Page 43 of City of Snakes (Legends of Henosis #2)

Chapter 42

Krait

S ipping amber liquor, I sat in a supple leather chair by the fireplace, watching Sybilla as she slept. She seemed so at peace, tangled up in my red silk sheets—no signs of the fire she’d been breathing in my direction just this evening.

What in the Sources were we thinking? Her jabs wracked my mind.

But other words did too—her admission that she wanted something more than I offered her. I had myself to blame for that frame of thought.

I’d leave before morning. Hearing her sleep was torturously tranquil and comforting. The faint whistle of a snore calmed me because, despite her anger, she was there. She had not left. Yet.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, trying to dull my restless headache. I clenched my eyes shut, taking a deep breath.

I’d bedded the Last Daughter of Isleen. That had always been the plan.

She’d agreed to marry me and fulfill the prophecy. That should be enough.

She wanted to leave me. That was where the panic stemmed from.

Sybilla had rewritten things I’d thought were set in stone. I hadn’t wanted to soften to her. Yet the way our breath had hitched and hurried, mingled together, would haunt me. I would not be able to eat again without thinking about how she tasted or breathe again without desiring a faint scent of lilac.

Now that I’d had her, all I wanted was more. Desire spread through me like a toxin beneath my skin, crawling through my veins. We hadn’t savored each other as I would have liked to, and a sense of yearning that I’d thought was buried beneath centuries of self-loathing overwhelmed me.

She was a cruel growing obsession, and everything I wanted was the furthest cry from keeping things “professional.”

“Krait?” The sound of my name in her sleep-soaked voice surprised me.

When I opened my eyes and glanced at the bed, she didn’t sit up but was squinting at me through the dark.

“It’s me,” I mumbled.

“Come to bed,” she demanded.

My head tilted. “You’re sure?” I asked while swirling the amber liquid in the tumbler.

“Mhm,” she hummed and scooted over to give me space on the right side, where I usually slept. I set down the glass, knowing that this was a bad idea. I’d told her that I’d give her time to think, yet here I was, hours later, at her bedside. My bedside.

“Is this a trap to suffocate me in my sleep?” I whispered.

“Would it work?” she asked, and I huffed a silent laugh. She could be so infuriatingly stubborn, and yet my heart warmed at the idea that she was still willing to let me near her.

I stood and kicked off my boots and pulled my shirt over my head. She watched me move about the room in only the moonlight that peeked through the curtains before rolling onto her side. Rounding the bed, I slipped behind her, under the sheets. Staring at the back of her head, I grew certain she wouldn’t turn toward me. At least she wasn’t spitting venom at me any longer. That was a start.

Then she rolled over and met my gaze.

“I made a mistake with you,” I whispered.

I’d put up so many emotional barriers that I’d always thought the mistake would be loving another. But now that there was a chance of it, I thought the mistake might have been not trying.

I’d dragged her into a mess of my tangled past and my even more tangled future.

“Just shut up and hold me,” Sybilla whisper-barked at me. Her sleep-glazed stare didn’t hold any more fire.

My brow furrowed. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I want to see how it feels. Just try it,” she answered with a tired sigh.

I swallowed hard, not giving a damn how humid the night air was from the rain. Wasting no time, I wrapped my arms around her middle and pulled her to me. Our legs tangled, and her head tucked into my chest. As she nestled in deeper, I unraveled one arm to brush her unruly curls out of my stubble.

“I wasn’t a mistake,” she whispered. “You don’t feel that way. You’re just scared...”

“I know,” I answered. I wouldn’t deny her that truth here in the dark of the bedchamber we shared, here when she seemed ready to be gentle with me.

Maybe she was simply flying a white flag until she could reinforce her troops.

“Can I tell you something?” she asked.

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“I’m afraid too.”

I tightened my grip around her, finding her wrists and massaging where she seemed to suffer, hating myself now for having tied her up because this soft tenderness felt worlds more intimate than how I’d taken her in the library. “I don’t want you to be afraid of me.”

I’d always been shit with words, but that sentiment seemed to cause her to melt into me. “Then stop being such an insufferable ass.”

Muffling a chuckle into the nape of her neck, I lazily rubbed her back.

She surprised me by continuing. “I’m not scared of you. I fear that all my weaknesses will stack up against me. That I will fail and be alone when I do.”

“I see no weaknesses,” I whispered.

She drew in a deep breath and, after releasing it, said, “I can tell the tonics Wyeth prepares aren’t as strong as my old healer’s. I’m starting to have to triple the doses.”

A knot formed in my stomach, thinking about how hard it must be for her to reveal this to me. The woman had gone weeks without remedies simply to not draw attention to her waning health.

“We’ll track him down and get you what you need then.”

She hummed into my chest as though sharing the weight of her concern had lulled her to sleep. I still didn’t know if I could offer her the life she may have dreamed of, but maybe there was still enough left of my heart to try to be there through good days and bad.