House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(133)

“Sybille.” She nods, as she presses herself to standing. “I’ll see you later, Fallon.”

To think that someday, she truly will see me.

Syb trails Bronwen with her eyes. The woman moves with such grace that I wonder how I ever mistook her for a human.

“So, what have I missed?”

So many things, Syb. So many things.

I tell her what Bronwen said about the Cauldron.

Syb’s irises glitter. “So I could ask it to make my ears pointy?”

“Maybe.” I try to ask Lorcan through the bond, but he must be busy because he doesn’t answer me.

At some point, Phoebus arrives. Although he sits at our table, his gaze almost never wavers off the barkeep.

“How’s that going?”

My friend snags his lip. “I’m trying to get him to come to the Baths, but the man prefers showering in his room.”

“Why don’t you go shower in his room, then?” Syb asks with a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

“I-I—” Phoebus’s cheeks pinken.

Syb leans over the table. “Do you not know where his rooms are?”

“I do.” He nods to the kitchen.

My eyebrows scale my forehead. “He lives in the kitchen?”

“No. He lives farther north, on the third floor. Since I don’t have wings, I cannot exactly pop in.”

“I see how that can be a problem.” I look between Connor, who’s busy slicing cheese, and Phoebus, who’s busy staring at the Crow as though he were cheese. “How about you just ask him if he’d be interested in showering in your room, Pheebs?”

My friend makes a choking sound. “I could never.”

“Where is all this shyness coming from? You were never the shy one.”

Phoebus stares down at his empty plate. “He dislikes Faeries, Fal. Like most Crows. I may not feel like one of my kind, but my ears say differently.”

Never in my life could I have imagined someone not wanting points on their ears.

How I’ve changed . . .

How we’ve all changed.

I reach out and cocoon Phoebus’s fist between my palms. “Pheebs, you may be Fae, but underneath it all, you’re a man, like him, with a heart, like his. He sees you. We all do. Now square those shoulders and ask him out.”

He peeks up at me from beneath his lowered blond lashes. “What if he says no?”

“What if he says yes?”





Although I try to reach out to Lorcan after I depart from the tavern, and then again throughout the afternoon, he never once answers me. I don’t expect a king to be at my beck and call, but his prolonged silence irks me.

As the sun dips beneath the horizon, painting the sky crimson and gold, I finally leave my bedchamber to seek him out. My trek to his rooms is interrupted by the shrill sound of my name and the churning of wings.

“Fallon!” Bronwen’s eyes glow as bright as the moon beyond the magical cupola above her head. “You must come with me at once. One of Lorcan’s crows was shot down.”





Sixty-Five





My heart has not beat a single time since I climbed astride Aoife’s body behind Bronwen.

One of Lore’s crows got struck down by an obsidian arrow in the Racoccin woods. Bronwen saw it as it was happening. She swears there was no Shabbin blood on the whittled stone, so there are no chances that he was turned into a forever-Crow, yet my lungs refuse to draw breath.

He promised he wouldn’t put himself at risk.

He swore it to me.

He painted his vow on my body.

But he just had to go and save the day himself.

I pour my anger through the mind link. He must hear it. After all, he only needs one crow to hear me. To speak, he needs two. Since he hasn’t answered me, I imagine he hasn’t risked reassembling his other crows. I’d deem that smart if I didn’t deem him venturing out of his castle’s walls incredibly stupid.

As we fly nearer to the clearing at the foot of the mountain, I squint to make out the gleam of iron, but mist blankets the ground, making it impossible to see anything beyond.

“Here, Aoife,” Bronwen shouts at our winged steed.

As soon as we land, I vault off her back, bypassing her extended wing.

“Where?” My voice is as sharp as a thorn and stabs the cloying silence. “Where is he?”

“Inside the cavern.” Bronwen nods to a small depression inside the jutting bedrock of the mountain.

I begin to sprint, but Aoife catches up to me. “Slow, Fallon. And stay quiet.”

Heart trembling as violently as my limbs, I creep toward the cavern. Just as I’m about to enter, a guttural gasp tears through the silence. I whirl around just as Aoife’s body slams into the ground.

I yell her name and rush back toward her, but Bronwen flings out her palms and shoves me back. “Get inside the cavern, Fallon. Now!”

“But Aoife—” My heart feels as though it’s crushing my throat, grinding each one of my ribs to dust.

“Lore will call her back, but in order for him to do so, you must save him. GO!”

I stare at the fletching that sticks out of Aoife’s waist. “Let me pull it out—”

Bronwen mutters under her breath. “Get in that cavern now.”