6. Krait
Chapter 6
Krait
W hy hadn’t we buried our dead? That, at its core, was a painful question.
“We still find so many…It’s hard to delay every time.” Elsedora offered the simple answer.
Queen Sybilla brought her hands to her wool-covered hips, wiping her palms. Wool. For a journey through the desert.
We’d been traveling for over a week, but it was only our first day in the Sahlms. If she didn’t stop being so stubborn and put something more suitable on, she’d die of heat stroke before we arrived in Sahlmsara.
So be it.
“That’s a horrid excuse,” Sybilla said plainly. “Bring me a shovel. I know you’ve got one for digging holes to shit in.”
My mouth hung open, and I thought about disagreeing. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Sybilla grunted back at me, mocking my curtness in an artificially low voice. I didn’t sound like that.
Elsedora chuckled. I shot her a glare, and she responded, “What? That was pretty good.”
As El went off to find a shovel, Sybilla wandered toward the side of the trail.
“Over there,” Sybilla said as she stared at a desert meadow. Late spring in these highland areas meant the usually sparse, sharp brown grasses were somewhat green and Larkspur shot up in bright blue patches across the otherwise rocky terrain. “It looks...peaceful. And those wildflowers are beautiful. I like those.”
After being brought the shovel, Sybilla spent the next fifteen minutes attempting to dig a hole large enough for the skull. The unforgiving rocky ground fought every strike against it.
Pathetic…yet slightly endearing.
She let the shovel rest against her shoulder and rubbed at her wrists. The sight of her attempting to bury the fallen of my land stirred something in me. It was a gesture of respect to bury another ruler’s dead.
Respect went further with me than kindness or likability. I pushed off from where I’d been leaning against the carriage and approached her.
“Move.” My command only resulted in her raising one choice manicured finger.
No shredding her to pieces with Shadows.
No violence toward our new ally.
Instead of biting back, I let my Shadows reach out and grab the shovel, pulling it away from her. She gasped as the dark tendrils brushed her fingers, unraveling them from around the wooden handle.
“That is creepy,” she mumbled. Yet, when I lifted the Shadows to create shade for her, she didn’t hesitate to step beneath it. “And nice to know you could have done that sooner.”
I hummed a dull response, taking the shovel in my hand, and finished digging the hole.
“I loosened that dirt for you,” she justified with a smirk as I wiped my brow and glanced down at her red face. Sweat beaded down her neck and then disappeared between her breasts. My eyes had only been drawn to the spot because a sun rash had formed across her chest.
“You’re going to overheat if you don’t change,” I grumbled. After pushing the shovel’s head down into the rocky terrain, I crossed my arms.
“Only if Elsedora has something that will cover me more than...that.” Sybilla waved her hand up and down at El, who was out of earshot offering water to the carriage horses. She typically pushed fashion boundaries even by the Sahlms’ standards, but I wasn’t going to tell Sybilla that.
My lips fought the urge to creep up at the sides. “Not a fan of staying cool?”
“Don’t play coy. In my land, royals just started to be allowed to show their shoulders .”
“How virginal,” I droned.
I found myself a bit disappointed when she didn’t shoot back an insult. She looked flushed and dead on her feet.
Bending, I set the skull into the grave we’d dug and offered her the shovel to cover it.
As she pushed dirt in, she said, “That’s a much more suitable resting place.”
I let a wordless response rumble in the back of my throat. Elsedora often mocked me for not being great with words—which wasn’t entirely true. It was just that not much compelled me to use them.
“Oh, why, you’re great company, too.”
My brow furrowed before I realized she’d pretended to fill in the response I hadn’t offered.
I grunted in agreement.
She answered again, “You think I am the Sources’ gift to this world? I’m flattered.”
At that, I couldn’t help but crack a vicious smile—would she tire of talking to herself, or was this the way it was to be? She glanced at me before she tossed the last bit of dirt back into place and patted the ground.
“Woah…his teeth are showing,” she called across the trail. “Elsedora, does he bite? I think he might be rabid.”
