The fangs scraping my lower lip could have been my permanent cobra fangs. Ghoul could have been my high-rankingconsort. I’m in a sort of daze as the sounds of the party get louder and two doors swing open to admit us.
Ghoul and I step inside, and we’re greeted by a round of clapping that suddenly roars in my ears. Someone cheers. My eyes squint under the bright lights as I struggle to catch my breath, realities colliding in the most brutal way.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Ghoul drawls, holding an arm out to me. “I present to you my bride, Jade Brown.”
An engagement party?Thismotherfucker.
Chapter 23
Aurelia
“Where’s the real Jade Brown?”I hiss into Ghoul’s dark mind.
“Dead, funnily enough. Smile.”
That poor innocent girl. I barely remember her from primary school. The type of girl who didn’t stand out amongst the rest of the hatchlings. Average grades, her ponytail always in a scrunchie. There are plenty of Eastern Brown snakes on this side of the coast, and while they are dangerously venomous, the ability to sell their venom to research has made a lot of them quite wealthy with a high rank in the serpent community. It made sense that Ghoul would choose one as his mate.
I bare my fangs as suggested, and the shadows part just enough for everyone to see my red lips and the sharp white tips. Everyone, that is, including my goddess-forsaken father, who is at the head of the crowd, tall and foreboding. My vision through the lace is fragmented, but I would know my sire on his power alone. It coats the air like oil, hanging above it and yet contaminating everything around it. It gives everything around him a subtle feeling of being choked.
I suddenly wonder how my mother ever tolerated it. How I, as a child, had ever tolerated it. But it had been all I’d ever known, and he had loved me at the beginning. Or perhaps it wasn’t love, but possession and greed that made his touch doting. It’s shocking and uncomfortable to feel betrayed in retrospect.
The other high-ranking serpents hang back, letting their king greet his general. To my utter and brilliant shock, my father embraces Ghoul, clapping him on the back just once before stepping back. He doesn’t even look at me. “Congratulations, General,” Mace Naga says. “Finally, you bring me good news.”
Interesting; that feels like a jab. More interesting still is the fact that it sounds like they’ve been trying to get Ghoul married.
Aunt Charlotte saunters forward, her stilettos clicking, in a long black dress with a dramatic fur trim. Her blonde pin curls look a bit dry at the ends, and her red-lipped smile is strained as she glances me over, then turns to her only living mate, Uncle Ronald.
“Well done, General,” Uncle Ron says. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes.
“Thanks, Ronny.”
Ghoul being chummy with my family makes my stomach turn, but it’s not until Aunt Charlotte tries to usher me towards one of the black velvet couches off to the side that I break out into a sweat. “You must sit down, dear,” she says, reaching out as if to sweep me away.
Ghoul’s shadows make me scoot backwards into his body. “My bride will sit with no one but me.”
A nearby anima that I recognise as one of Charlotte’s besties laughs nervously. “Ah yes, the possessiveness of basilisks is said to be akin to a rabid dragon, is that not right, General?”
“If the rabid dragon had its eggs taken from him, yes,” Ghoul says smoothly.
“We were all beginning to think you were impotent,” a stout man with a thick moustache chuckles. “Are you sure it’s yours?”
Light flashes and sizzling sounds. There’s a scream before it’s abruptly cut off. Everybody flinches, then immediately turn away and continue on like nothing happened. There is no trace of the man who stood there. Only a pile of smoking ashes and a joke that lingers in the air.
Wait.Wait.
“I’ll be in touch with you about your pregnancy requirements, Jade,” Aunt Charlotte says formally before turning on her heel and clacking away.
Now I’m shouting furiously into Ghoul’s head,“You can lay your own eggs, Ghoul! What the hell.”
He only chuckles, pulling me to sit on his lap.“Don’t you want my hatchlings, regina?”I go still. Suddenly, this dress feels tight around my diaphragm, and more sweat trickles down my spine.“Easy, snakelet. I know the princess is in there somewhere. All of this could have been yours, remember?”
I do remember, that’s half the problem. I imagine if I had been my father’s daughter, princess of Naga House. I had always been kept away from the generals, but as an adult, I would have had to interact with them.“You would have had to answer to me,”I tell him.
“It would have been perfect.”
I frown at him, but the basilisk general is looking threateningly out at the crowd. They might not be able to see his eyes, but his posture in the seat, the set of his shoulders and thighs, and the slight cock of his head scream pure, lethal challenge.
Now I get to look out at the rest of the people in the room. A string quartet is working its way through the Four Seasons in the corner, and overlooking them is the Naga family crest in goldand silver, shiny because it’s brand spanking new. I guess they couldn’t save the original one.
