69. Zendaya

Chapter 69

Zendaya

A midst the slow bend of my pink hair puffs inky black. It settles between my upturned face and the magical wall overlooking my queendom. My hammering heart holds still. Could it be a Crow? Could Cathal have managed to break into shadows?

I call to him.

Silence.

Another blot of ink lifts and glides along the warded surface. I comb my fingers through it, realizing it's viscous like?—

I touch two fingers to the top of my head. They come away slick and black with my blood.

I expect it will wash away like Shabbin blood but it lingers.

My spine tingles as I carry my fingers to Cathal's throat and draw stripes on either side. When the sky flares, the stripes are gone. Because my blood washed away, or because it penet?—

Daya? Cathal rears his head so fast that it knocks into my chin and clicks my teeth together.

I can bloodcast underwater.

I feel like weeping.

I feel like fighting.

My mate turns in my arms. For a moment, we hang there, suspended, our hearts and stares pressed against one another.

Can you shift? I finally ask him.

When he vanishes, another wave of relief dashes against me.

He knits back into flesh. They painted a fucking ward!

I nod.

He must catch sight of my bleeding skull because his livid gaze tapers there. Your head ? —

Is fine.

It's not fucking fine. It's bleeding. You're bleeding. I will fucking eviscerate ? —

Voices ring out nearby.

Don't let go of my hand. I dip my fingers into my blood and paint the invisibility sigil on Cathal's brow, then sketch it on mine.

The voices grow louder. I pick out Kanti's, Soorya's, and Rosh's.

I hear Kanti saying, "Did you really have to kill Antoni, Soorya?"

Their footfalls resonate against the ward as though they were traipsing over it. They are!

"Fallon likes the guy and so do you." The Shabbin wearing my daughter's face shrugs. "I felt that if Zendaya would try to heal anyone, it would be him." She shrugs as she steps right over us.

"She probably would've if her little Crow hadn't been so fucking suspicious," beautiful, blonde Rosh adds. "Can you get rid of Fallon's face, Soorya? It looks too much like the Naaga we banished."

Cathal's nails must be morphing into talons for I can feel their cool, hard shape digging into my skin—not hard enough to stab but hard enough to dent. I knew that wasn't our daughter…

May our child be safe.

May she be with Lorcan.

Kanti stops walking. When her pink eyes lower toward me, I think that my invisibility sigil mustn't have worked.

Can you see me? I murmur through the mind link.

No. Can you see me?

No.

Cathal's body suddenly jostles mine. What the—is that Behati?

Aodhan, I say.

Aodhan?

I imagine the real Behati's up there with them. I imagine they made him look like her.

Cathal's quiet for an instant. He would've shifted when he fell if it had been him. Not to mention, he wouldn't have gone along and acted like Behati…

Unless he turned against us.

He may be arrogant but he's still a Crow.

And what ? Your people cannot be traitors?

His nostrils must flare for little bubbles stream out and pop against the ward. Touch her forehead to see if there's any blood to lift.

I bite back my disgust and reach over. Her skin doesn't tingle with magic. I frown. Could Behati truly not have been embroiled in her granddaughter's scheme to remove me from power? But her cane…

Could it have been just a cane and not some giant vial of poison?

I get my answer when Kanti crouches and flattens her palms against the ward above her grandmother's ghoulish face. "Look at where your loyalties to the Mahananda brought you, Taytah."

"Honestly, I'm sort of surprised she turned you down." Soorya lowers her palm from her forehead, her skin tone browning, her violet eyes pinkening, her hair lengthening. I suddenly hate her the most for having used my daughter to placate me.

"Really?" Kanti crooks her head to look up at the former healer. "She threatened to leave Shabbe the day Priya led Fallon into the Mahananda instead of Lorcan. I heard them argue. She told Priya it would cost her her life."

"If she hadn't been with you in Nebba," Rosh says, "I would've been convinced she'd had a hand in freeing Meriam."

Kanti draws a slow oval over Behati's face as though sketching her. "You were right, Taytah. But you're not going to be right about the rest of it. The Mahananda will never turn down my bargain, for if it does, not only will we never release it, but we will also draw out every single drop of its magic until it's as dry and desiccated as the Selvatin desert. And then we will create a new source. One that won't turn humans into monsters and monsters into humans. One that will put Shabbe and the Shabbins before every other species."

" That's why you haven't been speaking to me, Mahananda. Not because you've abandoned me but because you've been trapped. Like me. " Even though my question will never land, I ask, " How do we break free? "

Thunder growls and lightning sparkles, illuminating a thousand Crow wings. But not just Crows. I see two women with pink eyes and one man with long orange tresses kneeling in midair, drawing knots of blood on what must be another ward.

Lore's here, Cathal murmurs.

He is, and he's not alone. My eyes sting because, not only did my daughter come, but my mother and Justus did as well.