House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(121)

Arin doesn’t grasp my question, so I point to the esplanade, then point to my ear.

Her lips form a soft, Oh. “The Fae kill one friend.”

My ribs squeeze around my heart. “Which friend?”

“The boy with dark hair.”

“Antoni?”

“No. Red eyes.”

“Riccio?”

Arin nods, her long, salt-and-pepper hair frolicking around her shoulders. “Tà. And girl, Giana—she . . . How you say it?”

“She arrested,” a grave voice completes Arin’s sentence.

Like a weathercock, I spin again, this time toward Aoife. “Arrested? By whom? For what?”

“By Dante. For crime against Fae Crown.”

The blood drains from my face. “What?”

“Gabriele reached Sybille and Mattia before they caught and guided horses up mountain for safety.”

Heart thudding in my jaw, in my cheeks, in my lids, I gape between Aoife and Arin.

Aoife’s throat dips. “Immy was with Vance, the Racoccin rebel. They vanish in tunnels last night.”

Last night, while I was in a state of bliss, my friends’ world was toppling. “And Lore isn’t able to get in touch with her?”

Aoife shakes her head, and although her face isn’t a mess of wild heart palpitations like my own, her eyes gleam with anger. “No.”

“Has he tried calling her?”

She nods.

“And?”

“She not come back.”

“How can that be?” I ask.

Aoife closes her eyes. “Forever-Crows lose power to communicate.”

The market’s noise vanishes as the whole world comes to a screeching standstill, every vendor frozen beside their stalls, every lit flame immobile, every conversation suspended in midair, never landing. My lips shape the word, No.

“Lorcan wants to fly in valley and over forest, but your father and uncle have told him that if he do that, they toss him in Shabbe.” I’m not sure how, but Aoife manages to raise a smile. It’s brittle but there.

There and gone.

Arin has gone as white as the linens I’d launder by hand when I still believed myself a halfling with, for only prospect, a small life in Tarelexo. How narrow my world was back then. How wide it’s become thanks to Lore.

Caws echo across the marketplace as black bird after black bird dives through the cupola and melts into skin and armor. Lore’s eyes find mine through the darkness and don’t let go as he pounds across the rapidly dimming cavern toward me. Whatever sun he’d let shine over Luce winks out of existence as woolen clouds flock over the blue like sheep.

Aoife steps aside so that he does not have to circle her to get to me. He steals my trembling fingers from my side and wraps his solid hand over them, then leans over to press his cheek to his mother’s.

Words are spoken, volleyed back between mother and son. My eardrums quiver so frenziedly that I don’t even try to concentrate on the conversation. “Could Imogen be out of range?” I finally ask, my voice as tremulous as the rest of me.

“Perhaps. Or perhaps, Dante locked her in an obsidian cage. Obsidian blots out our powers.” His mouth sets into a grim line. “All of them.” Lore speaks softly as though he senses that a stronger pitch will unmoor my heart. “Why don’t you go see your friends, Little Bird?”

He nods to the heart of the tavern where Syb and Mattia stand huddled together beside a blindfolded male with long blond hair and a soiled white shirt untucked from dark breeches. It takes me a moment to remember that Gabriele was the one to intercept them and bring them up here.

I glance at Lore, who kisses my knuckles before releasing my hand, then take a step in Syb’s direction, but stop and turn back toward the Sky King. “You’re staying, right? You’re not—not—”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I sink my teeth into my lower lip to keep it from wobbling, then take off like a minnow freed from a fisherman’s net, sore muscles be damned. “Syb!” I yell her name.

She presses away from Mattia’s side, picks up her skirts, and sprints toward me. We collide in a tear-filled hug and hold each other a long moment before either of us manages to utter a single word. Not that words are necessary with true friends; I already know all that must be racing through her head.

When we finally pull apart, her wet cheeks look like polished obsidian and her eyes shine like silver medallions.

She sniffles. “Gia was arrested.”

“I heard.”

“And Antoni . . . we didn’t find him. And—and—Imogen and Vance—”

“I heard.” I squeeze her, calm, the Cauldron only knows how. “On what grounds were they arrested?”

“Tavo said—he said they stole classified information from Isolacuori, and he had an order to raid the house. Gia wouldn’t let them in, so they blasted the door with a cannonball and—and Riccio was standing—” Her voice breaks. “He’s dead. And they took Gia after they found—after they opened the cellar door.”

“We’ll get Giana out, Syb. She’ll be fine. Dante will release her. Drugs may be illegal, but they’re hardly a crime against the Crown.”

I’m not sure if Syb hears me because she says, “Catriona’s the one who told Dargento about the dust. We should never have let her inside our home.”