Page 96 of Servitude to Serpents

He didn’t send me here.

He didn’t send me back here.

I sob, the realization ripping the hole in my chest wider because of course, he’d try to protect me, control my fate even after tossing me out. He loves me.

She wiggles out of her underwear, jerking my face into her cunt. “Lick it like I taught you.”

I drag my tongue over her soaked core, letting my mind drift to molten hazel eyes and the depths of the sea. It’s her nasty, scathing voice, so much like Grandma’s, that forces me back from that faraway place. “He never saw it coming, not until it was too late. It was Bloom's bullet that pierced his father’s arrogant skull. As if fucking Tyet has the balls to turn on the proud House of Serpents.” She lets out a throaty moan as I slow. “How ironic that all these years later, we take from him again, right under his nose.”

I still, her words sinking in as she grinds into my face, making it impossible to breathe.

“Fuck, there you go.”

I don’t know if it’s the lack of oxygen, that admittance given in the heat of the moment, or the deep lashes covering my front that make my eyes roll back in my skull, darkness edging my vision.

Chapter thirty-seven

To own is to… Mar

Warrick

My head pounds relentlessly as Henrietta's voice shrills outside the doors to my office.

“…Sir, she’s refusing to leave. I-I apologize, but she’s already in the foyer.”

My back aches in protest as I sit up, upsetting the glass that had been forgotten on my lap. The sound of it shattering only adds to the constant prick of needles assaulting my temples. For a moment, that strange wave of unease hits me dead in the chest, making my eyes flare wide, my hangover forgotten as I try to make sense of the dark office, looking for the only teacher keeping me topside. The faint rustle of chain and leather frays the worst of the never-ending pressure in my chest as I find her collar amongst the disheveled papers.

The next pounding seems to pick up a harmonic rhythm with the one in my head, this one originating from the heavy wooden doors. “Get your ass up and deal with this, or I will!” Stuart booms. You’d think after Pup was gone, he’d have been pleased. I suppose he was for the first few days, when I was still halfof a functional being. Before sleep only fed me dreams featuring her, so I started avoiding it. Before everything else lost its interest and flavor too.

The sound of the banisters on my bed groaning under her thrashing weight makes bile dance in my stomach, upsetting the copious amounts of liquor, cigars, and jerky that seem to sustain me. That agonizing memory is enough to incite that anger…the one I no longer control, so I don’t breathe as it carries me from my dark office. Yesterday’s suit is wrinkled and musty. I squint at the bright hall, shooting a warning glance at Stuart as I pass him.

“You look like shit, Basilisk,” Mahari goads as she sees me pass the landing. Again, far too bold for her own good. If she even knew, or maybe she does. Maybe she just doesn’t care. I certainly wouldn’t.

Where I was once a king, stalking the halls of his empire, now, I’m a fucking wraith, an omen haunting the tainted halls.

“I will ask you one more time:whereis she?”

I smirk. The movement feels putrid as I reach her. “Gone, but you knew that.”

The woman’s eyes widen and mist, her delicate brow twisted in anger. “Did you kill her?”

I scoff.

“You fucking monster. Tell me what you did with Chloe,now!”

Chloe.

“I sold her to her new keepers, for a hefty price.” The words are acid on my tongue, and when she makes a shocked, distressed sound, her hand flying out to connect with my face, I don’t stop her. Her slap stings far less than what I deserve.

“You’ve killed her.”

My jaw clenches.

“She adored you, and you’ve tossed her out?” Her voice is thick with emotion, proving it was only Pup’s tears I could tolerate. “I know of thereturn clause. Have you sent her back to that awful house? Why? Why would you do that to her?”

Why, indeed?

Because I’m a miserable fucked up bastard.

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