“Have my things moved here,” I command Zaethir and Nirik as I reach my door, the words brittle, each syllable a confession of defeat. “From the sovereign’s quarters. Immediately.”
Inside the chamber glows from the keh’shali illuminating the familiar shapes. The door solidifies, a slab of stone isolating me from the world, and only then do I let the mask fall. I drop the basket and sink to the floor, knees colliding with the smooth chill of rock. Fury should be enough to hold me together, but in its wake comes only emptiness; a hollowing grief, the ache of heartbreak.
My fists clench against the pain, nails biting into my palms. I replay the last few minutes in fragmented flashes: Varok's arms around me, the heat of Emberyn, the guilty look on his face when I accused him of betrayal. The way I felt it through the bond, a surge of cold calculation from him colliding with my own burning rage.
For the first time since the journey from Clavenmoor, I feel utterly alone. I was a fool to imagine I understood naga politics or Varok’s feelings, or my own role in any of it. The worst part is how much I still want to believe he meant me no harm, how the longing hasn’t dulled even in the face of his treachery.
The silence is unbearable. My mind claws for escape, for some small comfort, and lands on the memory of Serin. The bright, bell-like sound of her laughter echoing through the stone corridors of Valen House, the way the corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled at me across the dinner table. I would give anything to be with her now, even for a moment, even if it meant enduring Father's cold lectures. But I am bound here, by blood and by oath and by the damnable thread that now feels like a curse.
I let the tears come, not in a flood but in silent, angry drops that leave no mark. How could I have been so blind?Never trust a serpent,Father used to warn. His words echo, relentless. Grief twists where my heart used to reside whole, each breath a shard of pain.
A soft, sweet scent drifts through the gloom: glimmergrain cakes, warm and almond-scented like home. My heart yearns for Serin. I reach for the basket, fingers trembling as I lift a cake. I close my eyes, inhaling the fragrance of freshly baked almond cookies in Valen House’s cozy kitchen, laughter rising around me as Serin nudges me for the last crumb.
I take a bite. For a heartbeat, sugar melts perfectly…then a cloying bitterness claws at my tongue, reminiscent of the water Varok pressed to my lips after the bombing. Panic spikes. I think of Nirik and the cake I gave him. He can’t eat it! I lurch to my feet, vision blurring as I go to warn him, but my legs betray me. I collapse to the floor, the cake tumbling from my fingers.
A stirring at my waist draws my attention. I glance down just in time to see the silver clasp cinching my tunic slither away, a pale serpent writhing, its eyes flashing malice before darkness claims me.
Chapter Twenty-Two
VAROK
Ilook back, surprised there is not a groove carved into the floor of my chamber from hours of restless motion. The walls press in, suffocating. Every shadow mocks me with her absence. I cannot stop seeing her face. The moment clarity struck, how her eyes widened then hardened, trust crystallizing into betrayal in the space of a heartbeat. I failed her. Not as a sovereign, not as a warrior, but as a bloodmate. The one role that matters more than any crown or battle victory.
"You used me,"she had said, each word a blade between my ribs.
My fist strikes the wall, the impact sending cracks spiderwebbing through ancient stone. The keh’shali flare brilliant azure at the point of impact, pulsing outward along the fracture lines like liquid lightning before gradually fading back to their usual soft glow. Pain radiates up my arm, dull and welcome. A lesser hurt than the ache beneath my scales.
I coil myself tighter then release, a futile attempt to shed the tension gripping me. The empty nest mocks me from across of the chamber, its curves still bearing the impression of her body, the hollow where she slept against me only this morning. I turn away, unable to look at it.
"I command legions," I mutter to the empty room, my voice rough and brittle, sounding foreign to my ears. "I break the spine of human battalions without flinching. Yet one female—my female—has undone me with a single look."
Fury builds within me at myself for the deception, at the prophecy for forcing such burdens upon us, at the war that made such suspicions necessary. But what burns hottest is how completely I failed her when the moment came to explain why we must watch her people. My words tangling and dying before they could form the truth she deserved.
I should have told her about the OathCoil from the beginning. Should have explained how it was placed as a safeguard before I knew her, before I understood what she would become to me. How after the first days I forgot its existence, consumed instead by the miracle of her presence in my life, in my nest, in my arms.
My claws dig crescents into my palms as I whisper into the emptiness, "I should have stopped her. Found the words. Begged if necessary. Anything but watch her walk away thinking I saw her as nothing but a means to power."
I reach reflexively for the bond between us, that warm tether of sensation and emotion that has grown stronger with each passing day. It pulses with her hurt, a distant, muffled agony that mirrors my own. She has not severed it—cannot according to the ancient laws that bind bloodmates—but she has withdrawn as far as the bond allows. The equivalent of turning her back to me across our shared nest.
My tail lashes the floor, frustration seeking a physical outlet. I snatch up a ceremonial urn, ancient and irreplaceable, and hurl it against the far wall. The sound of shattering pottery brings no satisfaction, only a hollow echo of my own fracturing control.
"Ashira," I mutter, using the name I gave her, "Why did I not force myself to speak plainly?”
The memory of her in the war chamber burns behind my eyes: the basket clutched against her chest, her face transforming from confusion to understanding to hurt in the space of a single breath. I had reached for her, desperate to explain, but the words tangled in my throat.
I wanted to shield her from the shadows gathering at our borders. Even now, I sense the tremors that run through her when sudden sounds echo too loudly, the aftershocks from the bombing that nearly claimed her. But in my ignorance, I kept silent about General Thorne's treachery, about the spies who walk among us with smiles that never reach their eyes, about Lurok whispering poison into receptive ears, about the TrueCoil's ominous silence. I failed to explain why the OathCoil was necessary when first it was placed within her home, and in that silence, I betrayed the very trust I sought to protect.
Instead, I froze, watching her retreating form. The only soul who had ever broken through my armor, turned away believing I had manipulated her affections for power. When in truth I would surrender every flame that will ever burn within me just to hold her trust again.
My scales bristle with indecision. Honor demands I respect her wishes to be left alone, yet the blood bond between us pulses like an open wound, drawing me toward her chambers with the inexorable pull of gravity. Every heartbeat without her feels like another opportunity lost to heal what I have broken.
I catch my reflection in the polished obsidian of the far wall. Scales rippling in agitation, eyes burning too bright, the crown gleaming on my brow. A figure of power, of authority. Of loneliness.
Leira changed that. In mere weeks, she transformed my solitary existence with her courage, her sharp mind, her capacity for compassion despite all reason to hate my kind. The thoughtof losing what we have built together, this fragile thing still taking root between us, is unbearable.
And beneath that fear lurks another darker concern. One I did not voice when I should have. If the OathCoil's discovery has revealed a traitor in Clavenmoor, what other threats might be closing in around us, unseen?
I straighten, decision crystallizing like flame hardening to diamond in my core. I will go to her. Not to demand forgiveness, but to give her the explanation she deserves. To lay bare the truths I have kept hidden, not out of manipulation but out of my own stumbling attempts to protect her from burdens that are rightfully mine to bear.
