Page 44 of City of Snakes (Legends of Henosis #2)

Chapter 43

Sybilla

H undreds of people crowded around the temple steps. The guillotine was set and ready as they led her out in nothing but a canvas nightdress more fitting as a potato sack than clothing. They wouldn’t even take her head by the sword, the honorable way. People watched with quiet anticipation as their adulterous Queen was pushed forward.

I tried to look away—anywhere but at her face that so resembled mine.

“Watch, Sybilla,” my father commanded from his place on the temple balcony beside me.

It all blurred together at the seams, but this time, I saw someone in the crowd. A man shrouded in a gray veil. He watched as the blade came down upon my mother’s neck. Then he looked up at me.

I gasped awake.

Krait stirred but didn’t open his eyes. Breaking free of his arms without waking him proved difficult; I had to wiggle from his grasp. Luckily, he was sleeping soundly. The lines of his face were all soft and unworried as his arm reached out in the direction of where I’d just been.

I shouldn’t have felt warmed by that.

Remaining angry with him grew harder and harder.

Still reeling from the vivid nightmare, I stepped silently around the room and pulled a blue duster over my nightgown. Glancing back at the sleeping King, I wondered if he could ever be the type of man to force me to my knees before a blade.

My heart told me no.

I was sure my mother’s heart had told her the same, too.

I needed to put my hands to work on something so that my mind would stop pinwheeling. My comb was missing from the vanity—I’d left it in Elsedora’s room. Thinking maybe Krait had one to spare, I opened the top drawer, then the middle, then the bottom. The edge of a piece of parchment caught my attention.

It bore my name.

I held it up to the golden sunlight from the window.

I. Phynnic idealist

II. Stubborn as a bull

III. Has little control over her own power

IV. Impatient

V. Vulgar

VI. Shortsighted

VII. Willful

VIII. Not ready

My blood flashed cold. The handwriting was familiar—I recognized it from the letter Krait had written me when he’d tried sending me away.

I should have left then.

He’d been keeping a tally of my faults. A night of passion and softness would not change the things he thought of me that were inked on this page.

The guillotine dropped.

Instead of my head rolling, my heart split in two.

Krait shifted but didn’t wake. Swallowing hard, I made no sound as I stepped to the foot of the bed and dropped the parchment down at his feet. To think I’d been contemplating opening myself up to him, building a life with him, letting myself fall. My tongue felt two sizes too big, and heat pressed on the back of my eyes.

Krait had been clear all along that he didn’t see love or affection as necessary for us to have an heir, but the sting of seeing all my written defects hurt no less.

Especially that final entry .

Not ready.

I was not prepared to take on Death, not ready to marry, not ready to be a mother, not ready to love. It didn’t hurt that he’d written the list; it hurt that it was all true. There was no use even waking him to be angry—he wasn’t the realm’s biggest fool. I was.

Slipping on a pair of leather mules, I left the bedchamber. I needed to find Elsedora. While she would never speak ill of her King, she would at least be a welcome distraction. And was likely to have wine.

Knocking would have been wise.

In a flurry of emotion, I’d entered Elsedora’s bedchamber only to be met with the sight of a very well-sculpted pale ass, tensed and driving. Ryn held Elsedora’s ankles over his shoulders, and their sounds could only be described as animalistic.

Squeaking, I stumbled back, closing the door, before shielding my eyes and fumbling for the handle. Once out of there, I slammed the door. Holding one hand to my forehead.

At least that shock had staved off the tears that had swelled in my eyes for a brief moment. My feet were stuck to the spot. I did not know where to go next. Every instinct screamed—the Egress. Go home.

There was loud shuffling and an “Ouch, Ryn!” before the door creaked open. Elsedora stepped out with a silk robe haphazardly pulled around herself, her red hair mussed.

“My Queen, if you wanted to join us, you only had to ask,” she teased with a smirk.

My face burned hot, and I shook my head. All words escaped me, and my eyes brimmed again. Source-damned tears.

“Oh no...” Elsedora’s face fell.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Get...back to it.” I staggered backward, turning to spin on my heels.

El caught my forearm. “Hold on,” she said. She cracked the door and commanded, “Ryn, get dressed. Out!”

Thankfully, Ryn was clothed when he appeared, looking not at all sheepish. He smiled until he saw the tears streaming down my cheeks and then glanced between me and Elsie, wide-eyed. “Right then. I’ll leave you two.”

Elsedora pushed him out of the doorway before dragging me toward her bedchamber.

“Come back later,” she called after him.

Ryn just huffed a laugh over his shoulder and said, “Only if she does agree to join us.”

A watery laugh bubbled from me, but I didn’t respond to Ryn’s crude joke. I watched him go, knowing exactly how good he looked out of those breeches now.

