House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(41)



Deciding to press Syb for details once we’re alone, I ask instead, “And no Fae is aware of your resistance?”

“Oh, they’re fully aware of our voyages to Rax to ferry over food and construction materials to build them sturdier abodes.” Catriona’s shoulder-length locks glitter gold in the faelight spilling off a decadent candelabra mounted with multihued tourmalines.

Syb rolls her eyes. “We? You knocked on our door yesterday. You have not traveled to Rax yet.”

“I offered to come, but Antoni insisted he and his companions had everything handled, and that you and I should shop for provisions to make this mansion homier.” Catriona nods to the house, her gaze stroking over each cornice and cut stone before leveling back on my face. “The estate used to belong to the marquess Ptolemy Timeus. I heard you two were well acquainted, Fallon.”

My skin crawls at the sound of his name and sparks of the night he attacked Minimus score the backs of my lids. “Lorcan bought it off the marquess?”

Sybille’s full lips draw open around a blinding smile. “Lorcan bought it from Dante.”

“I don’t—I’m uncertain I follow.” Or rather, I’m entirely certain I don’t follow.

“Ptolemy mysteriously disappeared a week ago.” Syb’s confession pinches the muscle behind my ribs which had seized up upon learning that I was in the home of the loathed High Fae. “Since the man had no heirs, his estate reverted to the crown. Dante offered to sell Lorcan a bunch of other homes, even offered him an entire island in Tarelexo, but Lorcan insisted on purchasing this Tarecuorin estate.”

My lashes beat as rapidly as Lore’s wings the day he tried to carry me out of the tidal wave’s path. Does the Crow King know of my history with the amber-eyed Faerie? Did he make him disappear? No. A week ago we were still collecting his crows. He wouldn’t have risked being exposed to avenge me and my serpent.

Antoni, then? After all, this is now his house and he was aware of my twilit spat. But again, the timeline is awry. He was in the south, wrangling the galleon. And it couldn’t have been Dante since he was chasing me across the kingdom.

If I believed in coincidences, I’d deem the marquess’s disappearance a stroke of luck. “Why did Lorcan insist on buying this one?”

“Because of the private wharf.” Antoni’s voice booms across the glass-paned hallway.

I whirl on myself, finding the captain and his two mates rubbing droplets of water from their shaggy manes.

“Welcome to my humble abode.” Antoni’s mouth is tight as he mucks up his jade floors with boots glazed in mud. After studying me, his blue gaze lifts off my bedraggled appearance and cartwheels around his behemoth home.

“It’s grand.”

“It’s not me. Then again, I doubt my likes factor into Mórrgaht’s choices.” For someone who used to embrace the Crows’ cause, Antoni sounds thoroughly disenchanted.

“I’m sure you could sell it.” I suggest when the silence thickens. “It is yours, after all, isn’t it?”

“My name is on the deed.” Antoni’s throat dips. “But I neither have the time nor the inclination to relocate. Besides, the ship I was given is too large to dock anywhere other than in Tarecuori, and considering our growing numbers”—he looks between Catriona and me, and then tips his head toward the first-floor landing—“we need the room.”

I turn to find the tell-tell smoky haze of a Crow tightening into flesh—Eefah’s flesh. “I am apology, Antoni, but I follow orders.”

“He’s not angry with you, Aoife.” Riccio trots up the stairs toward where the new object of his fascination stands, fully formed now. “He just thinks Lorcan sent you because he doesn’t trust him around Fallon.”

My breastbone prickles as I think of the note I shredded before dropping its fragments into the septic tank. Did Lorcan find the pieces and assume it was a love letter, like I had at first?

“Riccio . . .” Antoni rolls the ‘R’ in his friend’s name, evidently annoyed that the dark-haired sailor transcribed his distrust to one of Lorcan’s trusted Crows.

“Don’t know about the rest of you”—Mattia all but jogs to Sybille’s side—“but I need a bath.”

As he plucks her hand, a taunting glimmer enters her eyes. “I’m not in the business of bathing men, bibbino.”

The corners of Mattia’s mouth kick up. Because she’s called him baby in public?

When he twirls Syb into him, pressing his sodden, mud-speckled clothes into her pretty yellow dress, I realize his grin wasn’t prompted by the demonstrative nickname. “I believe you’re in dire need of a bath now, too, Signorina Amari.”

“You scoundrel.” She laughs, and it loosens the tension simmering between the strange assortment of lodgers.

Thoroughly unlike the shy first mate he used to be, Mattia scoops up a still-laughing Sybille and barrels up the stairs. A moment later, a door rattles shut on the landing above.

Catriona sighs. “Young love.”

“Since when do you believe in love, Catriona?” I ask.

She side-eyes me. “You’re right. I meant to say: young lust.”

“Have you been shown to a bedroom yet?” Antoni’s question pries my attention off where the latticework railing vanishes into the ceiling.

Olivia Wildenstein's Books