House of Pounding Hearts (The Kingdom of Crows #2)(96)

“I believe Dante is holding both prisoner.”

My hand jerks off the book, and the leather binding settles with a muted thump over the silken pages. “Dante? But he’s . . . I thought he believed she’d escaped his dungeon and was running amok?” Even though I now know she isn’t running amok. “So he knows she’s in Tarespagia? Is he the one who locked her up there?”

Lorcan drops into a crouch, grabs logs from a metal hamper, and tosses them atop the cold ashes, making them puff and scatter. He then seizes some brambles, tucks them over the logs, and picks up two blackened rocks which he snaps together over the dried branches until a spark forms.

“Lore?” My voice has gone up a full octave. “Are you saying I went to Luce for fucking nothing?”

He finally sets the rocks down and rises from his crouch. “Don’t swear.”

My eyes bulge as I lurch to my feet. Invigorated by my fury, I swing around the table and poke his chest with my finger. “Are you fucking saying I went to Luce for fucking nothing?”

His pupils shrink. “You got to see your friends, adopt a horse, and meet Eponine of Nebba. I would hardly call that nothing.”

I stumble back a step. “You knew?” I hiss. “You knew all this time that Meriam wasn’t on the loose?”

“Fallon, do you really believe I would’ve let you wander around the Fae lands as bait to lure a witch who damned my people and her own? Why are you so angry?”

“Because! Because I feel like a fool, Lorcan. On par with the day I learned you could shapeshift into a man!”

“Why?”

“Because!” My anger vibrates against the wooden rafters and bone-smooth stone. “Because . . .” I give a humorless laugh. “How many people know?”

“Only the members of the Siorkahd.”

“So not Antoni?”

“And Antoni.”

“What about Riccio, Mattia, and Giana?”

“I believe they were told since they helped excavate the tunnels under Rax.”

“The tunnels he vanished in?”

“Correct.”

I drag my hands down the sides of my face. “Wait. My father is a member of your circle, yet he’s looking for my mother in Nebba?”

“It’s possible I told him that Marco traded her for that salt-blasting compound.”

My arms fall into a tight fold, and I grin. “Wow. Forget furious.” My broad smile turns into a cackle. “He’s going to pluck you like a pheasant.”

Lore crosses his own arms, expression tinged with amusement.

“Oh, you are in such deep shit.” Tears drip from the corners of my eyes.

Lore leans against the mantle, a smile curling his mouth. “I’ll just have to distract him with the news that you propositioned Pierre of Nebba.”

My laughter sputters like my good mood. “To find Meriam, Lore. Not because I had any romantic interest in the vile male. Unlike you, I’m not jumping headfirst into a profitable marriage to better the fucking world. Now get out of my room. I’m feeling suddenly exhausted and appetite-less and in no mood to talk to the likes of you.”

“I wasn’t aware that ensuring your safety was such a horrid thing.”

“You kept me in the dark, Mórrgaht. Which means you don’t actually trust me.” I press my lips together. “If you did, you would’ve let me in on your big secret. You would’ve let me help solve it.”

He presses away from the mantle and stalks closer to me. “How exactly would you have helped? By rekindling your friendship with your little princeling in the hopes he’d let slip in which part of the tunnels he and Justus moved Meriam?”

I suck in a breath. “My grandfather?”

“Justus isn’t your grandfather.” Lore’s rough tone spikes my temper.

“I fucking know that.”

He seizes my chin, his thumb pressing into my lips, denting them.

I bite down on his finger, hard, before spitting and twisting my head so he cannot stamp my mouth closed. “Keep your fucking fingers off my body or I’ll chomp them off. And don’t you dare comment about my word choice. If I want to curse, I’ll fucking curse.”

He growls a long string of words in Crow.

“Is Justus Rossi even dead?”

“No.”

Of course, he isn’t. And of-fucking-course, Lore knew. He knows fucking everything where I know fuck all. Well, besides the fact that Meriam must be in the tunnels beneath Tarespagia.

“The tunnels span from Isolacuori to Monteluce.”

“Eponine said she was in Tarespagia, so they must run farther west.”

“Eponine lied to you.”

“That’s impossible. She ingested salt.”

He sighs. “Salt doesn’t affect the Nebban elite because, for years now, they’ve been ingesting the compound they dump into the ocean.”

My jaw unhinges before snapping shut with a click. “You could’ve at least told me that much.”

A knock sounds on my door, and then Imogen steps inside, holding a platter of food I want to take from her hands and dump on Lore.

She exchanges a couple words with him that I—again—don’t understand because my knowledge of my father tongue is still too basic. Which is obviously why they use it.