Page 48 of City of Snakes (Legends of Henosis #2)

Chapter 47

Krait

E l had been pacing in front of me for the past twenty minutes. I stood frozen to the tile, grinding my teeth as anxiety built in my chest.

Sybilla was down there with one of Caym’s envoys and the woman who’d brought war upon her city. And she’d cast me out of the cell so damned easily.

“She’ll be okay,” El reassured me. “She’s stronger than the two of them combined…”

My greatest fears crashed down on me. Descending those stairs to see her limp and lifeless. Having to step through her blood to kill anyone who had dared to hurt her.

Mourning her.

I couldn’t fucking breathe.

Sybilla’s hold on me slipped just as the heavy door down to the cell swung open.

“I need everyone here, immediately,” Sybilla barked at Elsedora as soon as she appeared. “Asterie, Fen, Cassidee, Wyeth, Amara…all of them.”

“You cannot give my officer orders,” I snapped as the door slammed behind her. Upon seeing her alive in all her stubborn beauty, I let out a breath. Every muscle in my body relaxed in relief.

Sybilla glared at me as she stepped out of the doorway. “I don’t see why I cannot. I will be your Queen, your equal—list of shortfalls or not. And you were right—I am willful. I am stubborn. So go ahead and try to stop me.”

My whole body tensed again as she referenced that damned list, and I shook my head. “You could have been hurt, Sybilla. Or worse.” My voice cracked.

“Yes, and?” Her hands found her hips, fingers digging in there in such an alluring way.

I no longer feared being with her.

I feared being without her.

“Fetch that map you found in the Helos crypts too. We need to show the others,” she instructed Elsedora, who glanced between us, mouth agape.

“Go, do as she says.” I waved her away. El looked relieved to oblige and hurried down the hall.

Sybilla’s eyes possessed no shine, and her shoulders slouched. Had the way I’d fought that mental hold fatigued her?

I approached her and she didn’t retreat. My Shadows trailed the ground before they rose to create a shield that engulfed her in soft darkness. They wrapped around her, seeking out any injury, any scratch.

“You have no reason to be pissed. I do,” she said. “You tried to keep me from matters that concern me—that concern someone I care for.”

“I wasn’t pissed, Sybilla. I was terrified.”

Her posture slackened slightly, as though she’d anticipated an argument.

I was too relieved that she was okay. “I don’t care what you think of me but know this—I don’t want you to ever have to face danger alone. Sources, I felt helpless…I refuse to lose you; I refuse to lose everything again.”

One of my hands wrapped around the back of her neck, drawing her gaze up to mine, and the other held her at the torso. I lowered my head, desperate to seek out her lips. Our breath tangled in the Shadows between us.

Her brow furrowed, hands still on her hips, and she said, “Krait. I do not wish for your hands to be on me right now. Remove them, or I will do it for you.”

Swallowing hard, I pulled my hands away from her, longing for the warmth of her skin beneath my fingers.

My foolhardy sense of hope hinged on her caveat of “right now.” She took one last look at my lips, which I dared to think seemed tinged with longing, before stepping away from me.

“Emmerick is truly an envoy, but Firose is not any longer. She was reborn from fire. I know that sounds impossible, but I sank into both of their heads…”

“The Origins work in ways even I can’t fathom.”

Ryn’s heavy footsteps rang down the hall. He reached us with labored breath and a scowl that I’d never seen him wear before. “Sources, woman,” he huffed. “If you’d asked nicely, I would have brought you down here.”

Sybilla stiffened. Ryn looked confused by her sudden cold front.

“It is not my truth to unfold for you,” Sybilla said to Ryn. “But I could not find anything in Firose’s memories that suggested she was the one to tell your father about Freya and Krait eloping.”

Her words were like a blow, and air escaped my lungs.

That couldn’t be.

“I need to go find someone to send down supplies. For now, both Emmerick and Firose are wards of Luz. Any harm that befalls them is an act of war against me. Also, they’re unchained.”

I fought the impulse to scold her. She didn’t look at me before she headed off stiffly down the hall.

Ryn stood stone-still as I listened to Sybilla’s receding steps.

“Firose told him,” I insisted. “She told your father that Freya and I were married. She is the reason I lost my Source Match, and she’ll suffer for it.”

Ryn shook his head and said, “You’re wrong, Krait.” His eyes glistened, and my heart stopped.

“What do you mean?” My tone grew so grave that Ryn’s face fell. The Shadows that had protected Sybilla grew like angry vines above my head.

“It was me.”

I stalked toward him without thinking. “ What do you mean?” I repeated, in a snarl.

Ryn’s cheeks glistened with tears that now rolled freely.

“Krait...” My longest-standing friend and officer of my realm held up his palms. “The night you were married, I tried to kill my father. Freya deserved to be on his throne...but my plan backfired. I was caught.”

I couldn’t control my breathing or see through the Shadows growing around me. They reached for him, ready to tear—to destroy.

“Please, Krait...My actions killed her. My father immediately suspected something was amiss. He knew that so long as she lived the people would reject him. I was interrogated until I cracked, and her life was the price of my attempt on his. I live with that the guilt every fucking day.” Ryn was spitting through his own tears when I threw the first punch.

I expected him to fight back.

He didn’t.

Hit after hit, he groaned but did nothing.

It took every ounce of control I had to not let my Shadows descend, rip and tear.

My vision blurred as I knelt over him, panting—all my anger spent and thoughts tumbling into despair.

My knuckles were bloodied. “Four centuries. You lied to me for four fucking centuries.”

