Page 81 of Her Rabid Beasts

Five figures loom over me, all dressed in ripped black jeans and black t-shirts and hoodies. These are serpent students from the academy. Not any of the generals from my father’s inner circle. A small part of me relaxes.

Someone steps in front of me and tight fingers lash around my throat. A voice growls in my ear. “What the fuck is your secret, Aquinas?”

I grit my teeth against the digging fingers restricting my air supply.

My father knows about my venom trick because my mother was the same. We’re immune to the venom of any creature, probably because we can turn into any of them. Those fingers squeeze my airway further and I wheeze audibly. But it makes my vision narrow. A wave of fresh panic clears my eyes and I recognise the face?—

“Stop it, Thaddis,” hisses the lone female anima, dragging out theslike the feral she is.

Thaddis, a blonde, muscular anaconda, lets go and I gasp in the damp air, each breath painful and strained. As he removes his grip I notice, on the back of his hand, the same black and green tattoo that had been etched on Thomas Krait’s hand. Astylistic ‘B’ encircled by a black snake with long, serrated fangs and startling crimson eyes.

“What the fuck do you want?” I wheeze out. I need to find out their plan. Get them talking.

The only female, Natalia, steps around Thaddis and I mark the five of their faces. Natalia is a cobra, there are two pythons, a black mamba, and Thaddis the anaconda. I know Thaddis and Natalia from my father’s court. The other three didn’t grow up near me or I didn’t see them around as children.

“Tali,” I say smoothly. There’s water still dripping down my face and it slides down my forehead, getting in my eye. I blink irritably against it. “Didn’t you come to my tenth birthday party? I thought we had a good time.”

She’s a waifish brunette with a venom identification number along her cheek and as a child, she was a whining, meek sort of girl. How times have changed.

“We were all forced to come to your stupid party,” she sneers down at me. The black eyeliner under her eyes accentuates her green irises, making her look predatory and cruel. Her black leggings are strategically ripped, and the black hoodie she wears dwarfs her frame. By the way the two pythons possessively flank her, I take them to be a mating group. “You never had any real friends.”

“It was a great party, though,” I muse. I will not give this bitch the upper hand by showing fear. “That pink cake tasted so good.”

Natalia spits at my feet and points at me. It’s then that I see she has the same ‘B’ tattoo on her hand. “You didn’t deserve any of it, you ugly whore. Especially not after what you did to Theo.”

That cuts deeper than any other thing she could have said. My heart sinks, but I don’t lower my gaze from hers as I say quietly. “What does my dad want?”

There’s a collective hiss that echoes around the chambers of the cavern walls. How did they even find this place? I don’t know how far they’ve moved me, but if it’s in the school, then help will not be far.

Of course, they spent weeks planning this. They must have been waiting for the one day both the headmistressandthe deputy headmaster were gone from the academy.

“His Majesty,is not your dad,” Thaddis snaps. “You’re just property. Livestock.” He gestures to the black mamba with the inky comb-over. He’s short and slender, with lip and brow piercings, and takes out a roll of material from a backpack.

He gets down on his knees before me.

My heart thunders in my chest and I try to kick out of the rope and shackles tying me to my chair. I try summoning my power once again… but it’s like trying to draw breath in a vacuum--there’s nothing to pull.

“Yuran has a special talent,” Natalia says smugly. “He was taught by his father.”

The name rings a bell. I wrack my brain, trying to remember the serpents on my father’s payroll.

“For you,” Yuran’s voice is barely above a whisper, “we’ll do something special.”

It’s the thump of the roll of fabric falling open that triggers the memory for me.

Metal instruments gleaming in the moody light of my father’s throne room, knives of different lengths and widths, metal pliers, screws, a tiny, jagged saw…

All the blood drains from my face.

He’s the son of one of my father’s six masked generals. They called him the?—

“So she remembers the Serpent Charmer,” sneers Natalia.

Fuck.

Yuran smiles faintly as he lovingly gazes down at his torture set and then selects a black knife as wide as one of my fingers. “His Majesty knows everything. There is no point trying to hide.”

“If he knows everything, then why bother questioning me?” I say quickly, my eyes on all that lethal metal.

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