13. Krait
Chapter 13
Krait
I ’d been in the bell tower quarters, lighting the candles, when a prickling sense of danger had hit the back of my neck. Legend said that Shadow-wielders were more attuned to forthcoming Death since the Death and Shadow Origins were brothers. I could usually see Shadows of the dead in the moments after someone had passed away, and had a keen sense of when Death neared.
Sybilla.
Leaving the candles, I Shadowed to her bedchamber door.
“Ryn?” I shouted. He had been told to watch over her room. I pushed through the door. Sybilla stood with her hands stretched out toward the ground.
Blood dripped from her cheek.
A ring of red circled her neck.
Someone would be dying for that. An annoyance or not, the Queen should not have been touched in my home. My vision blurred with rage.
For a moment, I didn’t register what she was doing. Then I looked down and saw the state of the two men on the ground.
Shit. I might not even need to help kill them.
The men were clawing at their own skin, trying to escape the inferno of their minds.
It was her.
I’d doubted it could be possible, but she had been right in front of me this whole time.
I wanted to watch her fry their brains like eggs in a pan, make them husks—punish them. Standing there in nothing but a pale-blue, blood-spattered nightdress, she was a vision of violence that struck me as terrifyingly beautiful.
But I needed to know who’d sent them and why. Logic won out.
“Sybilla!” I didn’t tell her to stop. Killing was a personal choice.
Her shoulders slumped, and she glanced down and then up at me. For a split second, it seemed as though she might extend her magic to me; she looked drunk off it.
I tilted my head. “Come on now. Don’t do that. ” She didn’t seem to hear me.
She stared down at her hands.
Then she gasped and took in the product of her vengeance. As soon as the men’s bodies slackened, I let my Shadows do as they wished—which was to dig into the intruders and slam them to the far wall. I’d deal with them later.
I took one step toward Sybilla. “What did they do to you?”
She fucking flinched.
I softened my tone. “Sybilla, which one of them did that?” I pointed to her neck.
Her breath heaved, and she gestured to the dark-haired man. I smirked as my Shadows wrapped around his fingers and mangled every single one. He shrieked as they snapped, though it paled in comparison to his shrieks from just moments ago.
“What about that?” I pointed to her cheek.
Her eyes darted like a caged animal, as if she didn’t know whether to strike out at me or back away. But then she motioned to the light-haired man.
“My King, please—” he begged.
The snap of his bones and cries of his pain pleased me. They were both pleading now, squabbling like children. Not wanting to hear them anymore, I let my Shadows consume them completely and cut off their air.
“Did they touch you anywhere else?” I whispered. I didn’t want to startle her again.
Sybilla shook her head.
Ryn burst through the empty doorway, glancing around. “Sources...what happened?”
“I don’t know, Ryn,” I growled. “What happened? You were supposed to be guarding her door.”
Ryn’s face paled. “Krait—I went to take a piss. I was gone for five minutes.”
“A lot can happen in five minutes,” Sybilla’s rasped and strained voice cut in. “I should have locked the door.”
Hearing her take any blame made another snarl gather low in my throat.
Sybilla pointed at the men. Their faces were turning blue.
“Stop that,” she ordered.
“Why?” I retorted.
“Because I’d like to interrogate them tomorrow.”
Elsedora jogged down the hall in what she’d worn that evening, except with no shoes. Her eyes widened at the scene. “What in the Sources’ names…”
“El, take these men to the cell,” I reeled in my Shadows only enough to allow my newly appointed second to step inside and take the rope from the ground. I could kill Ryn.
“Happily,” she said. She crossed the room and tied the men’s hands with frightening ease. She turned to Ryn with a narrowed gaze. “Answers later.”
“What will you do with them?” Sybilla asked.
“They will die,” I said plainly. “After we question them.”
“They attempted to kill me. Don’t I get a say in their fates?” she retorted though her posture told me the wind had been knocked from her sails. It felt like she needed to pick this fight—like it centered her to have her claws out.
My teeth involuntarily ground together. “Fuck no, not in my realm.”
When I stepped toward her, she braced again—it made her look smaller. Her hands began to rise as though I would…
I frowned, and her eyes grew wider.
A learned reaction.
She thought I would lash out—hurt her too.
“You can’t go around killing anyone who tries to harm me. Your people need to trust this alliance. You kill them for attacking me, and you make them martyrs.”
