Page 95 of How Does It Feel?

My heart was beating so fast that it felt like a train was running through my chest. The hot tears continued to blur my vision.

“I wish I could go back to Willow Springs and pretend again. Just pretend everything is normal and okay and that . . . that is my life. I could date Cliff and settle down. I would hug Cecelia if I ever saw her again. I would hug Earl so tight and tell him to stay so far away from those stupid mushrooms.” My blubbering was incoherent, but it didn’t matter because no one was here. I would die completely alone.

Fight lamb. Show me the serpent that I know you really are, Callie. Give me all the venom you’ve got.

He was encouraging me? How ironic.

Calling me a serpent. Couldn’t he decide? A lamb or a serpent? You couldn’t be both.

He and I both knew I was a lamb. If I was a serpent, I would have already bitten him.

I would have bitten him a thousand times before he threw me in the dungeon.

I would have filled him with so much fucking venom his eyes floated and his heart exploded—

That mouth of yours is making me hard with all of these venomous threats.

The venom.

Ohmygod. The venom.

I struggled to sit up. My stomach felt tight, and I was barely able to move.

The venom was the last antidote.

The last poison was oleander. It had lethal cardiac glycosides known as oleandrin and neriine that sped up the pulse to erratically high levels.

I rolled off the table with a crack as my back landed hard atop a lumpy pile of snakes. I grabbed the nearest one, my fears overridden by the last morsel of my fleeting will to live.

There was no more space left for panic. I was too full of desperation.

The thick black reptile was huge. My hand couldn’t encompass his body, but I trailed it to the end and lifted hoping it wasn’t his tail.

It wasn’t. The large black snake widened its pink mouth before striking me in the chest just above my right nipple.

I screamed as the snake slithered angrily away.

The harsh sting had me clawing at my breast where the viper had struck. I felt the rush of venom surge through me like a bolt of electricity before it began its paralyzing effect.

Snakes used their venom to dull and sedate their prey, making it easier for them to consume. This effect would counter the poison’s effect by slowing down my heart rate.

The collection of poisons in my stomach would likely be in abundance, hence able to burn off enough of the lethal venom to where I would only be incredibly sick, but not dead. Unless they didn’t get me out of here in time and the other snakes bit me.

Before I could even move my arms out to collapse on the ground, the room whirled around me, and I was again back in the center of the ballroom at the Court of Faerie.

This time I felt no cold marble floor beneath me like that of the last trial.

Warm hands shifted underneath my back. My eyes fought to stay shut. To go somewhere far, far away from all of this torture.

I was in Prince Mendax’s arms.

I opened my eyes, prepared to fight, but instead, my body betrayed me. Every taut, sedated muscle grew heavier in his arms, and I found myself tucking into his broad chest, finding comfort.

It made no sense. He was the reason I was sent to the trial.

I knew he wanted me dead.

But something had cracked in him. I could see it in the way he stared at me.