Page 123 of City of Snakes
“King Mattock,” she gasped.
Though she made no move to strike, I slid back and rose to my knees, searching for the sword no longer at my hip.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
“Where is Ryssa?” Self-preservation made me ask the question. Because I knew the truth. Ryssa had never existed beneath that veil. The cloak she wore was wrapped around Firose’s petite frame.
She stepped forward and extended one hand toward me. “Listen, Emmerick, please.”
I pushed to my feet, pulling my dagger from my boot. Holding the blade between us with a shaking arm, I stepped out of her reach.
“Please. Don’t strike until you’ve heard what I have to say.”
Blood pulsed in my ears, and cold sweat ran down my back. The scarring at her throat formed a ring all the way around her neck, purple and gnarled. Her face looked like cracked marble, with scars running from her temple to the peak of her full lips.
Lips that had once kissed mine roughly over wedding vows in the Central Tower on a night that I’d hoped to forget. The Divine who’d conducted our ceremony had worn gray robes and a gray veil—his voice had been grave and commanding. It’d seemed as though he held an investment in our marriage and wanted to put Firose on my throne. Poison-soaked memories blurred into the reality that she had never truly died. Seeing her face again was all I’d needed for the memories to return.
Our union had not been nullified. My lawful Queen consort stood before me.
My heart shattered. This woman before me was not the soft-spoken Ryssa that haunted my dreams. She was my worst nightmare.
“You,” I growled.
Firose’s eyes brimmed with tears.Fake. She’s incapable of remorse.
“How?” I shouted and lunged for her. She didn’t attempt to fight—no fire formed in her palms.
She gasped when I slammed her against the iron-framed glass of the atrium. “Please,” she said through tears. “I beg you. I’ve tried to help you, to stop you when he takes control. I had been tracking him with a map, but it was stolen from me. He kept reaching you before I could. I was your father’s friend once…I tried to help him then too.”
With my body pressing hers to the glass, I brought my hand up to place the blade against her throat. “You have thirty seconds to convince me not to bleed you out right here.”
I should just kill her.
Firose winced against the feeling of the blade at her throat. “It was real...our time spent together. It was real. At first I only wanted to ensure you did not Death-wield, that he couldn’t harvest more through you. But then I enjoyed your company.”
I shook my head.
Closing her eyes as tears streamed down her pallid, cracked cheeks, she continued, “Caym found me a week after Fen asked me to marry him. He was in Commander Stygian’s body then. I was in the Temple of Light in Belray.
“I had everything I ever wanted. I was about to be the happiest woman alive. Caym took the worst of me and set it aflame. At first, it was infatuation. Then fanaticism. Within weeks, he could control me fully. He takes your anger and uses it to kill, destroy, maim, and when he bleeds you dry of your will to live, he simply takes a new envoy in your place. There are three of you he’s infected.” Her voice cracked.
Elsedora’s words circled back to me about the Death Origin rising, about me being an envoy. Sybilla suspected me, Haward and Bringham.
I lessened the pressure of my dagger, too appalled with myself to hurt her. Not when she looked so damned helpless, not with tears burning down scarred cheeks. She breathed a sigh.
“How do I know you are not him now? I assume he can still control you?” I demanded.
“I am no longer an envoy,” she answered. “He cannot control me any longer.”
I scoffed. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she answered frantically. “One moment I was being torn apart in the throne room of Luz. The next, I woke in a field of flames on the West Corridor shores. It’s as though the Sources melded me back together.”
“Can he hear us now?” I should let the blade sink in. On one hand, she’d deceived me; on the other, she’d also been at myside for months. Every emotion grew at odds with another. I hesitated.
“No, he can only move between envoys when you are close. It’s why he relies on his relics—the deathmarks. The marks do not control you; theytrackyou. That is what the map in the crypts tracked too—the active deathmark. I knew when he neared. But I could only stop him so many times without risking him finding me.” She reached up to place a hand on my chest. “I’m sorry...for lying, for it all.”
I growled at the memories darkening my thoughts.
