A Hymn of Snakes

THIRTY TWO

The Hound's POV

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Everyone had known about Delia Petri and the Prince's outburst, that the Duchess of Night threatened to rip out his tongue. However, it's when she disappeared that people were worried. Her friends searched for her high and low, claiming she would have never went into the city. I had a hunch and her scent, so I kept my wits about me and followed the trail. Delia Petri didn't smell like the average human, after almost six centuries of practice and trying to maintain my bloodlust. She the unknown variable, I still didn't want to kill her. I was better than that, it was just easy to tell when she was around.

My footsteps hollow against the floor as I watched her hair fly against the summer wind, she sat on the ledge of the empty train station and waited. "There you are." I said, she turned around as her slim hands clutched onto a bottle of whisky. Probably something she stole from the kitchen, her cheeks were flushed and her eyes red from her tears.

She had been sobbing, "Wow what an honor, the Queen's Hound was looking for me." Delia said as I sat down besides her, the moonlight on her skin crystallized her like a diamond. Her dark brown eyes baring holes into my face.

"Are you drunk?" I asked her as I could smell the alcohol on her breath, I was glad I was the first one to find her. Otherwise everyone in court would see a drunk Duchess.

She looked down to her hands, and messed with the glass of the bottle. Delia's words slurred her words, it caused my heart to skip a beat. "Not like I want to be but yes." Delia answered me, picked her legs up from the ledge of the train station and crossed her legs. "I think I'm allowed to, I mean I risk my life for a man who I love then he stabs me in the chest. Now I'm stuck in a corner I can't escape, I don't want to marry him." She confessed turning her head towards me, her eyes wide as she tried to catch a read on me.

I reached out and pulled the whisky bottle from her and into my own lap."You're done with this for the night." She didn't seem convinced though, but I wouldn't give it back even if she pleaded me.

"He bit me." Suddenly Delia said, putting her hand to the crease of her neck. I reached out to move her hair to the side but I didn't want to touch her without her permission. She turned her head over and I noticed the open wound near her throat, any closer and it would have tore an artery. I swallowed down my rage, the Prince touched her. He fed from her. He broke her. "I guess that's my luck." She told me, but I didn't want her to think that any of this was her fault. It was that bastard of a Prince for laying his hands on her.

I wasn't there to protect her, guilt swarmed my gut. I moved my hand down to slice at my palm, moving my hands over as my own blood rose to the top. There was a red solo cup next to her leg which I poured it out for her. "You should have came find me." I said as the cut on my palm healed, giving her the cup as she looked down into it. Waiting and watching as she brought it to her lips and drank it dry. She threw the cup as we both sat, I watched as the Prince's mark disappeared. Thankfully it wasn't deep enough to mark her, then she would have been bound to him for life. "I would have protected you." I promised but I knew that my words wouldn't reach her.

Delia was too wounded to accept any help.

Her words slurred even more as her head fell on my shoulder. I froze, afraid to move. "Protect me? You're the Queen's Hound, if anything you knew what she was planning on doing. You knew I was about to be shackled to the Prince." She told me but I knew no matter what I said she wouldn't listen to me. I was bound by the Tepes family to be dutifully loyal since my birth, even if I wanted to tell her- I wouldn't be able to. Then her mind trailed off, "Did you know it was my birthday when I first got here?" She confessed to me and I smiled, her hands lifted up to tell me a two and a zero. I remember being twenty and knowing absolutely nothing, "I never said anything because it was too crazy of a time but it's funny that now I'm twenty. Two decades of complete and utter bullshit." She told me.