Page 95 of City of Snakes
“Because true or not, that is a shit thing to say to a child.”
“Now we’re berating the dead?”
He grunted and crossed the room to relight another candle that had blown out. “No—I just mean that you shouldn’t have had to hear, or see, any of that.”
“Ah, so you’ve been eavesdropping the whole time then.” I shrugged, watching the muscles of his arms as he set the candleback down on the mantle. “Life is not all rainbows and sunsets, is it? My mother wasn’t wrong. Bringing children into the world is to hold confidence in the future. She held no such confidence.”
Krait was silent, his hand still held the candle. He seemed uncomfortable with my being here, yet he didn’t ask me to leave.
“She was beautiful,” I said.
He hummed, but glanced away from the flames. “She was.”
The room was rather dreary, with thick drawn curtains. There was minimal furniture aside from a desk on the far side, which had a glass case on top of it that housed a large tome.
It was no place to honor the dead.
I wished for more light for her, for her to see the moon that she’d once commanded.
Krait cut through my thoughts. “You speak of children as though you’ve made up your mind against them. Yet you told your cousin that you’d have a dozen children to keep him off your throne—is that what you actually want?”
I wondered why he was asking and tried to slip through the back door of his mind. Either he really wanted to keep his thoughts to himself, or I was too exhausted to push through.
“Nice try.” He confirmed my latter suspicion.
I let my head rest on my shoulder. “I want to secure my Corridor’s safety—to know that there is someone to rule when I die. But that seems like a terrible reason to bring a child into the world. Sometimes it sounds nice. Marriage, children, grandchildren, a palace full of laughter for generations to come...but that laughter isn’t guaranteed, is it? Any heir of mine would be born shackled to a crown they may or may not even want.”
Biting the side of my cheek, I realized I’d never voiced that fear before to anyone.
He remained guarded and hard to read.
“Is that how you feel? Shackled to your crown?” he asked.
“Am I being interrogated for something?”I was too tired for this.
He sighed. “You’re in a quarter you shouldn’t be in, drunk, chatting with my dead wife—I’m not interrogating you. I’m trying to understand you.”
When he put it that way, I knew I didn’t have the moral high ground in this argument. “Fine—yes. I have often resented my position, resented my parents. That does not mean that I don’t love my people or that I will not continue to do everything in my power to protect them.”
He made a sound that resembled a grunt of agreement. “We have that in common.”
Thinking that was the end of this bizarre conversation, I grabbed the bottle of port and the chalice and poured another glass. Rising and stepping up beside him, I extended it to him.
“Does marrying me change your view on having children?” The question came out blunt as he took a long sip of the port I offered him.
With wine-loosened lips, I answered, “Here we go with the breeding fantasies again.”
He smirked.
“Any children we conceived would be both Reverist and Source-wielder, would they not?”
“Reverist and Source Origin,” he corrected.
My brows lifted. “How could that be? I thoughtyouwere the Origin.”
The candlelight warmed his otherwise cold gray irises as he met my stare. I wasn’t sure when my hatred for him had begun to melt away. Something about being under his gaze now made my stomach flutter in a stupid, reckless way.
“When Caym led the Reverists to betray the other Origins, his brother, the Shadow Origin, Desidero, bargained with him for his life. Caym agreed, but he didn’t want Desidero to ever growstrong enough to be a threat to him. He let him live but under a curse.”
