“I’m not sure we can call him a man. I don’t think he feels what we feel. He must have had some other reason. Think how useful I proved because I was able to cut a fence for him into Taino country.” I told him about the way my sire had enfolded me in his wings, the words he had whispered, and how I had thought at first that he had been speaking of Vai. “But now I think he was talking about himself. Mortal blood feeds the spirit courts and gives them the power to bind their servants to them. He’s bound to the courts, just as I’m bound to him. Just as you and your village are bound to Four Moons House. Why tell me that a prince among slaves is still a slave if he does not chafe at his chains?”

As he considered my words, I could not help but note what a decorative thinker he was, with his chiseled shoulders and those inventive fingers splayed along his chin. “So ‘the palace where those without blood cannot walk’ was the pit. Our ancestors whose spirits walk in the spirit world can’t cross into the palace—the pit—because they have no blood.”

“Yes. That’s why the cacica couldn’t cross and I had to leave her hanging…” I trailed off as I realized I had positioned the skull with a full view of the bed.

Vai followed the line of my gaze. “Catherine, why is there a skull on the table?”

My cheeks burned.

“I don’t remember seeing a skull when we arrived here yesterday,” he added.

“Blessed Tanit,” I murmured, blushing even more scaldingly as I turned the skull to face away from the bed and toward the hearth.

“I thought you were telling one of your jesting tales to entertain me, like you do. I didn’t think the basket really had a head in it.”

Was her vision confined to the spirit world? Could skulls see? Could a skull close its eyes if it had no eyelids? Or would it be forced to watch everything?

“Why would you even have the head of the cacica if the Wild Hunt killed her?” he asked.

“The Taino ancestors put me on trial for her murder but I talked my way out of it.”

“Naturally.”

“The council of elders recognized the merit in my arguments!”

His shoulders tensed. “You mean it. It’s really the head of Queen Anacaona.”

“Of course it is! Why would I say so otherwise? I have spoken more to her after she was dead than I ever did while she was living. She admires your good manners and your… attractive disposition. She told me that an unusually powerful fire bane like yourself would have been a challenge she would have savored.”

His jaw tightened. He pulled the fur blanket around his torso and stood, primly covered from armpits to calves.