15. Isla
15
ISLA
“ H ow was your date, Behach Batee?” My grandfather’s limbs are so rigid that when he folds his arms, the leather ensconcing them creaks.
Another shadow sweeps beneath the door and firms up beside him—Lachlano. My friend’s eyebrows journey up his broad forehead as he takes in my red pants and blue coat.
“My date was lovely. Lev was the perfect gentleman. How was your evening, Jaytair?”
A nerve jostles the black stripes obscuring my grandfather’s temple. “Isla Mara Ríhbiadh.”
Since the middle name only comes out when I’m about to get into a world of trouble, I say, “I’m sorry I lied about going out with the arms dealer.”
Just as my grandmother slips through the closed door, he says, “You better have a very, very good explanation for it.”
“And for what you’re wearing,” Lachlano pitches in, which wins him a smack in the pecs from my grandfather who has clearly not come to discuss my sense of fashion.
“We were out of our minds with worry when Lev showed up at the castle looking for you, abi,” Taytah says.
Lev sailed back to the castle for me? What determination…
“The blame is mine,” Konstantin says. “I asked your granddaughter to accompany me into the human district.”
How…unexpected.
“To do what ?” Jaytair snaps.
Konstantin leans back in his chair and stretches out his long legs. “To plant a listening sigil in a tavern. As I’m sure you’ve heard, there’s much conflict here.”
Aodhan nods toward my grandmother. “Did the Cauldron have anything interesting to add to the prophecy, Sumaca?”
A vein throbs at my grandfather’s temple. “You told them about the prophecy, Isla?”
“It came up, yes.” I nibble on the inside of my cheek. “Did the Cauldron show you anything new, Taytah?”
“No,” Jaytair says, at the same time as Taytah says, “It did.”
The silence that ensues is so long and fraught that I know my grandparents are squabbling.
Before they can decide whether to share this new information with me, I walk up to my grandmother and press her palms to my forehead. “Show me.”
My grandfather shakes his head, but my grandmother doesn’t listen to him; she listens to me, which tells me this must be important.
I see a sky tiled with stars and ruby blood glazing my fingertips. And…is that a ring on my annular finger?
I try to zero in on it, but Taytah is dragging my mind’s eye away, toward the dagger embedded with diamond snowflakes that I clutch, and then farther, toward the motionless body.
I see a face as pale as the snow it rests upon. As pale as the round moon bathing the indigo land.
I see pointed ears poking through white hair, which an invisible breeze has tossed across glassy, orange eyes.
I suck in a breath and tug at my grandmother’s wrists to free myself of the vision. “Her eyes! They’re not gray. It’s not Alyona I murder!”
Taytah nods.
“Did the Cauldron swap the victim?” Aodhan asks.
My grandmother shakes her head once more. “It’s the same woman. We just hadn’t noticed the color of her irises until now.”
Aodhan toys with a button on his navy coat. “Why did you assume it was Alyona?”
“Because they look very much alike.” Taytah sets her black stare on her fellow monarch. “Which leads us to think it’s either another child your mother would’ve birthed with a fire-Faerie—perhaps before she was married—or?—”
“My mother has only ever been with one man, and that man was my father,” Konstantin snaps.
I tilt my head. “And you know this how, exactly…? Did she sit you down one day and walk you through her sexual history?”
The glower he lobs my way would’ve made me shrink had I not spent the better part of my evening with him. The male is protective and prideful of his family, to the degree that he’d likely execute anyone who dared insult one of his siblings.
Taytah tucks a lock of pink hair behind her ear. “Could the slain Faerie be a child of your sister’s? One of yours?”
The Ice King’s complexion turns mottled. “Neither Alyona nor I have a child.”
“We don’t know in what year the prophecy happens,” I say.
“This winter,” Taytah says with eerie firmness. “It happens this winter.”
I grip my grandmother’s wrists once more. “Show me her face again, Taytah?”
My ear’s buzz with my grandfather’s protest. I don’t waste energy on his sullen mood, giving the crime scene my full attention. Since I can’t pilot my body in the vision, I squint and scour the woman’s traits for a distinguishing feature. I look for freckles, a birthmark, anything that could?—
Is that?—
A shadow passes over the full moon, hampering its reach, casting my victim in darkness. I will the light to touch her again, but instead, the obscurity grows until it becomes so complete, I melt back into the here and now.