I drew closer to her, and she took another step backward.
Now I was growing pissed. But not at her. At anyone who’d dared to touch such divinity, such power, with an unkind hand.
Ryn was still standing there with his hands loosely at his sides, body tense, when I glanced back at him.
“Help El get them to the cell. And have the maids bring a cot up to my chambers.”
“A cot?” he asked.
“Are you really asking questions? Go.”
I trusted my friend implicitly—he’d never slacked off or slipped up on anything this important. And the Central Queen had just become incredibly important to us.
He nodded with a short “Alright.” Looking defeated, Ryn left the room without another word.
Sybilla’s breath finally slowed. As I approached, she gripped a bedpost, her knuckles white, but she didn’t try to back away from me this time. I leaned down as gently as possible, trying to remind myself that she was still in shock, still shaken.
“I don’t know who in your life gave you the impression that someone can hurt you without consequence.” I should stop speaking and let her be, but all I could see was red. “In my residence—if anyone so much as intentionally gives you a paper cut, I will let my Shadows tear them limb from limb. Slowly. Do we have an understanding?”
Knowing who she was changed everything. Her safety was no longer just about a political arrangement.
With a skeptical expression, she nodded and her posture softened.
The way her wet lashes stuck together as she looked up through them added fuel to my fury.
“No one lays a finger on you unless you want them to—not me, not your cousins, not that Constable. And I will teach you how to stop any who try. Because what you just did, what you are—with training—is a weapon worth protecting.”
“How do I know it wasn’t you who sent those men?” she rasped.
I scoffed. “If I wanted you dead, I’d have never made a blood oath that binds me to keeping you safe. Plus, what good would a dead Queen of a realm I need a foothold in be to me?”
Keeping her safe wasn’t a matter of a silly blood oath. It was a matter of life and Death for the realms.
To let her fully into my head would’ve been unwise, but as she stared up at me, I realized she needed to know that my words were true. I focused on my emotions—the swelling sense of protection, the desire to see her unharmed, to see her power outgrow mine.
When I opened those emotions to her, she wrapped a hand around her bruised throat and stared at me with a furrowed brow. I stepped out of her personal space. I hadn’t touched her, but the warmth of her breath had heated, and left condensation on, the silk shoulder of my tunic.
I pushed her back out of my thoughts before she could unravel the truth. I wasn’t ready to lay that bare to her—not yet.
“Why a cot?” she asked. The roughness in her tone made me want to follow El and Ryn down to the dungeons and get rid of those men. But that wasn’t my pain to deal.
“Because you’re no longer under Ryn’s watch. You’re under mine. You’ll be staying with me for the rest of your time here.”
She opened her mouth like she might try to disagree, but the words died on her tongue as her gaze caught on her own blood mixed with the green liquid from the shattered vials. Curious vials. Had she intended to poison me? I wouldn’t put it past her.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, yeah?”
She nodded.
A breeze blew through the curtains from the open balcony as I held my bedchamber door open for Sybilla. She stepped inside, glancing around, stiffly clutching her dark-blue robe closed. Her bare feet planted on the terrazzo tile at the entry, not moving further into the room.
“The balcony is warded. This is the safest place in the realm you could be,” I assured her.
The maids had already brought a cot in. Atop the footboard bench were healing salves and a bucket of warm, clean water. Sybilla sat and wet a rag, not speaking, for once.
There was something odd about seeing someone so exquisitely feminine in this space—all dark leather and crimson. The bedsheets were a deep brick color, and the ceilings were made of dark wood.
She bristled. “Repeat it.”
It seemed she’d come to the conclusion of whatever thoughts had been wracking her.
I felt that conclusion would inevitably be bad news for me.
“Repeat what?”
“Repeat what you said in our blood oath. I need to hear it again.”
My teeth ground, but I remembered every oath I’d ever made. Every word. To forget one was to leave yourself vulnerable to loopholes. Blood oaths were fickle magic if not ironclad. Outside forces could break them rather easily with no consequence if both oaths were broken at once.
I repeated my oath to her: “‘No harm will come to the Central Queen, or her Corridor, so long as she is an ally to Sahlmsara in all negotiations with the rulers of the Corridors.’”
Her distrust was misplaced.
Yet, her eyes narrowed on me.
