Chapter 20
Had I been fighting for the wrong side before I’d lost my memory and my past, if there even was a side in this fucked up broken world?
“Was I that terrible?” Fuck me that was my outside voice. “Never mind, forget I asked that.”
I didn’t want to know, not really. Because the way he’d spoken about me before, the way that Stheno had said I was an improved version now…as if I’d been the villain. Had I been? Was that why things were this way?
Only problem with trying to retract my statement was that Veyyr had stopped and turned around to face me. And my feet kept moving until I was right in front of him, one deep breath away from brushing up against him.
“I don’t want to know.”
“I think you do.”
Fuck him for knowing me that well.
He touched my cheek with his index finger, drawing it across to my ear, then trailed it down my neck where he held it, and me with his palm cupping the side of my neck. He put his forehead to mine, his hair hiding us for a moment as if we were in a world that was not this one.
When he spoke, his voice was soft, nearly gentle.
“You saw things only in black and white, Mallory. There was no ability in you to admit you were wrong, and that rigidity in your mind made you beyond difficult. It made you dangerous in a way that even those who loved you could see—it cost you greatly and yet you never saw it as your fault. Beyond that, you were always trying to live up to a standard that didn’t exist, instead of opening your eyes and seeing that the standard was broken…
and…I hated you to the marrow of my bones. ”
I knew why I could hear this and remember it. Nothing Veyyr was saying told me a specific memory, a specific name or place. It was a feeling, and a deep truth of how he and others had seen me.
The view had been…shitty. A woman hell bent on being right? Pushing her own ambitions onto those around her and not caring who she went over in the moment?
Something in me cracked, a pain I didn’t know was sitting deep in my bones.
A past version of myself that I couldn’t remember and yet my own bones, my own body reacted to his words…
Stheno had said it, the body remembers, even when the mind didn’t.
I started to shake, as if he’d pulled a pin from a grenade and I would fall to the ground and the pieces would scatter.
His face wobbled as my eyes filled and liquid slowly spilled over onto my cheeks. He brushed them away. “You aren’t her, Mallory. Not anymore. Whatever version that you started with washed away in the Rift…”
Too much, it was all too much, and I wanted to be strong, fierce, there was a truth to that part of me too…
but could I be both? Fierce and strong, but also soft and vulnerable?
Silly and cheeky? That same shaking worked its way up to my chest until it reached the back of my throat, words sticking there.
Veyyr pulled me into his arms, holding me as the shuddering turned into something closer to sobs that I couldn’t bite back, I couldn’t stop them no matter that the voice in my head was demanding I hold myself together…Don’t show him you’re weak! Vulnerability is not for those you don’t trust.
Only…I did trust him, maybe not so fully that I didn’t question him but enough to let the threads of my world unravel knowing that he could keep me grounded.
I let myself hang onto him, this vexing bastard of a man who had kept secrets, and who likely had more and yet, he was a certainty that I could hang onto as my mind tried to figure out where I stood in this storm.
“I need you to trust me, for a little while longer.” His words were muffled in my hair, my face mashed into his chest. “Can you do that?”
The shudders slowed, the tears no longer poured down my face. “I…”
A rumble through the rock cut me off, dust and rock falling from the ceiling, misting the air even with the blue lanterns. “I thought you said the hydra was dead?”
Veyyr let me go. “Just because the ground shakes it does not mean there is a hydra involved."
I swiped my hands over my eyes, as if that would erase the moments before. “Well, if I were to guess…something big is waiting in there. And seeing as this is the hydra lair…it seems unreasonably reasonable that is what’s waiting.”
The leash that Veyyr had on me slipped as he pinched his fingers and the blue lanterns dimmed to a bare light. Just enough not to be blind in the depths of the earth.
“If that is the case then Doran set us up,” Veyyr said, his voice flat. “Hydras—”
“Are nearly impossible to kill.” I pulled my falcata free and stepped up so Veyyr was on my left. I would go for Rana as soon as we were done here. “Do you have a plan?”
