71. Cathal

Chapter 71

Cathal

O ur three bodies don't magically glide through the congealed surface. Zendaya draws a circle to shear a hole through the wards. The black ring of blood just sits there like a stroke of charcoal. I give my mate's waist a squeeze.

Tell me, mo Sífair, how's this water not affecting you?

I've been dosing myself.

…Pardon?

I've been ingesting flakes of the poison since Isolacuori. Asha read that taking a little each day can build a tolerance. And it has.

I cannot decide whether to growl at Daya for having taken such a risk or praise her farsightedness. How come Agrippina's out?

Because, until I knew for certain whether it would work, I didn't want to harm my Serpents.

But you didn't mind harming yourself ? Anger rides me so hard that my molars click. When were you going to tell me that you were ingesting fucking poison , mo Sífair?

She snorts. Never. Look at your reaction. You would've made me stop. And if you had, I would've been unconscious like Enzo and Agrippina. As she draws waves atop waves, she adds softly, That wasn't him on the boat. Not only did he call me Daya and never once answered through the mind link, but he didn't stutter. Her gaze suddenly snaps upward.

I think the Crows must've breached their ward, but a glance upward shows my daughter, Meriam, and Justus still swirling blood.

While I rake aside corpses, Daya attempts to tame her cloud of pink hair. Mara's sling! she says suddenly. Amma says that's the sigil I need to paint. How do I ask Behati to guide my hand? She can't hear me.

Your mother says?

She and I can communicate.

Crafty Meriam . For once, I'm glad for her slyness.

How do I ask Behati, Cathal?

Write your query in blood.

And so she does. And then Behati wraps her fingers around Zendaya's wrist, touches them to the wound atop her head, which I'd really like to see gone, and begins to paint. Whorls and whorls bisected with lines.

As they bloodcast, I keep the surrounding water clear of dead fish and dead humans, save for Agrippina. I keep her near. I suddenly see the woman Enzo "turned." Daya was right. The unhinged boy on the boat was a sorceress playing pretend, for the Lucin female's face is bare of tusk and her eyeballs have marked irises. The sorceresses must've been hiding amongst the cadavers, biding their time. The weight of a stare prickles my nape.

The Faerie healer who stabbed me in the back— fucking traitor —is watching us.

Not wanting to worry or distract Daya, I ask, Almost done?

I don't know.

Behati peers past her intricate sigil at the one Meriam, Fallon, and Justus are doodling, and readjusts a swirl here, a line there.

Come on, come on… I shove a corpse so hard that it repels four others. Lazarus flexes his finger, pointing us out to Kanti's inner circle. Behati must take notice, because her speed augments considerably.

Just as a dozen guards leap off either side of the embankment onto the Amkhuti's rigid surface, Daya's extraordinary blood ignites, its beam shooting so high that it strikes the glowing sigil above, creating a radiant column.

A heartbeat later, a tremor like I haven't felt since Meriam vanquished her wards shakes Shabbe and propels us beneath the water.

Daya! I scream.

Right here.

Where the fuck is here ?

A ray of light nicks the obscurity. I trail it toward an elegant hand. My clever mate. I shift into my Crow and scoop her onto my back, erupting from the chaotic, toxic moat like a creature from the underworld.

Behati! she says, directing her beam toward the pale hair of the seer, who's getting accosted on all sides.

I dip and hover my talons in front of Behati until she latches on, and then I take off just as one of the guards manages to snare the seer's ankle. Since the former hangs strong, I fly right for the Vale, swooping just high enough so that Behati clears the cliff but not the female dangling from her foot. No, that Shabbin gets well acquainted with the flavor of sandstone.

I'm a tad tempted to head straight for Lazarus and plant a talon through his neck, but Daya asks me to carry her to the Cauldron.

Had a pleasant dip, brother?

Though hearing Lorcan's voice gores me with relief, I'm not in the mood for humor. Not yet. Lazarus stabbed me with obsidian. He's working with Kanti and the others. Anyway, keep him alive for me, all right?

After a beat, in a voice crackling like his sky, he says, He will be kept alive.

I've got Behati, Aoife says, diving beneath me.

We both hold still until the seer has taken a seat atop Imogen's sister, and then in tandem, we set sail toward the lowest point of Shabbe.

Everyone, I tell my pack mates, Aodhan and Reid vanished in the home Behati and Kanti have been staying at since their return. The sorceresses probably warded it. You're welcome to leave Aodhan in there, but I'm sure Agrippina would appreciate getting Reid back.

Several snorts resonate through our pack link.

