7. Zendaya

Chapter 7

Zendaya

T he queen sits at one end of a long banquet table, Lorcan at the other. Relief fills me when I glimpse Fallon at his side. Even though the tendons in the male's neck are strained and Fallon's eyes shimmer beneath her black stripes, the mated pair must've reconciled if they're sharing a meal.

I twist a greeting around my tongue, but a snatched glance around the crowded table has me gulping it back. Every member of the Akwale has been invited to dine, as well as every Crow from Lorcan's Siorkahd.

A chorus of "Good evening, Rajka" pronounced in thick Crow accents echoes off the tall sky-bloom hedges and glittery flagstones that hem in the garden dining area. I'm tempted to reply with words, but my breastbone grows hot and I smoosh my lips. I do, though, dip my head while folding myself into the seat beside Priya's.

Just as one of the Shabbin attendants tucks my chair close to the stone table, Cathal makes his appearance and drops into the last empty seat, which he scrapes in himself. The conversation, which hushed when I arrived, resumes.

The Shabbin Queen leans forward and slides her elbows onto the table. Her split sapphire sleeves, bound around her wrists by jeweled gold cuffs, billow open around her sun-kissed arms. "You were saying, Lorcan? The Crows in the forest…they still bleed?"

Fascinated once more by my flawless comprehension, I almost miss the Sky King's reply.

"That's correct. They awakened on their own, but their wounds won't seal."

"Fallon's did," the Shabbin monarch replies, her pink eyes tangling with Fallon's violet.

"Fallon was in the Cauldron, Sumaca." The reminder's spoken by the black-skinned, white-haired female who's part of Lorcan's inner circle.

I vaguely remember her attending my "rebirth," but do not recall her name. The single detail that did stick with me is that she mothered Phoebus's lover and grandmothered Reid, a male who comes often to Shabbe.

Kanti, who loves little more than discussing people, says he travels here to visit Fallon's Faerie mother, Agrippina Rossi, who—still according to Kanti—has a broken brain. I'm unsure what this means, besides the fact that Kanti, who I've heard discuss my reptilian brain with the Akwale, seems to have a fascination with the insides of heads.

"The Crows back in Luce…" Imogen—Aoife's older sister and one of the few people whose company Cathal enjoys—breaks off a piece of fried, phosphorescent algae and nibbles on its corners. "Their wounds are festering." Though her coloring is the same as her sister's, her features are sharper—bladed.

"Have your injured Crows tried serpent healing?" Behati asks.

"The serpents won't approach them." Lorcan flexes his jaw. "You know Crows and serpents have never been…" When he catches me sitting up straighter, straining to hear his next words, he says, "We're hoping that Fallon will be able to weave relations between our two species."

"Fallon and me ," Kanti says. "Have you forgotten that I'll be joining you in Luce?"

"How could we forget?" Fallon grimaces. "You've reminded us hourly since Behati foresaw how instrumental you'll be at seducing one of our many enemies."

"Have you foreseen which enemy, Behati?" Lorcan leans forward. "I have so many…"

"The Mahananda hasn't given me a name or shown me a face. It's only shown me that Kanti must head to Tarespagia."

Two-legs' politics is so tedious, everyone vying for power and control. Why can't the world above the ocean be as simple as the one beneath, where minnows do not aspire to become barracudas, and barracudas do not desire to duel me?

"Cathal, your wound? Has it improved?" Aza's query makes the Crow's dark stare lift from his bare plate and settle on the strikingly beautiful Shabbin with hair the same sapphire-black as Crow feathers.

"It hasn't worsened," he mutters to the youngest member of the Akwale.

Priya snaps her fingers. "Call for my healer."

Two guards whirl and disappear behind a hedge.

"There are plenty of serpents in the Sahklare." Aza's expression is alight with satisfaction, as though she's singlehandedly solved the Crows' tribulations. "You could go for a dip with your daughter while you wait."

Cathal mutters something in Crow that makes the black-haired beauty narrow her eyes. "It's not a trick. We do not trick people. The Mahananda does not trick."

"If you believe it's a trick, then perhaps Zendaya could lick your wound better?" Kanti smiles at me. "After all, you trust her and she does so love lapping blood, amongst other things ."

I frown, because one, Cathal does not trust me, and two, I'm no fan of the taste of blood. Also, what else have I lapped? Is she referring to the ward?

Cathal growls something in Crow that makes Kanti's expression pinch.

"Careful, Crow"—Kanti squares her shoulders—"or I may reconsider playing diplomat between your king and his enemy."

Cathal's eyes twitch as though it's taking every last shred of his strength to repress his reply. Or perhaps they twitch because Lorcan is asking him, through the mind link, not to anger his future ally. "I'll swim with the serpents."

