House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(91)

The large healer inclines his head. “What is it, Fallon?”

“Have you tried to get the serpents to heal me?”

The old man runs a hand through the silver hair that’s come loose from the knot in which he’s bound it. “No.” He stares at the shadows reassembling into the shape of a man. “We were afraid salt would anger your lesions.”

My temples prickle, this time from a memory on a past conversation. “Isn’t salt the antidote?”

“Only when the toxin is ingested. Not when it’s in one’s blood.”

I try to roll onto my side . . . and succeed. The effort feels monumental. So much so, that stars dance at the corners of my vision, threatening to tip me right back, but I bolster the pillow beneath my torso.

I finally catch sight of my surroundings, and my cheeks warm at the realization that I am in Lorcan’s room, the one I’ve only ever mind-walked through. Which means I must be in his bed.

“Take me to the ocean.”

The Crow King crosses his arms in front of a black top that clings to the many muscles that contour his chest. “No.”

“I’m not asking.” I move my gaze to the window, to the darkness lacerated by lightning beyond. “Don’t you want your curse-breaker to live?”

“You’re alive.”

I narrow my gaze on his. “Don’t you want her not to suffer?”

“She may suffer more if seawater gets into her wounds.”

“Why must you outshine me in the stubbornness department?”

A minuscule smirk tugs at his stern expression.

“I’m presenting you with an almost-guaranteed solution to get me out of your feathers and bed. Why in the three kingdoms and one queendom aren’t you jumping at the chance?”

Why do you assume I want you out of my feathers . . . or my bed?

A crushing blush mottles my skin. On the upside, if all the blood in my body is currently lodged in my cheeks, my wounds must’ve stopped weeping. Right?

Lazarus stares between us, his amber eyes filling with a knowing glint. “Well, that explains why Our Majesty’s been acting particularly feral.”

My face gets so hot that I almost ask Lore to smother me with his cold smoke.

Lore now grins, which does make him look slightly unhinged. Out of every Crow in existence, why did the Cauldron shackle me to the mad one? Couldn’t I have been paired with a more gentle-tempered specimen who didn’t feel the visceral need to fight my every decision . . . especially my better ones?

Lore raises an imperious brow. Shackled?

Lazarus sighs. “Mórrgaht, perhaps you could take her down to the beach and see if a serpent will come. None may even swim up, what with the unending storm you’ve unleashed upon our poor kingdom.”

Deciding I may snag more crows with honey than vinegar, I add, “If you take me for a swim, I will stay up here and leave raiding Meriam’s hideout in Tarespagia entirely up to you.”

The healer blinks. “Tarespagia?”

“Lazarus, fetch Fallon a quill and a piece of vellum please.”

As the giant Fae vanishes through an archway into an adjoining room—I imagine an office of sorts, possibly the library I showed up in during one of my mind-strolls—I ask, “Are you really going to make me write this promise down?”

“Absolutely.”

“In blood? Like Pierre?”

“Unlike Pierre, I prefer to keep the blood inside your body.”

“How considerate of you.”

The male prowls closer to my bedside—technically, his bedside—and drops into a crouch, legs splayed wide, elbows propped on his thighs, fingers twined in the wide gap between. “You may think me a monster, and perhaps fighting monsters has turned me into one, but as you said, you’re shackled to me, Little Bird.”

I puff a breath out of the corner of my mouth in frustration. “I didn’t say it. I thought—”

“Do you know what that makes me in regards to you?”

I sigh. “My ball and chain?”

His mouth tips. “That makes me your monster. The one who will fight off all the others in order to keep you safe.”

In a moment of rare pragmatism, I ask, “And who, do tell, will keep me safe from you, Lorcan Ríhbiadh?”

My words are met with a dusky smile that heightens the fever in my blood and the throb everywhere else.





Forty-Five





After penning my promise to remain an alacritous jailbird in ink, Lazarus makes Lore step out of the room so he can help me dress. My skin is so tender that he selects a black robe—presumably one of Lore’s considering the belt ties lay at my hips and the hem drags on the floor.

I hiss as the fabric grazes my open wounds that extend in hyphenated slices from the juncture of my shoulder blades down to my left ankle, the longest cut being on the back of my thigh.

I wonder how Dargento and the wildling met. While he was chasing after me? And then I wonder how much coin Dargento offered the wild Fae to remove me from the world? And who fronted him the money? Dante? He may not want me healed but does he desire me dead?

Thinking of Dante pitches me back into my walk-in closet at Antoni’s and the conversation I had there with Sybille.

Right before we pad out into the stone hallway, I turn my gaze up to the gentle giant whose eyes look as bloodshot as Lore’s. “Lazarus, may I ask you a medical question?”