My gaze clocks the chunks of flesh carved out of various parts of his body. One bitemark is so deep and wide that my iron-cladstomach churns. I stride toward his head that lolls against the sandy soil, lids clasped shut, tusk half-buried in the ochre dirt. I crouch and seize his tusk to right his face. I consider giving it a jostle to test his alertness when I recall the damage he incurred at the fangs of the tendu.
I end up patting his cheek and muttering the word for serpent in Shabbin. When after my fourth iteration of, “Naaga,” he doesn’t stir, fear replaces my concern.
Yes, fear. For all my anger that the Mahananda matched her with another, I know what the loss of one’s mate feels like, and I would never wish it on anyone. Especially not on the woman I still care for.
I palm his neck to locate a pulse. When something flutters against my skin, I expel a relieved breath, shift back into my other form, and carefully scoop him up. He dangles from my talons like a piece of seaweed. The comparison is horrid, and I instantly chide myself for it.
When I approach the vale, my eyes lock on Daya’s searing ones. It strikes me that her hair is wet, as is her dress. I take it that she must’ve tried to swim toward us. I’ve never been more glad for the bargain we struck about waterrises. She might not be mine to protect anymore, but the idea of her swimming in tendu territory drops my body’s temperature to one equaling the wintry air in Monteluce.
I deposit him at her bare feet, then shift and watch as she peruses his body. Unlike me, she doesn’t hunt for a pulse. She must sense he still lives through their mind link.
As she kneels beside him, she looks up at me through narrowed eyes as though I’d been the one to attack and carve out her little mate. “Do not cast me off your back without my consent again, Cathal Báeinach.” Her anger is a live thing that chews up the air around us.
Again… That means she intends to hitch more rides on my back. I cross my arms, keeping my expression bare of all sentiment, even though relief stirs behind my ribs. I’d feel even more so if I knew whether she could hear Agrippina.
I consider striding to where the blue-haired former Faerie stands conversing with Fallon, Ceres, Priya, and Behati, but I don’t, for inquiring while a Serpent lay bleeding at my feet feels immoral and untimely.
“You should get Agrippina to heal him,” I advise Daya, whose stores of magic have already been depleted once tonight.
“He’s my Serpent. My responsibility.”
I note that she didn’t say mate. Petty. So petty. “I meant, because you’re already spent.”
“I’ll do it in the water.” She walks over to his head and leans over to bracket it tenderly between her palms. “Can one of you lower him inside?”
“I’ll do it.” Erwin shifts before I can.
As I accompany Daya to the moat’s edge, she nods to my arm. “How bad are your wounds?”
“Just scratches. They’ll heal.”
“Show them to me after.”
After.“Tendu claws aren’t made of obsidian, Sífair.”
“I’d almost forgotten how dogged you could be,” she huffs.
My lips set into a smirk. One that makes her head shake as she plunges headfirst into the deep trench ringing the valley of the Cauldron. I stand on the steep cliff, gaze riveted to the inky water.
After dropping Enzo off inside the moat, Erwin parks himself beside me. “Poor kid. The tendu really got him good.”
“He should’ve known better than to venture in that part of Sahklare,” I murmur. “Especially since, unlike the other serpents in Priya’s queendom, he can shift and use a fucking boat.”
Justus sidles close to us, his furred cape rustling against the black velvet inserts of his jacket. It’s far less gaudy than the gold and burgundy uniform he used to don, but still too foppish for my taste. Then again, unlike Faeries, I don’t have much taste in fashion, nor any inclination to develop one.
“A Serpent,” he murmurs. “My menagerie is growing.”
I side-eye him while Erwin guffaws.
My fellow general shrugs, a smile tickling the edge of his lips and the corners of his timeworn eyes. “A snake. A bird. Next thing I know, my wife will ask the Cauldron to turn her into a grasshopper.”
“Which wife?” I needle him.
With a sigh, he says, “Ah, Cathal… Forever aiming below the belt.”
“I can’t imagine having two mates,” Erwin muses out loud. “One’s already a constant adventure.”
His euphemism draws snorts from both Justus and me.
