Page 60 of A Reign of Storm and Madness

A laugh bursts out of me and I shake my head. She truly does make things interesting.

Ruen’s brow puckers in confusion as he stares at Theos’ door before he switches his attention to me. “Kalix.”

I wave my hand in his general direction, pushing off the railing. “Don’t worry about it, Ruen,” I say, still chuckling. “I think our baby brother is just experiencing his first case of blue balls since losing his virginity.”

Something hard slams into Theos’ door from the inside in response to that. I go into my own room and close the door, leaving Ruen to deal with Theos’ rage tantrum.

Yes, Kiera Nezerac is far more interesting than any Terra we’ve had before. Perhaps because she’s not really a Terra, but a Mortal God masquerading as such, and even if she hasn’t told me why, I have every intention of taking a note from Theos’ bag of tricks and fucking the answers out of her. I’ll get it sooner or later, and by the Gods, what a true labor of lust this hard work of mine will be.

Chapter 32

Kiera

Two weeks after Rahela’s attack, I wake to a bird’s insistent tapping on my window. A mixture of excitement and relief has me out of bed in an instant, hopping over the new rug that had appeared in my room the day after the attack—no doubt to hide the blood stain I knew for sure wouldn’t come out. No one ever visits a Terra’s room, though, certainly not in the north tower, so no one would suspect that Rahela was killed here unless they came in and either scented the blood or searched for it.

I swing open the window and the bird lands much as it had the last time, little clawed feet on the crossing metal grate. I snatch the scroll on its leg and absently pet its beak with the tip of my finger as I unroll it with my other hand and read the short note written there.

Returned to Riviere. Urgent meeting requested. — R

I frown at the words written. Urgent? That’s basically Regis speak for ‘get your ass back to Madam Brione’s before I come hunting for you myself.’ Is it because he’d heard what happened at the Academy? I release a breath and stop stroking the bird’s beak long enough to walk over to my nightstand and light the candle sitting there. The flame flares to life and I hold the scroll over it, letting it burn to nothing but ash as I scribble out my reply. It only has one word:

Sunday.

That’ll be the only day Ruen will have completely free of training or classes and so will I, now that my duties in the library have been discontinued. I’m ready to call in my favor. As I roll up my note and attach it to the bird’s leg, I spot my spider king crawling across the top of my mattress.

The bird flaps its wings as it leaps away from the window and catches the wind in the perfect gust that allows it to coast along back to Riviere. I shiver as I close the glass and take a step back. That one warm day we’d experienced seems to have been the last one of its kind for quite a while. From the slit of a window in my room, I can spot a light dusting of ice and snow on the ground.

Turning away from the disgusting sight, I drop onto the mattress and hold my hand out for my little familiar. The spider king crawls right into my palm with a new ease that we didn’t have the first time we’d met. I smile and pat its head.

“I think I’ve got a good name for you,” I tell it. “Just let me know what you think of these.”

In response, the spider tilts its little head, bumping it against the pad of my fingertip in a request for more stroking. My smile widens.

“What do you think of Ragno?” I ask, peering down at the creature with curiosity as I send my thoughts to it. I wait, but there’s no responding emotion.

“No?” I sigh. “What about … Xaxis?”

Still, there’s no emotion. Neither negative nor positive. I press my lips together, my slight strokes pausing. “Lacerta?” I ask. “Lacerto?” I glance down and wince. “I don’t know if you’re a boy or a girl,” I admit a bit sheepishly.

The spider’s emotions darken and then it pushes an answer back into my mind. “A girl?” I blink. “A spider queen then, it seems.” The guilt at not recognizing her gender pangs in me, but I overcome it quickly enough as I swap my name ideas and begin rattling them off one after the other.

Each one either gets me no response or a negative one and on one that sounds a bit too close to that of a bird’s name, my little spider queen nips at me.

“Okay,” I say, shaking my hand out. “Definitely not that one then.” I blow out a long breath and set my little friend on the bed next to me. “Let me think a bit more as I get dressed,” I say.

She sits there, my form reflected in eight black eyes as I slip out of my sleep shirt and into the black uniform that I’m still being forced to wear most days. Binding my breasts down and tucking the last thread into the top, it comes to me. Slowly, I look over my shoulder at the spider that sits on my bed as if it’s basking in the warmth of the room and the small kernel of sunlight that streams inside.

“Aranea?”

At the sound of the name, the spider turns and glances at me. She lifts her front two legs and rubs them together as her emotions pour into my mind. Sweet. Comfortable. Right.

I smile. “You like it?”

She rubs her legs together again and I finish dropping the tunic over my head before tucking it into the waistband of my trousers and snatching up my jacket, buttoning it up to my neck. “Then Aranea you shall be,” I tell her. “I think it’s a beautiful name.”

I wonder if she knows, too, what it means. One of the few books in the old language that Ophelia had kept in her personal library was what seemed like a dictionary. I’d been horrid at old language, but I had been curious about what the word for spider had been, and thankfully, someone had drawn the little creature right next to that word and it’d been in the front of the book.

Aranea simply meant spider, and that’s what my spider queen is. She is herself, a spider, a queen, and that’s as simple as it gets.

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