Fangs hovered inches from my lips, dripping with a toxin so black it shimmered violet, each drop searing wherever it landed, burning flesh into ruin.
I couldn’t look. I couldn’t face it. I shut my eyes, bracing for the inevitable sting, the puncture that would spill my blood and silence my heart.
But it didn’t come. That stillness almost felt worse.
When I forced my eyes open, the sight wrenched a gasp from me.
Cerulean eyes glared back, more brilliant, more merciless than any venom. The onyx slits at their center widened, stretching until they split the blue like lightning across a night sky. The mark at the corner of one iris, a patch of brown, was unmistakable.
They were so close our faces mirrored one another, breath for breath.
My body shook from it, instinct warring with the truth staring back. Its jaw unhinged, slow, monstrous fangs curving above me.
You will always believe you are in control. Always think you’ll conquer me—
The voice sliced through the core of my mind, venom slick and unrelenting.
But make no mistake…
My mouth fell open in tandem with its own, as if my body had always known how to answer this call.
A voiceless scream tore my throat as it promised,You are already lost.
The words rang through my skull, echoing, damning, until I couldn’t tell if they were from its voice or my own as it swallowed me whole.
I lurched upright, mouth still open around the scream that had followed me from the nightmare, its fiber splitting the line between illusion and reality.
Sweat slicked my spine, sliding into the hollow of it, damp hair clinging to my cheeks in strands of shelter. The ivory blanket slipped from my fingers, pooling soundlessly at my side.
My hand flew to my chest.Da-dum. Da-dum. Da-dum.
Life. Still mine. Still here.
My breath dragged rough from my lungs, weathered, desperate, until I could taste air again. Until the room no longer felt like it was closing in to choke me.
It was just another nightmare. Just a dream. Not real.
But the heat soaking through my bare skin, the burn in my throat, the rattling wheeze in my lungs, they told a different story.
My nightgown lay bunched on the floor, my feet brushing its cotton as I moved off the bed, as if my own body had fled from its confines.
The sun was cruel in its brightness, beaming through the open window, exposing me completely as I stumbled to the drapes. With a yank, they closed, muting the glare into a dull, acceptable glow.
The bed creaked as I fell back into it, dragging the blankets over my face, hoping the fabric could shield me from memory.
The Viper was quiet. I could feel the hum of its presence deep in my blood, but not the pull of its power.
For a heartbeat, two, three, it was only me.
Yet my stomach knotted still as I folded into myself, arms clamped tight around my knees, groaning into the pit I made.
I wasn’t sure I liked it.
I curled deeper into my knitted blanket, dragging it to my chin, inhaling the vanilla clinging to the threads. Faint lavender twined through it, Gemma’s scent, burrowed into the weave even decades after she’d made it.
The cold gnawed through the stone walls and I cursed myself for not lighting a fire the night before.
I had come home drenched in sweat and dirt, too fevered to bear flame. Even after I rinsed, the heat lingered. Though it was certainly gone now.
