Page 174 of City of Snakes
“You are a long way from home, my Queen. And to be married, I’ve heard?” Mortag asked. His tone was laced with surprise and what one might construe as judgment.
“Guilty,” I admitted. “I am married already. It is what’s right for Luz—this alliance, this marriage. I think you’d like him. It is a good match.”
“Your mother thought her marriage a politically gainful one, too. And Death found her quite easily.”
I wasn’t sure when Healer Mortag had developed the nerve to speak to me in such a way, and my awareness heightened. My teeth ground together. “Yes, well...she was foolish to trust my father.”
My healer hummed and said, “Drink your tea. It will ease your nerves.”
As I drew nearer to him, I instinctually lifted the cup to take a sip. Upon noticing something familiar on the sleeve button of Mortag’s cream robe, the tea sloshed in my mouth.
The deathmark.
He still faced away from me. All the hairs on my arms stood as I lifted the cup to my lips, backwashed the tea into it, and set my cup down on the windowsill beside his arm, trying not to let my hands shake.
“You...” Healer Mortag’s voice turned darker as he said, “You have skirted Death your entire life, haven’t you, Isleen? Don’t you find that odd?”
I faltered, taking one step away from him. “That is not my name,” I reasoned. “Healer Mortag, you know that I am Sybilla. You’ve cared for me since I was a girl.”
Healer Mortag laughed—a horrid sound that filled my ears with smoky terror, like his essence was seeping into my mind. When he looked at me, his eyes were a terrible shade of murky green—Caym’s envoy.
Fuck. Think, Sybilla, think.
I glanced down at the cup of blue liquid on the sill and felt nauseous. A family recipe. My mother had loved it, her mother...daughters of Isleen.
What the fuck had he been doing with the tea?
Then it hit me—how easily my power had started to come to me while in the Sahlms, how scrambled my mind had felt for the first few weeks here. It felt like a punch to my stomach.
He had been suppressing my power for my entire life.
I caught sight of the moon through the window behind him. It was a deep shade of gray, nearly devoid of color with only a silver lining.
We were supposed to have years. This could not be happening so soon.
Mortag hunched, and I watched as the brown in his eyes returned. His mouth agape, he stared at me with dread written across his features. “I’m sorry, my Queen. Please, run…”
My heart pounded. “We can fight him, Mortag. I will help you…”
“It is a shame that you fell in love with my nephew.” A dark, grating voice came from the door of the flat.
I hadn’t heard anyone enter over the blood throbbing in my ears. A man in a heavy gray robe stepped into the room, the top half of his face obscured by the shadows of a hood. Barden followed behind him.
Emmerick, Barden, Mortag…The three envoys. But this was a fourth threat.
My eyes widened at the sight of my cousin—his hair ruffled, cheeks red and eyes bloodshot.
The gray-clad man continued, “We could domarvelousthings together. But time and time again, you always choosehim.” The way the man’s lips had shaped the word “marvelous” would haunt me until the end. With blackened fingertips, he drew back his cloak hood.
That same sense of inevitable doom I’d felt the night Asterie and I had used the moonstone together struck me.
Caym.
His eyes were a piercing shade of green that seemed to smoke with amber from within. He combed back golden locks with one hand. If it didn’t feel like I was about to be rotted from the inside out, then his sharp features might be considered handsome.
“Ah. I cannot kill you...I won’t kill you. Not when you hold such beautiful power. We will be unstoppable, Isleen.”
Barden and Mortag now stared at me with hungry expressions, like wolves set on prey. He was influencing both of them. Isolde’s powers had been restored.
