16. Isla
16
ISLA
I ’m uncertain for how long I lapse into silence, but it must last quite some time because Lachlano is waving his hand in front of my face, repeating my name on a loop. When sound finally penetrates my ringing ears, I snap my lids. But then I see the ring again.
“Can you hear his thoughts?” my friend murmurs in Serpent, while Aodhan—who’s somewhat calmed—swivels his head as though trying to snag a passing brainwave.
“No.”
“It took the bond between me and Izzy a few years to form,” the Glacin Crow explains. “Could’ve had something to do with her age, seeing as she was fifteen when we met.”
As the cabin and the men come into sharp focus, so does a thought. I press Lachlano aside for an unobstructed view of Konstantin’s fingers. Though he wears a few platinum rings, none of them bear a stone.
“Ilya’s a Korol too.” I assume my conclusion will be met with relief on Konstantin’s behalf, but it only whittles his scowl.
“The ring you described belonged to my mother. Not to Milana.”
I lick my lips. “You share a mother with Alyona.”
“You’d rather marry my dead sister?” he asks.
My head rears back. “Obviously not. I was just calling attention to the possibility that I wear the ring because I retrieve it during my assassination of her daughter—or yours.”
“I don’t have a bloody daughter!” he growls.
When his face takes on the hue of a beinnfrhal, I decide to return to the theory that the daughter is Alyona’s—if only to avoid accidentally committing regicide.
“Perhaps my victim has your mother’s ring, and I retrieve it, and it only fits my ring finger?” I realize how ludicrous this all sounds, but no more than marrying the Glacin monarch.
“The ring’s in my desk drawer.” Konstantin’s eyebrows are slung so low, his silver irises are in full shadow.
“Not exactly the safest place for a keepsake of such value, now, is it?” I didn’t think his features could become any sharper.
They can.
Along with his tone. “In a locked drawer.”
“Perhaps your— my victim unlocks it.”
He cradles his cheek on the tips of his fingers as though settling in for a long and tedious conversation. “Strangers cannot penetrate my private quarters without an invitation.”
“I entered.”
“Because you’re of Meriam’s bloodline.”
I take it he checked with the maker of the sigil. “Maybe you’ve inadvertently invited her in? Or maybe you advertently invited her in! Maybe she’s a woman you’ve lain with?”
“First off, I’d never fucking lay with a woman who resembled my dead sister. Any sister.” His grimace is rivaled by his glower. “Secondly, the ring’s still in my drawer.”
“Do you take it out and polish it on the regular?”
That causes his pupils to retract and his head, to drift away from his fingers.
“Fine. It was just a theory anyway.” With a shrug, I say, “Maybe she’ll steal it from you in the near future…”
“Or perhaps, Kostya’s your mate,” Aodhan chimes in. Unhelpfully.
I can’t help but grimace at the idea of ending up with a male who hates the very idea of marriage.
Aodhan’s smile flattens. “I know Ríhbiadhs consider Crows the superior species, but we’re not, and there’s no shame in being mated to a Faerie.”
At first, surprise flutters my lids. But then annoyance slits them. “I don’t fucking care what species of person I’m mated to, Aodhan. I’m just attempting to come to terms with why the Cauldron decided to bind me to someone who’d prefer to strip a rose of its thorns with his teeth than to marry.”
“That was oddly specific.” Aodhan’s features are no longer pleated in displeasure. “The thorn part. Have you ever caught someone doing that, Isla? Have you ever done that?”
When Lachlano grins, I level him with a glare that I hope will raze his devastating longing to share the idiotic challenge he suggested when we were young, dumb, and bored.
“Can the two of you give Isla and me the room, please?” Konstantin asks. “I’d like to talk to her in private.”
“Do you want me to stay?” Lachlano asks in Serpent.
