Chapter 20
Nothing tested Therxian’s patience like waiting for the right moment to strike.
It was necessary, however. Knowing when to strike was a matter of survival.
As was knowing when to be silent. His eyes shifted to the wall, and he slapped a wing against it to silence the human’s muttering.
She clearly thought she was being quiet enough, but Seshanamitesh hearing was far superior.
As noisy as she was, he did not understand how she evaded detection whenever the servants arrived to set up a mating feast. The slap of his wing was casual, and he even stretched to make it more plausibly unintentional to anyone watching while delivering an immediate warning to Alex.
Fortunately, the female possessed quick enough wit and survival instinct to understand it for what it was and promptly fell silent.
He rolled his shoulders as he gave his wings another subtle stretch, his gaze scanning the corridor that led to his nest. That was as far as he dared to take Alex out in the open without cover.
It was just fortunate that he found the storage nook to temporarily stash her inside amid all the supplies regularly used to keep that part of the palace clean.
He wrinkled his nose at the musty scent emanating from the space.
It was really unpleasant. Although the plant material from which the clean rags were woven grew in the depths of the caves, clearly no one from the palace was inclined to properly clean and dry them on the surface of Seshana.
He hoped that the human was faring well enough despite being surrounded entirely by the foul odor.
From all the noise she was making, she clearly wasn’t suffering too terribly, even if she was complaining about it a lot.
Therxian grunted quietly as a small hand shoved adamantly at his wing.
“Therxian,” she hissed. “I can’t see anything. I can barely breathe. If you had been listening at all, I said that it stinks like a cesspit in here.”
“There is nothing you need to see,” he retorted quietly, angling his head slightly in her direction.
“And breathe through your mouth if you dislike the smell. This is the only suitable place from which to launch our attack, and as a female is to be delivered to me, no one will pay much attention if I am loitering at the entrance of this particular corridor.”
After all, it was the one that led directly to his nest among others that had been carved out over time for all the royal hatchlings. There were twelve in total, few of which were ever opened in his lifetime.
“Yeah, yeah,” Alex mumbled. “Charming. When exactly is the lucky lady supposed to arrive?”
Therxian hummed thoughtfully as he scratched an itchy spot behind his left front gavo spine.
Seshanamitesh did not measure time the way humans did.
Beyond possessing a general understanding of shared calculation of day and revolution, their method of tracking the sun’s movement was incomprehensible despite how long he had observed those humans among the Vehal utilize it.
Noon. He understood noon. Beyond that, it was incomprehensible to him. He gathered it was based on a division of time particular to Earth that did not quite match the span of the day on Seshana, since they had also often complained about their difficulty with time conversion.
But then it turned out that he did not need to worry about it because a female adorned with the ceremonial painting on her scales was heading directly toward him.
His stomach turned as he noted which female it was.
Ferinia. His mood immediately darkened as she noted his presence and immediately began to preen as she made her approach.
He studied her sourly. He should have known that she would have pushed to be next.
He had hoped that another one of the younger, more easily frightened females would have been selected again, but knowing Ferinia’s temperament from her earlier displays, she had likely insisted.
“Therxian,” she hummed with obvious delight.
“Ferinia.” He made no attempt to soften his bearing or make himself more appealing as he stared woodenly back at her. He dipped his head, his gavo rising slightly in a brief display of formality before lowering again.
Her smile faltered with frustration, her gavo rippling in response before she regained control over herself. Her smile returned, though it was noticeably forced.
“So polite,” she observed, with a lingering note of irritation in her voice. She covered it with a small chuckle that made his scales prickle as she looped her tail around herself in one elegant motion. “There is no need to hold yourself so rigidly, Therxian. I will not bite.”
Therxian looked away, refusing to play whatever game she was determined to indulge in.
He needed to find the perfect opening to create the necessary distraction.
He could sense that Alex was coming close to shaking with anger at being pinned for so long in that hole.
Ferinia was suitable cover and nothing more.
The sooner he could utilize her presence to fulfil his needs, the better.
Unfortunately, the cursed female was having nothing of it.
She leaned closer, humming as she wafted her wings subtly, dosing him with both her frequency and pheromones.
Therxian’s head instinctively jerked back at the assault on his senses, his entire body stiffening warily even as he sneered in affront at her.
She was so brazenly certain of her own status and capabilities that she had no compunction when it came to coercing him in public.
Even the guard at her side angled her body away with noticeable embarassment so that she did not have to stand witness to Ferinia’s indecent tactics.
They were not necessarily unlawful, but they were considered conduct that shamed and made a spectacle of a male since they were within a public setting.
Did she not fear the anger of the high queen?
The council’s plan was insulting enough, but to assault a son of Zathexa within the halls of the palace was an insult to the high queen herself.
He wanted to repay her insult. He hissed in warning as she attempted to entwine her tail with his, and he snapped his tail away so that his secondary sant was nowhere near her lower copulation vent.
He was not being forcibly hooked by her within the corridor and in front of her guard and any other Seshanamitesh who may pass.
His wings flared to make himself appear bigger, and it seemed to give her a pause for a moment as she peered at him.
Although female Seshanamitesh significantly outweighed most males in the shinara, he was larger by far than even the average Vehal, and like all males, possessed a significantly more expansive body to wingspan ratio than the female counterparts of their species.
