Serpents of the Night (The Darvel Exploratory Systems #5)

Chapter 41

Slengral’s patience was at an end. As the days continued to pass, he could feel the confinement slowly crushing him. He couldn’t breathe much less fly. All due to his mother’s cruelty. He brushed his fingers across the bag hanging around his neck where the preserved dishana rested, his claws scraping lightly over the embroidered hide.

Soon. Jathella said that it would be soon. Kehtal and Daskh had already escaped, throwing the entire shinara into chaos. Some praised the males while others reacted with shock at the males’ open defiance of the queen matriarch.

He smiled grimly. His betrayal would cut far deeper.

At least he no longer had to chase females from his sleeping chamber. After the fifth, or sixth—he had not cared to keep an exact count—his mother stopped sending them. He no longer had to contend with females trying to test his pheromone bond or attempting to seduce him into mating. Now, at Queen Zathexa’s orders, he had pheromone-drenched cloths brought to him by the males sent to serve him.

He gritted his teeth, his nose wrinkling in distaste, as the newest cloth was set before him under the disapproving frown of his mother.

“This would not be so unpleasant if you would just cooperate and choose one,” she argued for not the first time. “It does not matter whether you find it appealing or not, Slengral. Eventually, you will come to enjoy the company of your mate once the pheromone bond with that human has finally dissipated. You might as well make it easier on yourself and accept what is to come. The shinara depends on us—and it is now depending on you most of all to provide for its future.”

“I do not have to accept anything,” he hissed darkly. His hand curled around the bag hanging from his neck and tightened around it. “I have told you that I will not mate with any other female. As far as I am concerned this maternal line can die with me unless you can coax one of my brothers to return.” A bitter smile lifted the corner of his mouth. “And I wish you luck with that.”

Zathexa’s wings rattled angrily as she swung from him. “Ungrateful creature!” she spat. “Have you forgotten so quickly that it is I who nested you, even as the shinara that cared for your every need and the haga that trained you?”

His gaze narrowed on her. “You mean a mother who pushed me off onto nest tenders so that she could shower her attention upon her youngest—her daughter? A shinara which rejected me and cast me out as an adult, and a haga that made every rotation of my youth within its confines a life of endless misery?” He scoffed angrily. “Did you never wonder why I did not return with offerings of the hunt for the shinara? Why my brothers never returned? Why more and more hunters have abandoned the shinara with each successive generation?” He cocked his head, his smile turning hard. “It is quite interesting. I had never before realized how many males had abandoned the upper caverns of the Aglatha to choose more hidden locations within the cave system until we gathered at the human colony.”

His mother whipped around to face him, her gavo rising in a fan of multiple crests over her head with her fury.

“You dare to speak in this manner to me?!”

“I dare,” he agreed smoothly. “Even if my mate rests among the dead for dozens of revolutions, I will still continue to reject everything to force upon me.” His own gavo rose aggressively. “Keep sending the servants in to bait me with pheromone laced cloths and see what happens. Sooner or later, I will break and when I do, I will begin killing everyone that carries the scent of an unwanted female. I will give you no nestlings to fill this palace with your joy for you are responsible for the death of the only nestling you would have ever gotten from me. All I shall bring to the palace now is death.”

Zathexa’s mouth parted in surprise and despite her greater size, she drew back from him on her coils as she regarded him. She inclined her head stiffly, her gavo rising above her head authoritatively.

“We will see what you do when the bond breaks,” she hissed. “And you will see what measures I will take. You will breed, my son. You are of my nest and your bloodline belongs to me! Even if I have to sedate you and bind you with such strong stimulates that you will not have a choice but to extrude for whatever female I put in front of you.” Her gaze pierced him with the weight of her anger. “It will be better for you to mate, fulfill your duty, and be respected within the shinara for continuing the bloodline than a male scorned and restrained, forced to breed multiple hand-selected females who will happily leave their maternal lines to join the royal nest to fill the palace with heirs of my line.” Her hand slashed the air. “Forget about the human and your abomination offspring. Higthar was right to destroy them upon the sands before they could pollute this nest!”

