She follows closely behind while the others stay back, watching from a distance. “Where are the rest of you?” I snap over my shoulder, peering back at Melsya.
Her eyes roam over the room before refacing me. “Dead or gone.”
Scanning the room one more time, and seeing several more females appear in the doorways and tunnels on the other side, I am surprised I count so few.
Melsya hisses again, forcing my attention back on her. “Through here.” She points at the tunnel entrance directly to my right. “Use your nose to reach the exit, the air gets clearer as you get near.” She moves to the tunnel but stops at the threshold, shifting to the side to let me pass. As I enter the darkened path ahead, I scan her frail form once more. “This is the last time we will speak, Darolus.”
Looking away from her as her words sink in, I stare off into the darkness, already searching for Sabrina, regret and worry filling me that I have sent her into danger willfullybecause I was hurt. But Melsya’s words draw my attention back to her. “What do you mean the last time?”
“We will be leaving and finding a new home immediately.”
Meeting her dark gaze in the gloom of blue light, I see the truth to her words, and that she means what she says.
“We will not need your offerings anymore,” she continues.
I have known her longer than any other being, and seeing her for the first time in seasons, after so long, a sadness hits me that I have not felt before. “Why?”
She turns her head away, looking at the other females in the room, her eyes going distant. “You were right. We have been taking many risks, far more now than we have in many seasons. It seemssss that with time, things change, and so do our choices.” She peers back up at me. “We have missed much that has happened in the land since we left, and though some of us may yet remain in isolation, the rest of us understand that way can no longer last as we are.”
Taking in the barrenness of their home, I shake my head. “You may die if you leave.”
“We are old, Darolus. Like you. And many of us have died down here in the dark. No more. At least not for me. I will return to the forest and see my clan once more if they should still be there, and let the last seasons of my life end, seeking that path and rejoining with them. I miss my father, my brother.”
“Melsya,” I say her name, picturing her as she once was in her youth, strong and warrior-like, unrelenting until the very end, especially against her opponents. “I am sad to see you go.”
We may not have spoken in ages but she is kindred all the same. Right now she feels like the closest being I have toa sibling, and I wonder why so many emotions are rising in me. Between Sabrina and Melsya…
I am losing everything.
A pain in my chest blooms deep inside, unlike anything I have experienced before, and I press my hand to my heart.
“I am not,” Melsya huffs. “I am tired of the dark.” She sweeps her tail across the floor. “Thank you for helping protect us, for keeping one of the entrances to our home safe, but your services are no longer needed, Titanoboa. You are free to go, and you must.”
There is a rush of low hisses from the rest of the female nagas. Giving them all one last look, I meet their eyes in the low blue light. Afterward, I face Melsya again. “I will not forget you.”
“Find her—” she tilts her head in the direction I need to go “—before another does and takes what you should have never let go.”
I grumble, my hands fisting at their sides. Turning back to the path ahead, I head into the tunnels without another thought, anxious now more than ever to have Sabrina safely back in my arms.
Melsya is right.
I should have never let her go.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE WRECK
Sabrina
Right in themiddle of a deeply crevassed street with rocks and dirt piling up under the shattered cement, between another pile of jagged and crushed rock and in a space barely wide enough to allow it to sit flat upon it, is…
The Wreck.
Staring at the faded silver facade, the bent-back wings, and the thick front body in almost overwhelming disbelief and relief, what has been my home for the past several years is back within my sights. Strangely, it’s a sight I never thought I’d see again.
Yet here I am. I’dhoped, but I’ve hoped for a lot of things that haven’t come true.
I didn’t think I’d find it, just having chosen to start searching for the city limits instead so I can see farther afield, hoping that with some luck I’d be going in the direction of the forest before sundown. If I couldn’t go back toDarolus, and assumingThe Wreckwould already be gone, I planned on heading straight where everyone else had to be.
