The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(55)

Kiva looked like she wanted to argue, but in the end, she let out a grumbling sigh.

“Send this out for me?” I handed her the letter.

She took it. “I hate that I’m stuck here.”

“At least you can spend more time with Auma.” I shot for the door before she could throw something at me.

*

Caylus had just finished up a shift when I arrived at the bakery, his hair and skin dusted in flour like powdered snow. He smiled when I entered, and we went upstairs to his workshop. He sat down at one of the workbenches beside the kitten, who lay curled on a blanket near the sona lamp. “Is something wrong?”

“I need your help.” I pulled the bag at my hip onto the workbench, then paused. Despite what I’d said to Kiva, trusting Caylus was a risk. But he already knew about our plans with the rebels. If he was going to betray us, he would have already.

I unwrapped the blanket, revealing the egg.

Caylus’s eyes widened, and he ran quivering fingers along the smooth shell. I gave him a moment. When he finally looked back at me, I said, “We need to figure out how to make it hatch.”

He blinked. “You think it’s still alive?”

“I’m hoping.” Praying. “Can you do it?”

Caylus regarded the egg, head tilted. “I have no idea. This is uncharted territory. Though maybe if I…” He shook his head. “What makes you think it’s still alive?”

“I can feel it. It hums when I touch it.” He felt the shell, and when he didn’t react, I added, “Kiva couldn’t feel it either, but I swear it’s there.”

“I believe you.” Caylus sat back, rubbing the side of his face with one massive hand. “Well, what do we have to go on? Don’t they have to hatch on the winter solstice?”

“That’s just tradition.” The words came quickly. I felt jittery and unsteady. Was he actually agreeing to help? “They can hatch anytime. But something makes them hatch, and I don’t know what.”

“Are you…asking me to experiment on it?” he asked.

I nodded. “Chemicals. Herbs. Anything that’s not likely to damage it. Maybe the egg will react somehow.”

He hesitated, and my heart seized. “Will you help me?” I asked.

He ran his fingers over the egg. “I don’t know if I can do much, but I’ll try.”

Relief swept through me in a cool wave. “Where do we start?”

An hour later, I sat beside Caylus with a paper and pen in hand. He alternated between laying out ideas and allowing the kitten to attack his fingers while I translated everything into an actual plan, taking quick notes.

With every new idea one of us suggested, the mountain we had to climb grew taller. By the end of our discussion, the idea of hatching the egg felt impossible. One step at a time. The familiar phrase calmed me. Right now, we planned. Then we tested.

We started with herbs. Murkwood root and dried delladon vine, lavender and monkshood. We crushed them before laying them on the shell, Caylus watching for physical indicators while I focused on the humming. Then we cleaned the spot and tried the next one, moving on through powdered metals and basic liquids.

I’d told him that it seemed to have something to do with the royal family, but simply willing the egg to hatch didn’t have an impact. So either it was something else about me or there was another factor. With each new thing we tried, I focused on willing the egg to hatch, but nothing changed.

As we worked, we talked. Or rather, I talked. Well, asked questions that Caylus answered in as few words as possible. He didn’t seem to mind them; he just didn’t have much to say. He was nineteen, his mother taught him to bake, the kitten’s name was Gio, and yes, he made his own vests. Even getting that out of him was like prying open a crow’s beak.

I also learned he was from Seahalla, the capital of the Ambriels, where the corrupt remnants of the high council still pretended to rule under Razel’s control. The real power there was the Drexel family. They called themselves rebels, but they were just a vicious gang profiting off the slowly crumbling nation.

“How long have you been doing this sort of thing?” I asked from my seat in one of the workbench chairs as Caylus sifted through a pile of papers.

“All my life,” he said.

“Ever sold anything?”

He paused, his scarred fingers curling around the edge of the stack of papers he held. “Some.”

“Ever answer a question in more than three words?”

“Only during high tides.”

I blinked, and he smiled over his shoulder at me. I really had to get used to his deadpan delivery. “Funny. You’re funny.”

He found the paper he was looking for and returned to the chair beside me. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I like to know stuff.”

“So do I, though I usually ask books.” He patted a nearby stack. “They’re more reliable.”

“But not as fun.”

“Less liable to get annoyed.”

“More liable to get chucked at you when someone does get annoyed.”

“You sound like you speak from experience,” he said.

“Books are very underrated weapons.”

He laughed, the sound rich as molten chocolate. It pulled a grin across my lips and brought a flush to my cheeks that felt strange and unfamiliar but pleasant.