Page 51 of Serpents of the Night

“You betrayed me,” he said quietly, drawing his mother’s stricken gaze to him. Deep down within her hardened heart, he was sure some small part of her believed that she loved him. “You killed the only thing that I loved. You destroyed my happiness.”

Her jaw quivered and clenched. “I had no choice. You were too proud and insistent to listen to what the shinara needs. Or what needed to be done to satisfy Shangla.”

His eyes bore into her mercilessly. “You assume too much, mother, to think that you can speak for all, much less for Shangla.”

“I... am... the queen... matriarch,” she spat, twin streams of venom arch and splattering on the floor in front of him. “I am the vessel of Shangla in the shinara. She moves my hand. She removed your mate and her brood from the sands of Seshana through me! And Payeri was eager to serve her will!”

He regarded the splattered venom silently. She would never see that she was wrong in what she had done. At least he finally knew for certain even though it tore into him like the clawed limbs of a zarkulth. His eyes lifted coldly to his mother.

“I hope that you will remember your words and find comfort in the fate you have created for yourself when the gods of destiny feast leisurely upon your bones next.”

Her expression hardened as she moved back from him, her expression closing completely. “You are upset, so you are not thinking clearly before you speak. I will not hold it against you—this time. It will not go unpunished, however. We will see if a few rotations without my tenderness will make you change your mind. The palace gets cold, and nothing enjoys even the simple pleasure of a mouthful of food or a sip of tea without my say so. A few days without these comforts will make you think more clearly. I will return then for your apology.”

She swept from the room, her wings fanning and snapping angrily as she left. He watched her go, feeling nothing but hatred as the door was drawn shut and locked behind her. He dropped onto his coils where he was, his gaze fixed on the fire glowing in its pit. There would be no fuel, no food, no clean water—he welcomed the suffering.

Folding his arms on the upper coil of his tail, he settled within it, his eyes watching the dancing flames until they began to slowly diminish as the hours passed and eventually died. He tightened his tail around himself and allowed himself to drift in and out of slumber as the endless march of time blurred together. It was better to sleep. He could ignore the ache of hunger that eventually gnawed at him and the burning thirst that grew even more terrible as the days passed. He knew only from those signs that much time had passed during which he lay unmoving from that spot. A Seshanamitesh could go long without food or drink before it began to truly be a source of discomfort for them.

He embraced the pain, his mind turning to his mate unable to keep himself from imagining how she had suffered dying upon the dunes. It tormented it and at some point, he began to shake uncontrollably but he was not sure if it was due entirely to his grief or the cold slowly making his muscles spasm as they began to tighten. He was surrounded in an abyss of darkness and misery, cut off from the wide expanses of the night that had offered him freedom. He was lost and dying.

He wanted to just hurry up and die, if nothing else, to thwart his mother’s plans before she returned for him. Jathella had abandoned him. He settled deeper in the darkness of his mind. He would sleep endlessly.

The darkness could not maintain its hold on him. Claws scored the abyss and drove forward to sink into his scales, dragging him up off the floor. Slengral fought for consciousness as pain scored his sides as he was shaken.

“Wake up! Hurry,” a familiar voice hissed.

His eyelids fluttered open, and his eyes rolled over to the source of the voice. Jathella glared back at him with concern as she gave him another brutal—and very painful—shake.

“You came,” he whispered and could have laughed at the indignant look that crossed her face.

“Of course I came. I swore my oath. It was just more difficult than I had imagined,” she explained and grunted as she shouldered his weight. “The queen matriarch has imprisoned everyone who opposes her. She has even locked down the spire, trapping the holy matriarchs within it when they protested against her for moving forward with her plan to breed you.” She hissed in disbelief. “I cannot believe that she would do something so forbidden that violates the sacredness of the pheromone bond.” She looked over him with concern. “And look now what she had done to you!”

“She has done worse,” he mumbled, his tongues feeling thick in his dry mouth. Jathella gave him a concerned look and lifted a water skin to his lips, pouring water into his mouth so that he could drink it down eagerly. Once satisfied, he handed it back and regarded her solemnly as she looped the bag across her chest as she gave him a questioning look. “She is the one who is responsible for Payeri killing Lori.”

A soft sound of despair drew his gaze quickly to the door, his weakened body stiffening, preparing to fight. The tension drained out of him, however, when his eyes fell on Kitanara. The females shared an unspeakable look between them and Jathella’s head turned to peer down at him with worry.

“You are certain?”

His gavo snapped weakly, and despite how sick it made him to do so, he repeated all of the vile things the queen matriarch spewed at him. The sisters listened, though it was clear that it made them distraught to do so, but gradually the shock and betrayal bled from their faces and was replaced with a fury that still burned within him.

“I will avenge my mate,” he growled, his voice slurring as his large body swayed. “I will destroy everyone who killed her.”

Kitanara shifted to his other side and gripped him as well. “You are not in any position to avenge anyone right now. You are too weak, Slengral, you cannot even fly in your current state. Let us help you. You can have some peace knowing that I killed Payeri by my own hand. Part of your vengeance has been paid. The rest can wait longer. Let us return you to your nest brothers. They are waiting for you.”

“They wait?” he echoed, hardly able to believe that they were waiting for him to join them.

“They have been searching the desert in the area that Buosoa and I left Lori,” Jathella clarified. “We will search together.”

His head lulled, his newly regained energy fading rapidly. “Together,” he rasped in agreement, his gavo twitching without even the strength to lift.

Held between them, the females lifted him from the floor and carried him from the room. The palace was silent. He wondered at the time, but he could not even drag enough air into his ethin. He had to trust the females as they carried him quickly through the palace. His eyes fell upon unconscious guards lying in the halls, but the image felt distant to him as if he were looking at memorials of events that had already passed. He felt nothing at all. He could not even savor the triumph of the moment. He felt insubstantial, his consciousness drifting as they left the palace and rose into the air.

The higher they went, the warmer it got, and after so many days in the numbing cold of the palace, he tipped his head back in pleasure and embraced it. Even the heat on the surface, though it burned and stabbed at his eyes, he could not hate it as they flew for hours on end before burying into the sand to wait out the hottest part of the day. He was fed water and bits of food as he was warmed by the sand and regained his strength as he waited for the day to come to an end. As soon as the primary sun began to drop, they flew again.

He knew that he was slowing them down and on the second day he spread his wings and helped bear his own weight as they flew with him through the sky. His strength was returning far more slowly than he liked but he was free, and he would not die now.

He would find Lori... and then.... he would find vengeance with his nest brothers.

Chapter 42

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