Chapter 5
FIVE
ARYELLA
Molochai’s beasts were once instinctive and free, now corrupted with an unnatural darkness they can’t understand or escape. My lingering suspicion is that only you can break the bonds that tie them.
I know the feeling all too well.
—FROM THE BUTCHER OF NYRIDA’S LAST KNOWN LETTERS TO QUEEN ARYELLA I
By nightfall, Shera and I were hours ahead of schedule. We camped beneath a small alcove worn into a moss-covered cliff and were lulled to sleep by the rushing waterfall below. The next morning, we woke before sunrise and, once Shera was finished with her hunt, continued south.
The terrain wasn’t too different from southwest Warrich, but it was greener and lush.
Nothing like the barren, gray, and rocky cliffs of eastern Wymara we’d traversed on our way to Brinnea months before.
If I hadn’t learned how to find my direction based on the sun’s position in the sky, I’d be lost. The forests were beautiful, fresh, and intoxicating, but they were miles of homogenous woodland.
Fresh air scented with pine and damp soil filled my lungs.
I found myself reaching into my wheel for Floris’s power just to draw vines and branches closer to my fingertips, to feel connected to the foliage around me and the life it freely shared.
Damond had been adamant about Molochai’s abominable creatures farther south, but we hadn’t come across one. I knew it was sheer luck but basked in it regardless.
“I don’t see any vile creatures, do you?
” I asked Shera, plopping down between some blueberry bushes.
She stretched out lazily beside me, only to tense moments later when a tawny brown rabbit hopped in front of us.
“Just small, cute ones.” Shera’s claws flexed, talons protracting.
“Oh, gods, do you have to?” I flinched and tore my eyes away when she pounced and had it down her gullet in a matter of seconds.
I knew some cats liked to play with their food. At least she spared me by skipping that part.
My appetite was sparse, shrouded by growing anxiety, but I couldn’t afford to be hungry, so I forced down some bread, berries, and cheese until my belly was full.
The sun had set just over an hour before, so the clearing we rested in would soon be completely dark.
I gathered some twigs, sticks, and dry leaves of various sizes in a pile.
I was about to summon the power of Helios to light a fire—and hopefully not burn down the surrounding foliage—when something dark and large shifted in my periphery. Shera saw it too. She rose to all fours and brushed against my hip. My hand shifted to my dagger.
The head of a snake emerged from the trees.
It was a monstrous, hideous thing at least fifty or sixty feet long with a body at least three feet thick.
Black scales encased its body in impenetrable armor.
A shimmering hood framed a voracious, bloodred face and slitted yellow eyes.
It slithered closer, its pink tongue darting from its mouth as it released a low, menacing hiss .
The size of its undulating body was terrifying and unnatural. It had to be one of Molochai’s beasts. No snake was naturally this big. It could swallow me whole.
And it was coming right toward us.
Growling beside me, Shera crouched low and ready to pounce, her silver tail twitching back and forth.
“Shera,” I warned, lifting my hands to wield. I hadn’t decided which power yet. The fur on my umbra’s spine puffed up in warning. She leaned back, teeth bared, ready to?—
“Shera, no!”
She didn’t listen. Beside me one moment, gone like a flash of lightning the next. She launched herself to triple my height, landed on the snake’s back, protracted her lethal claws, and scratched and tore across its armored scales until they caught and struck through.
Its furious hiss of pain lifted the hairs on the back of my neck.
An ominous chill rushed down my spine when it rose, spun, and turned, its tail whipping and stirring debris off the forest floor.
I nearly dodged a jagged rock roughly the size of my palm, but its sharp edge sliced across my forehead.
Hot blood streamed over my brow and down my cheeks, but I didn’t care. Molochai’s raging beast and my beloved umbra— his gift to me—kept my full attention.
I reached for power and grasped the spoke of Helios’s fire, poised and ready to strike. I should have set it aflame and ended this before Shera had a chance to pounce, but fear had taken hold, and now she was in the way. If I wielded the flames, I’d burn them both.
The serpent swooped down to her eye level, hissing in warning. Shera flexed her claws into sensitive flesh between the snake’s scales and bared her teeth. Its forked tongue darted out before its gaping maw opened and revealed two monstrously long fangs.
“Shera, enough!” I cried out, my hands hot with growing fire. Shera didn’t hear me, or she didn’t listen. I reached for Floris’s vines or Rainar’s water to strangle or drown it, but the snake reared back with lethal speed.
“Shera!”
