'ᴡᴇ ꜱʜᴀʀᴇ ᴀ ꜱᴇɴᴛɪᴍᴇɴᴛ. ɪ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ʙᴏᴜɢʜᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʙʟᴏᴏᴅ ᴀɴᴅ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴄᴇ.'
Only one month has passed in Daliah Viper's life trying to reintegrate at court and follow the uneasy trails her eyes have caught.
One month filled with blood, tribulations, and l...
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Lying to Larentia feels like I cut off the tail of a lizard. It wiggles and moves helpless, devoid of any function until it dies off and lies too still.
I cannot tell her about my deal with Maven. I cannot tell her I knew about the rebels at the sun shooting. I cannot tell her I knew about the lightning girl. I cannot tell her what the whispers want or do. I cannot speak about the death of my uncle or that my father waited so patiently to do it.
Too many words left to be unspoken.
Instead I tell her a pitiful truth first.
"I tried to gain some insight in my marriage, but I can only tell you what everyone knows about Samson. He is a cruel brute that tried to break me a few times. And now he uses my incompetent mother to gain access to every room in the house and wants to know every secret. She keeps distasteful parties and company too."
Larentia makes a displeased sound. Showing fangs, her white teeth blink through her lips a second. She looks back out. I follow her eyes into the grass littered with red flowers behind the house. The cups are delicate, more like weeds than actual petals, and their intense, spindling bodies reflect the light in hypnotic patterns. They remind me of spider legs, growing in colonies and running wild over cobwebs.
"Your mother never knew when to keep her legs or her mouth shut. I will take care of her. It is about time someone does."
"I'd be eternally grateful," I state and bow. I don't dare to pull a chair over. I can't turn my back. I am almost paralyzed. "You know my father is unwell. It keeps getting worse."
A nod. I feel how we draw everything that flutters and crawls into the room. The spiders, ants, moths. Everything gravitates towards me and her.
"I had a bad run-in with Queen Elara at dinner with my in-laws but I could convince her that I am utmostly interested in turning the rebels in. I mostly negotiate with her son. I wouldn't say Maven Calore likes me. But he likes to use me." He surely likes to unload on my poor spider whatever he feels like revealing.
"I offered myself up for arrests and special tasks regarding rebels and...and-" I flinch away from stating it. "Anomalies."
"New Bloods," Larentia corrects me. "Red rats." And of course, she knows that. She knows what they are.
Unfazed, she turns from the flowers in a cutting, but graceful motion. You can see where Evangeline has inherited it from. She sits down again. "And now?"
I draw my shoulders back. "The first arrests by myself were made today. I will reroute through Norta for a few more stops."
I cannot tell her that the children all weigh heavy on my consciousness, more so than the guards I killed, or even Ellyn and defusing Ara from her position, everyone I condemned. I remember myself slipping on silver blood of four-year-old twins and how I blamed Barrow for murdering our children. And then the muddy eyes of my red boy mix in.
