House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(24)

“Lorcan’s allowed me to return home. Isn’t that wonderful?”

My friend’s lips part and his fingers, too. His open-faced sandwich topples onto the plate he’s piled high with a little of everything. “You don’t sound as though you find it wonderful.”

“And yet, I do. I find it very wonderful.”

He rubs his fingers on his napkin, eyebrows bending like windblown fronds.

“Will you be coming home with me or staying?”

He hesitates, frowning at Lorcan. “I’ll go back with you, Picolina, but in my opinion, it’s a shit decision.”

I swallow at his reproof but remind myself that it comes from the heart. Phoebus is worried, and for good reason. Before departing from Monteluce, Dante told me I’d be safer away from Luce because the Fae would see me as the traitor who murdered their king.

Those words had pounded the last nail in the coffin of my feelings for him. After all, he was the one who’d demanded his brother’s head, not I, and yet he blamed me. I wonder if that’s the story he told upon taking the throne in Isolacuori and anointing himself king with a crown soaked in blood.

I hunt the depths of Lorcan’s eyes for the answer, but he reveals nothing, so I attempt to penetrate his mind but bang into an obsidian wall with no beginning and no end and not a single fissure. I almost ask for him to let me see what he’s seen and heard, but deep down, I don’t want to know, for it may influence my decision.

I turn back toward Phoebus. “Good thing I didn’t ask for your opinion, Pheebs.”

He launches the smeared bread into his mouth and chews on it like a rabid animal, then seizes his berry wine and slugs it down, the apple in his pale throat moving like a razor blade. “When are we to leave?”

“In the morning,” I say,

He nods. “Good. That gives me some hours to yell at you.”

“Phoebus,” I sigh.

He holds out a palm. “Save it for the conversation we’ll have behind closed doors.”

Another sigh balloons through my aching chest. “It doesn’t sound like it’ll be much of a conversation.”

He pivots his body so that it’s angled away from me and gives Arin his undiluted attention. Although Lorcan doesn’t pat Phoebus’s back, I can tell my friend’s irritation pleases the shifter.

“Nothing and no one can change my mind.”

“Oh, I’ve no illusion you’ll be staying, Fallon,” he says. “As for your father, you asked if you’d see him. He’s scouring the three kingdoms for Daya, so I fear he may not return in time to see you off.”

I’m so shocked by this news that my fingers loosen around my makeshift cloak. The heavy fabric glides down my arms and settles like a shawl in the crook of my elbows. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

“He isn’t alone.”

I’m glad to hear my father didn’t charge into this reconnaissance mission all by himself, but still . . .

The gold in Lorcan’s irises shivers before it hardens, along with every line in his body. “Crows do not do well without their mates.”

I don’t think his intent is to guilt me, yet that is the emotion that wells behind my thumping breastbone. I wish I could’ve been the mate you deserve, Lore.

He doesn’t respond to that. I suppose there isn’t much of a response to give.

Nevertheless, his silence irks me, and however much I try to concentrate fully on Arin and the questions she asks about my childhood and passions, questions that Lorcan translates, my mind wanders to other places.

To my little blue house in Tarelexo with its frescoed walls and fragrant wisteria.

To my loyal pink serpent with his rings of scarred flesh.

To the gloomy Racoccin woods steeped in mist.

To the white barracks where I spent one afternoon with Dante, convinced it’d be the first of many.

To the mountain pass I scaled on the back of my beautiful stallion.

To my first awed glimpse of the Sky Kingdom.

To the pureling tribe that attacked me for sacks of gold.

To Selvati and the man who sacrificed his life to help Lore and me.

To Tarespagia and the horrible Rossi women.

And to that final horseback ride the day my world tipped and changed forever.

Over and over, I shepherd my straying mind back to the here and now. To this woman intent on getting to know me even though I’ve chosen to abandon her son and his people. Soon, like the Fae, the Crows will consider me a defector. The girl who reneged on her heritage for one that doesn’t even belong to her.

Maybe I should sail to Shabbe.

Don’t.

I jump at the sharpness of Lorcan’s voice. At the fervency limning that one word.

Not until I’ve destroyed the wards.

I study the harsh angles of his face made even harsher by his dismal mood. I swear not to cross the wards until you’ve killed Meriam, Lorcan Reebyaw.

He doesn’t look at me again for the duration of the meal, nor does he look at me after he flies me back through the hallways of his kingdom toward my cell bedchamber, and departs with his mother, who carried Phoebus.

Phoebus who shuts the door so hard, it all but splinters the wood and shatters the stone frame.

Phoebus who yells until his voice goes hoarse and we both have tears running down our faces because leaving is a risk. But I cannot hide inside a mountain while the world crumbles. Only cowards hide, and I may be many things, but not a coward.