House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(36)

Mamma’s rocking chair has been charred and splintered. Nonna’s wicker baskets full of medicinal vials have been overturned and their contents smashed. The windows in our rooms have been blown out, the drapes slashed. A motionless bird lies on my bare mattress, its wings splayed like the crow from the Acolti family’s vault.

The reek of rot that suffuses the air has me reaching for purchase and sagging the second my palms connect with something solid. I try to harness my breakfast but every last morsel makes its way out. Once my stomach is empty, I press away from the wall and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, stilling when I catch the sooty hue of my fingertips.

I raise my gaze, and a blaze as hot as Fae-fire begins to chew my thrashing insides.

“Santo Caldrone.” Phoebus rocks back onto his heels, flinging one arm up to his nose.

Lewd drawings of a girl fucking a crow—and not a man-shaped one—darken my walls.

They’re vile.

Gruesome.

Appalling.

They destroy my faith in humanity and fill me with a vengeful thirst to punish all those who dared defile my reputation and home.

“Is Dante aware of this?” I speak through clenched teeth, desperately trying not to breathe in the sickly sweet scent of decay.

“He has much on his plate,” Tavo says. “And in his bed.”

His ignorance of what was done to me doesn’t quell my wrath’s vigor, but it does temper it, for if Dante knew . . .

If he allowed this to happen and voluntarily left my house in this putrid state . . .

Gods, I don’t think I could forgive him.

“Clothes.” Phoebus wheezes, his arm still smooshed against both his mouth and nose.

I walk to my closet and hook the door with a single fingertip to tug it open, then stare and stare. I blink back tears of rage before backtracking toward the door.

“What?” Phoebus asks as I sidestep him.

“Let’s go.”

“What about your—”

“They’re gone.” I don’t add that in their place someone left me a handful of serpent tusks—one still attached to turquoise scales, another as slender as my pinkie.

Tears filming my lashes, I glance back into Mamma’s room, at the shelf upon which she kept her favorite books, love stories I would read out to her. All the books are gone but something remains on her shelf—the smooth rock with the engraved V I unearthed from one of the dresses I inherited from Mamma when I turned fifteen and outgrew the frocks Nonna would mend and let out so I could wear them another year.

I traipse over and snatch the stone, then give her room a once-over. Like mine, it’s been ransacked and soiled. Running my thumb along the grooves, I fly down the stairs and out the door.

Once I’ve burst out, I hinge at the waist and breathe. Just breathe.

And then . . .

And then I finally scream.

My neighbors poke their heads out of their houses, but no one asks me why I’m undergoing a meltdown because they know, they saw, and they sat on their fucking asses and let it happen.

“Feel better?” Phoebus asks.

Huffing, I straighten. “No. Not even a little.”

I hesitated to burn down your house so you wouldn’t see what became of it. Lorcan’s voice feels like a warm balm, and yet it does nothing to soothe my iced blood.

I close my lids and focus on the breaths sliding in and out of my aching lungs. And yet you didn’t because you wanted me to see, didn’t you?

Oblivion makes one weak.

I trace the V almost manically, thinking of ways to retaliate without stooping to their level.

If you’ll allow me, Behach ?an, it’d be my pleasure to restore your honor.

I snort, picturing just how much pleasure he’d take, but that would only poison relations between Crows and Fae. I stride around the embankment toward Tavo’s bobbing boat. “Antoni’s new house. Where is it?”

“Next door to the Acoltis. Would you care for a ride?”

“No. We’ll—”

“We’d love a ride.” Phoebus sets his palm on the small of my back. “I’m not risking walking through streets filled with haters and getting socked by a cauldron brimming with animal guts, or dead birds, or Gods only know what else they’re stockpiling in their homes.”

I blink up at him. Although it’s me the people despise, their abhorrence is so vast that it encompasses all those close to me. “I’m sorry, Phoebus.”

“Boat. Now.” He shoves me forward. “And you have nothing to apologize for. All you did was scratch at the pretty veneer that’s coated Luce for far too long. If anyone should be apologetic, it should be our new leader who let this”—the hand not on my back shoots out toward the little blue home that used to be my safe haven—“this carnage happen.”

“Careful, Acolti.” Tavo puffs warm air onto a steel dagger before polishing the pewter blade unhurriedly against the fine burgundy of his jacket. “Your words could be construed as antagonistic, and you know where dissenters are sent.”

Into Filiaserpens, the lair the serpents established in the fault line that stretches between Isolacuori and Tarecuori. The place where Fae have disposed of their enemies for centuries.

I watch the dagger, wondering how fast I could disarm Tavo and thrust it through his rancid heart.