House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(95)

I finally press my exhausted body away from the doorjamb and grab a simple white sheath that feels finer than Ptolemy’s sheets. Shapeless as it was on the hanger, I assumed it would be comfortable, and it is, but the scoop neck is so low, the material droops past my breasts.

I tug on the sleeves, attempting to hoist the neckline up, but I only succeed in covering one half of my body. “How the underworld is this dress supposed to be worn?” I’m about to pitch it off and replace it with a matching pant and shirt set, when I sense the air shift and fill with the scent of twilight and clouds.

I swiftly tuck both my breasts in and pinch the material at the front before emerging from the closet to find Lorcan wearing his usual leather trousers, long-sleeved black top, and charcoal stripes. Although impossible, he looks as though he’s just woken up from a restorative nap, while I look like life beat me to a pulp. My complexion is so sallow and greenish, and my muscles so shrunken, that I could pass for a stick insect sporting a toga and a toupee.

Lore’s lips twitch. “You have the dress on front to back.”

Ah. I backpedal into the closet and twist it around. Although the back tumbles past my shoulders, the neckline is finally decent. “You knew that because you happen to have the same one in your size?”

“I don’t wear night frocks to sleep.”

No wonder it looked comfortable . . . Since I cannot exactly show up in the tavern in nightwear, my fingers skip over the rows of hangers to find a dress to slip over the white sheath. “So what do you sleep in? Leather pajamas?”

“I prefer to feel the silk of the sheets against my bare skin. It’s refreshing when one needs to wear armor and leather as often as I must.”

I should not picture him tangled in his bedsheets. Absolutely should not. On the plus side, the visual that flashes behind my lids chases away the greenish tint of my skin, replacing it with a mix of mollusk pink and ladybug red.

“Don’t bother adding layers. I’ve called for supper to be brought to us. The tavern is rowdy at this hour, and I thought we could both do with a little peace and quiet before your father flies back from Nebba to assassinate me.”

I pop out of the closet, slightly out of breath. “Why would he assassinate you?”

“I allowed you to leave the Sky Kingdom and meet Pierre of Nebba. Not to mention that you were shot with a poisoned arrow.”

“Except none of that was your fault.”

Lore’s easy smile collapses on a sigh. “I also may have sent him on a merry chase around Nebba for your mother. That will tip his mood for the worst. He may never forgive me.”

“So my mother is not in Nebba?”

“I believe your mother is with your grandmother.” He ambles toward the unlit stone hearth, and grips the frame, staring at nothing.

Not nothing.

At ash.

I’ve never lit a fire and don’t remember ashes graying the stone floor, which means someone’s been using this room.

“Phoebus comes to sit here most afternoons to read the books I lend him.” Keeping his back to me, he gestures to a low coffee table stacked with a hodgepodge of leather-bound novels.

“Does he know I’m back?”

“Don’t you think he’d have been here if he had?”

“Unless he’s mad.” I approach the table and kneel to browse the titles.

Five books are in Lucin but two are in Crow. Has his knowledge of the bird tongue improved so much that he can now read a book in their language?

As I trace the accents peppering a word made up almost exclusively of vowels, I mumble, “Granted his grudge-holding isn’t quite as impressive as Syb’s. Is she— Did she come back?”

“She decided to stay with Mattia.” He must sense my disappointment because he adds, “She wanted to help find Antoni.”

I wish she’d returned with me, but I understand. “So he hasn’t been found?”

Lorcan stares to the side, toward the little window overlooking Mareluce. “Not yet.”

“Do you think his disappearance was an accident?”

“I don’t much believe in accidents.” Moonlight gloves the straight line of his nose, the strong pane of his forehead, and the hard cut of his jaw.

“So you think he was ambushed?”

“Yes.”

My heartrate spikes. “Do you think he—he—” I cannot get myself to finish the sentence.

“I don’t think they’d have killed him, but I have no connection to him for he is not a Crow, so I cannot sense his pulse.” He wets his lips, and although he does so unintentionally, it gusts heat low in my belly.

Why couldn’t Mórrígan have blessed Lorcan with a porcine nose, a reedy mouth, and a few boils? It’s the least she could’ve done considering the immeasurable power she gave that man. It’s simply unjust for the rest of us.

He stares over his broad shoulder at me, one hand resting on the tall stone mantle, the other relaxed at his side. “You find me pretty, Behach ?an?”

His question makes my finger skitter off the embossed title full of accents and apostrophes. “Fishing for compliments is beneath a king.”

“Alyona finds me hideous. Her exact word was: bestial.”

My first reaction is: What? How? But that would just blow air up his ass, so I brush off the subject entirely and flip distractedly through a book, refocusing on our earlier conversation. “You believe Meriam is holding Daya prisoner?”