Page 59 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

I repress a groan. “Why must you always ruin my fun? I thought that was our eldest’s job.” Even if his position is only what it is because of a few months’ difference.

“Ruen is the only one of us who seems to plan ahead. He got you out of the trouble you caused by killing Rahela,” Theos replies. “The Gods need to think that we are under control—”

“The Gods do not understand systems without a hierarchy,” I snap, cutting him off as my smile falls away completely. “I am my own hierarchy, Theos. Do not push me on this.”

“This is fucked up, you know that, right?” he demands. “She’s mortal and she’s hiding something. If you did anything to break her—”

I hold my hand up, halting him. “You need not worry about our Terra’s physical constitution,” I assure him, recalling just how hard she’d fought both on land and underwater.

It makes my blood race just thinking about it. I reach up and touch the side of my nose in fond memory of when she’d kicked it so hard, she’d broken it. I wonder how she’d fare against me and my familiars. I shiver just thinking of the pleasure it would bring to see her fight against the hold of my snakes as I pinned her down and fucked into her sweet cunt.

“She’s just fine,” I tell my brother.

Gold eyes narrow on me, suspicion curling in their depths. “She’s not hurt, then?”

I cock my head to the side a little bit, my lips twitching with remembered amusement. “She’s well,” is all I say.

Theos stares at me for a moment and I wait, expecting him to say something else and he doesn’t disappoint. “Ruen thinks that once everyone has forgotten her punishment, perhaps in another semester or two, we can request a new Terra and she’ll be reassigned. He’s spoken to the Terra Librarian about having her work with—”

A snarl releases from my chest before I can hold it back. My fangs punch out of my gums and I have my hand wrapped around the railing, the wood creaking under my grip. “She is not leaving,” I snap. “It is not an option.”

Theos’ eyes widen. “Kalix.”

“Not. An. Option.” I repeat the words, even as the lisp from my fangs makes enunciating them a bit harder than it usually would. My vision flashes blue and green, my serpent’s sight, and then quickly flickers back to normal as I take a breath and settle the rage in my blood. I inhale deeply, pulling on the excruciatingly fresh memory of her skin, of her blood dripping as I fucked into her hot, tight little cunt.

My fangs retract and when I look back at my brother, calm has settled once more. I release the railing.

“Fucking shit.” He gapes at me and stumbles a step back before pointing. “Tell me you didn’t.”

I straighten and stare down my nose at him. “Tell you I didn’t what?”

“You fucked her, but did you scent mark her?”

I don’t answer.

“You did, didn’t you?” He brings his fist down on the railing at the end of the stairs and the whole thing groans. “No, Kalix. You cannot do this. You fucking can’t scent mark her unless you intend to keep her and you don’t keep—”

“I’m keeping her.”

“You fucking snake.” Anger bleeds into his expression, but so, too, does jealousy.

“Yes, I am.” I offer him a shrug. “And you’re an idiot for pissing the little Terra off with whatever you said to her.”

He stiffens and his hand drops away from the railing. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I roll my eyes. After all these years, does he truly believe I don’t know his tells as well as I know my snakes? The dart of his eyes to the left even as he tries to keep a stony face. “Is that so?” I deadpan.

“It is.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about,” I tell him. I let my grin grow as I take a step down. “In fact, since you’ve fucked her and now so have I—perhaps we could share just like we used to. Do you think the Terra would like you in her cunt while I opened her pretty ass for my cock?”

Theos is up the stairs in a blink, hands fisted in my tunic and shoving me against the wall so hard that something cracks. I laugh, unafraid. I could turn him, flip us both—by the Gods, it would be easy to send him sailing over the railing to break his fucking legs. He’d heal, of course, but not as fast if I don’t immediately take him to a healer and let his bones knit together wrong so that they’ll have to be re-broken before they’re set and healed again.

I do nothing, though, simply content to have a front row seat to my brother’s downfall as he realizes that he wants her just as much as I do and that I’m not backing down. He knows he wants her, but … what he said? She’s hiding secrets? Perhaps Theos isn’t as much of an idiot as I once thought.

“What’s going on here?”

Theos releases me the second he hears Ruen’s deep rumbling question. I arch a brow, silently daring him to tell our brother, but all he does is shoot me an angry look and then turn on his heel. I smile, taking two strides to reach the railing as I watch him stomp back down the stairs, bypass Ruen without so much as a word, and slam the door to his bedroom behind him.

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