He glowered back at her, not even bothering to hide his hatred. He had almost believed in her sorrow for Lori’s loss at first, but he had ceased believing it days ago.

“It was not Higthar’s hand, though, was it?” he rumbled. “I had thought Payeri had betrayed all of us by abandoning my mate and leaving her for the dead, but that is not the entire story—is it?”

His mother stirred, her gavo dropping slightly as it fluttered. “What do you mean?” she demanded.

He scoffed again, his disdain flowing through him like a violent current. “It occurred to me,” he replied as he moved forward, closing some of the distance between them, “why would Payeri test the displeasure of her queen matriarch? Yes, she is of the same mother-line as Vekatha, but she was raised within a mother nest of a noble matriarch and was reared with devotion to the orders of the queen. Vekatha was an acceptable sacrifice for her misdeeds, but it kept everyone else within their mother nest safe even as you utilized the female against my mate like a weapon, forcing her into a corner while you were allowed to play your role of a caring mother so that you could manipulate me and the whole of the shinara best.” His eyes narrowed speculatively. “I imagine that the noble matriarch Shalyia has already been permitted to return home with her eldest daughter, abandoning the younger to her fate to satisfy your plans.”

The lines of his mother’s throat stood out with the tension that had caught ahold of her. “Sacrifices must be made for the greater good of the shinara,” she rasped.

“You betrayed me,” he said quietly, drawing his mother’s stricken gaze to him. Deep down within her hardened heart, he was sure some small part of her believed that she loved him. “You killed the only thing that I loved. You destroyed my happiness.”

Her jaw quivered and clenched. “I had no choice. You were too proud and insistent to listen to what the shinara needs. Or what needed to be done to satisfy Shangla.”

His eyes bore into her mercilessly. “You assume too much, mother, to think that you can speak for all, much less for Shangla.”

“I... am... the queen... matriarch,” she spat, twin streams of venom arch and splattering on the floor in front of him. “I am the vessel of Shangla in the shinara. She moves my hand. She removed your mate and her brood from the sands of Seshana through me! And Payeri was eager to serve her will!”

He regarded the splattered venom silently. She would never see that she was wrong in what she had done. At least he finally knew for certain even though it tore into him like the clawed limbs of a zarkulth. His eyes lifted coldly to his mother.

“I hope that you will remember your words and find comfort in the fate you have created for yourself when the gods of destiny feast leisurely upon your bones next.”

Her expression hardened as she moved back from him, her expression closing completely. “You are upset, so you are not thinking clearly before you speak. I will not hold it against you—this time. It will not go unpunished, however. We will see if a few rotations without my tenderness will make you change your mind. The palace gets cold, and nothing enjoys even the simple pleasure of a mouthful of food or a sip of tea without my say so. A few days without these comforts will make you think more clearly. I will return then for your apology.”

She swept from the room, her wings fanning and snapping angrily as she left. He watched her go, feeling nothing but hatred as the door was drawn shut and locked behind her. He dropped onto his coils where he was, his gaze fixed on the fire glowing in its pit. There would be no fuel, no food, no clean water—he welcomed the suffering.

Folding his arms on the upper coil of his tail, he settled within it, his eyes watching the dancing flames until they began to slowly diminish as the hours passed and eventually died. He tightened his tail around himself and allowed himself to drift in and out of slumber as the endless march of time blurred together. It was better to sleep. He could ignore the ache of hunger that eventually gnawed at him and the burning thirst that grew even more terrible as the days passed. He knew only from those signs that much time had passed during which he lay unmoving from that spot. A Seshanamitesh could go long without food or drink before it began to truly be a source of discomfort for them.

He embraced the pain, his mind turning to his mate unable to keep himself from imagining how she had suffered dying upon the dunes. It tormented it and at some point, he began to shake uncontrollably but he was not sure if it was due entirely to his grief or the cold slowly making his muscles spasm as they began to tighten. He was surrounded in an abyss of darkness and misery, cut off from the wide expanses of the night that had offered him freedom. He was lost and dying.

