Page 171 of City of Snakes
Krait leaned down to kiss me once more, before he whispered another Brennac charm to unlock the door. It opened to a large cave.
The dark lava stone domed high above us. When Krait began to light torches around the perimeter, I finally sawthem. They towered above us, their vicious intentions set in stone.
They had obsidian scales that covered their long lengths and legless, snake-like bodies. Their curved faces resembled the angular shape common in the rattling serpents of this realm. Feathered wings stretched high above their serpent heads. They were utterly terrifying to behold.
Any prior confidence drained from me.
“Giant flying snakes? You’ve got to be kidding,” I whispered mostly to myself.
Krait looked over his shoulder at me as he lit another torch. “Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet about this,” he said.
I shot him a pointed glare. “No, I am just unsure howI’mmeant to control something so...horrifying.”
Krait stepped behind me. “There is only one way to find out. We start with this one,” he said as he turned me by the shoulders toward the largest. “This is Lymrasi—their leader. We’ll speak with her first. It’s believed that if she accepts you, the others will too.”
Before I could think twice, Krait stepped behind me and urged me forward with his front against my back. He placed my handon a giant scale of the beast’s nose. He kissed the top of my head as an amber glow shone bright, which made me stumble into his chest.
I squinted against the glare. Life seemed to return to Lymrasi’s dusty stone scales, and they glimmered black against the lamplight. Krait pulled me back a few paces as the serpent wound and stretched.
He kept me between him and the beast. Motherfucker.
“Now? We’re waking hernow?” I gasped as the serpent licked the air, still coming out of its stone sleep.
“If not now, when?” he whispered in my ear. I would kill him if we made it out of this cave alive.
A low hiss escaped the beast’s mouth before it stretched its neck toward the ceiling and shook it side to side with a lethal grace. When the serpent’s double lids lifted, a slitted pupil of gold stared right at me.
Luckily, I’d relieved my bladder back at the falls; otherwise, I’d have surely pissed myself for the second time in front of Krait.
She hissed out, “Who holdsss the power to wake me?” Lymrasi’s tongue tasted the air in front of my nose.
I held my breath, cold sweat building on the back of my neck despite the cave’s sticky heat.
“I-I—” I stammered. Krait squeezed my shoulders tight. “I am Sybilla Wymark, Queen of the Central Corridor and the Last Daughter of Isleen.”
Lymrasi tilted her neck as her wings flapped twice, blowing back the curls from my face. “Ahhhh, yesss. And with an heir of Desssidero. How prophetic. But are you worthy?”
Her gaze beat down on me as her mouth opened just enough to reveal venom dripping from her fangs.
She smelled of mourning and death—not putrid or rotten but like the very essence of loss. The feeling tugged at my mind,wanting me to think of all I’d personally lost. It was like a mental attack on my very soul.
It took a great deal of energy to push Lymrasi out of my thoughts, and I strained to ward both my mind and Krait’s. “Ahhh and she lovesss him too. It is a shame that Caym cursssed me to kill his brother’s kin,” she hissed, and coiled back as though about to strike us.
“No!” I ordered with a raised hand, and Lymrasi’s neck halted mid-swing. “You answer to me, not Caym. I seek your help against him.”
Krait said nothing but held onto my unraised arm and let me press into him, steadying me. We stood our ground against the beast of nightmares, and she sized us up as though we were mice to be swallowed.
But she did not strike.
I’d stopped her.
“Ssso you can control me. What reasonsss do you have for needing my help?” Lymrasi asked.
“We require reinforcements against Caym’s rise. I’ve come to offer you freedom in exchange for your help,” I said. The beast coiled its long tail around itself.
“I do not bargain,” she answered. “That is Death’s way.”
Setting these beasts free seemed unwise anyway.
