Page 39 of A Chill in the Flame
Her screaming stopped. Its final echoes crawled from the cave, hollow as the sound escaped over the waves. Her throat ached from the exertion. Her eyes burned from the tears that had stung her. Now that she’d created her monster,she didn’t know what to do with it. Harland had been so quick to behead her snake when they’d been on the cliff. Dwyn hadn’t looked even the least bit afraid. Now that she was alone with the animal, she started to remember why she’d chosen the image of a snake in the first place. She found them utterly terrifying. They were the most horrible thing she could imagine, and now she was sharing a suffocatingly small sea cave with the coiled tendril of an enormous reptile.
It swerved as it observed its surroundings, slowly unraveling itself like rope on a dock. It had been interested in the flame in the center of the room until Ophir made the mistake of taking a sideways step and catching its attention. It whipped its head around with unnatural speed.
She raised her hands to placate it, but her heart began to pick up its pace. Fear crept through her as she attempted to speak. “I created you, snake. Stand down.”
What was she saying? It didn’t speak the common tongue. It was a scaly brute.
It flicked out its tongue to taste the air around it and unhinged its jaw, revealing the horrible venom she’d spent weeks envisioning as it dripped from the creature’s fangs.
“It’s okay, snake,” she tried to say, but she didn’t believe her own words. Sensing her uncertainty, it began to rear its head.
Though the princess’s heart was in an arrhythmia of panicked humming, she locked in on an idea. She raised a hand and began to manipulate her ball of light, drawing the creature’s attention to the movement of the orb while she slowly backed out of the cave. The serpent moved with unnatural ease as it cocked its head, continuing to flick its tongue as it tested the air around it. Ophir continued to move the ball of light toward the back of the cave, drawing the serpent to the shallow pool. Her back was to the sea as she took step after step, putting more and more distance between herself and the snake. The tide was beginning to come in. The waves were louder as they broke on the cliffs and hadbegun to conceal the slippery rocks that had allowed her access to the cave.
She didn’t want to put her back toward the serpent, but once she reached the mouth of the cave, she needed to turn and run if she wanted to get to shore before the waves made it any higher. In her foolish haste, she’d scarcely made it onto the second, sea-slick rock before a wave cracked against her legs, knocking her feet out from beneath her. The wave shoved her with rough hands from the boulder and rammed her body into the vertical cliffs of Castle Aubade.
Ophir thrashed for the surface, finding air as the wave withdrew. She knew it was preparing to crash again as she reached for the boulder. Her fingers scraped against the sharp, glasslike shards of the mussels and mollusks that clung to the protrusion, desperate to find a way to grip the perilous rock. She held on tight as another wave crashed down on her, filling her mouth with seawater and bits of sand. Her body was not thrown into the cliff this time, giving her just enough time to pull her knee up onto the stone and attempt to stand. A deep, gory slash carved across her leg as a broken barnacle bit into her flesh, but she made it to her feet.
She had mere seconds to jump to the next rock when she realized her flame had gone out. The dark silhouette of a reptile was slowly slithering its way out of the cave. It was following her.
Adrenaline and fear drowned out the sounds of the rising tide and crashing waves. She leapt onto the next rock. Pain shot through her wounded leg and found her on unsteady feet, crunching down onto her knees with a horrible, squelching impact. The snake’s attentions whipped to her movements as its huge, rope-like body finished slithering from the sea cave completely and onto the rock, fixated on her.
She turned for the snake and called upon fire once more, flinging the ball into the sky to tempt the beast’s attentions. Her flame needed to be high enough so that the punishing water would not extinguish it, but as the sea around her rose,the waves came down with increasing intensity. She couldn’t watch to see if her attempt was successful, making yet another jump for one in a line of five more slippery boulders before she was safely on shore. She yelped unwillingly as the gash in her leg and pain in her knees caused her stomach to churn.
She jumped again, slipping on the disgusting, slick surface that came from years of seaweed, muck, and grime, making traction impossible with the rising tide. She slipped again and this time, the ocean succeeded in shoving her into the tight space between the boulder and the cliff. The moment she hit the water, she felt the terrible impact of her skull as it bounced off of the sheer, unforgiving wall of the cliff. She couldn’t so much as gasp in surprise as seawater pushed itself down her throat. The wave pulled away, but she didn’t have time to grab for a rock before she was being shoved against the cliff once more.
A rough, horrible feeling lanced through her as her neck jerked backward and upward. A man had a handful of her hair and was yanking her from the water like one might grab the scruff of a kitten. His other hand gripped her shirt, yanking her indelicately from the only two places he’d been able to take hold. He had her up and out of the water just as another rising wave smothered them. Fortunately, the man was anchored by enough weight and traction from his heavy boots that he was not knocked from where he knelt. It was not Harland.
“Can you walk?” The stranger yelled the question over the sounds of the sea.
She wasn’t sure if she could, but as her eyes caught the dark movement of the snake, she knew her fire had gone out once more. She tried to raise her hands, but he seemed to know what she intended.
“Forget it,” the rough, masculine voice insisted. “We have to get out of here.”
He grabbed her by the elbow both to urge her forward and to steady her as they covered the remaining distance toreach shore, escaping the violence of the rising tide. She wanted to collapse upon the sand, but the snake was closing in. It seemed to have a problem with the water as it slithered over the slippery stones and swam when the waves pressed in.
“The snake,” she gasped.
“Command it!” he yelled at her.
She coughed up bile and seawater.
“I—”
“Command it, Ophir.”
“I told it to stand down and—”
“Snakes can’t stand!” the man barked in response.
She blinked up at the dark stranger and then at the snake as it closed in on them. The princess didn’t have time to argue. They didn’t have time. She raised her hand and shouted at the beast, “Stop.”
It obeyed. It tilted its head with what may have looked like curiosity. Though its large face stayed still, its body continued its slithering journey to join the rest of its vertebrae and coil beneath it on the rock nearest the shore. It tasted the air as it had done in the cave.
She coughed again and he slapped her roughly on the back to help her dispel whatever remained of the salt in her belly.
“Get rid of it,” he said.
Conflicting emotions jolted her. “You want me to kill it?”