Elsie rounded the cart with an airy laugh. “He is all bark.”
The thought of them teaming up to rib me sounded like torture. I lowered my voice and said, “I don’t need to bite.”
“Is that so?” Sybilla whispered back.
Feeling like I’d fallen for bait, I grumbled, “Mhm.”
“Well, you should smile more—it suits your face. The whole brooding ass thing is dull and overdone,” she said as she rested her forearms against the shovel.
I knew she was trying to provoke a reaction. It worked. “Do you frequently advise people on what to do with their face when you have no right to?”
“Yes. And seeing as I’m ‘under the ward of the Sahlms now,’ I thought maybe you might like to get to know me.”
“I have better things to do.”
“Right,” Sybilla huffed, and her nose pinched up. “Why exactly do you hate me? I understand why I hate you—but I wasn’t even alive during the Great Wars.”
She pointed the shovel’s blade at me.
Great, I’d armed her.
Drawing a deep breath to steady my temper, I reeled my Shadows back and let the sun descend on her again.
“What do I hate?” I ground out. “For starters—your entire upbringing was rooted in hating people for no other reason than the Source in their veins. I’d say my hate is justified. Your Phynnic ancestors paved the way for your realm to fall apart, and yet you blame my actions centuries ago for your own downfall. You look at my land now, and you see only what you can gain from that power. Don’t you?”
It felt odd to use so many words and yet it still had not been enough to cover even half of my qualms with the Central Queen and her shit realm.
Queen Sybilla dropped the shovel, and her hands fell to her hips. “If your people are so strong, why did you leave?” she retorted. “You could have stayed—overtaken it all. You were more than positioned to.”
I growled under my breath. “We didn’t need to leave. I could have let my troops take every city in the Kingdom of Phynx, spill more blood, destroy more homes. But after centuries of persecution, my people wanted peace, not more war. So I led them away from those who would sooner see them dead than cohabitate with Source-wielders.”
She straightened. “That isn’t what the history texts say, and—”
I cut her off with a dark laugh and said, “And you believe everything you’ve ever read? Everything that has been fed to you about your hero ancestors? Source-wielders were bound with magic cuffs in their sleep and thrown from that cliff. The Phynnic invented weapons against us—gasses and tonics that could suppress magic. Mortals always find a way to see magic as a threat. They seek to destroy it out of fear.
“You can hate me for the fall of Phynx and for fighting for my people. I’ll happily play the villain in your storybooks if it means you don’t yammer on for the rest of this trip.”
“You’re one to talk. I haven’t been able to get a word in.” Her hands fell to her sides. “You act like I am my ancestors—as though I am not here, willing to negotiate. My father and those before him might not have been capable of change, but I am ready for it.”
I said nothing.
That response had been unexpected—I’d anticipated more fire, more denial.
Emerald-green irises of pure determination met my gaze.
She continued, “It is no mystery that I want things from you. Henosis has long suffered from the suppression of magic. But that doesn’t mean I have no care for the needs of your people in the Sahlms. If I’m to be your ally, then I should know their needs too. So, instead of being Darvan-dick the Terrible, work with me and not against me.”
It was unnerving how quickly she’d disarmed my temper. No cutting response came to mind, so a low growl built again in my throat.
She mimicked the sound, her brows knitting together, attempting to imitate my expression.
“Stop that,” I commanded.
She stopped mimicking me but did not stop trying to persuade me. “Come now. What harm would it bring if I better understood what you’re trying to accomplish?”
“I don’t need to tell you anything.”
“Why?” she insisted.
“Are you always this persistent?”
“Only when I want something,” she said.
Why did that statement make my cock twitch?
Probably because she’d leaned in with that ruthlessly anticipatory smile and unnerving eye contact when she’d said it.
“Fine.”
“Fine,” she repeated back to me. I’d expected her to be petulant and spoiled. I hadn’t anticipated that she might be willing to work for anything.
I added, “There’s a difference between hating a person and hating a system.”
“A system...like the Order?” she asked. “That is being dismantled as we speak.”