Lastly, Enzo and Agrippina are inside the moat, along with a bunch of corpses. Fallon, can you and Meriam drain the water? I soar over a trail of bloodied bodies—brave palace guards who must've tried to fight back. I spot Abrax but kick him from my mind before I inadvertently broadcast his death to my mate.

I'll tell her, Lorcan says.

I think he means Daya, which makes me wonder why the underworld he would tell her…but then I realize he means he'll tell Fallon, and my selfish heart stops. Just stops. How could I have forgotten that my daughter no longer has access to our pack's mind link?

I cast my sorrow aside to focus on the Cauldron that's ringed by dozens upon dozens of sorceresses. The traitresses' number is so great that they form six circles.

They've emptied it! Daya hollers.

My gaze judders off the kneeling witches and sets on the birthplace of magic. It's hollow, shallow, no more than a drained washbasin.

"What have you done, Kanti?" Behati's ancient voice hurtles against all eight wings of the palace.

"We've done nothing but correct all the wrongs committed by our mothers, Taytah." Her long black hair snaps in the turbulent winds of Lorcan's anger.

Cathal, Meriam says she needs me to go inside the Mahananda! Daya cries out.

Go inside? There's nothing left of it!

She says that the medley of our royal blood will revive ? —

She can feed it her blood. You're not going anywhere near that courtyard.

Cathal, if we don't nourish it, then ? —

I. Said. No.

Blood suddenly stains the bottom of the basin. It doesn't bubble from the stone, though. No, someone's painting a sigil. Someone who's made herself invisible. It better be Meriam, for if it's my daughter…

Lore, where's Fallon?

On my back. Why?

My relief is short-lived, for one of my fellow Crows barrels toward Priya's Akwale.

Erwin? I snap. What the fuck are you doing?

I'm distrac ? —

Rosh swings her arm, spraying my fellow shifter with blood that makes him shriek and…

And…

No.

No…

It must be a spell.

One that'll wear off.

I don't know whether I speak these thoughts or if my fellow shifters do. All I know is that a small black bird is flitting around the courtyard like some distraught bumblebee.

"Anyone else want to become a forever-Crow?" Rosh taunts.

Erwin? I croak through the pack link.

His answering silence echoes as loudly as Cian's the night Lorcan allowed him to pass to the next realm. Where my brother had desired nothing more than to die, Erwin just found his mate and is about to become a father.

Please let it be an illusion.

Please let it be a spell.

Home! Lorcan roars. We fly home, now!

The Crows rise like smoke toward the stars.

Imogen swoops over me, then under. Where's Zendaya?

What do you mean, where is she ? I twist my head. She's on my ? —

My mate isn't on my back. How could I not have felt her weight vanish? Fucking, how ?! Did she fall off? Did she jump off? She may be immortal, but a fall from this height…

Daya? I roar, whirling on myself, my feverish gaze scrolling over the dark land. Daya! I shout again, before yelling at Lorcan to draw back his clouds so I can fucking see something.

But Lorcan doesn't listen, and land and sky keep trembling.

I dive through his thickening clouds, only to spot him doing the same. Lore?

He turns toward me, his golden stare lambent like the lightning-veined night, but that isn't what arrests me…

Where's Fallon?

She vanished. Just…vanished. And now she's not… She's not…

I'll go find them. You stay up here.

My mate is down there, Cathal. Not up here! Down. There! He dives.

I arrow past him, then swerve into his path. He breaks into his five crows and streaks around me.

Lorcan Ríhbiadh! I rage. Our obsidian curse may be a thing of the past, but if they turn you into a forever-Crow, it'll probably affect us all. I'll go find our mates. I'll bring them home.

Immy and I will stay with him, Cathal, Aoife says. Please be careful.

Propelled by razor-sharp raindrops, I dash back toward the land, toward the eight petals of stone that shape my mate's palace. Except…except they're gone.

So is the moat.

The scooped land.

The Shadow Forest.

The fortified walls.

The whole of Shabbe is gone .

Did Lorcan drown the queendom, or is this the Cauldron's punishment?

My mate's a Serpent. Water is her element. But what of my daughter?

Daya? I rasp. Where are you? Is Fallon with you?

I can't have lost her again. I can't have lost my child. Not again.

I soar back and forth over the inky spill, low and high. Not even the faintest glimmer of stone shines through the surf. Could I have flown past the isle?

I'm about to ask Lorcan to quiet the skies when I spot a swirl. I hover over it, my deadened pulse ratcheting when it begins to expand into a shimmering whirlpool. It isn't the ocean that floods Shabbe, but a torrent of magic.