“‘I will go willingly to the Sahlms so long as no harm shall befall me or my Corridor until the trials end,’” she said, repeating the terms she had agreed to. Her shoulders were still stiff as she looked around at the contents of my room—the dark wood vanity, the shelf of my favorite volumes and the standing globe that still reflected the Old World.
My face paled as she touched her cheek with one hand and her throat with the other.
No harm.
The marred skin on her neck and the slice across her cheek taunted me with the truth. She was no longer bound to be here by flimsy magic. No oath tied us together any longer.
“It seems we don’t need to hold up this alliance, do we?”
I swallowed hard. “So you’ll return to Luz?”
“That depends. Would you try to keep me here if I said yes?”
“No.” It was the easy answer. The more complicated one burned in the graveness of my voice. She couldn’t go—not now, not after I’d just found her.
“Then I am willing to stay.”
The air deflated from my lungs, but her tone told me this wouldn’t bode well for me.
She added, “With a few conditions.” Blood dripped onto her neck as she gingerly wiped her cheek with the cloth and winced.
I stepped across the room and sat beside her on the bench. Outstretching a hand, I offered to take the rag. “You’re just smearing it around. Let me? While you share your conditions,” I said, trying to feign indifference as my mind grappled with what she might propose.
She hesitated but reluctantly handed me the cloth. I dunked it in the lukewarm water and began to dab away blood from her cheek. She met my gaze with resolve.
“An Egress, built immediately so that my advisors may come and go as they please and I can aid them in rebuilding Luz.”
“Done,” I grunted. She pursed her lips, which dragged my gaze down. “You want that in blood?”
She shook her head. “Enough has been spilled—and blood oaths can clearly be broken. But I am not done,” she said. I dabbed my finger in the salve and gingerly pressed it to the open wound on her cheek. “I want your assurance that what happened tonight remains between us.”
I stilled, glancing at the blood running down the side of her neck over the purple-mottled skin. “May I?”
She pulled her hair to the opposite side and nodded.
“I agree with your condition. But what exactly happened tonight, Sybilla?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted and sucked in her cheeks. “You said you can teach me how to control it...and that’s another condition. If I’m to stay, I want to understand how to wield that .”
I fought a smile and trained my face into a neutral expression, as I slid the cloth down her neck. That was a condition we both wanted. The stronger she grew, the better she could contend with Caym in the years to come.
“Then we begin tomorrow.” I took a dry cloth and wiped the water off her neck where it had dripped. My fingers trailed over her soft skin. Those stunning green orbs of determination held my gaze. “Is that all?”
“No. My last condition”—she hesitated—“is that you marry me, Darvanda dearest. ”
My whole body stiffened. I’d heard her wrong.
The proposition struck me in a way that raised the hairs on the back of my neck and made my palms grow clammy.
“Why would you want to marry me ? You’ve made your opinions of my character rather clear.”
She looked a bit smug about having taken me off guard. “Because, Darvanda, you don’t seem like the kind of King who needs, or wants, a wife or another ruler’s crown. I have two years left to marry to keep my position, and I’d rather focus on matters of my Corridor than court prospective consorts. It’s a wise political move for both of us. It’s no secret that I want to bring Source power back to Henosis, and you need resources for your people.”
I didn’t need her crown, or a wife. I needed a child. That was a more complicated matter—one that would become less complicated if we were to marry.
She continued, “You are powerful in your own right; you have your own lands and no desire for mine. We would maintain separate rules and stay out of each other’s affairs for my mortal lifespan. It’s a perfect arrangement.”
I shrugged. “Very well then.” My heart raced.
“Utterly romantic,” she scoffed, and I had to fight a smirk.
“Do you wish to be romanced into marriage?” The question left my lips before I could think better of it.
“No.”
Her answer was abrupt enough that it brought me relief and, more confusingly, some disappointment.
She scanned my face. “One more thing.”
I raised my brows. “What’s that?”
“I get the bed.”
I’d already planned to let her have that.
“Fine.” I sighed.
She cast me a skeptical look but rose and stepped around the bed to rearrange my pillows. She was ruthlessly flattening them.
I rinsed my hands in the bucket and then dried them. Not saying goodnight, I got into my new bed on the other side of the room.
I had the Last Daughter of Isleen beneath my roof.
Willing to marry me.
I’d sleep wherever it took to keep her here.
And although my feet hung off the edge of the cot, I’d rest better knowing that no one could get to her unless they got through me first.