Page 43 of Cathmoir’s Sons (Bad Boys of Bevington #5)

Chapter 43

Mother’s Milk

LAW

I smell her before I see her: salt and musk, sunlight on pines, a thread of hot copper.

I whip around from where I’m standing with the timid Seer and scan the horizon.

A line of five figures appears where sand meets foam. They stumble into being as if belched forth by the sea. Their wetsuits and the demon’s horns clip the shapes of night out of the gray horizon.

I roar and rush to my mate. The human is a step behind me, flowing over the sand like a flash flood. We crush Caileán between us, protecting her with our bodies.

The human speaks before I have a chance to, while I’m still running my hands over my mate, looking for any injury.

“Baby, are you okay?” the human hisses, thin with worry. “How’d you get here? Did you decompress? What happened?”

Idiot. “Are you hurt?” I ask, framing my mate’s face with a concerned palm.

Caileán tips her head back and looks up at me with tear-bright eyes. She takes a deep breath in and lets it out, connecting with her Element. She smiles up at me tremulously, while brine that’s not of the sea cuts crystal paths down her cheeks.

“I’m okay,” she whispers. “My team?”

Her eyes slip away from my face to the people—and demon—who appeared with her. The Void Mage is still gripping Caileán’s hand.

“All okay,” the Void Mage responds.

“We should all take Luca’s decompression potion just to be safe,” Caileán murmurs.

I brush my twin’s mind to warn him. He pushes back reassurance on a warm, summer breeze.

“Luca’s standing by,” I tell Caileán as I lick tears from her cheeks. “What happened?”

Caileán drops her hand forward, looking down at the hand she holds against her stomach. Slowly, she uncurls her fingers.

A tiny skull and group of bones sit on her palm. The bones are so small, so fine, they could be bird bones ... except that the skull is unmistakably human. Well, other than the two tiny lumps of horns rising above the empty eye sockets. The bones are discolored, yellowish, all but the horns. They glow like pearls in Torre Faro’s winter light.

My breath catches. I’ve seen horns like that before.

“Caileán, where did you get those?”

“Charybdis gave them to me. I gave her my crown. She’s been blinded and trapped on the edge of Hell for three thousand years. She’s going to try to find her mother.”

More tears slip down her cheeks. Rhodes nuzzles in on his side, murmuring, “Baby, baby, it’s okay.”

I thumb her tears away gently. “Is it over?”

She nods. “This is Ulune’s Daughter. I have to return her to her mother.”

“I think I know where to find her, my love.”

After a harried half-hour where we watch the divers for any sign of the bends, pack up the Tech Mage’s equipment, and a very frustrated Fire Mage stews over the “treasure” Caileán’s recovered, we retire to Ty Olewydd.

Where we find four crows perched around the living room while my twin holds a seemingly one-sided conversation with the snowy bird on his shoulder.

The demon, who has taken possession of the sad collection of bones, throws the albino crow a very dark look before he stalks into the kitchen.

Didrane cackles as only a crow can.

The white crow remains on Luca’s shoulder as he distributes the decompression elixir to the mortal divers. Arch, to no one’s surprise, refuses to take it, even while his eyes and nose run from the proximity to the birds.

Caileán looks like she’s going to argue with him, but the team’s Seer beats her to it. “Then you need to spend a day in a decompression chamber,” Cami says, crossing her arms over her thin chest. “There’s one in Cefalù. Do you want me to call ahead to see if they have space for you?”

Arch stares at her open-mouthed. “Uh-I don’t think?—”

“You’ll need it. I’ve Seen it.”

“You have?”

Cami nods, glaring at her team leader. Daring him, I think, to challenge her vision.

Arch takes the small bottle from Luca and gulps it down.

Cami drops her arms and pats Arch on the shoulder before she follows Jou into the kitchen.

The rest of the team keep straight faces with obvious effort.

“Well, this isn’t quite the outcome I expected from this hunt,” the Tech Mage says.

“I’ll make it up to you.” I clap him on the shoulder. “There are a thousand lost treasures in Faery.”

