The Betrayer’s Serpent #3
“Bast.” Urias was the first to stand, too dizzy with pain to use her Micrean name. He crashed to his knees in front of her and his hand, chilly and damp, tried to warm her cheek. He understood. They were trapped in these iron bodies, and if they could ever flee them, they would in a second.
But that wasn’t an option. Omniel had stolen even death from them.
Esme wrapped a shaking hand around Urias’s and pressed his palm to her cheek. There was so much she wanted to say. She wanted to scream. She wanted to shred her lungs. She wanted to cry until she became a howling wind.
Urias bent down to put his forehead to hers. Each of them shook too hard to do anything but keep each other’s gaze.
Just breathing had blood spitting from the will on his neck, but Urias opened his lips and forced, “I’m so, so sorry,” out of his ruined throat.
“You owe me a drink.” Esme saved her anguish for herself. Urias didn’t need to shoulder it. He blamed himself enough, and to see her upset would torture him. She wouldn’t do that to him. She couldn’t.
Urias sobbed, but he forced a smile. They wrangled themselves to their feet, half carrying each other. Esme coughed, Magic still too tight on her throat to do much more. The humans in the corners wailed. Blood and vomit stained the floor and the rugs.
Esme touched the blood gushing from her throat, and Urias grabbed her when he noticed it. He clutched her so hard she’d bruise, shaking at the words carved into her neck.
“It’s a spell,” Esme gasped, quivering at the pain of speaking.
She pulled Urias’s shirt collar away and found the entire text of the will wrapped around his neck until, at the very base, Omniel’s name was scrawled across his collarbone.
Urias touched his own throat, and when he pulled back his bloodied hand, his breath cut.
He heaved, stuck between crying out and gulping down a breath.
His immortal strength failed, and Esme held them both up.
“It chokes you when you disobey it. It can’t be broken.
Its rules cannot be twisted, lest the traitor be strangled to death by the will itself.
” Esme tried to say it gently, but there was no gentle way to tell him that Omniel had just snatched them back under him for the thousandth time.
Worse, she couldn’t admit that Omniel only knew about this kind of spell from her, from a story she’d told him about her own mother.
Urias was usually impossible to shake. He was the eldest. He’d seen the most, done the worst. And here he was, reduced to a shuddering, weeping pile in her arms. No amount of strength or cruelty could ever save him from Omniel, and it was enough to end him.
Esme shouldered all of his weight. She didn’t have the time to cry or melt or collapse. She had to remain standing, if only so she could carry those she loved.
She turned to the crowd and put iron into her voice as she asked, “Does anyone know where to find the Heirs?”
Belchin popped up from where he cowered behind the throne. “The Scourge encampment lies in Prelyn, in the south. The Prince of the Lake resides is Hark-sov, in the west.” Even in his craggy neck, the will was carved deep. “I’ll send men to—”
“No. Urias and I will set out south today. Daphna and Padrian will travel west. Tagas and Samander will stay here to assist the King’s Guard,” Esme said as Urias slowly straightened in her hold.
He squeezed her when he was ready to take his weight.
“We’re faster unbridled. These…” Esme pointed to her throat, “and that…” the crack sprinkling dust on Belchin’s head, “will only worsen if we do not do as the will says.”
The crowd shrieked like Esme had just threatened them herself, but she looked over the clot of quivering courtiers to her Wraiths.
Daphna and Padrian nodded at her command, and Tagas and Samamder traded a look between themselves.
Behind her, Mak’kon couldn’t care less about them, petting Isobel’s hair as she shushed a sobbing Hallel.
But for the first time in her life, Esme saw him shaking.
Before anything could shatter her cracking strength, Esme and Urias left.
They split to go to their separate rooms, and Esme collapsed the second she shut her door. There was no one to be strong for anymore.
She should be used to this. She had Omniel’s name branded down her spine in big, welted letters.
He’d thwarted her escape attempts a thousand times.
But as she sat back against her door, Esme wailed just like she had under that branding iron.
She was suddenly strapped to the slab again, screaming until her lungs ached but unable to stop.
Cold and hot all at once because her toes and fingers had gone blue from lying on her stomach against the stone for so long, but her skin was melting against that iron.
With each letter, something evaporated out of her, left her as something less. Something worse.
The will at her throat was no exception. Her hope had burned out of her in the throne room, and all that was left now was emptiness. She would be here forever. Forever in the basement, pressed under that branding iron.
Esme didn’t hear the first knock on her door, or the second, or the slotting-in and turning of her secret extra set of keys that only Urias had. What she did feel was the nudge of the door and his body sliding down beside her.
“Look at me.”
Esme was always good at doing what he said. She felt stupid crying like this. She should be used to it by now.
“I’m so sorry, Bast,” he said gently, tucking her messy hair behind her ear and wiping her tears away. His eyes were clear, unblinking. The man collapsing under the weight of his oppressor was gone.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “I’m fine. I just needed to sit. Let’s go.” She stood up and walked around him to get the still-packed bag Mina had prepared for her. She could cry later. When no one was here to see it.
“I wanted to talk about that.” Urias slid his hands down her arms and into her palms from behind her.
He pulled her towards her tall window overlooking the city.
“I think I know how to free us. There’s no king.
There are only heirs. We answer to no one for now.
This is a very small sweet spot, but I bet we could make it out. ”
Esme shut her eyes. “Isobel is technically the ruler. She has a hold on us.”
“How do we know that?”
“It’s safe to assume.” Urias opened his mouth, but Esme hated how hopeful he’d sounded. “Look at your neck, Ryukyhn. Do you not understand what that is? The Betrayer’s Serpent will kill us.”
“The spell is old. At least thirty years, maybe even more.”
“We both know not to underestimate Magic.”