“Hush, you’ll get yourself killed if he hears you,” Elsedora warned him before dragging me inside and shutting the door. She spun me and sat me down on the sofa below a gallery wall of paintings depicting the Hussa mountains and Belray. It had never struck me that maybe Elsedora might be homesick. Her chambers were a tribute to the North Corridor.

“Here.” El plucked a handkerchief from her wardrobe and handed it to me. She sat beside me. “What happened? If you tell me that Krait is the reason you’re crying, then I will go castrate him right now. Prophecy-blessed seed be damned.”

“He isn’t. Well, not entirely. I honestly have no idea why I’m crying. This is ridiculous.”

Elsedora’s posture softened, and she secured the tie of her robe. “It does not make your emotions any less worth feeling if you don’t know where they’re coming from.”

Somehow, that brought me comfort.

No one had ever told me it was okay to just feel. I’d spent so much time under a facade of strength, holding myself together. Now every loose seam had unraveled at once—my body ached, my mind was fatigued, and my feelings were wounded.

“There are so many unknowns. I don’t know what’s right or wrong, or up or down. What if I’m not strong enough to keep Caym from overrunning the realms? What if we can’t save Emmerick? What if I can’t conceive as the prophecy requires? It isn’t always easy—many women struggle. What if I have an heir with that insufferable man and still fail to be the mother our child needs? What if I do deserve the same fate my mother received? What if I’ve—”

“Woah, woah, woah.” Elsedora placed her hands on my shoulders. I couldn’t find the energy to be embarrassed by the amount of snot I was blowing into her handkerchief. “Slow down and breathe. I’m afraid if your head spins any faster with what-ifs, then it may very well fall off. Have you talked with Krait about any of this?”

“No. That would be pointless,” I said, letting out a laugh at her suggestion. “It could all fall apart. All go up in flames just like that.” I snapped my fingers.

Elsedora hummed and nodded. “It could,” she plainly said. “But it won’t. Because even if everything goes up in flames, there are no two people better suited to fight through the fire together than you two. Stop carrying all that weight alone...It will all happen as it will.”

I drew in my first deep breath since waking up and nodded. Not because I believed her, but because no single answer to my many what-ifs would have prevented any of our fates.

“What happened, Sybilla?”

For the next few minutes, I confided in her about my and Krait’s time in the library, our bickering and our reconciliation. When I finally told her about that dreadful list I’d discovered in Krait’s drawer, her lips pursed.

“That man is his own worst enemy. He doesn’t mean those words. He’s spent so long alone that he’s just trying to find reasons to continue that course. I’ll talk to him.”

Shaking my head, I answered, “Please don’t. It isn’t worth the breath.” I cleared my throat, desperately wanting to ignore the tears still streaking down my cheeks. “I truly am sorry that I interrupted.”

El smirked and waved her hand. “Ah, it wasn’t so great anyway.”

“ That is a lie.”

Elsedora winked. “It is, but I am trying to make you feel better, not worse.”

I laughed and asked, “How do you separate the physical from the emotional? You…have other partners, no?”

Elsedora shrugged, but her face fell slightly. “Don’t mistake promiscuity for heartlessness. My mother and father were Source Matched—so sickeningly in love. I always longed for that as a girl. That feeling in your soul that connects you with another. Even with no Source in my veins, sometimes I still wonder if that match exists in other ways. So I throw myself at every opportunity for affection, thinking, maybe, someday, someone will surprise me.”

“That is…self-aware.”

Elsedora chuckled. “It took me a couple of centuries to figure out what I was doing. Everyone always considers Fen the hopeless romantic and me the impulsive one, but romanticism may be a family trait, I fear.”

“And is Ryn the one?” It intrigued me to think of Elsedora’s airy and light personality as a coping mechanism.

She shook her head. “I don’t imagine so. But he has known me nearly my whole life. I trust him. He’s my dearest friend, and he would never betray me. That may need to be enough.”

“Bullshit.”

Elsedora laughed. “Oh, now you are suddenly a romantic?”

“No—but if you are, you deserve nothing short of a fairytale. And I don’t think for a minute that you’ll settle for ‘enough.’”

She nodded and said, “Maybe you should take a dose of your own tonics on that one.”

While annoying to admit, I knew she was right. I’d put up so many obstacles between my heart and others that even those closest to me never truly understood what I desired.

Not even Emmerick, and he’d spent over a decade protecting me.

Elsedora pursed her lips with a soft, narrowed gaze and nodded before squeezing my hand.

“Can I stay here a while?” I asked.

“Of course. I’ll go grab some tea and pastries. Nothing baked goods can’t fix, right?” She got up and bounced to the door.

I wished my problems were simple enough that sugar could solve them.