The idea of someone else's tongue on his skin hardens my insides, so I push out of my chair and circle the table toward Cathal. When I start to lower myself to my knees, he melts into smoke and reappears behind Imogen's chair.

Kanti drapes one arm around the back of her chair. "Huh. She really does understand what we say."

"She understands everything ," Fallon snaps.

"Pardon me for doubting it. She's always so quiet." Kanti wriggles a hand. "Anyway, let's see if it works."

"No!" Cathal says.

Kanti frowns. "Why not? Saves you from getting wet."

"Because this could hurt her!" Cathal bellows. "Daya's not just a serpent; she's a shifter."

Is it truly my health he worries about, or is repugnance what keeps him from letting me try?

The female healer I met the day after my rebirth as a Two-legs arrives in the company of a silver-haired male twice her size, and with ears so broad and pointy, they skim the top of his head. Though their appearance doesn't entirely smother the ambient tension, it seems to lower its volume. I suppose that if a Shabbin crystal leads to Cathal's full recovery, all will be forgiven.

But what if neither crystal nor serpent can mend obsidian injuries? What will happen to the relations between sorceresses and Crows?

"Soorya, one of our guests needs healing from a dagger wound." The queen nods to Cathal.

"Right away, Sumaca." Soorya's pink eyes roam over the shifter in a way that makes me want to step between them.

I realize she's probably seeking the wound in need of mending, but I find her smile too bright, and her stare, too intrigued. When she looked me over that first day, her expression was as bland as the tapioca pudding Kanti eats every morning.

"Which part of your body needs healing, Cathal?" When he points to his thigh, her slightly hooked nose wrinkles. "What did you stab yourself on?"

"Obsidian."

The giant Faerie shadowing Soorya blinks. "Obsidian? But I thought—I thought you were rid of your curse!"

"You and us all, Lazarus." Erwin drags a freckled hand through his red locks. I recall his name because, his hair, like mine is a flamboyant color not worn by many. "Seems like obsidian remains toxic to our kind."

Soorya's layered necklace clinks as she hooks one of the six chains, then runs her fingers over the gold baubles dangling from each link until she feels out the appropriate medicinal crystal. According to Behati, they hum to her.

" Kavari ," she says, twisting the ball until the bottom half comes loose. I imagine it's a land substance, for I don't have an equivalent in Serpent. She props it in front of Lazarus, who leans over and takes a long whiff. "It counteracts toxins." She rubs the tip of her index finger against the salve until her skin is as green as a lizard's. "Your wound, Cathal."

The Crow grows out his talons and swipes them through the leather cloaking his thigh. When Soorya kneels in front of him and pinches the flap, I grit my teeth and hiss because the veins orbiting around his puckered flesh are black.

"Great Mórrígan, how are you even walking, brother?" Lorcan exclaims.

Soorya traces the extent of the infection with her gaze before tracing it with her healing salve. I will the darkness in Cathal's veins to seep out as she collects more salve and spreads it over his flesh.

Lazarus crouches beside her. "How about turga ?"

" Turga clots vessels. If anything, we need his wound to bleed." Soorya bites down on her upper lip. "May I try to slice you open with my blood, Cathal?"

My nails aren't talons, yet they score the skin of my palm just the same. I do not want this female to butcher my sentry's thigh with her magic. I do not want her to harm him further.

"If you're trying to widen the cut, Soorya, I've tried, but the skin doesn't tear." Cathal's complexion is as pearlescent as the inside of an oyster shell. "Not even with obsidian."

He's used the dagger on himself a second time? How foolish is this male? I might not have been part of the Two-legged world for long, but it strikes me as absurd to employ the cause of the issue in the hopes that it'll have an adverse effect.

The Shabbin healer swipes her thumb over a serrated link in her chain, then draws a line down the blackened skin with blood; it doesn't penetrate. Tongue tucked in the corner of her mouth, she widens the gap in the leather sheathing his thigh and paints a noose around the black veins.

"The blood's not penetrating," Fallon murmurs, coming to stand beside me. "Put some on his wound."

He hisses as Soorya presses her cut to his, which makes my teeth grind and my feet itch to squeeze in between them.

Soorya studies the circle of blood. "The blackness hasn't receded."

"Maybe it takes time?" Fallon proposes.

We wait, and wait. It feels like an entire day has come and gone before anyone speaks again.

"Perhaps your blood will work on him, Your Majesty?" Lazarus suggests.

Fallon grabs a napkin from the table, saturates it with water, then wipes down her father's skin. And then she pricks her finger on her neck ornament and circles the wound. Her blood, like Soorya's, sits atop Cathal's skin like wet sand. Mouth twisted, she touches his cut. Another hiss drops from his mouth.