The surge of my pulse floods my tongue with the tang of blood. “Again!”
“Daya, please?—”
“Perhaps she saw something we didn’t, Cathal,” my grandmother says. When she presses her palms back to my forehead, I see only darkness. Why do I see only darkness?
“Have I exhausted the vision?” I ask my grandmother, finding her stare luminous like glass.
At least that explains why I see nothing…because the Cauldron has dragged Taytah into its inky depths. I hope it’s not angry with her for having shown me the vision.
“Any notable details, Isles?” Aodhan asks.
“The moon was full—or close to it.”
“She noticed the moon,” my grandfather mutters in Serpent.
I hike up an eyebrow. “Yes, Jaytair, I noticed the moon, like I noticed the hue of the woman’s irises. I’m perspicacious like that.” When he cracks his knuckles, I narrow my stare but then spring it wide. “It’s the ring that’s put you in a tizzy, isn’t it?”
“What ring?” Lachlano asks.
Since he speaks in Serpent, so do I. “In the prophecy, I wear a diamond ring.” My heart misses a beat. “I wear it on my annular finger!” I gawk at Lachlano. “Holy fucking shit, Lach, I’m going to meet my mate this winter!”
My grandfather is red in the face, as though he’s swallowed an iceberg. “We don’t know that the ring’s owner is your mate.”
I roll my eyes. “Not only do I wear the jewel on my annular finger,” I repeat, “but also, do you really see me marrying a man who isn’t my mate?”
My grandfather grinds his jaw as though masticating unshelled walnuts.
“Who’s the lucky man?” Aodhan asks—in Serpent.
Jaytair freezes. “Since when do you speak Serpent?”
“Since Konstantin appointed me as the liaison officer for shifters in Glace. All shifters.” Aodhan leans forward to peer at me around my grandfather’s large, vibrating form. “Though we still don’t have Serpents in residence, we’re open to welcoming them.”
“Do I perish at your talons as well, Miss Ríhbiadh?” Konstantin leans back in his chair and leisurely hooks a foot over his knee. His pretense at tranquility is lost on me, seeing as the tendons in his neck strain against his pale skin like rigging.
“Do you really think your death would cause my grandfather such distress, Vizosh?” I quip.
Lachlano snorts.
“Depending on who were to succeed me, it might,” Konstantin replies steadily.
“Jaytair’s wound tight because, in the prophecy, I wear a diamond on my ring finger, which means I must find my mate.”
“We don’t know that he’s your mate,” my grandfather grumbles in Serpent. Again .
“It’s twice that you’ve said that. Why in the world would I sport the jewel of someone who isn’t my mate on my ring finger?”
“Your paths crossed,” my grandmother suddenly says, blinking away the veil of magic. “You know her.”
“ Her ?” I repeat. “My mate is a woman?”
“Your mate?” Taytah’s canted head sends her long pink locks frolicking across her cream velvet cape. “No, the dead woman. Why did you think I was…” One glance at Jaytair’s complexion leads her mouth to soften around an, “ Ah . You uncovered what your grandfather preferred you didn’t see.”
“She’s perspicacious like that,” he grumbles, recycling my words.
I’m about to roll my eyes when a realization hits me dead center. “Great Mórrígan, Jaytair! You know who the ring belongs to!”
With a harsh flare of his nostrils and a harsher glower at the tawny slats beneath his boots, he mutters, “No.”
His lie escalates my heartrate, because my grandfather has only ever protected me, which can only mean one thing. “What sort of monster does the Cauldron bind me to?”
Taytah strokes my cheek. “He’s not a monster.”
“Then why is Jaytair about to toss up his carnival fare?”
“Because, like your parents, he would’ve preferred bundling you up in the Sky Kingdom until you blew out a hundred candles. I’m sorry, abi, but I’m afraid I need to go rest now.” Taytah kisses my forehead before sidestepping me to reach my grandfather. “You’re not alone. We’re here for you.”
“Does she even need us anymore?” my grandfather mutters before mumbling something about how my father will be turning him into a forever-Crow, and that he hopes my grandmother can still love him in puny bird form.
Taytah titters as she leads him toward the door. She’s the only one who does, though. Even Lachlano, whose pearly whites are on display even when he sleeps, doesn’t react to my grandfather’s woeful remark.
As my grandmother paints the sigil to slip through the door, I call out, “At least solve one of my two puzzles by telling me who the ring belongs to!”
