy sky. His eyebrows sink toward his crooked nose. I should use words, but it's suddenly so quiet that I worry my voice will reach farther than just his ears.

" Foroshock ," he suddenly says.

Foroshock ? What does that mean? He must be speaking in his tongue again.

I push a lock of hair off my face, trying to wrangle it behind my ear, but the strand refuses to cooperate. " Nahen behiboleh Crow. " No speak Crow.

He dips his chin, pinning me with a look that makes heat tiptoe up my neck and into my cheeks.

" Krehiya ," I add, feeling like adding the word please will soften his irritation.

For a couple heartbeats, he just glares, and then his mouth curls and laughter leaps out.

How dare he laugh at my diction, especially considering his accent. I might not be entirely comfortable with the Shabbin tongue, but I can tell he doesn't speak it like Pink-eyes.

I plant my hands on my hips and narrow my eyes, and then in my best Shabbin, I tell him not to laugh at me. He sobers instantly and mutters that he wasn't. Then why did he make that sound after I spoke?

He rubs his hand through his snarled midnight locks, then across the growth on his jaw. He repeats what he's just said, swapping the word not for one that sounds similar but that is stronger, especially in his mouth— never . And then he admits that he was speaking in Shabbin.

I feel like even more of a fool.

He nods to the sky and repeats his earlier word, breaking it into syllables: " For roshock ."

I frown and repeat his words out loud. It takes them rolling off my own tongue to make sense of them: " Phar rosha ." Still mates .

My cheeks must match my hair because the skin over them feels lit by twin flames. I palm one, my thumb bumping into the thin scar that dips from my left eye like a shil .

Dádhi Cathal's mouth moves again. So focused am I on the blaze of my cheeks that I'm not quick enough to snatch and iron out the syllables that spool off his tongue. I don't ask him to repeat himself since I've learned that most Two-legs find this practice exasperating. Fallon and Asha are the exception. Both will repeat words without me ever needing to ask. Aoife, too, come to think of it, but she speaks almost exclusively in Crow. I've decided not to try and learn another foreign tongue until I can express my Serpent thoughts in Shabbin.

I moisten my lips with the tip of my tongue. "Fallon phar Crow?" Fallon still Crow?

" Phar Crow," he replies, enunciating the first word even though it still sounds like he's attached an ‘o' to the end of it.

I know he's not mispronouncing it for my sake, but is it wrong of me to appreciate that he does? That I'm not the only Two-legs maiming the Shabbin tongue? He mentions that he will go check on her and asks me if I want to accompany him. And I do, but Fallon's his daughter. I'm certain she'd much prefer to see him alone.

As I decline his invitation, I glance at his maimed thigh. The scent of his blood has changed. Instead of wet metal, it now smells… not good . I almost suggest taking a look at it, but I don't care to remind him that beneath my smooth Two-legs' flesh, lurks a creature better suited for the deep.

Smoothing away my grimace, I stride toward my wing of the palace. Abrax falls into step beside me and sighs. When I cock an eyebrow at him, he tells me something that makes my footfalls falter and my heart stop beating.

I halt and twist around. The Crow hasn't moved from the threshold of the Kasha.

As I stare at him and he stares back, my heart remains suspended like the clouds over Shabbe, like the smoke around his limbs.

Now that their curse is broken, he's leaving.

They're all leaving.

I don't realize I'm rubbing the skin over my heart until Abrax asks if something's wrong. Yes , I think. I will be even more alone now.