She cranes her neck, tipping her face toward his. Though I can only see the back of her head, I've no trouble picturing how tormented she must feel. My abdomen hardens until it's become as tight as the fingers I've balled at my sides, fingers that grow infinitesimally tighter when Soorya glances over her shoulder at Priya. Although they don't exchange words, the apprehension sizzling between the two females bites my spine like an icy current.

"A trip to the Sahklare it'll be," Kanti chirrups, as though alluding to an exciting jaunt instead of a last resort.

"Can you fly, Dádhi?" Fallon asks.

"I'm not infirm," he grumbles. "Besides, it's my leg. My wings are fine."

I think of the Crow from the vision the queen showed me before Fallon went inside the Mahananda—the one with the arrow protruding from its wing. Can it still fly?

As father and daughter shift, I take a step toward them, desirous to accompany them in case…in case my fellow serpents prove unkind or uncooperative.

"No, emMoti," the queen's voice is low but resonant.

I'm about to beg her to allow me to join them when a gust of air streaks across my cheek and kicks up the ends of my hair. By the time I've spun back, Fallon and Cathal have departed.

Without me.

I grind the ivory inside my mouth, wishing I had wings instead of fins.

"Good evening, Zendaya." The mammoth Faerie, who accompanied Soorya, is staring down at me with a kindly smile.

Although it doesn't completely blow away my annoyance, it does appease it.

"I hear you've mastered shifting from beast to human."

I tilt my head, unsure how to answer since it isn't a question.

His amber gaze roams over my face, lingering on my retracted tusk. "A serpent shifter." He shakes his head, still smiling. "In my long years, I've never seen anything quite as surprising as you. The Cauldron's magic is truly astounding." He speaks of the Mahananda with stars in his eyes.

It may have split my scales, but it doesn't only produce miracles. Though, admittedly, if the serpents manage to heal Cathal, I may admire it once more.

"I'm curious." Lazarus tucks a long, silver strand behind his pointed ear that shines with a dozen golden hoops embellished with Shabbin crystals. "Can you communicate with them?" At my frown, he adds, "The serpents."

A slender hand winds through mine. I know it's Priya's before I even spot the blood-coated ring gracing her index finger. She says something to Lazarus in his tongue before switching to Shabbin. "Will you be returning to Luce with Lorcan and Fallon, Lazarus?"

"I was hoping you'd allow me to stay in Shabbe, Sumaca. I do not have anyone to return to in Luce."

"Ah, yes. Forgive me for forgetting about your loss. You're welcome to stay for as long as you wish. I hear you and Soorya are getting along swimmingly."

Swimmingly? Since I've never crossed paths with a Two-legs in the Amkhuti, besides Fallon and her friends, I assume Lazarus must've bonded with Soorya in the Sahklare.

"Your royal healer is a most wonderful teacher."

Soorya sidles close to Lazarus, threading one of her brown arms around his. "Only because you are a wonderful student."

How can they jest at a time like this? I look up at the sky, hoping to spot beating wings, but Cathal and Fallon don't magically appear. Food does, though. Well, not magically. The vibrant dishes must've been deposited while Soorya melted crystals between her fingers.

"Enjoy your dinner, Sumaca." Soorya nods before retreating with Lazarus beyond the hedges.

The queen guides me back to my seat. As she regains her place at the head of the table, she reaches for the spoon tucked into the wide-brimmed terracotta bowl brimming with flame-broiled beans and warm grain and serves herself. When I make no move to ladle any on my plate, too flustered to eat, she reaches over and serves me. I push my food around, creating shapes…letters. I suddenly wonder if my reading will have improved now that my oral comprehension has clicked into place.

"Everything all right, emMoti?" Priya rubs her thumb over the diamond tusks that protrude from her gold ring, a jeweled rendition of the Shabbin crest and of the crown glimmering amidst her white strands—two serpents coiled around a circlet that symbolizes the Mahananda.

Though many stares warm my cheeks, I decide to voice what I practiced earlier. Just as my lips part, Behati releases her fork, and its clatter snatches everyone's attention.

"What is it, Taytah?" Kanti covers Behati's hand with her own. "Was it a vision of me again? Did you see who?—"

"Kanti, quiet," the queen snaps. "We do not interrupt visions."

Kanti herds her hand onto her lap, chastened by the queen's reproof.

Several minutes slip by before Behati's eyes clear of their white veil. Nevertheless, her silence endures. I've come to learn that there exists many types of silences in the world of Two-legs, some that are soothing and others that are loud. The one that drapes over the palace gardens rings louder than any scream.

Behati combs aside her pale bangs. "The Mahananda has changed its terms."