Danny twirls an entirely fictional moustache. “I heard something about finding Faery’s lost seas? I’m totally down for crewing the Good Ship Cait-pop.”

Luca sniggers. I’m not sure what I’m missing, then it occurs to me that I mentioned Faery’s lost seas when I was alone with my mate. Or, at least, I thought we were alone. I glower at the Tech Mage.

“Stop listening in on my private conversations,” I grumble.

“Stop having such interesting private conversations.” Danny shrugs, unrepentant.

The crow on my brother’s shoulder joins him in sniggering. I roll my eyes at all of them.

The demon returns from the kitchen with a small metal tin, which I assume contains Mordeh’s daughter’s bones. He hands the tin to Caileán before beckoning all of us to the dining table.

“Conflab,” he tells us.

Caileán catches my hand as I walk toward the table. She laces our fingers together. With a rustle, the wetsuit she’s wearing transfigures into her mantle, feathers spilling over our linked hands. A sooty band spreads across Caileán’s cheeks, framing her bright blue eyes. A black line connects her eyes’ inner corners, dipping across the bridge of her nose like a beak. Another black line runs through her lower lip, down over her chin and throat, to disappear in the collar of her mantle.

War paint.

I don’t comment on the changes in her appearance. Whatever my queen wants to wear is fine with me.

By the time we sit around the table, three of the other crows have taken their skins. They’re mantled in black; their faces decorated the same as my mate’s. Instead of a black line through her lip, Brangwy has a red bone pierced through hers. Kathu’s lines are bright blue and run from the corners of her mouth instead of the center. I’ve never seen them as “sisters” before. Now, sitting together in their mantles, their eyes gleaming, their power thickening the air with familiar flavors, I see it. They are a fractious family, cawing and clacking at each other. But against a common foe? They are united.

Didrane remains in her crow form, seeming happy to remain on my twin’s shoulder. She settles down, looking like a large, white cushion, and tucks her head against Luca’s jaw. He strokes her ruffled throat. I’m reminded of when we were Blackey and Whitey and I thought frequently about eating her. I give her a wink. She clacks her beak sleepily at me.

The demon sits heavily across from Caileán as steaming cups of lemon tea and platters of long flatbreads, laden with anchovies, pancetta, mozzarella, greens, and toasted nuts appear between us.

I’m only a second behind Luca in grabbing one of the anchovy flatbreads. The house bwg know what cats like.

The demon nods at the small tin Caileán’s set on the table. “Pretty sure those are Mordeh’s daughter’s bones,” he says, telling everyone what we concluded on the beach. “From what Charybdis told Caileán, Mordeh’s own mother, Licyssa, kept the remains away from Mordeh. I’m guessin’ it was part of a power-play over the gates to the Dransbych. Mordeh’s in control of ‘em now. We give the bones back to Mordeh, sit back, and watch her go after her dame now that Licyssa don’t have that bit of leverage. Weakens the Dransbych and keeps the water demons busy for a century or two. Win-win. Or we give ‘em back to Licyssa, sit back, and watch her use ‘em against her daughter?—”

“No,” Caileán says softly. “I know double-crossing your allies is expected in Hell, but it’s not the way I intend to rule.” She opens the tin and rests a long, black claw on the tiny skull. “I offered Mordeh an alliance. Charybdis bid me to return the bones to her mother. If Mordeh is that mother, I’ll fulfill Charybdis’ charge?—”

She lifts her hand. A green droplet runs down her claw. It sizzles on her skin, carving a raw line down her finger to her second knuckle.

“Baby—” Rhodes reaches across Luca to heal Caileán but she waves him off, staring at the wound before she draws the tip of her tongue along it. Blood washes over her lower lip and trickles down her chin.

“It tastes ... like betrayal,” she whispers.

“Caileán—” I begin.

She shakes her head, dips her claw into the tin again, and brings out another glistening drop.

Hraena lunges across the table, wrapping her hand around Caileán’s wrist. “I lost you for over a thousand years. I can’t lose you for another thousand. If someone needs to taste it, let it be me.”

Caileán breaks into a soft smile, even as a tear runs down her cheek at her sister’s loyalty and centuries of loss.

