Page 89 of The Demon Crown

“Greed?” Gluttony’s voice cut through his thoughts. “Do you have a snake problem?”

“Excuse me?”

Then Greed saw it. The massive snake shifted through the sands, its scales glinting in the sunlight where it poked through the desert before sinking back down. A snake who should have been dead for hundreds of years and yet, apparently, had woken.

“The desert takes what it wants,” Greed muttered, the words from an old kingdom that had long fallen underneath the sands. “We feed it blood, and the beasts rise from the deep.”

“What are you muttering?”

“This is a problem,” he snapped. “Bigger than that fucking Horde who I assume is behind all this. We’re following the beast, Gluttony.”

“Of course.” His brother kicked his nuckelavee’s sides and Greed wished once again for his own mount as they raced across the desert after the ancient snake that should be asleep. “Why wouldn’t we follow the snake?”

ChapterThirty-One

She’d gotten the damn healing artifact. And she’d done it in the most reckless way possible, almost as though she was trying to make Greed angry at her. But he’d been so pushy with his opinions. So certain he knew exactly who she was and why she did everything that she did.

It was fucking wrong.

She didn’t risk her life because she wanted to prove to herself that her life didn’t matter. Varya was smarter than that. She risked her life because others needed her and that was the only reason she’d almost fallen multiple times in that ancient tomb. The only reason she’d thrown a rope across a chasm and not tested to see if it would hold her weight.

She was and always would be, a good thief who knew how to navigate a tomb. Varya didn’t need the idiot king who had made her entire kingdom fall to pieces, anyway. Why did he think he was better than her?

Their argument continued to roll over and over in her mind. Greed had been so smug telling her that she didn’t care about herself and so someone had to. He hadn’t taken a word of her argument as the truth that it was. He’d just dismissed everything she said! Like he had that right. Like he was the only person in the kingdom who didn’t have to work on himself.

Not that she had to work on herself. Varya was just fine the way she was, and he’d never convince her otherwise. She wasn’t taking risks without realizing the danger. She saw it. Every bit of the danger that she walked into, and she loved it.

She raided tombs every week! By all the seven kingdoms, she’d been just fine before him and now he’d wriggled his way underneath her hard exterior and she was worried about taking risks!

Damn him.

Damn that stupid fucking king who thought he knew her.

“Varya?” Altan asked, drawing her to the present. “Are you so sure this is a good idea?”

No. It was a terrible idea. That’s why she’d wanted to come alone. Instead, he had insisted that a small group come with her out into the middle of the desert.

“Not really,” she admitted. “The map doesn’t tell us what the artifacts are. None of us have ever heard of what the Lamp of Origins does. But I still think its better for us to have it than the Horde. And they’d circled this spot.”

Which meant maybe they already had it. And if they did, then they were all risking their necks for nothing. Varya had guided them to the middle of the desert, and their packs were already running low on water.

She stared around her at the few friends who had gotten ancient donkeys and skinny horses, and wondered what she’d dragged them into in her anger at the king. They wore white and tan shrouds over their heads, trying to reflect the heat of the sun as far away from them as possible. They were all hot, though. Sweating right through the shrouds that were supposed to keep them cool and thus wasting even more precious water.

It was cruel to bring them here.

“You should all turn back,” she said, returning her gaze to the basin in the sands. “I don’t know what this item does. I haven’t heard of it before and... well. This is too risky.”

“If you can do it, so can we,” Altan replied. He sat up a little taller on his horse, but it made her heart race to see him like this.

“You have people back home waiting for you. All of you do.” She twisted on her saddle and the nuckelavee beneath her gave a little restless snort. It had been doing that a lot for the past hour. “Don’t put your lives at risk for something we don’t even know about. It might do nothing. The magic in it might be all used up, or the Horde might have already gotten it. We don’t all need to risk our lives.”

She knew they’d argue. Because they had argued with her for hours on end before she’d agreed to let them come with her. Each one of them had looked at the leathery beast she’d stolen from Greed, and they had said they’d go. As protection? She had no idea.

Altan nudged his horse closer to the nuckelavee, or as close as he could without the mount trying to bite the other. “One last time, Varya. Is Greed searching for you? We cannot have any trouble in the town.”

“I don’t think he is.” It was a lie. He was definitely looking for her, but she didn’t think that was going to be a problem for the town.

It was a problem for her.

---