“He’s not going to eat her.” Aodhan joggles his head. “Or maybe?—”
“Finish that thought,” Konstantin hisses, “and you’ll end up spiked on an obsidian sword at the bottom of my ocean. With my sister. The dead one.”
Aodhan snorts as he pulls open the door and lets himself and Lachlano out.
“I steal it!” I gasp just as the door settles in its frame.
“You steal my mother’s ring? That’s your latest conclusion?”
I wrinkle my nose. Even if it is a sensational jewel, it’s not in my nature to steal. Not to mention, it would be incredibly weird to flaunt my theft by wearing it on my ring finger.
I drift over to the table and pull out the seat beside his. After I flop down, I jam all ten of my fingers into my hair, kneading my throbbing skull, wishing I’d never learned about the ring.
I lower my gaze to the quiet shot glass. If only a brawl could start at the tavern, so that we could focus on something else. “Have you ever considered selling it?”
“Do I look in need of coin?”
“No. But people don’t always sell things for profit. Sometimes they part with things to get rid of them.”
“It’s the last piece of my mother I own. I’d never get rid of it .”
I run my lip between my teeth. “I assume you’d have preferred to hear the antimorphs lobbed off your head?”
“Than stripping a rose of its thorns with my teeth?”
I snort. “Than having a mate.” After some more lip torturing, I ask, “You really never considered giving the ring to your brother?”
The vein at the base of his throat quivers. “My brother doesn’t want the ring.”
I sit up straighter. “Aha! So you have considered giving it away! If I do turn out to be his mate, then perhaps he’ll change his mind and take it off your hands.”
Blood converges into Konstantin’s cheeks, dramatically defining the sharp bones.
“What’s with the rage-reddening? I’ve just found you a way out of an undesirable union.”
Konstantin’s lids twitch. “I’ve never been one to shirk my responsibilities.”
That tightens my lips. Not enough to keep my next words from sailing out, but enough to inflect them with all I’m feeling. “I understand that the ring news comes as quite the shock, but it would be nice if you could temper your revulsion, because a mating bond isn’t a responsibility ; it’s a fucking privilege.”
“If it’s such a privilege , then why are you so desperate to cast me aside and marry one of my siblings?”
“Because I don’t want your kingdom!”
“My kingdom or me ?”
“Your kingdom!”
Silence follows my reply. The swampy sort—viscous and rife with things that can be felt but not seen.
Konstantin rolls his neck, which seems to drive the blood back down into the rest of his body. “Glad to hear I’m not entirely off-putting.”
“You’re not all that on-putting either,” I mutter, which results in softening his features.
“Is there a way to sever a mating bond? In case one does snap into place between us.”
The muscle behind my ribs clenches, deadens. “Yes.”
“Then after the prophecy plays out, we can do that .”
“Can’t believe you’d rather be dead than mated to me.”
“What?”
“The only way to sever a bond is if one of us perishes. Since I’m quasi-immortal, that makes the most probable candidate for eternal slumber you , Vizosh.” I lean back in my chair and fold my arms, relishing the veil that blanches his complexion.
“Don’t Shabbins know of some severing spell?”
Voice as serrated as my heartbeats, I bite out, “I’ve never heard of one, but I’ll be sure to ask around.”
He unhooks his foot and parts his thighs, and then he leans over. I think he means to steady my bouncing knee, but in the end, he doesn’t touch me. Which, for the sake of his fingers, is a sensible decision. I might not be able to shorten them with a spell, but I’m just vexed enough to grind his phalanges using brute force.
“Perhaps your grandfather was right, and the ring has nothing to do with a mating bond.” His pupils are so enlarged they devour his irises, leaving behind only metallic rings. “Perhaps you wear it to draw out my niece.”
“Niece, huh? You’ve come around to the prospect that you might have one?”
“I’d be astounded if I did. Nevertheless, for everyone to have thought my sister the victim of the prophecy—people who’ve interacted with her—leads me to think that the resemblance must be striking.”
