House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(88)

As her skin brims over the silver mask like proofing dough, I rub her open wound, biting back the bile basting the back of my throat when my fingers encounter bloodied tissue and hard bone.

A million questions throttle my mind—What is it you were sorry for? What did you not want to do?—but the sight of her lips inflating into red buoys steals them all away.

With my free hand, I try to tear off her mask but the thing is stuck. “Tavo, a knife! We need to cut her out of this thing!”

She lays so still that I root around her swollen neck for the pulse point at the base of her jaw.

My heart stutters because I feel nothing save for rutted flesh. “Catriona?”

In spite of the terrible swelling, the wound in her cheek is gone.

“Catriona!” I will her lashes to flutter and carry her lids back up. I will her mouth to open around a breath or a moan or a grumbled micara.

“She’s gone, Fallon.” Tavo stands over me, eyes a terrible shade of amber.

“But—but—no. She’s healed. I healed her.” I begin to pump her chest to jumpstart her heart. Come on, Catriona. Come on.

“Stop,” Tavo says.

But I don’t stop. I cannot stop. Stopping means giving up, and I’m unwilling to give up on her.

“Too late, Fallon.” Hands slip under my arms and pull me up.

I stumble, but Aoife bears my weight, steadying me. “Aoife, no. I healed her.”

I try to break away from her but I’ve no strength left. I tremble so hard that I almost go down as she maneuvers me toward the dock upon which Sybille and Eponine stand, surrounded by a thickening clump of Lucin soldiers. Makes sense considering we’ve docked on the Barrack Island.

Two Crows in skin haul me up. They must sense my knees will buckle because they keep their hands on my biceps.

“Why did she transform into a beast?” Eponine’s waist-long brown hair is damp with sweat and sticks to her scalp and pumping chest.

“Poison.” Tavo’s voice is low, yet I hear his word.

After shock comes anger. “Who did this?” I yell. “Who fucking attacked us!” The crystals and chains of my shoulder piece have shifted and hang around my neck like limp seaweed, shivering with each one of my chaotic heartbeats.

The air in front of me heaves with smoke that sharpens into a man.

A man with radiant yellow eyes that sear a path straight into my skull. “Drop the archer.”

I frown, until I understand that I’m not the recipient of Lorcan’s words.

A body—presumably the archer’s—tumbles from the sky, thumping into the slats so hard that the wind-beaten wood splinters.

I suck in a breath as the person flops onto their back, revealing a head inked with brown swirls and blackened teeth unlocked around a moan. My shocked gaze traces over every fanned-out dreadlock and the dozens of beaded strands that hang around the woman’s neck like a noose of her own making.

A hiss catches behind my teeth because I remember this woman . . . this savage. I remember when she swung before me on her liana. I remember when she and her friend Lyrial bartered for gold and more gold before raining arrows over me.

Did she come down from her mountain to finish the job? Is that why she attacked me?

Ice chips flood my veins as I’m again reminded that Catriona is dead because of—

No. She’s dead because of a bargain she struck with a gutless man.

I fling my gaze up to Lorcan’s, confused. “I don’t . . .” I swallow but the lump in my throat is so jagged, I end up choking for breath instead of finishing my sentence.

“Fuckin’ feathery demons.” The savage spits at Lore’s feet.

Holding my breath, I watch the glob of saliva slither down the toe of Lore’s black leather boot, waiting to see how he’ll react. I’m not alone in staring. Eponine, Sybille, and every soldier in a one-kilometer radius stares.

Only Colm and Fionn, who bracket me, don’t bother, their eyes too busy roaming the sea of white uniforms.

Tavo crouches, inspecting the hennaed woman sprawled before him. “What brings you to the capital, wildling?”

She turns her head and narrows her gaze on Tavo. “Nostalgia for the rainbow houses of yonder.”

Tavo’s jaw sharpens. “How about the truth?”

“How ’bout you ask your commander?”

“Gabriele?” I sputter.

The female’s gaze lands on me and her upper lip hikes up in a hiss. “Well if it ain’t the whore who got my friend’s arm chopped off.”

Lightning forks across the sky, brightening the Faeries and darkening the Crows.

Tavo glances up at me from beneath a hooked eyebrow just as Lorcan bursts into smoke. A second later, a scream rends the air and metal clinks as every soldier on the island brandishes his sword.

When he reappears before me, Lorcan’s talons drip blood which he casually wipes against the black leather ensconcing his muscled legs. “Hurry the interrogation, Diotto, for the next time that savage speaks poorly of my Crow, I will be removing her tongue. Considering she no longer has hands to write a confession, it may prove impractical.”

At the sight of her mangled wrists, Tavo loses what little color he’d regained while Syb and Eponine lose the contents of their stomachs.

If my insides weren’t frozen in both terror and shock, I may have thrown up or screamed myself.