She adds a cross in the middle of her circle. “Do you remember what it looked like?”
“It was square and as big as my knuckle, so I’m guessing it’s someone well-off.” As I shuffle through my memory, she presses her palm to the door. “Wait!”
But she doesn’t. She slips through the wood, my grumbling grandfather in tow.
Ugh .
“Maybe I can help narrow it down,” Aodhan says, in Glacin this time.
With a frustrated sigh, I say, “I don’t know how, unless you’ve visited every jeweler in Glace.”
“If your grandparents recognized the stone”—Aodhan presses away from his perch as though his legs were in need of stretching—“then it’s an heirloom and not a new design.”
Huh. For some reason, my mind goes to Lev’s mother, and I try to remember if any ring graced her finger but then realize the diamond would probably belong to my mate’s dead relative, since prying an engagement ring off a living person’s finger would be in poor taste.
“You said the stone was a large square?” Aodhan asks.
I snag the memory and paste it on my lids. “Squar ish .”
“Define ‘squarish’?” Aodhan asks.
I shrug. “It was geometric. Could have had more sides than just four.”
Aodhan’s gaze flicks sideways toward Konstantin, who sits up, as though my description has piqued his interest. He does strike me as an observer, so perhaps he, too, would know the ring.
“What color was it?” Aodhan asks.
I frown. “It was a diamond.”
“Diamonds come in different colors.”
I screw my lips. “It wasn’t pink like my mother’s. Or black. Definitely clear.”
“White?” Aodhan asks.
“Probably, but everything had sort of a bluish tint to it.” Save for the moon-faced woman with the spill of white hair. I give my head a small shake to dispel the sight of her empty eyes. Skies, those were going to haunt me. Since they’re all watching me, I add, “It was night.”
Actually, they’re not all watching me. Aodhan is staring very steadily at Konstantin, who looks about ready to lose his shit.
“Does it belong to the Zaslofskys?” My hesitant query is met with a very loud snort from Aodhan.
“Sorry,” the dark-haired Crow coughs as though trying to dissimulate a laugh with some throat clearing. But then his neck tips back, and he’s hooting.
“Leave!” Konstantin commands, as still and pale as an ice carving. As I glance at the door, the Ice King growls, “Not you, Miss Ríhbiadh. I was talking to the buffoon beside me.”
“Oh, Mórrígan, this is too good.” Aodhan rubs his palms together. “Just too good.”
“Can I please be told which enemy of yours is to be my mate?” I ask, rather alarmed, for why would Aodhan be getting such a kick out of Konstantin’s visceral reaction?
“Can I just stay until you tell her?” Aodhan thumbs his curved lips. “Please? Then I swear that I will depart.”
“Your betrothed isn’t one of my enemies,” Konstantin gripes, conceding to Aodhan’s appeal.
Except the Ice King doesn’t have that many friends, does he? He’d mentioned no one would come looking for him. But Aodhan had, and so had?—
My palms turn clammy as I contemplate the very real possibility that my mate is some huge, terrifying bear of a Faerie nicknamed the Flesher. The more I turn the possibility over in my mind, the more sense it makes. After all, Konstantin is attached to Salom. He’d be devastated if I took him back to Luce with me.
“Son of a sprite, Isles,” Lachlano murmurs. He must’ve drawn the same conclusion.
I linger on the door Salom passed through moments ago. “I know…”
“Planning on running away?” Aodhan asks through quirked lips. “Don’t blame you.”
“No, I was planning on going after…” The purpling complexion of the king perplexes me so deeply that Salom’s name mutates into a hum.
“Methinks Isla has her sights set on handsome Salom.” Aodhan’s stage-whisper wrinkles my nose, because the general is not handsome.
The thought strikes me as odd. Shouldn’t I be riveted by my mate, no matter his age or appearance?
“It’s not my fucking general you marry,” Konstantin snaps, which has Aodhan hooting some more.
The Crow doesn’t even stop after Konstantin pins him to the wall with a flare of magic. What could be causing him such hila?—
Oh.
Oh.
I blink at the Ice King, whose stare is so bladed I feel it slicing into me. “ You ?”
My shock has Aodhan grappling for air and Lachlano balking.
“Yes.” The Ice King works his rigid jaw from side to side as though frost had gelled his mandibles. “ Me .”