“The only three who tasted this poison the first time sit beside me. It has to be them,” Caileán says sadly.

Rhodes wraps his hand around Hraena’s, his fingers dwarfing hers. “It has to be me. I can flush out any poison with my Element, and ... I remember how it tasted.”

Over Luca’s whimper, Caileán nods and tips her hand toward Rhodes.

The wound on her finger fills in with clean, pink skin. The human’s tongue flicks out and scoops the drop of poison off Caileán’s claw.

He shudders, tucking his head down between his shoulders. Luca wraps his arm around the human’s shoulders. “Rho. Rho, are you?—”

The human nods. When he speaks, blood flecks the corners of his mouth. “I’m neutralizing it. It’s the same. It’s what my cousin O drowned in. It’s what the Oak King sent with Odhrán. It’s what filled the Cup of Dreamless Sleep.”

Caileán’s breath catches. “Rhodes, how?—”

“It feels the same. I don’t know how else to put it into words. It’s what I felt the first time I walked through the exhibit. It’s the essence of bile. A drop of the bitterest blood. It’s mother against daughter. A betrayal that echoes through time and taints everything it touches.”

Silence reigns for a long moment. Then a dozen overlapping questions.

The demon raises his clawed hand. “That’s what drew you to Isla Cedros, Treasure. An’ maybe what’s drawn me, too. My dame was poisoned. Died while she was bearing my clutch. I’ve never been able to prove nothin’, but the Old Man’s Flame’s was a Fire demon. She shouldn’t have been able to poison my dame. I always figured Licyssa had a hand in it. Maybe this is how. Maybe we’re seeing the way she’s moved behind the scenes for a long, long time.”

Caileán cups her hand protectively over the bones. “There’s nothing evil here. Just grief. Terrible, terrible grief. Enough to level mountains and lay waste to civilizations.”

“Maybe that’s enough,” Luca says. “Grief that terrible could be a poison.”

“We return the bones to Mordeh,” Caileán says. “And I beg her to confront the Oak King with us. All of Faery must know what he’s done. How far he’s strayed from the Mother’s Path.”

There are nods all around the table. Phones ping in tandem. I take mine out of my pocket.

Eat me, Jou: When do we roll?

Coach Charlie: Faevengers, assemble!

I show the messages to Caileán and share a chuckle.

“The Bevington contingent is ready,” I say for the benefit of those not part of our group chat. “Luca and I will summon the Cait.”

Caileán squeezes my forearm. “This is not a war for the living. Our battle cry is vengeance. Our soldiers are the shades who suffered for centuries at the Oak King’s hand. They will rise when my sisters and I stand before the Oak King and demand justice.”

My fur bristles. “Caileán, let us stand with you.”

She looks at her sisters. Kathu and Brangwy shrug while Hraena nods. “He owes them their lives, too,” she says.

The crow on Luca’s shoulder chuffs.

“Didrane agrees,” Luca translates. “All those the Oak King wronged must stand against him before the Mother.”

“Very well,” Caileán agrees. She angles her head to look at Rhodes. “Try not to die this time.”

He flips her off affectionately.

“When?” Caileán asks.

Since her question seems directed at Jou, I take the moment to grab another flatbread and touch Luca’s mind.

It’s filled with wind rushing over feathers, the exhilaration of a steep dive with talons outstretched, the sharp caw that freezes prey with fear.

Didrane is teaching me how to be a crow , he tells me.

Just don’t forget how to be a Cait , I respond.

Never. I know I don’t need to tell you this, but we can’t let Caileán go against the Oak King with just her sisters and a bunch of shades. I’d feel better if we had the entire Unseelie host at our backs, but if Caileán won’t raise them, then at least call the Cait. We can’t let her do this alone. That’s the way she’s always done things. Crows are loners. But that’s not the way to confront the Oak King .

I glance at my queen, who is debating something with the demon. My impassioned mate. My powerful, vengeful mate. My pregnant, vulnerable mate.

No, we won’t, I promise my twin. We’ll need the Holly King to get back into Ivywhile. When Caileán retrieves him from Cait House, you and I will call the Cait .