Like me.
Black spots clouded my vision. A growl tore up my throat with such ferocity he glanced back at me. Not a single ounce of recognition reflected in his citrine eyes, and he quickly lost interest in me.
“Sit.” Idra shifted to make room for him.
He snarled at her.
“Now, Edan, we have a guest.” Her eyes narrowed. “We must use our manners.”
His wings began twitching.
“What have you done to him?” I croaked.
“I made him my vassal of course.” She leaned forward and scraped her fingernail down his abs. “Males are so difficult to train, but I do enjoy a challenge. Besides the fact their bodies do have such interesting differences from our own, don’t you find?” She chuckled hoarsely. “I had forgotten that.”
My shoulders twinged, my wings trembling.
“Let him go.” My claws lengthened. “Or I will make you let him go.”
She ignored me, fussing over him instead. “Soon he will be as obedient as all the others.”
I strode across the room and wrapped my hand around her throat. “Take me instead.”
“No. I think not.” Her eyes glittered. “I gave you your chance.”
Cold metal dug into the skin beneath my ribs. I gasped when Edan pressed the blade deeper.
I winced at the bite of pain. “Don’t let her win.”
His expression remained unchanged. “I must do as I have been ordered to do.”
“Fight her.” I slowly raised my hand, pulling aside my hair and exposing the scars on my throat.
The tips of his fingers trailed the ridges of skin. “Did you?”
“Yes.” I let him look his fill. “You helped me. You saved me from her. Don’t you remember?”
A flicker of uncertainty passed over his features. “No.”
“That is enough.” Idra leapt to her feet. “I didn’t invite you here to destroy all my hard work.”
“Why did you bring me here? If you don’t want a trade, what possible reason could you have?”
“I want you to see there is no escape.” She stalked closer. “I want you to see that defiance has a price, so that when you return to Erania, you can tell them their time is coming. They will fall to their knees before me, as they should have when faced with the first wave of my army. You will tell them there is no cure for what ails their nation. Not anymore.” She folded her arms over her chest. “While you wandered through the veil in search of the crossroads, I sent my emissaries through to Beltania. My scouts have swarmed the area for weeks, reporting on the dayflower crops. By now the city will be ashes, the fields will be soot. All those precious dayflowers will be burnt and the cure with them.”
All those flowers lost, all hope lost with them. “What about the people?”
Her throaty laughter chilled me to the core. “Did you visit the market today?”
My eyes widened, and lips fell open on words that wouldn’t come.
“These last decades have been lean here.” She flung out her arms. “Now there is plenty.”
The memory of the delicate cubes of meat and their rich sauces flashed in my mind.
My knees cracked on the floor, and I retched.
Chapter 17
With my stomach emptied, I glared up at Idra. “You are a monster.”
“I am what the gods made me.” She sniffed. “Save your morals for the next time someone offers you a thick, juicy varanus steak. Then you can remind yourself what a monster you must seem to it.”
“Varanus are not people.” The rebuke sounded weak even to my own ears.
“I doubt they appreciate the distinction.” She tutted. “This could all be avoided if you accepted your nature. You are no longer Araneaean, you are superior to them. It is our place to prey on them.”
“I don’t wear your sigil.” Thank the Gods. “I’m no longer Necrita.”
“But you do wear a sigil, don’t you?” Her eyes gleamed. “Since Edan snatched you from your covey before you matured, there are things you don’t know about your nature. Such as when a fledgling has reached maturity and binds her own sigils to her, she no longer requires the one that converted her.”
I covered my ears with my hands as though she couldn’t tap right into my mind.
“Aww. Don’t fret, dear one.” She clasped her hands. “I hate being the one to tell you this, but by accepting my little gifts, you’ve done exactly as I always hoped you would. You’ve matured. You’re Necrita.” She smiled. “See there? Now you have no need for those nasty injections. You’re no longer dependent upon the Araneidae. You don’t have to bow and scrape to them to survive. You need only take what your sigils offer. Once a month, if that, allow it to anchor in you as you are doing now.”
My fingers itched to rip it from my nape. “You knew what would happen.”
“When you’ve lived as long as I have, you can predict certain events with a degree of accuracy, yes.” She tapped a nail against her bottom lip. “You could even create your own vassal if you wish. I saw how you looked at that male—Asher. Your thoughts trip over themselves when he’s near. Think how it would feel to know he could live with you forever. Claim him. Make him yours, and he will.”
The temptation hung there only as long as it took my gaze to slide back onto Edan.
Such betrayal would destroy Asher’s faith in me. He would hate me for eternity.
“No.” I snarled, “He deserves better than to end up as one of your drones.”
“Drones have their place.” She patted Edan’s cheek. “You will understand that in time.”
My agitation transferred into my sigil. Its sharp feet dug into my nap, its low buzz a warning.
Disgusted by the fresh link Idra had managed to forge between us, I willed the angry wasp to release itself into my hand. I offered it to her, pausing when her eyes narrowed and she stepped backward.
“Take it.” I held my palm flat and willed the thing to return to its maker. “I don’t want it.”
