House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(23)

I’m tempted to snort at his euphemism. Clearly, he means once he’s taken over all three kingdoms, and perhaps, even a queendom. Since I swore to be congenial, I steer the conversation away from his politicking. “Is it made from purple grapes or green ones like faerie wine?”

“It’s actually made from beinnfrhal.”

That must be why I prefer it to Fae wine.

Arin touches her son’s arm and says something. I pick up one word: Zendaya.

“Mother says you take after Daya.”

I pat my lips on a napkin. “So I’ve heard.” I try to recall the one and only vision I had of her, but I was so focused on what was being said that I cannot recall her face. Only the shade of her eyes.

Would you like another glimpse of her?

I blink at Lore. I believe this may be the first time you’ve asked for permission to penetrate my mind.

He sets his cutlery down and waits for my answer, which I give him in the form of a nod.

The Market Tavern fades. Actually, it merely lights up. Sunlight filters through the windowed hatch in thick beams that illuminates the pale gray stone and catches on the dust motes, making them glitter like tinsel.

A woman laughs, and it raises goosebumps over my skin because, somehow, the sound is familiar. She sits with her back to me, auburn waves flowing all the way down to her tailbone.

I pad closer, a ghost in Lorcan’s memory, stopping only when I stand in front of the table where she sits with a slew of other women and men. Like theirs, her face is smeared with black stripes and bears the black feather I’ve spied on every Crow cheek—every Crow except Bronwen.

Does ink not adhere to her damaged skin? I don’t give this thought room to grow, knowing I have little time and so much to absorb.

Zendaya’s stare arrests me yet again with her arched brown eyebrows that shade long-lashed pink irises, a hue that doesn’t exist in Luce, or in Nebba, or even in Glace. I didn’t inherit the color, but it’s seeped over the blue, turning my irises a shade of violet that has perpetually given Fae pause.

Her skin tone is also different than mine, a burnished shade of olive that resembles baked earth. Mine is far less exotic—peach like my father’s.

The one feature I seem to have inherited from no one is the shape of my face. Zendaya’s is a perfect oval and my father’s, a perfect square. Mine? Nonna calls it heart-shaped because of my pointed chin and high cheekbones. I used to think I took after my mother, Agrippina, because she, too, has a pointy chin and prominent cheeks.

Obviously, I do not.

I press away the sadness that always encroaches on my heart when I think of the secrets surrounding my origins and concentrate on this window Lorcan is allowing me to peer through.

Zendaya’s lips, full and pink, slice open around a smile that is so bright it seems otherworldly. My heart twists at the sight of her mirth, then twists some more at the melody of it. I wonder if she’s laughed in the past two decades.

I wonder if she is alive.

My eyes latch on to the pearlescent shell pendant nestled in the hollow of her neck. Although the shell is white, the tip is a rusted red.

My mother stands, one palm flush with the table, the other flush with her abdomen—a tightly rounded abdomen. Her fingers stroke the lump, and although I’m no longer lodged inside her and I’ve never felt her caress, my skin pebbles from the phantom touch.

She looks up at the sound of wingbeats. Giant Crows descend like cannonballs through the hatch, feathers dissolving into smoke before conjoining into flesh. One of these monstrous creatures lands right beside her. Once Kahol morphs into skin, Zendaya’s arms rope his neck and tug his face down to hers.

My heart tips, pouring heady beats into my bloodstream at the sight and feel of so much love.

How different my life would’ve been had Meriam not come between them . . . between all of us. The thought leaves me feeling like a traitor, like an ungrateful child. Nonna and Mamma gave me everything, and how do I repay them? By imagining my life elsewhere, surrounded by other people. People who aren’t Fae.

Heat veils my vision. I close my eyes when a wet trickle curves down my cheek.

When I open them again, the Market Tavern is dark, and Lorcan’s hooded stare bright. Phoebus and Arin, too, watch me. Where Arin’s mouth is squeezed into a grim line, Phoebus’s is wedged so tightly that he can barely fit the flattened bread he’s smeared with a yellowish dip.

I palm away the tear and shoot him a smile that does nothing to soften his worry. When Lorcan’s gaze slips to his mother’s and their heads bend close, Phoebus props his mouth beside my ear and hisses, “Are you crying? Why are you crying? Did Ríhbiadh make you cry? I don’t even care that he’s outfitted with iron appendages. If he’s hurt you—”

I turn my head, our noses almost colliding. “He showed me a memory of my mother.”

Phoebus’s pupils shrink against the green. “Oh. Good. I do prefer to engage in fights I have a chance of winning.”

I smile.

“Which mother did he show you?”

“Zendaya.” A current races down my spine as I picture her hand resting on . . . me. “I think I take more after my father. Speaking of whom . . .” I turn toward Lorcan and wait until Arin finishes whatever she’s telling him before asking, “Will I get to see him before I depart?”

“Depart?” Phoebus’s voice hits a note he hasn’t reached since puberty.