He wanted to just hurry up and die, if nothing else, to thwart his mother’s plans before she returned for him. Jathella had abandoned him. He settled deeper in the darkness of his mind. He would sleep endlessly.

The darkness could not maintain its hold on him. Claws scored the abyss and drove forward to sink into his scales, dragging him up off the floor. Slengral fought for consciousness as pain scored his sides as he was shaken.

“Wake up! Hurry,” a familiar voice hissed.

His eyelids fluttered open, and his eyes rolled over to the source of the voice. Jathella glared back at him with concern as she gave him another brutal—and very painful—shake.

“You came,” he whispered and could have laughed at the indignant look that crossed her face.

“Of course I came. I swore my oath. It was just more difficult than I had imagined,” she explained and grunted as she shouldered his weight. “The queen matriarch has imprisoned everyone who opposes her. She has even locked down the spire, trapping the holy matriarchs within it when they protested against her for moving forward with her plan to breed you.” She hissed in disbelief. “I cannot believe that she would do something so forbidden that violates the sacredness of the pheromone bond.” She looked over him with concern. “And look now what she had done to you!”

“She has done worse,” he mumbled, his tongues feeling thick in his dry mouth. Jathella gave him a concerned look and lifted a water skin to his lips, pouring water into his mouth so that he could drink it down eagerly. Once satisfied, he handed it back and regarded her solemnly as she looped the bag across her chest as she gave him a questioning look. “She is the one who is responsible for Payeri killing Lori.”

A soft sound of despair drew his gaze quickly to the door, his weakened body stiffening, preparing to fight. The tension drained out of him, however, when his eyes fell on Kitanara. The females shared an unspeakable look between them and Jathella’s head turned to peer down at him with worry.

“You are certain?”

His gavo snapped weakly, and despite how sick it made him to do so, he repeated all of the vile things the queen matriarch spewed at him. The sisters listened, though it was clear that it made them distraught to do so, but gradually the shock and betrayal bled from their faces and was replaced with a fury that still burned within him.

“I will avenge my mate,” he growled, his voice slurring as his large body swayed. “I will destroy everyone who killed her.”

Kitanara shifted to his other side and gripped him as well. “You are not in any position to avenge anyone right now. You are too weak, Slengral, you cannot even fly in your current state. Let us help you. You can have some peace knowing that I killed Payeri by my own hand. Part of your vengeance has been paid. The rest can wait longer. Let us return you to your nest brothers. They are waiting for you.”

“They wait?” he echoed, hardly able to believe that they were waiting for him to join them.

“They have been searching the desert in the area that Buosoa and I left Lori,” Jathella clarified. “We will search together.”

His head lulled, his newly regained energy fading rapidly. “Together,” he rasped in agreement, his gavo twitching without even the strength to lift.

Held between them, the females lifted him from the floor and carried him from the room. The palace was silent. He wondered at the time, but he could not even drag enough air into his ethin. He had to trust the females as they carried him quickly through the palace. His eyes fell upon unconscious guards lying in the halls, but the image felt distant to him as if he were looking at memorials of events that had already passed. He felt nothing at all. He could not even savor the triumph of the moment. He felt insubstantial, his consciousness drifting as they left the palace and rose into the air.

The higher they went, the warmer it got, and after so many days in the numbing cold of the palace, he tipped his head back in pleasure and embraced it. Even the heat on the surface, though it burned and stabbed at his eyes, he could not hate it as they flew for hours on end before burying into the sand to wait out the hottest part of the day. He was fed water and bits of food as he was warmed by the sand and regained his strength as he waited for the day to come to an end. As soon as the primary sun began to drop, they flew again.

He knew that he was slowing them down and on the second day he spread his wings and helped bear his own weight as they flew with him through the sky. His strength was returning far more slowly than he liked but he was free, and he would not die now.

He would find Lori... and then.... he would find vengeance with his nest brothers.