The sigil spread its wings, bent its knees then went still. As sure as if she had been inside my head, I felt her will caress the tiny creature, soothing it, urging it to stay in place and resume its rest.
“Don’t be stubborn,” she hissed at me. “It’s yours. You need it if you want to live.”
I frowned at the sigil’s hesitation to obey me. “I’ve lived this long without one.”
“If that’s what you call living,” she spat. “Daily injections just to avoid accepting who you are.”
“Return to her.” My command failed to launch the sigil skyward. “Go. Fly home.”
“The sigil is yours.” Her voice cracked. “It won’t return to me.”
Another wave of persuasion rolled over me, causing the sigil to sit flush on my palm. It hit me as another burst of her energy sizzled through our joined minds. She was afraid.
Why, I had no idea. The sigil was hers. She was the one who’d created it. I had no power over her or it. Of the four souls in this room, she commanded all of us. Still, I had to test the limits of her fear.
“Are you sure about that?” I took a step closer before the press of Edan’s blade stopped me.
A tic developed under her left eye. Her gaze darted toward the door Edan had used.
“This is your last chance.” Idra slinked toward the back wall. “Leave now, and I won’t follow.”
I kept an eye on her, watching Edan from my periphery. “What about my brother?”
“He’s mine,” she snapped.
“Do you want to leave with me?” I asked him.
“It’s not for me to say,” he gritted between his teeth, but the pressure from the blade lessened.
“He can’t leave.” Idra reached the other door and grasped the knob. “He’s mine. He stays.”
While her anger made her reckless, I gave my sigil its command. “Go to her.”
The wasp twitched its wings. Its abdomen lifted, its stinger dripping reddish fluid.
“It’s time
to go, Edan.” She held out her hand to him. “Our guest has overstayed her welcome.”
“You don’t have to obey her.” I put a hand on his arm. “Stay with me. Leave this place.”
The blade in my side vanished.
Idra’s startled cry brought our attention back to her.
My sigil darted in the air above her head. She lifted her arms to fend it off while she focused her will. The wasp staggered under the blow, and it turned once to glance at me.
I nudged it. “Do as I commanded.”
It did, plunging its stinger into the side of her throat where her neck met her shoulder. Her sickly yellow blood seeped from the wounds made by its feet stabbing into the tender skin of her neck. She screamed when its mandibles dug deep as it rooted itself into her. Tucking its wings flush to its back, the sigil made itself comfortable. Through my connection to it, I sensed its satisfaction as my own.
“What have you done?” She clawed at her throat. “Remove it. Now.”
The strangest sensation spread through my chest until my vocal cords thrummed with the rising of a song. It started slow and softly, almost a lullaby, while I learned the cadence. The higher I lifted my voice, the quieter Idra became. Glazed eyes fixed on me, Idra let her hands fall limply to her sides.
As quickly as the urge had come upon me, it faded, carrying its alien words and rhythms with it.
“Idra?” My voice rasped.
“This…is wrong.” Her head lolled. “I am…the mother.”
“You are mine now.” As sure as it was my sigil on her throat, I knew she belonged to me.
No wonder she had feared the sigil in the hands of someone not beguiled by her. It had been an ill-chosen gift, and one I was grateful to return to her.
“Release me.” She slid bonelessly to the floor.
I approached her, towering over her. “Release my brother first.”
“He is mine.” She bared her teeth. “I won’t…let you have him.”
“Then we have nothing further to discuss.” I spun on my heel, eager to leave while I could.
“Wait.” She banged the back of her skull against the wall. “If you leave me here…like this…”
In a flash, I understood. Her fledglings would overthrow her. She was weak now. Not fit to rule.
“You would receive no more than you deserve.” I had no pity in my heart for her.
“Take him.” She stuck out her hand. “He’s yours.”
At her summons, the sigil in Edan’s throat detached, flew across the room and lit on her palm.
Yellow-brown blood poured from his wound, but he paid it no mind. He hesitated, sparing her one last glance before he looked at me. “I will wait for you out front.”
He exited through the nursery, giving me a moment alone with Idra.
“Thank you.” I turned my back on her.
“Wait,” she screeched. “I freed him. You said—”
“I told you to release my brother first.” I shrugged. “I never said what happened next.”
“He will die without a sigil,” she yelled. “You’ve killed him by taking him from me.”
All I could say was the truth. “The Edan I knew would rather die than live here, with you.”
I walked out humming the unfamiliar tune, skin prickling as she hurled threats at my back.
Wild, hissing screams rose behind me, urging me to bolt through the door, but fleeing a predator never ended well. I kept my steps measured and calm. When I crossed the threshold into the nursery, I found myself the center of attention again. All those faces peered at me from their bedside. As Idra wailed louder and louder, their eyes turned more and more golden. A few licked their sallow lips. Their jagged teeth peeked from their smiles. They were filed sharp, not born with sharp grins.
Instead of shutting the door behind me as I had intended, I pushed it wide open.
Overhead, wind kicked up as wings beat harder.
“Sisters,” I called up to them. “I leave you to it.”
Not a soul moved as I crossed the room. When I reached the opposite threshold, a young female with tangled brown hair and wild golden eyes alighted behind me. We studied one another for a moment.
