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“Your hate will never be powerful enough to save Mother’s soul.”
He continued to stare.
“It pains me too, but we have to drop our prejudice against the innocent. Clara’s doing everything she can to make this right. That takes character. Without knowing her, I would say Cobra is lucky to have found a woman so courageous.”
Viper eventually turned back to me. “Kingsnake, I’ve always admired your intellect and empathy. It’s made you a great king. But you haven’t thought this through. You haven’t realized just how complicated this will be.”
Larisa sat on a rock in the distance, entertained by the lush landscape that surrounded us. Fang was wrapped around her body, perched on her lap like a loyal companion. Her fingers absent-mindedly stroked the scales upon his head, something I’d never done. I watched her before my eyes shifted back to his. “Speak your mind.”
“You know how much Father loved Mother.” He turned his head to regard me head on, his eyes burning with a quiet fire. “Her death haunts him, even all these centuries later. The very reason we became nightwalkers was to kill those assholes who desecrated her dignity as well as her body. We both know his hate has no boundary. We both know that hatred will only grow once he knows the truth—that the Ethereal destroyed his wife’s soul.”
A flush of coldness moved down my spine.
Viper continued to peer into my gaze. “Even if we destroy this obelisk, it’ll make no difference. Not to him. He’ll never stop until they’re massacred.”
My eyes dropped, feeling the dread that his assessment provoked. “We’ll speak to him.”
“Which will do nothing.”
“We can’t keep living this way. We need to move on—”
“If you hadn’t turned Larisa and she was dead right now, would you move on?”
My eyes stayed down.
“If she had to suffer an eternity of nothingness because the Ethereal—”
“Stop.” The thought was intolerable. Fucking intolerable.
“Then you know Father will never move on.”
* * *
Finally, the Mountain of Souls was in sight. We had been on the wrong mountain, so we’d waited until sunset to make the trek back down the hill and onto another path. We slept in our bedrolls every night, the mild temperatures making it comfortable to slumber under the starlight.
“Everything alright?” Larisa’s voice brought me out of the vault of my thoughts.
I turned to her beside me, her concerned eyes combing over my face. “Yes.”
Her stare continued, unable to believe my lie when she felt my truth. “I can feel your…I’m not sure how to describe it.”
“Dread. That’s what you feel.”
“And what are you dreading?”
Everything Viper had said was spot-on. Even with the obelisk destroyed, my father would be furious that we’d offered a truce, that we’d offered to impart our immortality to the people who had stolen my mother’s afterlife. “We’ll discuss it later.” In private. Where Cobra and Queen Clara couldn’t overhear my concerns.
Larisa didn’t let her curiosity get the best of her. She accepted my refusal without argument. “I wish we could communicate the way we speak with Fang. How nice would that be…”
“Yes, it would be nice.”
We stopped halfway up the mountain when it was fully dark, Queen Clara unable to see anything in the pure blackness. “We’ll continue at dusk.” She unslung her pack and carried it close to a tree where she would retire for the night. Cobra always joined her, the two of them sharing a single bedroll and a pillow. On occasion, they snuck off into the darkness to fulfill their desires in private.
I would have done the same with Larisa, except I’d been in a foul mood since my last conversation with Viper.
Larisa got her bedroll ready, Fang immediately helping himself and snaking inside to where her feet rested. He was a large snake, taking up most of the space, but she never seemed to mind.
She loved my best friend as much as I did. Bonded with my brothers, too. I had been blinded by Ellasara’s beauty, infatuated with her poise and intelligence, and became oblivious to all the shit she lacked. I’d loved her when I didn’t know what love really was. Now I did.
