Chapter Four #3
Adelaide said it so bluntly that Tem had no idea how to respond. It didn’t feel like the right moment to press the topic, so she didn’t. Instead, she waited until Adelaide spoke again:
“Besides, he does not fully trust me.”
Tem looked up at her. “Why not? He was going to marry you.”
Adelaide shrugged. “A marriage does not guarantee trust. I am a Seneca. He is a Drakon. We are on opposing sides. He was right to be wary.”
Tem was a Seneca too. Did Caspen trust her? “Can…I trust you?” Tem whispered.
Adelaide looked at her. “Yes,” she said. “You can.”
For some reason, Tem believed her. Another question occurred to her—one she was almost too afraid to ask. But she asked it anyway. “Are you…angry with me? For…taking Caspen?” Tem wanted to finish her sentence with from you but decided against it.
To her surprise, Adelaide smiled. “It is not possible to take someone who wishes to stay.”
It was a typical basilisk answer—more riddle than response. “But are you angry?” Tem repeated. She needed to know.
Adelaide turned to her, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I am not angry, Temperance. Caspenon and I were not compatible, and I know he would say the same. Our future would not have been a happy one. I am at peace with the way things turned out.”
Tem nodded. She felt immeasurably lighter.
“And I am glad he found you,” Adelaide finished quietly. “You two are meant to be together.”
Sharp guilt pierced Tem’s chest. She wanted to believe Adelaide more than anything.
But she was also breaking the one rule the basilisks held sacred—she was doing the one thing she wasn’t allowed to do: have feelings for someone else.
Was she truly meant to be with Caspen if she was still in love with Leo? Only time would tell.
Despite Tem’s anxiety, she was enjoying this moment here with Adelaide. It was feminine and fun and light. Almost as if she were talking with Gabriel—as if she had found a new confidant. For the first time underneath the mountain, Tem felt truly safe. It was a wonderful feeling, and she savored it.
“What else should I know?” she asked, eager for more basilisk secrets.
“Hm,” Adelaide said with a smile, looking out over the crowd. “Let me see.” She pointed to a group of women in the corner. “They are king chasers.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means they will pursue the Serpent King at any cost. It is their dream to seduce him all at once.”
Tem wrinkled her nose. That wasn’t going to happen.
At the look on her face, Adelaide laughed. “You have nothing to fear, Temperance.”
Tem looked at the group of women. They were stunning. “How can he possibly resist them?”
“Caspenon does not favor the desperate.”
Victory flowed through Tem. She watched as the women preened and giggled, all of them looking over their shoulder at where Caspen was standing, still talking to the group of men.
The sight gave her a curious mix of jealousy and pride.
Part of her was thrilled. It made her feel special that someone so desired had picked her.
The other part of her was irrationally angry.
Adelaide seemed to sense this, because she said, “He will not stray.”
Tem glanced up at her. Were her emotions really so transparent? “How do you know?”
“Because he only wants you.”
Even after everything they’d been through, Tem found that hard to believe.
“Do not underestimate your power, Temperance.”
“What do you mean?”
“You hold more sway over him than anyone else.”
“Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.”
“But it is that way. Beyond a doubt. I have never seen him like this. Nobody has.”
“What was he like before me?”
Adelaide smiled. “Rather insufferable.”
“Really?”
“Yes. His ego was unprecedented.”
Tem supposed she could imagine that. Anyone with a father like Bastian would surely take after him.
“You have tamed him,” Adelaide continued. “He is…more careful now.”
“Careful with what?”
“His life.”
Tem frowned. “What do you mean?”
There was a pause as Adelaide tossed her hair over her shoulders.
“Before you, it did not matter to him whether he lived or died. He was always the first to step into a fight. Now he refrains. I know it is for you.”
“Why would he refrain for me?”
“He wishes to keep you safe, Temperance. He views it as his duty.”
Tem processed her words slowly. She couldn’t imagine another version of Caspen, one who was rash and impulsive and reckless.
Those were qualities she possessed, not him.
Tem was struck once more by the fact that he’d lived an entire lifetime before her—that while her adulthood was largely shaped by him, his had not at all been shaped by her.
As if on cue, Caspen chose that moment to return.
His eyes flicked first to Tem’s, then to Adelaide’s, his brow furrowing in concern.
“Tem?” he said before he even reached her.
“I’m fine,” she said preemptively.
Caspen’s face softened but just barely. He looked once more to Adelaide, and his eyes narrowed. “If you are filling her head with lies, I will—”
“I’m fine, Caspen,” Tem insisted. “Will you calm down? Adelaide and I are friends now.”
That got an amused laugh from Adelaide and a distressed grunt from Caspen, who pursed his lips but didn’t press the issue.
“How did it go with…” Tem didn’t know how to address the group of men he’d been talking to. “Them?”
Caspen sighed, and his expression darkened. “The Senecas are angry. They feel I am corrupting one of their own.”
“The Senecas consider me…one of them?”
“Yes,” Caspen said. “They do.”
Tem couldn’t fathom that. She wanted nothing to do with Rowe or anyone associated with him.
“To add insult to injury, you are a Hybreed.”
“Excuse me?”
He smiled. “What I mean to say is that your status as a Hybreed makes you an asset. And since you are a Seneca, they feel they are owed your allegiance.”
Tem wrinkled her nose. She’d never felt like much of anything, and now she was an asset?
“The Senecas know that your basilisk side can draw power from your human side,” Caspen continued. “Once mastered, your power would be…limitless.”
Tem blinked.
Limitless.
It wasn’t a word Tem had ever heard in conjunction to herself. She remembered how she’d been able to crest herself at her wedding—how she’d do anything to feel that invincible again. Something within her fluttered at the thought.
“Limitless?”
“Yes.”
“What does that even mean?”
Adelaide’s eyes flicked to Caspen, as if asking for permission.
“Just tell me,” Tem barked.
“Tell her,” Caspen said.
A moment passed before Adelaide spoke. “If the legends are true, it means you can channel Kora.”
“What?”
Tem blinked. The basilisks thought she could channel Kora?
It was an absurd belief. Kora was a goddess—she could not be channeled through someone as insignificant as Tem.
She looked down at her hands. Twelve freckles on each palm.
Three beneath every finger except her thumbs.
Tem flexed her fingers, wondering what she had done in a previous life to deserve this.
“Such power is unimaginable, Tem,” Caspen said. “The Senecas covet it.”
“Why do they care? I thought they didn’t support mating with humans.”
“You are not a human. You are a Hybreed, and they feel I have taken you from them. They will not forgive it. Nor would I expect them to.”
“Well. That’s their problem.”
“They are rightfully angry,” Adelaide said. “Bastian used you against your own quiver.” She glanced at Caspen. “That was wrong of him.”
Tem thought about her first council meeting, where the Serpent King had touted her as a weapon. We have a Hybreed, Bastian had said. The implication was that the Drakons had a Hybreed. But the Drakons had never had her. They’d only discovered her. There was a difference.
“But Adelaide is a Seneca,” Tem said. “You said that marriage was arranged to bring peace between the quivers. If I’m a Seneca, and we’re married, shouldn’t that bring peace too?”
Caspen gave her a grim smile. “Any hope of peace was nullified when I…punished Rowe.”
Tem flinched at the memory of the mangled mound of flesh where Rowe’s cock used to be. Punishment indeed.
“So what does that mean?”
Both basilisks looked first at each other, then back at Tem. It was Caspen, finally, who answered.
“It means that Rowe seeks to retaliate. We must be ready when he does.”