She touched the scar on my neck. “You are not like us.”
“No,” I agreed. “I’m not.”
She pushed my shoulder. “You should go.”
“If you ever want to leave…” I let my offer hang between us. “There are better ways to live.”
“No there aren’t.” Her grin bared pointed teeth. “You just don’t know any better.”
Turning my back on her made the hairs on my nape stand on end. She shut the door on my heels with a soft snick. While I was unobserved, I dashed through the last room and out the front door.
The bright kernel of awareness that had been Idra’s constant presence in my mind…vanished.
The months of gnawing hunger and feverish cravings dulled to a low pulse then stuttered to a halt.
Those vicious desires, I realized, had been hers all along. She had fed them to me, used them to stoke my hunger in an attempt to bind me to her again.
I found Edan leaning against the building’s exterior. His shoulders quivered, his wings flattened to his spine. The wall behind him was the only thing keeping him upright.
I circled him slowly, making sure he saw me before I approached him.
He stared at the knife in his hand, its tip still discolored with my blood, then up at me. “Marne.”
My throat tightened. Idra hadn’t used my name. That he used it now meant, “You remember.”
His fingers opened, and the blade thumped onto the ground. “I’m so sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault.” I touched his cheek. “None of it is.”
“I don’t remember…” His voice faded.
“It doesn’t matter now.” I stepped into his side, wrapping his arm across my shoulders and mine around his waist. “Right now we have to leave before the others think to follow us.”
His weight staggered me, but I bit my lip and led him out the way Asher and I had come.
The walk into town was grueling. By the time our feet hit the cobbled street, Edan was groaning with each step. When Edan removed my sigil, I had been delirious. Though Idra had removed his, he would still suffer withdrawal from the venom until I either began injecting him with my medicine or put to the test Idra’s belief we could survive with sigils attached. But would he want to wear mine?
No. He would despise the idea as much as I did.
I shoved those thoughts aside. First we must reach the city and find our way back into the veil.
If Idra had been telling the truth, Beltania was under siege, and we had to help them if we could.
The festive atmosphere in town remained unchanged from when Asher and I passed through earlier.
When the females caught sight of Edan, their jaws dropped and their wings twitched. The female who had warned me against bringing my pet into town waved to me.
“Hello there.” Her gaze raked over him before she turned to me. “You are a very lucky female.”
“I— Thank you.” I grunted as I shifted Edan’s weight. “We have a slight problem.”
“Your pet?” She twisted a length of her hair around her finger.
“Yes, about him.” Dread washed through me as her cheeks grew flush. “Wait—what is it?”
Her chin dropped to her chest. “I told them he was spoken for.”
“He left.” He should have been to Beltania by now. “I saw him vanish with my own eyes.”
“If you say he left, you would know.” She shrugged. “A male who resembles him greatly is held in the butcher’s pen in Red Alley.” She smiled shyly at Edan. “I wondered if you had replaced him.”
“No.”
The girl lowered her gaze. “I meant no disrespect. Perhaps if you hurry?”
Grinding my teeth, I asked, “Where is Red Alley?”
She pointed the way, and I lurched forward with Edan.
Gods above. It would have been so much easier to leave him seated at a table while I went in search of Asher, but the females were eyeing him like a freshly carved varanus roast. I feared what they might do if I left him alone with them for long.
The smell of Red Alley told me we had arrived. It was a narrow path cut between two buildings, paved on a slant with a pool at the bottom. The alley ran red with blood that swirled around the drain.
“What’s that smell?” Edan wet his lips.
“Nothing good.”
His groan made me think he disagreed.
“We need to find Asher.” I led him through the alley, trying to keep to the sides so our bare feet were kept dry. “He’s the only way we have of leaving here without drawing attention to ourselves.”
More attention. Edan turned heads before, even with his scars. Now he was half naked, and from the reactions he had garnered so far, his new wings were setting harbinger hearts aflutter—literally.
He brought me up short, easing his weight from me onto the nearest wall. “Asher’s here?”
“He helped me find you.” I propped him up as best I could. “He left earlier, but he knows how to return.” Stubborn male that he was, I wagered he had wasted no time finding his own route back.
Edan’s brow puckered. “Why would he do that?”
“He wanted to prevent what happened to him from happening to you.” It wasn’t exactly a lie.
“That was kind of him.” Edan’s stare bored straight through me. “Is that the only reason?”
Cursing under my breath, I admitted the truth. “He and I are… We sort of…”
Red slashed his cheeks. “I will kill him for touching you.”
“No, you won’t.” I gripped his arms. “I didn’t mean that. We haven’t done anything.”
Yet.
“Good.” He relaxed, his head falling back to rest against the wall.
“Can you stay here while I scout ahead?” The alley was empty, and I could see the pens the girl had mentioned. The breeze shifted, bringing the stench of urine and feces with it. My eyes watered. I choked, tucking my face against my bare arm to mask the smell. There was nothing for it. I put down my arm and checked to make sure no one was coming. “Don’t move. I’ll be back as fast as I can.”
Araneae Nation: The Complete Collection Page 128
