Page 76 of Winter Gods & Serpents

“Snowlin,” my uncle called, approaching me, and I finally pushed away from the Adriatian.

“My sweet niece, you finally look somewhat Isjordian.”

A sneer lift at the corners of my mouth at that slithering tone in his voice.

He smirked, taking in the sight of me. “You come back, a general and two lords are dead.”

I rose a brow at him. “Fearing for your turn? You have an ‘eye’ for things after all.”

Nia snorted and Kilian turned staring at me again.

Uncle’s face lathered down sternly, his hand rose halfway almost preparing to hit me like he’d done in olden days. That remembrance almost settled in, my body almost obeying to let him strike me at the memory. “You—”

But that was all it was, remembrance, and it had built a backbone of courage in my spine. I grabbed onto his hand tightly, the dagger strapped to my side now on my hand, resting just above his wrist. “Do you know why I took only your left?” I asked, digging the dagger slightly in his flesh. “Because Thora’s kind heart said people deserve a chance at proving you they change. But her kind heart is also dead. So, you speak to me one more time, I’ll pluck your heart, string by string and knit your other eyeball a hat with it.”

He let a stuttering silent laugh, his body shaking but not from amusement. I let him go and sheathed the dagger on my side as he disappeared out of my wrathful sight. Sometimes I’d fear that I felt so little of fear.

“He is your uncle, you mannerless heathen,” Kilian accused.

I snorted at his prejudiced scale that always levelled me peccable, his sight that held me reprehensible. I was accustomed to such judgement, yet I felt inclined to break it. “The very same one who broke my little sisters arm twice, bruised her six-year-old face beyond recognition, and shaved her head with a pocketknife because he thought she was too pretty for an Olympian spawn. The very same bastard.” Eye for an eye, it was what I’d meant to say, yet I’d just made myself pitiful.

His eyes widened just slightly before he turned to narrow them on my uncle. The most reaction I’d seen him draw. “Where was your mother, your servants, tutors, guards?”

I had stopped waiting for someone to save me long before there was something of mine to save. “Where everyone else was, cowering in fear of my father or cowering in fear of us. The demons needed taming, that was what everyone thought so they said and did nothing. I was left with a brother who was breaking down from not being able to help us and with a sister who wore those bruises as a cloth and pretended everything was alright. That left it in my graces to act, but what can a worthless child do more than claw—and you can’t claw through scales, I only ended up tearing my own nails. They were also not me, sometimes I think the best thing that had ever happened to them was die.”

I bit my lip suppressing the tremble those words I’d uttered out loud had caused. Why did I have to tell him that? It felt liberating, saying it out loud. I had not known how heavy it had been on me—the truth.

“Snow.” Nia called, wrapping her hand around mine.

I took a deep breath, straightening. “Shame they missed me. However, they have given me purpose and mannerless heathen ways.”

He made to speak but his mouth fell in a sharp line and turned away facing the funeral crowd. After a while between prayers, storm, and silence he asked, “He hurt you too?”

I contemplated, maybe for too short a while because I confessed unrestrained, unnecessarily, “First time he tried I nailed a butter knife right in his thigh, an inch or so from his soggy treasures. The second time, he lost another sort of soggy ball, and now he wears an eye patch.”

“Creative,” he said almost in a murmur. “Metaphorical too.”

I shrugged proudly. “I’m a poet of sorts.”

“A poet who had her fair share of punishment after those actions,” Nia said, clicking her tongue.

“All suffering makes for great art, sweet Nia.”

She shook her head. “As you say, you maniac.”

He glanced shortly at both of us as. “She is not afraid of you also.”

“Oh I am,” said Nia. “I just refrain myself from calling her a contortion of the unnatural and a heathen, also I lack the ‘in my head you bleed’ look you give her. Little do you know, it provokes her more in a terrible sort of way, the ‘a challenge for someone to break’ sort of way.”

“Do not warn him Nia, I like him the way he is.” I turned to him. I liked reading the challenge in his stare, it was attractive. “Conceited and lush in blood. I do hate a dry corpse.”

He straightened, his chin raising a bit higher before he glanced sideways at my friend. “Is she always like this? Engrossed in her role.”

I shrugged. “What’s so wrong with capitalising rumours, fears and views of others?”

“It is a lie.”

I stuck my bottom lip out. “Oh, spank me.”