Page 47 of City of Snakes (Legends of Henosis #2)

Chapter 46

Sybilla

W hen Elsedora didn’t return with tea and pastries, I grew worried she’d gotten sidetracked. It was so very like her to flit around the estate and forget what she’d intended to do.

With my mules pulled on, I opened the door just as Ryn was about to knock. He offered me a smile that seemed weaker than his usual beam.

“Good morning, Sybilla.”

“El’s gone to grab us tea,” I said, answering his assumed question of where she’d snuck off to.

“No, no.” Ryn rubbed the back of his neck, looking a bit disheveled. “I came to see you. How are you doing?”

My eyes narrowed on the Prince of Phynx. Something felt off with this drop-in. It was almost as though he was intentionally distracting me.

“Oh, I am just rainbows and butterflies,” I drawled. “Why are you really here?”

He shook his head. “I can’t just care about how my friend is faring?”

“You can . Has Elsedora abandoned me and sent you up to compensate?”

Convinced that he was hiding something, I moved into that place of Ryn’s mind I knew to always be left open even when he was shielding his thoughts. When I sank into his mind, his emotions unsettled me; he was shaken.

I pushed deeper.

“ What in the realms could Mattock want so badly he dared step foot in Sahlmsara?”

“Emmerick is here? ” I gasped, and Ryn’s brow furrowed.

“Sources, I hate that. Sybilla,” he warned, “Krait will kill me. I can’t let you near Mattock, not while knowing he is an envoy.”

“You wouldn’t be letting me,” I breathed out. “Where?”

He grimaced. “The holding cell.”

I could feel his anger bite at my mind for taking away his will to obey Krait. Guilt gripped me. But the worst hadn’t yet been done.

“I’m very sorry, Ryn.” Then I forced his feet to stick to the spot where he stood, and I slipped past him through the doorway and ran.

When I reached the stairs down to the holding cell, there were three guards waiting.

“Move aside,” I commanded

“My Queen,” one said. “We’ve been told not to let anyone down there. King Darvanda is—”

I silenced him. At my will, the guards stepped aside. It had become so easy to bend those around me to my whims. That intoxicating and terrifying feeling enveloped me.

“He will not punish you for your disobedience,” I assured them as I stepped past. I closed the door behind me and took the steps in two, not knowing how long the hold on them, or Ryn, would last. It was fatiguing to use so much of my power at once.

My eyes adjusted to the low light as I entered the holding cell.

I heard my dear friend’s voice. “It’s Syb, isn’t it?” he questioned with brimming tears.

“Yes.” Krait’s voice sounded grave. That prick had no right to talk about me without my being present.

“Em,” I gasped out, and Krait stiffened before turning to me. “Why is he chained up like an animal?”

Then my eyes landed on the High Enchantress of the North. A ghost. No, not ghoulish—whole and in the tattered flesh.

I pressed my back against the bars of the holding cell.

“You.” It escaped my lips as a feral snarl.

“Sybilla.” Elsedora approached me. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

“For fuck’s sake, I need everyone to stop telling me what I should or should not do and explain. Now.”

“Syb,” Em breathed out and stared from his place there, arms over his head— how could they have done this? Envoy or not, he was a King. Logic told me that they were only taking precautions, but fury told me they were about to disregard my wishes to keep him alive.

“Leave us…” My teeth ground.

Krait’s hard, murderous stare didn’t deter me.

As he spat back, “No,” I moved his feet for him. He looked more pissed off than I’d ever seen him before—a scowl crossed his face as he left the holding cell and walked up the stairs.

I glanced at Elsedora and said, “Don’t make me do the same to you.” She bowed her head. “Keep Darvan-dick and Ryn up there until I am through.”

“As you wish, my Queen…but be careful.” She didn’t want to leave, that much I could feel. But she respected my request and followed Krait up.

Alone with my greatest friend and my greatest enemy, I reeled—dizzy with power, with shock, with confusion.

“Are you him, or are you, you ?” I asked Emmerick.

“It’s me…but they’re right, Sybilla. I am not safe for this world if Caym has any chance of reaching me.”

I looked over at Firose momentarily. “And the traitorous scum that you dragged with you…what is she?”

Firose’s nostrils flared, but her lips pressed together.

“She has helped me a great deal, and for that, I owe her a great deal. She’s not an envoy.”

I scoffed, not for a second believing that. “I don’t know how you regrew a head like the worm that you are, but I’ll have it off again soon,” I said to her, finally willing myself to approach the woman who’d inflicted so much chaos on my city.

She finally spoke. “I can assure you that your hate for me is mutual, Queen Wymark. But we seek the same outcome. Caym bent my will for centuries, and he will do the same to King Mattock should he not be stopped.”

I glanced at Emmerick briefly. “I don’t see any use for you alive. If you could have stopped Caym, you would have done so before bringing Death to my doorstep.”

“Sybilla.” Emmerick’s voice sounded desperate, which made me pause and look between them. They wore kindred haunted expressions.

I focused, reinforcing my hold over Krait at the top of the stairs and Ryn floors above him. Both were likely seething by now.

Just a little more focus, a little more strength, was needed. Digging deep into the well of magic I possessed, my mind pushed into Emmerick’s, needing to understand for myself how he’d come to be here with Firose.

Was this all an elaborate trap?

