The Storm Crow (The Storm Crow, #1)(66)

Kiva pulled a couch pillow over her face, groaning. “You want to ally with him too, don’t you?”

“I figured our job wasn’t hard enough already if you have time to flirt with Auma every day.”

She chucked the pillow at me, and I laughed, snatching her remaining cake and scurrying to the other side of the couch before she could stop me from eating it.

“What about you?” she demanded. “Falling for those green eyes of Caylus’s, are you?”

I scoffed, but she wasn’t wrong. They were pretty. I dropped onto the couch across from her, cake still in hand. “Talking to him is so easy. I love how curious he is about everything.”

“You just like having someone as nosy as you are.”

I smirked. “I just don’t understand how someone can be so observant and so oblivious at the same time. He doesn’t notice anything!”

She gave me a coy smile. “He notices you.”

My face heated, but she was right. Caylus didn’t notice a liquid boiling over above the fire, but he noticed which tea I liked, which muffin was my favorite, and had both ready and waiting when I arrived.

“You notice him too,” she added. “I think you’d live in that workshop if he’d let you.”

My blush deepened. “He’s easy to be around,” I muttered.

“Easy to look at too.”

I laughed. An image surfaced in my mind: him standing face-to-face with Ericen, his eyes hard as jade. At the same time, I thought of him in his workshop, his long limbs twisted into awkward positions in a too-small chair in an attempt to get comfortable, the sunlight illuminating streaks of red in his messy auburn hair, Gio snuggled on one shoulder.

He made me feel safe, comfortable, even happy, and that was all in the middle of Illucia, with the fate of my kingdom at stake.

Kiva fetched Sinvarra and her cleaning materials, then laid the sword out on the table to begin her meticulous polishing process. Someone knocked, and I rose to open the door, revealing Auma. She handed me a letter, though her dark eyes found only Kiva. I thanked her, and she bowed, slipping away.

Beside my name on the envelope, someone had written Lokane, the password we’d decided Captain Mirkova would use for news from Korovi. Had she convinced them to help us? I tore it open, then nearly dropped it when I beheld the simple message:

No.

Upon seeing my face, Kiva rose and snatched the letter from me, then cursed so violently in Korovi, I considered asking the Saints to forgive her. Except wasn’t this just another sign there was no one there? No one listening.

“Saints-damned isolationist snobs!” she finished, chucking the letter into the fire. The flames gobbled it up with the tenacity of Kiva’s curses.

I forced a deep breath. “It’s okay. We still have Jindae, Trendell, and the Ambriels. That’s more than enough.”

“If they all agree.”

*

All through morning training and the carriage ride to Caylus’s, I couldn’t stop checking the connection between Res and me. Every time, the cord hummed contentedly, and I would breathe a little slower until the fear compelled me to check again.

A day old, Res’s appetite would be kicking in, so I’d visited the castle kitchens with the intent of pilfering some meat. The castle cook was already preparing meals for that evening’s dinner when I slipped into the warm, cobblestone room.

After learning his name was Tarel and asking for some cooked chicken, a man shaping dough beside the oven had grinned at me in a way that made his dimples show. “So you’re the one who’s been ordering all the desserts,” he said.

My cheeks flushed. “I hope it’s not too much trouble.”

“Are you kidding?” replied Tarel as he folded chicken in a cloth for me with nimble fingers. “He’s just happy to make something other than sugarless tarts.”

It’d taken me several more minutes to escape and only after learning the dimpled man was Lyren, Tarel’s husband and the castle baker, along with how many years they’d worked there, how long they’d been married, and their opinions on who’d win the Centerian that year. By the time I’d slipped away with promises to return, I had an additional cloth wrap with scones, hard cheese, and dried fruit.

The carriage slowed outside the bakery, and I leapt out, darting inside with a quick hello to the woman behind the counter on my way up to Caylus’s. He answered the door after the first knock, as if he’d been waiting on the other side.

“How is he?” I asked the moment the door shut.

“Asleep,” Caylus replied. He had purple shadows under his eyes, and his hair had reached a new level of disheveled.

I frowned. “Did you sleep?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

Something warm and pleasant welled in my chest, and I smiled, taking Caylus’s hand to guide him upstairs. His fingers curled about mine, their trembling still. We hadn’t talked about our kiss, and some part of me didn’t want to. Caylus knew about my engagement with Ericen and my plans to stop it, and if he didn’t want to make a big deal of it, neither would I.

Getting caught didn’t worry me—kissing another boy was the least of my subversion.

Res lay cocooned in soft blankets of Ambriellan wool. There were more than when I’d left, as if Caylus had gotten concerned the crow might be cold. A small water bowl sat beside him.