“Your history under the Order won’t be forgotten or forgiven. Those laws were erected to—” She snorted a laugh. “Are you giggling over the word ‘ erect ’?”
Impossible woman.
I should have known there would be nothing redeeming in her character, but for a second, I’d felt a spark of hope.
“I’m sorry. The sun has worn me down. Plus, it’s a funny word. Especially coming out of your mouth. Go on, I’m listening.”
I glared. “I have no trouble with that word.”
Sybilla’s cheeks flushed an even deeper crimson. I almost smirked, proud of myself for catching her off guard.
“And you will learn what the people of my realm need when we get there.”
She rubbed a bead of sweat from her forehead, looking like she might fall over. “Alright then,” she said finally. “Sources, it’s hot out here.”
“The heat slows you down, but you get used to it,” I said.
She nodded and called out, “Elsedora—I’ll take that change of clothes.”
At least she had enough sense not to die of stubbornness in that wool and velvet.
A rattling sound came from the brush nearby, and I stepped between her and a thicket of half-dead grass. “Might want to stay back.”
“What is that?” Sybilla asked as she instead stepped forward to peer around my arm.
A horn-nosed snake slithered out from the brush. Its rattling died away as it peacefully made its way into another patch of thicket.
Sybilla stepped up beside me and glanced down at the symbol of the rattling serpent on my silk tunic. “Why are they on your crest?”
Fighting the urge to shrug away her question, I answered, “Because they are precise and lethal, but they always provide a warning before striking. They are docile until provoked.”
“Is that what you think you are? ‘Docile until provoked’?” she asked.
I looked over at her and shook my head. “Not anymore.”
***
The red rocks surrounding us seemed to ebb and flow with the midday heat. Elsedora had slipped a change of clothes into the carriage for the Central Queen, and we waited for her to change as my soldiers watered their horses.
“You two were looking chummy. I haven’t heard you talk that much in a century. What’s your angle there?” Elsedora questioned in a hushed tone.
“No angle.”
“I know you better than that. What do you think of her?” Elsedora prodded.
“I think nothing of her,” I said.
El crossed her arms, blowing a stray red lock from her eyes. “She doesn’t seem as bad as we’d thought, does she?”
Not quite as bad, but infuriatingly talkative.
“No comment.”
“Whatever you say, my King.” The click of the carriage door interrupted us. Elsedora smirked, pushed off from where she’d been leaning against the cab and went around it to go address the thirty or so soldiers that had stayed back. “We move again in five!” I heard her call out.
Immediately skeptical as to why she’d fled so quickly, I turned toward the carriage door.
Sybilla stepped down with a hand shielding her eyes. “I’m not in a skirt anymore—I can ride. Please don’t put me back in that oven. I don’t give a shit if we encounter bears or criminals. Either would be a quicker death than being cooked alive.”
Elsedora had provided the Queen with a pair of emerald silk pants, which flowed too long on her. Slits ran up the sides of her legs, revealing a dagger strapped to one hip. That’s what drew my eye—not the supple skin there. It was smart, after all, to keep track of the weapons on someone who might want to kill me.
“No,” I said.
“Do you think you get to make all decisions now?” Sybilla asked.
“Yes.”
“ That is not what I agreed to. Allies don’t lock each other in small boiling carriages for a week. Technically, that blood oath you took was to keep me safe—is letting me die of heat in that cab ‘keeping me safe’?”
She was rambling, but I was preoccupied with how the matching silk top snaked around her waist and cinched at the back, leaving no curve a mystery. The thin fabric cascaded down at the neckline and drew my eye downward with it. Fucking Elsedora.
“My eyes are up here, if that’s what you were looking for.”
I bit my inner cheek but made no move to correct my gaze; instead, I let it trail back down to the dagger at her hip. “You’re wise to stay armed.”
“Was that a compliment?” she asked.
“No, it was an observation.”
“You seem to have made many observations just now,” she teased.
When my eyes met hers, she was smirking. Let her think she was ribbing me. I’d never been embarrassed to appreciate a woman’s appearance.
