66. Zendaya

Chapter 66

Zendaya

T he boat creaks as it rotates.

"Whose blood is on your face, Enzo?" My tremulous query widens his nightmarish grin.

"I revived some of the dead. We can bring back corpses, Daya!" He gestures to the woman with the anchor tattoo.

She bows. Her hair's cut so close to her scalp that it's impossible to spot its hue, but her forehead bears the pearl and her eyes are black orbs. Two others hinge at the waist before meeting my perplexed stare—both round-eared men in drab garments.

"What the fuck?" Cathal snarls against the shell of my ear.

"We're going to raise them all!" Enzo cries out like some lunatic warrior. And then he claps for his new Serpents to follow as he pounds the deck to sort through the cadavers.

"Tell him to stop before I cut out his tongue," Cathal mutters.

No, I gasp. A Serpent without a tongue would be like a Crow deprived of a wing. No severing of tongues. Please, Cathal.

It was a turn of phrase.

I place my palm over my spasming stomach. Don't raise any more humans, Enzo. Not until…not until I speak with Behati. Please.

Though he keeps staring at me, he doesn't nod or acknowledge my request through our bond.

The nearby click of Behati's cane steals my attention off him. "Apparently your vision showed me rousing the dead, Behati," I sputter.

I spy her eyebrows slanting. "Which vision, Daya? I've had so many."

"The vision you had last night. The one you showed me at breakfast. I want to see everything you saw," I say reaching out to touch her forehead. "And I mean everything , Behati."

Her frown strengthens. "I showed you ev—" The bottom of her cane suddenly skids, and she wobbles. And then she's tipping.

"Behati!" I screech just as my fingertips graze her bangs.

Her eyes are huge as she lists. Huger still when she crashes into the ship's deck, splintering the blood-soaked slats before vanishing right through them.

"Taytah!" Kanti rushes to the edge. "What have you done, Daya? What have you done?"

"She didn't do anything," Cathal rumbles. "Behati slipped."

"Well don't just stand there, Crow," Kanti shrills. "Go get her."

A muscle pops in Cathal's jaw. "Enzo's down there. He can fetch her."

"No!" My hair flies as I shake my head from side to side. "I don't want him to go inside that water. Send Aodhan."

Cathal swerves his attention to the grounds and the glowing house at our back. "Where the fuck did he go? Aodhan!"

"I'll go find him. Keep an eye on…" Reid tips his head toward Agrippina, whose complexion is as bloodless as the corpses she cannot seem to look away from.

I suddenly want her far from this lurid spectacle. I want both my Serpents brought to Asha and tucked behind the walls of my palace.

As Agrippina's mate shifts and soars toward the house, I turn toward mine, whose nostrils flare. Cathal, can you carry Agrippina back to ? —

A booming snap followed by a reverberating crack makes me whirl back around. I scream just as the vessel fractures and sinks, drawing every corpse and Serpent into the liquid abyss.