Ryn spat blood to the side and didn’t try to rise. “I have been loyal to you just as long. I deserve whatever beating you’d like to deal me—but know that there hasn’t been a day in these past four centuries that I haven’t spent trying to repent for what I did. She was as devoted to that prophecy as you, and I was trying to make it right in her place.”

I shook my hands out. They were cramped and bruised. Standing and looking down at my dearest friend, I knew the guards could easily lock him in with the two downstairs. He wouldn’t fight it. It was what any ruler in my place would have done to someone who’d so wholly broken their trust.

Now that I’d expended all of the violence in my veins, my thoughts felt clearer. There was no way Ryn would have cracked easily. The Phynnic methods of torture might have been enough for me to crack, too. His father was a fucking bastard.

“What did he do to you?” I asked through a tight jaw.

Ryn winced with each breath and held onto his ribs, which I’d undoubtedly broken. “I’d prefer not to relive that,” he answered. “But I broke. I didn’t believe he would kill her, only me—I still have a hard time believing it. It should have been me.” His hair was a tangled silver mess, bloodstained at the temples.

“Get up.”

Ryn did what I said and staggered to his feet, holding his side. It would take a day or two, but he’d heal.

“I should kill you,” I growled.

“You should,” he agreed.

I heaved out a ragged sigh. “But that isn’t what Freya would have wanted.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” he said.

I shook my head. “She wouldn’t. She loved you. We were all foolish. One way or another, your father was going to find out. I’ve tried to stop blaming myself for his actions. You two were his children...and he brutalized you like you were war criminals.”

Only now did remorse start creeping into my veins, making my blood run cold.

What would I have done to him if he’d told me a century ago? Two? He’d been loyal to me for so long and imagining the friend before me dead in Freya’s place tugged at my heart.

“The one constant behind it all is Caym. He tore us all apart then, and he is trying to again.” I wiped my bloody knuckles on my breeches. “Go clean off your face...We are apparently expecting company.”

After a visit to the baths to rinse away the grime and betrayals of the day, I dressed in a formal silk tunic and dark linen breeches, and followed the loud hum of conversation into the dining room.

I avoided thinking of who was down in that dungeon, avoided thinking of the heartbreaking revelation I’d uncovered about my dear friend.

Focus would be needed to determine a path forward.

When I stepped inside the dining hall, our guests sat around the long oak table—all but Elsedora and Ryn. I suspected she was helping to clean him up. My heart sank and my stomach soured a bit at the thought of what I’d done to him.

Wine bottles floated into the room, along with blown glass chalices. The tile shone, and a golden sunset glistened through the wall of windows on the opposite side of the room.

Since I’d awoken with that horrid list at my feet, everything had gone to shit.

Sybilla sat at the head of the table.

I’m afraid too. The sensation of her in my arms had felt more right than anything I’d experienced in centuries, but her willingness to open up, to trust me with her vulnerabilities? I’d work hard to hold on to that.

Sybilla looked so natural there as she passed a bottle of wine to Amara. My two worlds collided as I watched them chatter.

Amara and Freya had been friends. Long ago, for a short while, the enchantress and I had enjoyed each other’s company. Until a young cousin of the Toths’, the late Corric Mattock, had thoroughly distracted her. Feeling disheartened, I had snuck into a Phynnic masquerade ball one evening, looking for Amara. Instead, I’d found a young Princess hiding in the garden away from prying eyes. At that moment, I, too, had become thoroughly distracted.

I now found myself similarly preoccupied with a certain Queen, who I’d so recklessly underestimated. When Sybilla glanced up at me, the glimmer of her weak smile faded. A chair was left for me on the opposite side of the table.

Between us, Fenris and his Star-wielder sat with their chairs bumped together, arm-in-arm.

The healer from Luz, Wyeth, sat opposite them beside a tall brunette wearing dusty war leathers—Cassidee, I presumed from Sybilla’s descriptions of her new Constable. The two of them were teaching a mop-headed boy with a missing front tooth how to move water from one glass to another with his Source power.

It was the boy Sybilla had found before the festival, the one who’d nearly gotten her killed on her first night in Sahlmsara. The same boy who could very well be the only hope to solve my realm’s endless droughts. I suddenly wished we’d included more context in our invitation because this was no conversation for a child’s ears.

Before sitting, I crossed the room to where Sybilla sat. I bent and placed a lingering kiss on her brow. She couldn’t hide her expression of surprise as I lowered my lips to the space just below her ear and said, “Be angry as long as you’d like. You know what it does for me.”

The icy smile she offered as I righted myself made me smirk. “Oh, I will,” she answered through clenched teeth.

“Where is Elsedora?” I asked her quietly.

Sybilla tilted her head and narrowed her eyes. “Likely helping Ryn dress himself,” she said with a knowing glare. “You broke four of his ribs…”

“It could have been more,” I drawled under my breath as I crossed the room to my seat.

Asterie sat to my left, a black robe slung over her chair, and she fanned herself with a handkerchief. Fen’s signature patched green cloak had been discarded on his chair as well, and the sleeves were rolled up on his cream tunic.

I leaned over to address Asterie quietly. “Sybilla’s dosage of tonics isn’t enough—has Healer Mortag returned?”

Fen’s eyebrows rose as Asterie turned her head to me and said, “No, but he finally wrote Wyeth that he is on his way to Luz. I’ll send him here right away when he arrives. She didn’t tell me she was struggling.”

Twisting a cloth napkin in my hands before placing it in my lap, I hummed an acknowledgment. Since Sybilla had told me she was tripling her doses, it had grated on me. “She’s been under a lot of stress,” I answered, hating that I was a contributing factor to that stress.

For the first time, the former High Enchantress’ gaze softened when she beheld me.

If only I could get a very stubborn Queen to stop staring daggers at me now.