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My heart gives a wild thud. One hammering pulse before launching into a hummingbird flutter. My body is suddenly too long for the pose I’m sitting in, but my legs don’t fit well in the space between the edge of the table and Myron’s knee when I try to slide them into a more comfortable position. A sheath of sweat covers my palms as I pull away. I wipe them on my thighs, lace my fingers in my lap, and lean back in my seat to bring some distance between us or the words—both spoken and unspoken—will tear me apart with tension.
“I’m sorry about Ephegos.” My voice isn’t more than a croak.
Myron inclines his head in thanks. “He was one of my best men—and I trusted him with my own life and the safety of my people.”
“The same people who want to kill you.” It isn’t fair. Not when there is so much more to this king than the cold monster ruling with punishing power. If they could see who he really is, see how deeply he can care for one of his own, they might change their minds?—
No, they wouldn’t. Not those creatures who chased me into the forest. Those who would have feasted on my living flesh. I try not to shudder at the memory of Crow claws digging into my shoulder, of their hissing threats and taunting.
“They deserved safety anyway. Every last Crow does. Even if they seem like terrible monsters to you, they haven’t always been like this—” His last word ends in a gasp, and a trickle of blood runs from the corner of his mouth.
“I won’t ask what they used to be like because it doesn’t matter if they want to kill you now.”
He forces a thin smile, understanding that I won’t push him on this. But I do address the one topic I haven’t dared bring up with either of the three Crows I trust in this palace—two. Ephegos is no longer there to answer and bleed. Grave sadness spreads through me, an echo of the last time I watched one of those I’ve come to call family slayed.
“You bleed when you speak about certain topics, like the words themselves make you bleed. But that happened before when you tried to talk about the Fire Fairies. And now it doesn’t.” I don’t know how I could have missed that detail before. But it is like every time I learn something, the Crows no longer bleed when they talk about it next time.
Myron clears his throat, tilts his head as if weighing how to phrase his response, then gets to his feet, stepping around the couch to the library behind it. “Because you paid attention. Only things you haven’t—” He coughs, bending over, grasping the shelf to support himself, and I’m on my feet, too, placing a soothing hand between his shoulder blades, even when there is nothing I can do to help him?—
Nothing other than figuring it out. He just gave me an answer that hurt him and, with it, a tool to make it stop.
There is nothing much other for me to do than to start guessing. “Things I haven’t talked about with you?” I try, but the coughing doesn’t ease, the heavy panting between frightening me to my core. He shakes his head, and I could swear his breathing rattles the next time he inhales.
Shit. Where are the gods when I need them? Whatever he was trying to tell me, it must be substantial, or the spell wouldn’t tear at him like this.
Things…What things could he mean? I’ve paid attention to a lot since I was brought here, to all the details and answers Royad, Ephegos, and Myron have given me. But the Flames… The Flames are something I figured out on my own. Guessed most of it, at least. And now I know, and whatever he told me about them no longer affected him. But what he’s trying to tell me now, I don’t know, so he’s suffering.
I don’t want to make it worse, so I promise myself I will ask only one more time. “You can only talk about things I already know.” He gasps a breath of air. “Or things that are irrelevant to the spell.”
The words are out before I can think as his all-black eyes lock on mine, black strands shifting over his features as he turns his head to the side with his hand still braced on the shelf. For a moment, I believe he’s going to collapse. Drop dead right there, at the foot of the library that has been my savior during lonely hours in this foreign place.
But as I wait, the tension in his shoulders eases, and he breathes more easily. “How do you know about the … spell?” His brittle tone shakes me to my bones, and I slide my hand under his wing, to the side of his waist to offer support, but he’s already straightening, a haunted look on his features and a vulnerability in his eyes that pulls on my chest like a length of yarn pulling a leg from a house of cards.
The fact that he can say the word without bleeding and coughing tells me I’ve been right all along. “There really is a spell.” I don’t realize how breathless I sound until the rapid movements of my chest become a distraction in the silence between us.
“For thousands of years.” Myron smooths a feather on his wing back toward his elbow and turns to rest his back against the shelves.
The information settles in like a rock, and I need to brace myself against the backrest of the couch so as not to stumble under its weight.
A spell. But more than that. “A curse,” I whisper.
Myron says nothing, and he doesn’t need to.
For a long time, we stare at each other, understanding passing between us in the dim glow of the fairy light. My heart pounds, my palms sweat, my limbs shake, but I hold my ground against the force that is Myron, the Valiant.
A bride. A chance,it echoes in my mind.
I don’t repeat the thought but swallow the lump forming in my throat and croak, “Who placed the curse on you?”
It’s one question too many, and Myron is already at his limit. Instead of bleeding for my curiosity, he shakes his head before he turns and stalks to the door. “We’ll talk about the water later.”
My gaze follows his to the door to the murderous bathing room, and I open my mouth to ask what he knows about what happened, but when I turn, his body is covered in feathers and shrinking to the size of a bird. Before I can get out a word, he launches into the air and flutters through the opening door.
Twenty-Seven
Seven days have passedsince the Flame attack, but the palace is still in an uproar. The walls are still soot-stained, and the Crows remain on edge. Despite keeping the heavily guarded windows and doors open during the days, the stench of burnt flesh lingers in the air like a ghost of all the Crows who lost their lives in the attack. Some of them were from the pro-Myron faction like Ephegos while others were from the faction against him, Royad explained after the attack, but Myron gives them all a proper memorial anyway.
I haven’t talked to anyone but Myron and Royad since the attack, and no one has approached me, even when the Crows stationed at the palace give me curious and sometimes concerned glances as I pass through the hallways at the side of their king or that of their king’s confidant. What they see when I pass them, I cannot tell, but it is no longer the little bride they taunted or chased or even attempted to kill. I am not sure if the new creature they see is much better either.
