As the Crow Falls | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Niccola lunged for the bushes behind them, Isaiah close behind. An arrow thudded into a tree inches from his head. Pekea leaped clear and skittered up a tree. Niccola grabbed Isaiah's hand and dragged him after her behind another fallen log. They crawled as fast as they could to its end, then crouched low as eerie silence engulfed them. These were assassins. Dinah's, or the palace's, or some other party Isaiah did not know. Niccola shifted infinitesimally, then whipped down again as an arrow hit the log's other side.

"Green jackets," she whispered.

Royal. They weren't shooting at him, then.

They were shooting at Niccola.

He wanted to tell her, but he could either speak or breathe, and even the latter was becoming harder by the heartbeat. Niccola's hand clenched his own. Still ducked low, she began to chant. A chill shot up Isaiah's spine. What came out of Niccola's mouth was not a human language. Not fully human, at least: it was the soft, guttural sounds crows used to talk to one another, shaped into almost human syllables. Its not-words and undulating intonation gave it the feel of the forest at night, rippling with unseen, dangerous things.

He'd never heard her do this before.

Wings rustled in the canopy. First one, then another, then more—in half a hundred heartbeats, there must have been well over a hundred, and more were still arriving. Only when the first one croaked did he realize what they were. The crow began to talk to itself, a low chuckling sound that spread though the flock like hideous laughter, until the whole canopy throbbed with it.

Then Niccola uttered a single, harsh word, and the trees exploded.

Cawing rent the air, ear-splitting and malignant. Wings fell like the canopy itself had come apart. The crow mob dive-bombed the archers, and a human yell barely sounded through the cacophony as Niccola yanked Isaiah to his feet and dragged him after her again.

They ran.

Through the forest, crashing through bushes and tripping over logs, weaving between the mighty trees. No more arrows flew after them, or maybe they did, and Isaiah just didn't hear them. Niccola had left a storm behind.

Niccola had called those crows. Commanded them.

By the time they stumbled to a halt an indeterminable amount of time later, a different fear had filled Isaiah's chest and bubbled over. He wrenched his hand from Niccola's and stumbled back, finding the closest tree trunk and pinning his back to it. "You're a barrower."

"I can explain."

Explanation wouldn't erase fact. Isaiah's voice shook as it tore out of him, words tripping over one another. "You never told me. Your sister was the only one who inherited it. What did you do?" His breaths came hoarse and ragged. "I trusted you."

"I got it myself to help find my sister."

"You murdered to help your sister."

"I didn't—"

"Is that why you left the ball early? You had Crow Moon offerings to attend to? And you never told me. Was it one of your own people that you killed to pay for the magic-line, or one of ours?"

"It's not paid."

Isaiah froze, fury and fear battling for dominance. Unpaid. Anyone who struck a new barrower deal with the Talaks had nine Crow Moons to make the life-for-line trade that sealed the magic lineage's creation. Nine moons before they started turning into a Talak themselves, the punishment for failing to uphold their end of the contract.

"How long?" he demanded.

"Eight moons."

She had one left. She may have started turning already. And she'd told him nothing.