“News travels fast down here,” I mutter, curious how she has already gotten word of the incident from just moments ago.
Severa doesn’t even spare me a glance, as if my very existence is an inconvenience she must navigate around. Still, there's genuine worry in her voice for Varok, a reminder of their long history together, of the attack she survived when his brothers didn't.
"The TrueCoil grows bolder," Varok says, his voice a low rumble that vibrates through my chest and settles lower, like warm honey pooling in forbidden places. "Their marks were fresh in the merchant quarter.”
Varok sets me on my feet with a gentleness that belies his warrior's frame, yet my fingers remain curled against the smooth scales at his shoulders. His body radiates heat like the heartstone itself, a primal comfort I'm not ready to relinquish. The solid presence of him feels like an anchor in this strange world. When his heavy braid brushes my wrist, I'm startled by its unexpected softness, like molten silk against my skin.
“You are safe within these walls, Leira,” he states as something flickers across his fierce features, a momentary softening that catches in my chest like a hook.
Only when his warm palm settles against my arm do I force my hands to fall away, though the phantom imprint of his scales lingers on my fingertips.
Across the room, Severa watches us with a gaze like winter frost; her scales contracting against her frame as if physically rejecting what she witnessed. The air between us grows heavy with her silent condemnation; each breath she takes seems to pull the warmth from the chamber, leaving only the chill of her disapproval in its wake.
Varok glides across the chamber, his movements liquid yet purposeful, and stops before what I had mistaken for merely another ornamentation embedded in the wall. When his clawed fingertips brush against a particular constellation of biotech veins, the smooth, flat stone glows with spectral light.
The surface flickers and swirls, colors shifting like oil on water until they coalesce and a naga appears on the screen. I step closer, fascinated despite myself.
“Malikor,” Varok addresses the image, his voice sharp with command. “Send reinforcements to the market district. Zaethir and Nirik need assistance tracking those cloaked figures. And dispatch two Talons to my den immediately. My den keeper needs an escort. Full armor.”
The bronze-scaled warrior straightens to attention. Broad-shouldered and rigid with discipline, his pale green gaze flickers like tempered glass, missing nothing. He inclines his umber head, the cold gleam of discipline in his narrowing pupils. “At once, Prithas.”
“The TrueCoil dares to set its gaze upon my bloodmate.” A hard ripple courses down Varok’s spine, scales lifting in silent warning. “I will not permit those under my protection to suffer from their defiance.”
My blood pulses faster at his words, at how easily he claims me as his, how naturally the term falls from his lips. Not human. Not offering.Bloodmate. The distinction sends warmth to my cheeks.
The glass ripples and goes dark as Varok turns back to us, his jaw set with determination. His gaze fixes on Severa, who still coils rigidly by the heartstone.
"Severa," he says, his voice commanding but not unkind, "when the Talon’s arrive, you will be escorted to Furra in the market district. The garment she is creating for Leira fortonight's audience with the Crown must be collected as soon as Furra sews the last stitch."
She obediently bobs her head though her scales ripple with obvious displeasure, golden eyes darting to me with barely concealed contempt.
The air between them tightens with unspoken tension. I can almost feel Severa's resistance, see the protest forming on her lips. But before she can voice it, the entrance to the den pulses. Varok glides over to stand before it, revealing two armored warriors.
I have never witnessed naga clad in full battle regalia. During the Sundering, my sister and I were always hidden away, shielded from the front lines, unlike our older brother who fell in battle. Nothing in my sheltered past prepares me for the sight before me now.
Their upper bodies are encased in fitted titanite plates that seem to absorb rather than reflect the surrounding light. Their faces are obscured by ceremonial masks that leave only their slitted gazes visible. They move with silent, lethal grace, powerful tails barely disturbing the air as they approach Varok and bow their heads in perfect unison.
"I will return as soon as the human's garment is ready," Severa tells Varok, her tail tip flicking against the stone floor like a metronome counting down her patience.
As she turns to leave, scales rippling with barely concealed disdain, Varok's voice cuts through the air between them, low and irrefutable. "Severa. The human is my bloodmate, and she has a name. Use it."
The den keeper freezes mid-turn, her tail tip twitching once before she inclines her head in the barest acknowledgment. "As you command, Prithas." The two armored Talons flank her immediately, their masks betraying no emotion as they position themselves at precise distances from her. She slips out throughthe entrance with her silent guardians, the stone parting and resealing behind them in one fluid motion.
I wait until the stone fully solidifies before I turn to Varok, unable to contain my questions any longer.
"What exactly are the TrueCoil? Why do they hate our bond so much? And why were they in the market today?" The questions spill from me like water breaching a dam, each one hanging in the air between us, invisible yet palpable as smoke.
Varok moves to the heartstone, his massive form casting long shadows as the crystal flares to meet him, bright, then brighter still, as if the very walls of his den sense the heaviness of all I need to know.
"The TrueCoil," he begins, coiling his lower half into a tight spiral, "are naga purists who believe we should have never bowed to peace. They see the treaty with humans as a betrayal of blood." His golden eyes fix on me, unblinking. "And they view our union as heresy."
I sink onto one of the cushioned loungers, my legs suddenly hollow. The satchel slips from my shoulder and lands with a soft thud against the stone floor, forgotten as I absorb his words. "Zara mentioned the Flame showed resistance from them.”
"An understatement," Varok says, his mouth twisting. “The TrueCoil are not merely agitators. They are fanatics, insurrectionists who believe humans are a disease upon our kind. To them, your people are weak, unworthy, and beneath the dignity of even our scorn.”
He uncoils and recoils, his agitation evident in the restless movement, the obsidian sheen of his lower coils glinting with molten undertones, like embers shifting beneath blackened stone. “They rose up centuries ago, when the Crown first dared to speak of allegiance with humans. They called it heresy, and their fury ignited the Sundering. Hundreds of years of war wereborn from their conviction that peace would corrupt what we are.”
Varok’s jaw tightens. “When the Crown’s forces broke up their rebellion, they did not vanish. They burrowed into the shadows, rooting themselves in our society like rot beneath the scales. Every whisper of treaty, they soured. Every step toward peace, they unmade.”
