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“You told her.” I looked at Fang by the fireplace, where he sat on the rug in front of the flames. King Elias had granted us accommodation without hesitation. In our last interaction, he’d looked at me with fear, but now he looked at me with nothing at all.
Cobra sat in the armchair, one ankle crossed on the opposite knee, his fingers resting across his lips.
I did not.
“Then how does she know?” I snapped. “You’re the only one who knew.”
“Instead of being pissed off at Fang, maybe you should be pissed off at yourself,” Cobra said. “Because you should have told her the truth.”
I looked at my brother, murder in my eyes. “I don’t need your shit right now—”
“It’s fucked up, Kingsnake. How could you not tell her?”
I would never betray you.
Now I carried on two conversations at once. “You’re the only one who knew, Fang.” I looked at my brother. “And fuck off, Cobra. She finally came to terms with her new life, and I wasn’t going to fuck with her head—”
“Don’t act like that’s the reason,” Cobra said. “You can’t bullshit me.”
“I’m your goddamn brother,” I snapped. “Your loyalty is to me.”
I wasn’t the only one who knew.
“Just because we’re related doesn’t mean you’re entitled to anything,” Cobra said. “She’s my sister, isn’t she? You were afraid if she knew the truth, she would leave you for a human life. Or worse, she would ask you to join her.”
“And you really can’t understand why I wouldn’t want that?” I yelled.
“Of course I do!” he yelled back. “But she deserved the option.”
“You want me to be human?” I asked incredulously. “Come on, Cobra.”
“No,” he said. “But I know Larisa would have chosen you. And that would have made your relationship a million times better. But you fucked that up because you didn’t trust her. You had no faith whatsoever.”
I turned away, the rage pumping in my veins like I still had a beating heart.
It was your father.
I slowly looked at Fang again, the terror too much. “My father wouldn’t betray me…”
Yesss, he would—becaussse it wasn’t me.
The room went quiet except for the crackling fire. Pain was stacked across my shoulders, and the burden was too heavy a load. I was wounded on all sides, in battle without my armor, stabbed in the back by my allies rather than my foes. “Why would he do that?”
Maybe he didn’t know it was a secret—
“He knew.”
“Probably because he’s pissed off that we didn’t give him what he wanted,” Cobra said. “Payback. If he can’t have what he wants, then you can’t either.”
“That’s low…even for him.” My father and I had buried the hatchet, but he was quick to betray me if I didn’t give him what he wanted. It was like a knife to the heart rather than the back.
“All he’s ever wanted was to defeat the Ethereal,” Cobra said. “He can’t think clearly.”
My father’s betrayal faded into the background because I couldn’t do anything about it right now. “I can’t lose her.” The room went quiet at my words. Neither one of them spoke. Neither one of them gave me words of encouragement.
“You should be talking to her instead of us,” Cobra said. “Go.”
21
