Veskar holds my stare for a long moment. “Very well.”
“Nora?” Birds and butterflies explode into the air as Sorren bursts into the clearing.
He reaches me in seconds, stepping directly in front of me, placing his body between mine and the snake.
“Give me the sword,” he growls. “I’ll kill it.”
I step forward. To stand at his side. “That will not be necessary,” I say, keeping my gaze on the cobra. “We passed your trials. Did we not?”
“Indeed.” Veskar rises higher on its coils to match Sorren’s height. “Thornreaper is yours.”
“What about the Amulet of Springtide?” asks Sorren, a strange urgency in his tone.
The snake glides closer to him. It cocks its head. “Are you certain that is your desire, Princeling?”
“I see no other way.” Sorren’s body tenses.
Veskar looks between us, and something about its hesitation causes unease to stir in my gut. “As you wish.”
The snake lowers its gaze to the ground at our feet. We follow.
A single tendril pushes up through the grass, slow and deliberate. It coils higher, thickening as it rises. At its tip hangs a glittering necklace of gold. The chain is heavy with thick, interlocking links that catch the light. At its center rests a single jewel. An emerald, oval shaped, a deep spring green, veined with fine threads of silver.
As I watch, the silver shifts.
It bunches together, twines, and unravels.
Knots. Unknots.
Like something is alive, breathing, inside the stone.
The vine bows toward us, and the amulet slips free. It drops into Sorren’s open palm.
The tendril withdraws at once, sinking back into the earth as if it was never there.
Sorren bows his head over the amulet while Veskar and I wait. The great cobra coils nearby, silent, his gold eyes unblinking as they move between us.
After a long beat, Sorren steps toward me. “Let me put this on you, Nora. It will protect you from my uncle.”
I step forward and bow my head, ready for the relief of safety. To know I won’t have to run or hide ever again.
Sorren raises the necklace. Its chain trembles faintly in his fingers, creating a soft clinking sound. He holds it over my head, but right before he places it around my neck I glance up.
His expression is one of pure misery, his eyes tight. Mouth turned down.
But why?
We passed the trials. Won the weapons.
I explore the bond, pushing my consciousness out along the threads that connect us and find his end muffled, like Sorren is hiding from me…but that can’t be right.
He loves me. He wouldn’t lie to me. Trick me.
Would he?
Behind us, Veskar shifts slightly in the grass, scales whispering against the leaves, but he says nothing.
Like a battering ram, I force my way through the door Sorren has constructed between us. I use all my strength to fling it wide open. Sorrow pushes through the bond immediately. Not just sadness. This is a hollow, bone-deep despair that doesn’t belong to someone offering protection.
