'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...
-to call forth or draw out (something, such as information or a response)
-to draw forth or bring out (something latent or potential)
(probably the last Viper chapter for now bc there are two or three Merandus and other parts still to elaborate on, sorry for the delay, my schedule is as fucked up as always.
For gipsie and also everyone else still reading heyy thank you for your support, I hope I get this done by the end of the year. <3)
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The room is not made for interrogation. It is an empty old guest room dusted off, furniture put aside.
A few glass cages decorate the walls, akin to the Viper Pit, as they call it. Mostly, they are empty under the soft yellow shine of electricity running beyond the walls and unloading in the glass of the lightbulbs above. A few now have been filled.
Their bugs and scorpions are everywhere.
One of the scorpions now sits on my wife's small palm, and she hands it over to her father before stepping back inside the background to my right.
It's yellow and big.
I can barely stop my face from crinkling into a low line. It is as nasty and ugly as any of the creatures inside the glass wall, but intriguing. Because it is deadly and hidden behind a security lock. I don't care about scorpions and spiders more than I need to trample them usually.
"Daliah likes the grey and black ones better," he explains."But I prefer this sort and the blue one over there. I added them to the Viper Pit a long time ago. Do you remember why, Calpurnia?"
The plastic cuffs cut deep into her flesh, the circulation cut off, and the missing grey blood makes her wrinkled skin sallow.
"You can't scare me," she hisses.
"Brave last words," the small, angry voice to my right mutters.
You'd know about brave last words, I think, recounting countless nights of needless denial and struggle.
My father in law gently puts the scorpion over her cheek. It doesn't sting. They're playing some game between animosi, fighting for control, and it could be amusing if it wasn't just a pale imitation of the abilities a whisper has. Far more primitive.
"Some types of spiders and scorpions provide treatment for my disease. Not perfect. Not at all. And with our resources concentrated on war effort and the crumbling fault in the money vaults and pockets, I only progress slowly on the subject. It could be too late in the end. But I keep buying time, so who knows? And who knows if the world won't burn down and we all fall into the abyss beneath Whitefire first either?"
"Poison as a cure." Fatalistic, dramatic. I take a step toward, pushing Daliah back. My fingers look too long and stark white against her black robe. "Let me cut to the interrogation."
