House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(73)

Before Lore can catch me thinking of him, I jerk my hand from my undergarment and turn onto my side—the side Lorcan is not on—and bury my burning cheeks into my pillow.

My attempt at making the Crow King squirm has epically backfired. The only one squirming is me. Why in the three kingdoms and one queendom did this feel like a sensible idea?

The armchair creaks again, but not like someone is destroying it . . . like someone is getting up. The carpet swallows the footfalls of the Crow King, but I, nonetheless, hear him pad closer in the silence of my bedroom. And then I feel him even though he doesn’t touch me—neither with his shadows, nor with his flesh.

“Go away, Lore. I’m not in the mood to fight.”

The air churns, and I think he’s finally listened to me, but when I crack my lids open, I find him crouched beside me, his golden eyes fastened to mine.

“I’m not in the mood to fight either, Little Bird.” He reaches out and tentatively pushes a strand of hair off my face, untangling it from my clumped lashes.

“Please, don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do that. Don’t stroke my face as though I were some child.”

“Trust me, that is not how I see you.”

Why must he be so confusing? Why must I be so confused each time he is near?

His cool fingers linger beside the crease of my ear. “Fallon, I—” A series of rapid plinks on my window makes him heave an annoyed breath and mutter, “For focá’s sake . . .”

He stands, towing the sheets over my skimpy chemise. I’d thank him for covering me up, but my throat is too tight with embarrassment to produce words.

“Don’t go anywhere.”

I’m not sure where exactly he’s expecting me to go. To Antoni’s bed? If my failed onanistic performance proved anything, it was that I turned that male down for a reason, and that reason wasn’t my obsession with Dante.

Lore’s pupils shrink, and his mouth flattens. I think he’s about to growl something when the plink of metal against glass comes again, and he strides around the foot of the bed and wrenches open the curtains.

One of his Crows is treading air. Lore steps aside with a nod. Instantly, the bird dissolves into smoke that slips through the closed window before firming back into a woman.

“What is it, Imogen?” His voice is low and rough, but a different kind of rough than when he was addressing me. Instead of a velvety rasp, his timbre is grave.

Imogen murmurs a rapid-fire series of words in their tongue that all elude me. What doesn’t elude me is the reaction Lorcan has to her words.

Every one of his features turns bladed. “You’re certain?”

“Tà, Mórrgaht.”

What is she saying yes to? What’s happened?

“Focà,” he mutters again.

I prop myself up. “What’s happened?”

Imogen casts my chemise a long-suffering look. What exactly does she wear to bed? Full-body armor?

Lorcan’s gaze flicks to me, and the corners of his eyes crinkle just the slimmest bit. “Your wish has come true, Fallon. I need to depart immediately.”

My heart starts and stops, starts and stops. I blame its irregular pattern on whatever bad news Imogen has brought with her.

Lorcan must command Imogen to leave the bedroom because she steps into the living room and shuts the door while he pulls the curtains tight again.

“What happened?”

He returns to my side of the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress. “Two Crows have gone missing.”

“Missing? Where?”

“In Nebba.”

“What were they doing in Nebba?”

“What do you think they were doing in Nebba?”

I assume it has to do with that noxious chemical Pierre is sprinkling into the ocean. “So you think Pierre had them . . . immobilized?”

“That’s why I need to fly to Nebba, Fallon. To feel out their location. But I don’t believe Pierre would have staked them or imprisoned them. After all, that would be an act of war.”

“And what you’re doing in Nebba isn’t?”

“We aren’t harming any Faeries.” He covers the hand with which I’m torturing the sheets.

Although the only thing that should matter is the news of his missing soldiers, his skin becomes my single point of focus. It is so very smooth. The exact opposite of my own, which still bears the brunt of years of manual labor.

I bet Alyona’s hands are like satin. I picture them twining through his hair like in my dream and grit my teeth, then attempt to steal my hand from beneath his before he can feel the hardened skin on my palm, but he clasps my hand.

And then he carries it up to his face.

I hold my breath because I don’t know what he’s doing.

And then I hold my breath for a whole other reason. His nose is traveling up the length of my middle finger, the one I used to—to—

When he reaches the tip, his eyes close, and he inhales a long, slow breath, and although it’s physically impossible, it feels like he’s just siphoned out all the air from my lungs.

When his eyes open, his pupils are so dilated that only a thin ring of gold remains. He carefully sets my hand back on the bed.

This time, it’s his hand that shakes and mine that has grown steady. “Stay away from Antoni.”