Veyyr shook his head. “I do not. This was not expected. You have something tucked away in that mind of yours that could help?”
Another rumble rippled through the rock and the sound of a very heavy sigh, lungs the size of the transport truck breathing in and out. I closed my eyes, digging through what I knew of the mythology.
“Heracles and his nephew killed the hydra by cutting a head off, then cauterized the stump so nothing would re-grow. Otherwise, you get the multiplier factor, two for every one cut off.” Simple, right?
Likely not at all. The hydra was always depicted as a monstrous creature, one that had necks so thick, tree trunks wept with envy.
A single slash or hack wouldn’t be enough.
I held up a hand, palm out to keep him where he was, and inched forward to get a look at the beast in question.
One of Veyyr’s blue lanterns floated just behind me.
At the next corner the scent of a larger-than-life lizard floated up to me, musky with the scent of old blood weaving through, tangy and sharp.
I wrinkled my nose. How had I not scented it before?
The air currents had been coming from that direction all along and there had been nothing until… now.
Carefully I angled my face so I could look out into the cavern. There were torches set in the walls of the cavern, lighting the space.
That’s not good. The hydra didn’t light those fucking torches.
The light was helpful, even if it was meant to terrify me with what I saw.
The cavern was easily five hundred feet across, and two hundred feet high, the edges were all completely smooth and glassy, as if someone had buffed them repeatedly. Or maybe it was the monster in the center that had done the buffing with its thick scales.
A slow, writhing series of coils wrapped around themselves, a bundle that was half as high as the ceiling. Each coil was easily twenty feet across with scales of deep purple, with flecks of gold and silver that caught the light.
There was no discernable head, or heads, no tail that I could see, no massive eyes peering back at me.
The sound of the body moving across the rock was the ‘shush’ of rough on rough. That was the smoothing action for sure.
The far side of the cavern that I could see had other entry points—paths that would allow meals to wander into the lair of the hydra. Clever. Dangerous.
Rana and Sorrow were walking down one of those paths.
I backed up, moving as quickly as I could. “It’s big, coils are twenty feet across, scales are diamond hard. Rana and Sorrow are still headed this way so we gotta hurry.”
And no, there was no point where I thought this is crazy, we can’t do this. It wasn’t a matter of if—if for no other reason that Rana was about to stumble into the hydra’s lair.
Veyyr rolled his shoulders and tipped his head side to side. “How fast can you cut the heads off? I can’t pull lightning here, but I can use the flames to create fire balls to cauterize.”
I grimaced and spun the falcata’s handle in my palm. “Those are thick coils. To cut through one…even with a shadowsteel blade…it’s going to take some time.” Which was not ideal. “Can you…freeze it?”
“No. I need to be above ground. This deep in the earth my powers are more limited.”
“I’m sure it’s a trap but…I don’t think Doran knew or set it up.”
“How?”
I paused. “Gut feeling. The torches flickered in a pattern, one that looks like synchronized dancers, meant to hypnotize. Magic flames typically aren’t attributed to a vampire of any kind.”
He turned to me. “You sure?”
“Yes. There’s a scent that I couldn’t pick up until we were on top of it. Rana being pulled down here so soon after her initiation with Thorn. Who do you think it could be?” I raised my brows at him, doing my best not to roll my eyes.
His face hardened. “Yeah. Who indeed.”
But already my mind was racing. This was not a challenge for me or Rana. This had to do with Veyyr, like a test of his abilities…one that his mentor really wanted him to have. That or she wanted him dead, it was hard to tell.
“Same plan,” Veyyr said. “Let’s see what the shadowsteel and a Tracker can do.”
We crept forward side by side until we reached the opening into the cavern. My tracking told me that Rana had stopped, and…she was asleep?
From the far side came a soft whoosh of wings as Sorrow flew toward us, coasting on the heavy breath of the hydra. As he got close, he tucked his wings and slammed into me, his whole-body shivering as he whispered—fucking whispered—“Snake”.