“It is.” I picture my victim, then the painting on the wall.
My grandmother’s words bite into my skull again. When did our paths cross, Taytah? Since I arrived in Glace? Why didn’t I think to ask her?
“Why would it draw her out?” I ask.
“Because it’s a family heirloom, and the girl considers it part of her heritage? It makes sense, doesn’t it? That you’d wear it as a lure because we’re accomplices.”
The lump in my throat turns jagged.
Konstantin tilts his head and absorbs my disenchantment. Then, with a temperate smile, he tosses my earlier words right back in my face: “What’s with the rage-pout? I’ve just found you a way out of an undesirable union.”
I might not be the most prideful person on this earth, but his solution…his rejection cuts.
“You don’t want to be mated to me,” he says with a wary sigh.
“You’re right. I don’t.” I can’t believe I ever found him remotely pleasant. “Now that I know how you feel, I wouldn’t accept to marry my mate if it did turn out to be you.”
“Miss Ríhbiadh, I’d be doing us a favor by rejecting the bond. You don’t want to spend your life in Glace. You said so yourself.” A white tendril has escaped his top knot and fallen across his face. It sticks to his lips, which round as he blows it away.
His mouth moves again, but I don’t hear what he’s saying this time, because I’ve just recalled a detail that feels important.
“She had a mole over her lip!”
“Many people have moles.”
“It’s still a notable detail.”
“Notable, but not hereditary.”
Confusion bends my eyebrows. “I’m aware, but it narrows it down.”
“Narrows what down?”
“Our search for my future victim: amber eyes, pointed ears, white hair, mole.”
Disbelief chisels the muscles of his face. “I thought you were talking about Mestyla’s mole.”
The boat slams into the trough of a wave, jostling my seat like Konstantin’s remark has just jostled me . “Great Goddess below…”
“What?”
I swallow to wet my throat that feels as parched as the Selvatin Desert. “I think my victim is Mestyla.”
“You said she had pointed ears.”
“Mestyla was wearing a turban. We don’t know what her ears or hair color look like.”
The boat slips over another swell, and another, as though to hammer in the fact that the girl I’m destined to kill had been right there, within our reach.
Right fucking there.
If only I’d thought of asking Konstantin to use his air-magic to knock the turban off her head.
If only I hadn’t cheered to Alyona of Glace.
If only I’d flown right back.
If only Konstantin hadn’t come with me.
If onlys weren’t going to help me figure out why I killed Mestyla with one of the Glacin Princesses’ daggers, or why I wore Konstantin’s ring while committing the crime. Before I can voice either of these questions, I spot another galleon through the window, one not quite as large as Konstantin’s but still impressive in size.
Lev stands at its railing, dark ringlets teased by the same icy gusts that churn the bay. He’s staring our way as though he can see us. Can he? The window is large, but the cabin is gloomy—unlike outside, where daylight lingers.
“He disliked me before, but now,” Konstantin muses, “that boy will be on a mission to strip me of my charmed medallion.”
I suck in air and look away from the window. “Why?”
“Why does he dislike me? Because I wasn’t interested in becoming friends when he dated my sister. Because I’ve cut down on the number of annual arms permits the Crown issues, which apparently slashed his family’s income in half. Because?—”
“I meant, why would he resent you even more now?”
Konstantin’s attention drifts back to me, slow and deliberate. “Because the woman he wants is at my side.”
“I could be at his in the blink of an eye,” I inform him, partly because I’m still vexed about the whole severing the mating bond bit, and partly to remind him that I’m not a toy he can wave around on his kingdom’s playground.
The outline of Konstantin’s body hardens like tempered steel. “Don’t.”
“Or what? You won’t give me your mother’s pretty ring? Pardon my Glacin, but fuck you, Vizosh, and fuck your kingdom’s tribulations.”
I slip into my shadows and fly back to the castle of the galling monarch, who better not be my preordained mate, or I will riot.