Page 25 of City of Snakes
“Put this on.” She handed me an emerald silk dress that felt far too light. “It will suit your eyes.”
“Thisis not a dress.”
Elsedora chuckled. “Trust me. As we get into the heat of summer, you’ll be thankful for the lack of modesty here.”
Offering her a mock glare, I took the dress behind a changing partition. Slipping off the robe, I pulled the slick green fabric over my head. I was thankful for the extra fabric that wrapped around the bodice but not for the back being left open.
Long ribbons hung from the sides, and the sleeves would need to be tied. I stepped out from behind the partition, trying to hold the dress together. “What exactly do I do with all of these?”
“Let me,” Elsedora said and stepped up behind me. With surer fingers, she crossed the extra fabric over my shoulders and then around my waist before tying it there. “This is the fashion right now, so many ties...It’s rather fun to be unwrapped like a present, though.”
A laugh burst out of me. I couldn’t imagine King Darvan-dick taking his time with a woman enough to ‘unwrap her like a present.’
It also seemed as though nothing, not even the Shadow-wielding King, could tame the wild gust of Elsedora’s winds. She was like a beautiful tornado that could sweep through and dismantle even one’s thickest defensive walls.
While she was Fenris’ sister, she had grown up here, apart from him. I admired her independent streak.
“Does your King like the gifts you offer?”
“Who?” Elsedora asked as though the question was outlandish. “Krait?”
“I assumed...”
Elsie threw her head back with a snorted laugh. “Oh, how I wished as a girl. Practically threw myself at him on my eighteenth birthday, and he was mortified.”
“It was wrong of me to assume.”
“I will deny I ever told you this, but I once had a portrait of him hanging on my wall as a girl.”
“No!” I gasped out.
“Yes. Such a girlish dream—the Brennac Prince whisking me away. The infatuation took years to squash. And many, many sexual encounters with other people—it’s funny now.”
I couldn’t judge her. The manwaslethally attractive. I’d give him that.
“You’ve spent many years together—it never changed for him?”
“No. After Freya, his heart is too wounded to have eyes for anyone else. But Krait is a loyal friend. Once he chooses you, little will deter him from being there when you need him. He and Ryn have been a constant in my life since I left the North Corridor.”
It was odd to think of the growling, grunting King as anything more than a sadistic prick. That he might be loved by anyone was intriguing, and it was clear from the adoration in her emotions that she did love her King.
“Princess Freya?”
“Yes. Rynall’s sister. I urge you never to say her name in front of Krait unless you want a catastrophic Shadow tantrum. She was beheaded centuries ago—it was a tragedy. The people of Brennax loved her. Krait loved her.”
I filed that all away—the last Prince of Phynx was here. Krait had loved his sister. She’d beenbeheaded.
The very word sent shivers down my spine. What could the Princess have done to deserve such a fate? Or had she deserved it at all? My heart sank for Ryn.
In my mother’s case, it hadn’t taken more than hearsay. For female royals, their position on a throne was always a precarious one.
But Krait had destroyed her city and killed her family...aside from Ryn.
Something wasn’t adding up.
“Was it hard for you—leaving your land?”
Elsedora contemplated that for a moment before she shook her head. “No, at the time I thought there was nothing left for me there. But I do miss the Hussa Mountains, the crisp air, the frost melting away after a long winter.”
