Chapter 61: The Snakes Confession

Leonidas stood at the edge of the healer’s ward, arms crossed, watching a vial of pale silver liquid change hands.

Cassian didn’t so much as glance at him as he took it, turning it over once in the light before nodding at Orin and tucking it away carefully.

He had hated Cassian since they were boys.

Not at first. At first, Cassian had just been the quiet cousin, always a half-step behind, always watching more than speaking. Leonidas had been faster. Stronger. Sharper with a blade before he had even hit his growth spurt. His father, the old King, used to parade him in front of the visiting Sovereigns like a prize stallion. Look at my son. Look what I’ve made. Look at how great he will be.

And then, somewhere around their sixteenth year, something had shifted.

Cassian had started winning. Quietly, at first, so quietly that Leonidas hadn’t even noticed until the pattern was undeniable. Sparring matches. Council debates. A hunting trial that should have been Leonidas’s by every right, except Cassian tracked the wounded stag through terrain no one else could read and brought it back before sundown.

His father had stopped looking at Leonidas the way he used to.

You should have been my son. You’re better and much wiser. If only I could do something about it, the old King had said to Cassian once, at a feast, loud enough for half the hall to hear, too deep in his cups to care who was listening. Leonidas had been standing three feet away. He remembered every syllable of it like a brand burned into bone.

And the words had haunted him ever since.

His father had died the following winter. Leonidas had inherited a crown from a man who had spent his final years wishing he had worn someone else’s face.

And Cassian?

Cassian had been quiet, once. Shy, even. Leonidas remembered mocking him for it mercilessly, the same way older boys always found the softest place to press their thumb. He had called him names in front of the other nobles’ sons. Left him out of hunts on purpose.

Then his father had started preferring Cassian, and Leonidas had learned, far too late, that cruelty rarely stays where you plant it.

The old King had made sure of that. He had rubbed it in Leonidas’s face at every opportunity, holding Cassian up like a trophy. And somewhere in the middle of all that public humiliation, something in Cassian had hardened into the sharp-tongued, needling menace Leonidas dealt with now.

The same menace that had tried to....

Enough.

Leonidas exhaled slowly, dragging himself out of the memory before it could pull him under completely. He was a grown man, a King in his own right, and here he was, sulking over a childhood grudge while a plague ravaged both their kingdoms.

Pathetic.

He turned away from the ward, boots echoing down the stone corridor, and let his mind do the thing it always did the moment he had a spare, unguarded second.

He missed the empress.

He missed Karina.

He had had time to think, these past seven days. Too much time, honestly, with nothing but silence from the capital and the ache of her absence to keep him company. He had turned the whole miserable history of it over in his mind more times than he could count, and he kept arriving at the same, uncomfortable conclusion.

He had been wrong. Truly, completely wrong.

Maybe initially it had been his ego, unable to accept that the wife he had dismissed as weak for six years had turned out to have more spine than every noble in his court combined. Maybe it had simply been easier to hate her than to look at his own failures as a husband. As a father.

It was so much easier to paint Valen as a byproduct of a desperate political scheme than to admit the truth: that his son had grown up without a proper father, that Leonidas had neglected him for six long years while chasing pride and mistresses and anything that wasn’t the quiet, watchful boy waiting for him back at the palace. And even now, even after everything, even after nearly losing him to a woman’s poisoned jealousy, Valen didn’t acknowledge Leonidas as his father.

He regretted it, in a small and painful way. Even though none of that changed the truth of it.

She had done nothing to deserve what he had given her. Even if he had genuinely believed her weak, believed her a burden, believed every cruel thing he had said to her face and behind her back, none of that had given him the right to treat her the way he had.

And now she’s no longer my wife.

He had said the words himself, weeks ago, so certain of what he wanted. Now they tasted like ash every time he remembered them.

He groaned, pressing the heel of his palm against his eye. Enough. This does nothing but rot you from the inside.

His thoughts drifted to Drystan. That arrogant, fire-breathing fool, humiliated in front of an entire courtyard, sent packing with his tail between his legs, presumably back in his own territory right now plotting something monumentally stupid.

Leonidas almost laughed.

I wonder how Karan and Zarek are going to fare.

The cheetah beast man could be just as stupid and hot-headed as Drystan, while Zarek was more of an awkward man.

He groaned again, louder this time, and kept walking.

~

Karina sat on her throne, trying her hardest not to fidget nor display the confusion she felt in her expression.

Standing in front of her was Zarek.

The Ruler of the snake faction.

And her third husband.

From her memories, Zarek hadn’t been much of a talker, nor a cheater.

He had just been neglectful, which made him just slightly better than the other husbands so far.

And true to her memory, he hadn’t said a word since, and seemed more than content to stare awkwardly.

I honestly didn’t think Aldric would catch him this fast, Karina thought, resisting the urge to shift under that gaze. A giant snake napping in a wheat field, and my general has him in the throne room within a day. Impressive, actually.

Corvin, who she remembered from the old Karina’s memories, stood a respectful distance behind his King with his arms folded.

After some more minutes of awkward staring, Karina cleared her throat. "King."

"Empress," Zarek said flatly.

A beat passed. Then another.

"Greetings," Karina tried again, deciding formality might get further than casual conversation had. "It has been quite some time, Zarek."

"Yes."

Wonderful. A man of many words.

She studied him properly now that he wasn’t blinking at her like a lizard sunning itself on a rock. Dark green hair, the faint shimmer of scales along his cheekbones. He looked cold, and entirely unbothered by anything short of a natural disaster.

If Cheshire was here, he would have given her a full breakdown of him.

Not that I need Cheshire anymore. Traitor cat’s still sulking somewhere in the back of my skull.

"I take it," Karina said, deciding to simply rip the bandage off, "that you are also here to discuss annulling the marriage."

Something flickered behind Zarek’s eyes. He said nothing.

"Don’t worry about it," she continued, waving a hand with ease. "I want to as well. Frankly, it will make things considerably simpler for both of us. You keep your kingdom, I keep my crown, and we never have to sit through another one of these excruciatingly awkward audiences again."

She expected relief. A curt nod, maybe. Perhaps even a flicker of that same cold indifference he had shown her the entire time she had been talking.

Instead, Zarek frowned.

It was such a small thing, barely a shift in his expression, but it was the most emotion she had seen cross his face since he had been dragged into her throne room.

"No," he said.

Karina blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

"No, I—" Zarek stopped, his jaw working. Beside him, Corvin’s eyebrows had climbed halfway up his forehead, apparently just as startled by this development as she was.

Zarek swallowed.

"Hmm," he said, mostly to himself, like he was still deciding whether to say the rest out loud at all.

Then his eyes came up to meet hers again, and this time there was desperation in them.

"I want my son."