It struck downward and sank its fangs into my umbra’s ribcage. She yowled and a wail ripped free from my own throat. The snake sank its bite deeper, and Shera went limp.
Pulled back to my wheel by an otherworldly force, I grasped for Soltum’s spoke.
“Cease!” I shrieked in a voice that didn’t feel like my own.
The eyes of Molochai’s slithering beast snapped in my direction, paralyzing me. When Shera’s body dropped from the snake’s mouth and crumpled to the forest floor in a heap of silver and blood, something black seeped from its fangs. Venom.
Tail cracking like a whip, the snake uncoiled to face me and rose up, up, up at least twenty feet high. I craned my neck to meet its yellow eyes, held out my hand, and screamed in warning. I waited for the monster to strike so I could blast its face off with a surge of fire at the very last second.
Instead of striking, the snake bobbed its head back and forth in a beguiling rhythm. It heeded my command and was waiting for another. I looked at Shera’s silver form stained in her blood. I couldn’t tell if she was breathing. If she wasn’t gone already, then she was running out of time.
I told myself to order it away but let it live. It was a beast following its instincts. I wanted to be a merciful queen, but then I glanced again at my umbra. My shadow. My companion.
Icy resolve steeled my spine.
I didn’t want to be merciful tonight.
I lifted and curled my finger, commanding the snake to draw closer. It bent to my will and lowered its head. I smelled wet dirt and rotting fish. The snake came so close that its forked tongue grazed my cheek.
I met its slitted, yellow stare and turned my palm outward.
“You bit my cat, asshole.”
My fury came alive. Lethal blue flames blazed from my fingertips.
The snake screeched, hissed, and flailed when the fire scoured its face and neck, engulfing its scaly body in a bright, torrential river of heat.
Its monstrous body swung so wide that I had to dodge twice before it landed with a knee-shaking boom at my feet.
I let it burn and lunged toward Shera. Debris from the forest floor scraped at my knees through my leathers, but I only cared about her.
Her silver fur was dampened by blood from two large puncture wounds. The rise and fall of her chest was slight. Breathing, but barely. The misaligned ends of her crushed ribs formed craggy slopes along her side.
“Don’t leave me,” I gritted out, tears burning in my throat.
He had given her to me. He knew how much I needed her.
“Damn it, Shera, you are not leaving me!”
I pressed my hands over her snakebite and reached inside my wheel for the healing power of Viridian, but before I could use my magic, I heard a faint sizzle .
I looked down to see that blood from the cut on my forehead had dripped onto her wound. A rosy liquid boiled and gassed over the two wounds. It darkened as the snake’s venom was drawn from Shera’s hip, bubbled into a clean white foam, and dispersed back into the surface of her fur.
Her panting accelerated, then slowed, as her ribs realigned with a gentle snap . It looked like her skin would scar, but she would live.
Thank the gods.
My body relaxed enough to realize the absence of my healing power. I hadn’t even managed to grab the spoke. Viridian’s healing had worked of its own volition, outside of me. And with my blood?
“Shera, don’t you ever do something so reckless again!” I wiped my tears with my sleeve then stroked her soft jaw. This must have been the panic Gavin felt when I’d run off to Molochai’s camp to sacrifice myself.
Too drained from healing to stand up, I fell back on my knees to sit. The snake’s burning body crackled and reeked, but the heat enticed me to rest. I prayed the blaze didn’t draw anyone to us. I felt too drained of power to put it out myself.
I had to sleep, just for a few minutes. My cheek hit the cold dirt. My eyes closed.
“ Aryella ,” called a saccharine, singsong voice. “ If you hurry and put out that fire, we might be able to salvage some of that snake for dinner .”
Adrenaline jerked me upright and awake, though my body protested. I searched my skin for puncture wounds. Had I been bitten? Was I hallucinating?
“ It didn’t bite you ,” said the voice.
Dear gods. I really had finally lost it. It had only been a matter of ti?—
“The fire, human!”
I squealed and reached for Rainar’s water to douse the flames. A weak stream of water made it to the top of the snake’s head before the trickle stopped. The fire on parts of its face was extinguished, but the rest still blazed.
I sucked in just enough air to stay conscious as the forest spun around me. I hadn’t been ready for the aftereffects.
Unafraid of the flames, Shera made her way to the snake’s corpse. She nudged its scorched hood with her paw. Huffing in disapproval, she fastened her glinting violet eyes on me.
“Well, that won’t do.”
My stomach catapulted into my throat.