Puffing up was a suitable warning because a male could strike with those wings and deal crippling blows if they landed effectively.
Few males actually tried it, since the repercussions for harming a female could be swift if he was determined to be out of line and his dignity unharmed, but Ferinia was giving him every reasonable excuse to defend himself.
Was she dimwitted? From what he had described, even Slengral’s assailant had the sense to hunt him within the cavern tunnels.
Therxian glanced over at the guard, silently bidding her to do something but she bowed her head away, and shifted her body so that she had her back turned to them completely as she stared out into the main corridor.
He gritted his teeth angrily. There was nothing there that required her attention.
She was intentionally abandoning her responsibilities to satisfy the council, regardless of her own feelings on the subject.
There was not even a single Seshanamitesh approaching them.
The few who drew near, the guard quickly waved them away until anyone who might have approached turned and headed in a different direction at the sight of the guard blocking the residential hall.
Now there was no one at all moving through this part of the busy corridor for the guard to occupy herself with—he blinked, his gaze shifting upward so that he was looking past the guard into the corridor and studying the empty space.
There was no one to be seen anywhere immediately within view of the royal residential hall.
No one to immediately take note of any source of disturbance that might strike the main corridor from there.
It was the opening he was looking for.
Evading another grapple from the female, he feinted to the left, angling his body, his wings splayed wide, so as to obscure Ferinia’s view.
The female’s heavy body collided with the wall, and Therxian used that opportunity to deliver the signal to Alex with two rapid taps of his tail against the wall.
He felt it the moment she made her move.
Her hand slid across the back of his wing, dangerously and unintentionally distracting him from the aggressve female in front of him preparing for her next launch.
It was nothing more than the lightest of touches at first, but it rapidly shifted into a steady, warm weight when Alex leaned against him, supporting her body weight against his wings as she sent the small sphere rolling.
Therxian tracked its movement even as he brought a wing sharply down, striking sharply across Ferinia’s breastbone.
Her angry shriek echoed as she rolled back onto her coils away from him, but the guard continued to be deaf and blind to everything.
He thought he caught a hint of amusement on the female’s face, but it was fleeting before it was replaced once more with the guard’s deferential mask.
Whatever her duty toward serving as Ferinia’s escort, the guard clearly disliked the matriarch and was not going to be quick to defend her if the situation allowed it.
And this situation certainly allowed it.
Ferinia coiled up and lunged again, and once more he struck her with a crossway strike, driving her off him, cutting off her attack.
He shrilled venomously at her, covering the sound of the sphere clattering as it rolled over the roughest part of the stonework.
The guard turned and looked their way at that moment just as the sphere rolled by her.
He grinned inwardly, pleased with how it all turned out, but then cursed when Ferinia made contact with his wing, her sharp teeth piercing its muscular limb.
He shrieked and hissed at her. Pain shook him and was quickly followed by anger and a good portion of disbelief.
She actually bit him!
The female smiled triumphantly around her hold on him, her saliva dripping across his wing as he tried to wrench it away from her.
Half of his attention followed the faint sound of the sphere as it rolled and bounced its way down the corridor, its sound growing fainter until it stopped.
His heart seemed to cease beating for a breath as everything grew still in the space of the smallest moment before the corridor shook with the blast that tore through it.
Fire flashed, and the cavern shook with the hollow roar of the explosion, knocking loose stones from above so that they came crashing down.
Ferinia glanced up and dropped away from his wing to avoid a crystalline cluster falling from the ceiling.
Therxian did not give it, or the female, a second glance.
He was aware of the guard springing into action, the massive female gathering Ferinia close and whisking her out of the residential area and into the main corridor as it flooded with panicked Seshanamitesh.
Allowing himself a moment to smirk at the chaos, Therxian stretched his wings and gave them a leisurely flap before drawing back from the wall and turning to the human hiding there.
Alex stared at him wide-eyed from her crouched position. She clearly hadn’t risen but had watched the path of the sphere from where she had hunkered down behind him to send it on its path. Her mouth parted and rounded in an expression of surprise.
“Whoa,” she whispered.
Grinning down at her, Therxian opened his arms for her and scooped her stunned little body up from the floor. “Hold tight. This is going to be fast and messy.”
Snapping her mouth shut, she swallowed and nodded uncertainly as she wrapped her arms around him, clinging to his body tightly.
Tucking his wings around them in a protective posture that covered much of his face and torso, he tightened his wings across her back and bottom, providing additional support while also carrying off the simple protective posturing that the fleeing Seshanamitesh adopted.
Satisfied with his secure hold on her, Therxian bolted out into the chaos.
His heart hammered as they dove in among the panicked Seshanamitesh fleeing the palace, but it was exactly as he had anticipated.
Not one Seshanamitesh, neither male nor female, gave him notice as he slipped among them, heading for the hidden passage.
None except for Kitanara, who grew still upon catching sight of him.
Her eyes followed him for a moment, and he paused in the midst of the crowd rushing around him, wondering what she would do.
Though she had brought Alex to him to hide, the female was still a loyal servant of the palace and was therefore unpredictable.
Jathella must have spoken to her, however, because the female lowered her eyes and inclined her head to him in passing.
The message was clear. She saw nothing and would cover his escape. And he needed no further encouragement to plunge into the dark abyss of the palace’s and shinara’s great past.