“So, a horse, Darvanda? Are you capable of producing that, or would you like to continue trying to make me uncomfortable in this silk napkin that I was given to wear?”
“Are you uncomfortable with being looked at?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I can’t tell if you’re trying to determine the best way to fuck me or filet me. And that makes me uncomfortable.”
“Both. You pick the order,” I grumbled.
“You are vile,” she said with a scrunched nose, but a bubble of laughter escaped her lips.
My crude joke had landed.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not getting back in that cart, so either I walk, and slow us down, or you find me a horse.”
I let my hand run down my face before I stepped away from her. She was altogether too amused; it would be easier if she were more intimidated.
If the small victory of not riding in the cart would keep her from bothering me the rest of the trip, then so be it. “Unload a mule’s pack into the carriage,” I instructed the nearest soldiers.
With a hand on her hip, she said, “A mule, really?”
“You are more than welcome to ride with one of my men or go back in the carriage.”
She took one look around at the bloodstained tunics of my men, unbathed and well traveled, and another glance at the carriage. “Mules are built for tough terrain, even better than a horse.”
For the next week, the sun was unrelenting. Not a cloud had marked the blue sky. A few times, Queen Wymark had looked so unsteady on her mule I’d nearly opted to Shadow her to Sahlmsara. But this journey, the harsh reality of it, was important for her to appreciate. I always traveled with my soldiers, and she should have to as well.
The rocky terrain did nothing to cool the ground, so the heat of late spring enveloped us. These red rocks and this unforgiving land were home to me now. In the low desert, the greener brush was already becoming yellow and dry, and the towering spiky plants did nothing to shade us. Nearly a century of making this trek to secure exiles’ safety, and then four centuries more living here myself, had hardened me to the conditions.
“Is everything in this land designed to be deadly?” the Queen said from the mule to my left. She motioned to the spiked foliage. In juxtaposition to the dying grasses, the cacti were blooming with various colored flora.
“Mhm,” I answered. I’d tried to pawn her off on Elsedora, but my flighty officer kept wandering off, so I was forced to stay by the ever-talkative Queen.
“They’re pretty. In a very prickly stay-away-or-else sort of way. Like you.”
I squinted and hummed a response, not letting myself react to her statement, which had most definitely been aimed at baiting me into conversation.
We were approaching the switchbacks of the canyon that led down into the city, and the spires of buildings were beginning to peek above the horizon.
She spoke again. “Are you just going to keep grunting at me?”
I shrugged. The horses and carts at the front of the procession began to crest the canyon and travel downhill. I watched as the riders leaned back on their horses, freeing the animals’ shoulders to navigate the mountainous terrain unobstructed. The Vallic Mountains, which separated us from the volcanic shores, created a backdrop against the deep valley, painting the view in reds and browns. Colors I’d grown to love.
At Sybilla’s gasp, I finally looked over at her. Her eyes were as big as saucers. She steered the mule to the side of the trail and stopped at the canyon’s edge.
“Sources,” she breathed out. Her heart-shaped lips were chapped from the sun and hung open.
I followed her line of sight, realizing that, from our vantage point, Sahlmsara was now in full view. I’d helped build the city stone by stone, one canal and crop yard at a time. The population had boomed, and the city stretched the full width of the canyon, with the densest sector around Umber House—my home.
I imagined what it might be like to see it for the first time. Judging by her reaction, it was not what the Queen had expected. I didn’t ask but watched her take it in.
“It’s marvelous.” She didn’t spare a glance at me. “You built all this?”
“Yes.”
She swallowed hard. “I couldn’t even keep a city that was handed to me out of shambles and yet this...”
Did she blame herself for the destruction of her city? Judging by the Death-wielding I’d witnessed, there would have been little she could have done to prevent the ruin that had occurred. No mortal, even one with a hint of Reverist magic, could take on an army of Death-wielders. I voiced none of that.
I knew the feeling of being responsible for a city’s demise…
“That is Sahlmsara.”
“It’s truly marvelous,” she repeated.