Peeling back layers, I closed my eyes as his emotions and memories began to flood me.

Flashes of their time spent together with her in a burgundy veil flew past. Every conversation. Every revelation. Every memory and nightmare in the months that had passed, some tinged in a dark amber glow.

He trusted her.

He’d bedded her.

My heart sank, and my desire to see what other stones I might be able to overturn grew. I delved into Firose’s mind next, wanting to know if she was truly helping him without ulterior motives.

When her emotions hit me, I had to bend over at the sinking weight of them. Her pain, her suffering, her torture at the hands of Caym.

Her thirst for vengeance was so strong it felt like hot iron against my mind, sizzling into the fibers of my soul. But she was so very tired of carrying on.

Years of warring with Caym’s will.

Her hands being forced to do unspeakable things.

Betraying Fenris, who she’d loved.

Watching the demise of Freya, who she’d cared for deeply.

Centuries spent hiding that Asterie was not truly bound to her.

Watching her friend, the late Mattock, wither away in his battle against Death.

Being torn to shreds in the Luz throne room.

Waking, scarred but alive, in a field of flames.

I abruptly shut her out, gasping for air.

“What has he done to you?” I wheezed.

It would’ve been easier if I’d still wanted to put Firose’s head on a stake and ride through my city with it. But now my conscience fought against that thought. Her memories were more like nightmares.

“He’s like a parasite. The deeper he digs, the worse it is…” Firose explained. “Until you believe yourself incapable of good.”

My eyes welled with tears. Emmerick’s stance against me in those council meetings, his newfound anger—it all grew clearer.

Em swallowed hard. “He’s doing the same thing to me. I needed you to know that I am not your enemy—not yet. I never want to be, and that is a weakness he so easily wields against me.”

None of this was right. None of this was fair…I wanted to throw something. My hold on Krait and Ryn grew thin.

I crossed the room to find the key that lay on the steps and returned to where Emmerick was bound, standing on my tiptoes to undo the chains from the wall.

“Sybilla, that isn’t wise,” he tried.

“We’ll leave the binding cuffs to prevent wielding. But I’m not leaving you chained up like this.”

“No,” he commanded, and I stilled as the key slipped into the lock above our heads. His gaze met mine, pleading. “I couldn’t live with hurting you. You know that. Let Darvanda keep us here.”

“You know that telling me ‘no’ has never worked. I won’t let Caym hurt me and neither will you.”

The lock clicked, releasing him from the wall. I left the thin cuffs around his wrists, but they were no longer attached to those dreadful chains.

Maybe it was foolish, but my resolve strengthened as his arms lowered and he embraced me. I slumped there against his chest. “I still have to stay down here, Syb.”

“Fine,” I answered. “But I’m having cots, food and supplies brought down for you.”

I backed out of his arms before stepping over to Firose. She’d stayed quiet through our exchange but appeared altogether as wary of me as I was of her.

I’d felt the hatred within her—anyone who loathed Caym that much was an asset, whether I wanted her dead or not.

My mind was growing tired, the stacked layers of magic I was using weighing down my body. It felt like moving through mud.

Her eyes widened when I reached above our heads and undid the chains binding her to the wall as well.

“Should you ever betray me…I can promise you that what he did to you will pale in comparison to what I shall do,” I said through clenched teeth.

Firose nodded as she lowered her scarred arms and rubbed at her wrists where the cuffs remained. She appeared almost girlish—broken and tired. I wondered if that was how I sometimes looked. It felt odd to find kinship with her.

“Read into the Sethe curse,” Firose offered. “If we can trap Caym in one of the envoys, we may be able to cast the curse and delay him. Until an heir can be had…assuming our guess about you is correct.”

Recalling the excerpt I’d read in the library, my heart clenched and my jaw tightened. I glanced at Emmerick and said, “We will not cast it on Emmerick.”

“That we agree on,” Firose said as she slumped back against the stone wall.

“So we find Barden and get him alone,” I mused, recalling their conversations about him being an envoy from Emmerick’s memories.

As I crossed the cell, toward the stairs, one of her memories made me halt. She’d loved Freya; she’d felt betrayed and heartbroken over her friend’s death.

I turned on my heel. “If you did not tell King Toth about Freya and Krait’s marriage, then who did?”

Firose swallowed hard before she said, “I always suspected Rynall Toth, her brother. He was the only other one who knew.”

My gaze narrowed on her. “That is quite an accusation.”

“I assume it was not without interrogation from his father.”

I drew in a deep breath. I couldn’t deny the truth in her memories. I’d seen her do such unspeakable things—why lie about this?

“It could have been the Divine that married them.”

“It could have,” Firose said dully, as though she didn’t believe her own words. “You can use the map that Elsedora stole to track Caym’s active envoy. Pray to the Sources that the envoys are not together. It will be harder to trap him if he can move between their minds. Don’t approach him without reinforcements.”

I nodded, glancing at Emmerick. He stared at the two of us with a furrowed brow as though watching us work together was not something he’d ever expected to see.

“I’ll be back this evening,” I told him.

Then I stepped out of the holding cell and locked the iron gate behind me.

“We are going to settle this,” I promised through the grates before ascending the stairs. My feet felt attached to weights with a mile-long mountain to climb. Each step filled me with more dread as I released my hold on Krait and Ryn.