House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(15)

I startle. “A mansion?”

“In Tarecuori.” Antoni casts a long look at the king he helped resurrect.

I wonder if he regrets it.

Perhaps, but I doubt he regrets his newfound prosperity. As Antoni climbs atop another giant bird, Lorcan says, “Imogen will be at your house tomorrow evening to discuss your visits to Rax. I’ve also tasked her to be our go-between with Vance from this point forward.”

“Who’s Vance?”

“The unofficial leader of the Racoccins,” Lorcan explains just as the Crow carrying Antoni takes off.

“Safe travels, Antoni!” I call out as one more friend is swept away.

Once the air stops churning and I find myself alone with Lorcan, Keeann, and Bronwen, I scan each one of their faces. “What exactly are you planning?”

“An alliance,” Lorcan offers.

“You’re allying yourselves with the humans?” I ask.

“They could do with a friend in this Fae world, don’t you think?” Keeann’s voice isn’t quite as deep as my father’s, but it rumbles and rises just the same.

Before I can answer his question, which, granted, was surely rhetorical, Bronwen inhales a sharp breath.

“What is it, ah’khar?” Keeann whirls to face her.

“Pierre Roy is coming.”





Seven





“Pierre Roy, the King of Nebba?” I ask Bronwen, whose eyelids are still pried wide.

“Or the Butcher of Nebba. The man has many names.” Lore has sidled in so close that the heat of his skin and the chill of his mood lick up one side of my body.

I stare at the harsh cut of his face, made even harsher by the charcoal stripes he wears. “It seems to be a trend amongst kings.”

Lore smiles even though there really isn’t anything funny about our little aside. To Bronwen, he asks, “Is he coming to collect his daughter?”

“No.” Sweat dots Bronwen’s patchwork of creamy-brown and pinkish skin. “He comes for his daughter’s nuptials.”

Lore’s mouth flattens. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Bronwen, but I rather clearly recollect separating her betrothed’s head from the rest of his body.”

Bile lurches up my throat because I, too, recollect this.

“Eponine will marry Dante.”

My fingers go slack, and the little note Antoni slipped me flutters to the floor. “Dante?”

Bronwen’s white eyes shine like twin moons. “Yes.”

My pulse lurches . . . teeters . . . stumbles.

Dante will marry Eponine?

Although my love for the Fae ruler has wilted, the idea of him marrying the woman who was supposed to be his sister-in-law is farcical.

“I expect King Vladimir of Glace won’t be too pleased with this turn of events.” Lore’s comment draws me back into the deep stone well where sunlight penetrates but does not warm.

“Considering the track record of Bronwen’s predictions,” I mutter, “it may not come to pass.”

Although Bronwen is blind, her face veers toward me. “All of my predictions have come to pass, child.”

“And yet, here I stand, crownless and stateless.”

Bronwen opens her misshapen mouth—I assume, to tell me off—but instead, a sharp inhale stabs the weighted air.

“Ah’khar?” Keeann cups her cheeks between paw-like hands.

“They were looking.” She sweeps her fingertips across her forehead, grazing the new hair growths darkening her shaved scalp.

Her words dredge up the memory of something Lorcan had let slip during our travels. He’d told me Bronwen had struck a deal with the Shabbins: use of her eyes in exchange for the power to see the future.

The idea that a resident of the pink isle is currently spying on us causes goosebumps to bloom everywhere on my body.

“Can you tell who was looking?” I ask.

Her eyes cling to Keeann’s, and although I may be wrong, I think they’re carrying out a silent conversation. After almost a full minute, she replies, “No.”

Is it me, or was her pause a couple beats too long?

Keeann glides his hands down his mate’s face before turning toward Lorcan, who suffuses the air between us with the black coils of his smoke.

“Cian, gather the Siorkahd.” The Crow King pivots but doesn’t pound straight off into the darkened hallway. His gaze strokes over my upturned face before falling to the stone beneath my feet.

He crouches, and my heart screeches to a halt. Using his middle and index fingers, he clinches Antoni’s folded note and carries it upward.

I assume he’ll read it, or confiscate it, or . . . I don’t know, swallow it.

He holds it aloft.

When I don’t take it, he circles my wrist with fingers that are as cool and soft as his smoke and presses the parchment into my palm.

You’re not even going to look at it?

He closes my fingers over the paper with the gentleness of a man handling breakable things. I trust you.

Except the King of Crows trusts no one.

As he swirls down his torchlit hallway, becoming one with the shadows, I call out, “Since when?”

Without so much as a backward glance, he says, Since you walked into my bedroom unclothed. You said it was symbolic, that it showed you meant me no harm. I choose to believe this, Behach ?an.