Page 67 of King of Serpents

While Therxian was relieved that his mother had not condoned or ordered acts of brutality to preserve royal secrets, that was not what he needed to know.

“What did you see, Mother?”

She met his gaze, grief-stricken with the memories he was forcing to the surface. “Dead. They were left at different intervals, the bodies abandoned in different places, their sexual organs removed and their innards spilling out,” she rasped, choking on a sound of sorrow. “I did not understand how it could happen. Gyin and Taru, I was never alerted to their mating. The haga did not submit their cyclic report until nearly a full lunar cycle after their deaths. But when questioned, their mates claimed to know nothing. The second story was the same as the first. They had left their nest during the night and never returned. They had assumed that they had fled their nests to the upper caverns to wait out the pheromone bond, as that is not unheard of.” She scoffed angrily. “Not one of them thought to inform me that they had even chosen them, much less about their disappearance, until they were already gone.”

“Sexually brutalized and murdered,” Waena drawled quietly from where he had settled behind his mate, his presence, until that moment, forgotten. “I have read about this, but it is exceedingly rare, and there has not been any documentation of a punishment of this nature being carried out in generations.”

“Apparently, someone decided to bring it back,” Jathella observed.

“Punishment?” Queen Zathexa leaned forward as Jathella supported her weight. “What crime could be so great that it would demand such a horrific punishment?”

Waena’s mouth tightened. “Historically, removing a male’s sant and inner organs was seen as a punishment for a male’s lack of filiality to his mate that was exclusively carried out among the noble houses. Many would commit suicide to prevent being passed around, abused, and his sant removed while he was still breathing. But it would have been ritualistically carried out regardless. The removal of the internal organs was the final insult before disposing of his body publicly, where it would be subject to shame.”

Zathexa made a strangled sound, and Waena paled, his expression immediately becoming apologetic as his mate struck him with her wing.

“Waena, she did not know such details. You could have found a gentler way to put it,” Elder Goyu hissed.

“Apologies, my queen. I was not thinking,” the male stuttered in apology, but Zathexa held up a hand, silencing him.

“No need. It just proves that I was right. I suspected that the council was behind it, as it always followed a decision I made wherein I ignored their advice or objection. This was largely the case regarding my own daughter’s rearing and education.”

“Given what my purpose was to be, is it possible that they were likewise used for breeding—but secretively? And what if they had failed to reproduce?”

His mother paled and swayed, forcing Jathella to grip her more firmly as she glared accusatively at Therxian. Zathexa caught the look, however, and patted her arm.

“It is fine, Jathella. I need to hear this. Yes... if they were trying to breed a legitimate replacement for my mother-line, it is quite possible.”

“Mother, I need to speak to you about Vekatha,” he rumbled as he touched her arm and settled more firmly at her side. “And... Yilada.”

Zathexa met his gaze, and her expression tightened at the hated name. “Tell me.”

Chapter 47

The elder palace was surprisingly a lot bigger than Alex had originally surmised. Although the route down from the royal nest to the bath was long and winding, it was direct and gave the palace a more compact feel before she started branching out and exploring other corridors that branched off from the main one. Corridors that she had passed by and left undisturbed before. The palace, it seemed, was filled with what appeared to be different household compounds, as if it had once housed an entire extended family and their lines, each one assigned to a wing that led off from the winding descent of the main corridor. Every corridor was inviting and decorated, but every section seemed to have its own theme. And each with its own mini courtyard-style garden, though less grand than the one in the royal suite.

Alex dusted off her hands as she passed from the main corridor into the courtyard. Although the wings gradually descended and rested at different levels from where they split off from the main passage, they all seemed to be similarly arranged. Each courtyard doubled as a kind of leisure room in which the residents would gather. From there, numerous small corridors would branch off, each of which would end in a nest in the fashion that seemed to be common of the other residential parts of the palace, outside of that which was provided for the queen and her offspring. Given how large each gathering room of every familial compound appeared to be, the palace itself had to be enormous!

From what she could tell, the royal residential area was at the top with a long central corridor that ran directly toward the kitchens and other chambers for various purposes until arriving at the baths. It formed the heart of the palace, but from there was a cluster of four wings arranged at the east, north-east, north-west, and west fronts of the palace extended from the rock-face of the cavern. She had already explored the eastern and north-eastern wings, each of which provided her with a starkly different view of the palace’s surroundings and had its own specific theme of décor from its courtyard to its inner-most chambers.

Whereas the courtyard of the queen and her direct line was decorated with images of deities and rulers that carried on throughout the royal residential area, the eastern wing had a quiet, introspective feel that felt almost cold and repellent. The courtyard was laid out with blue stones that shimmered with caught light but the galthie were restricted to urns set out in strategic locations and meticulously contained planters filled with numerous species of luminous blooms that, while being attractive in design and overspilling their boxes with their tangle of blooms, invited dark shadows to gather that would only be illuminated by the singular crystal that sat at the center of the room—if Alex possessed the ability to awaken it. Which she did not, so the point was moot.

That said, she had to admit that the dedication to carrying out the themes was impressive. The entire floor of the courtyard and inner corridors and chambers of the eastern wing was comprised of that same blue stone, complimented by a broad blue band about halfway up the walls onto which swirling designs were carved. The overall effect gave the entire wing and its balcony a dreamy mystic quality that was only outdone by the view from its balcony. Despite extending from a point where the palace met the cavern wall that it was carved into and from, there was no grim view of stones. Instead, it overlooked a great chasm through which a waterfall dropped amid an entire ecosystem of bio-luminous trees and flowering bushes that she hadn’t seen in the upper shinara—though admittedly her view was incredibly limited at the time by what she could see from Therxian’s nest. The water glowed a silvery blue as it wound along the lower streets in numerous canals before spilling into the abyss, and a luminous, silvery cloud of vapor filled the void. Alex had watched it for a time and listened to the cadence of the flowing water and the rustling sound of leaves with the wind that blew through the caverns, sending plumes of glowing flower petals spinning into the air.

The eastern wing had a golden and bronze-colored stone that boasted bold geometric décor and splashes of vivid color among the choice of flowers planted—not only the galthie but large, bulbous, lantern-like blooms that, while they did not give off much light individually compared to the galthie, were striking due to their overall size—many of them the size of a toddler’s head, and for their scarlet and purple petals. Like the blue wing, the gold wing possessed a very contained design, but the overgrown flower beds were largely arranged around long benches where scrolls had been abandoned as well as a few odd, stringed instruments that piqued her curiosity as something to revisit later. There were also polished crystal spheres that, unlike the singing crystal that dominated the center of the room, appeared to be more ornate. They appeared to be designed to catch and distribute the light more evenly throughout the nests of the entire wing, despite the individual nests also possessing their own individual singing crystals.

In contrast to the dreamy atmosphere of the east-wing, the north-east was dominated by themes of organization and stability, something which was reflected in the view from its balcony. The canals were woven intricately there, intersecting and creating channels of navigation amid the sleepy shadows of an abandoned market of massive size and complexity, amid which numerous statues rose amid gardens that seemed sustained by the currents of air that continuously moved gently throughout the cavern and the endless supply of water everywhere.

Then there was the north-western wing. There the galthie grew more naturally there, and the stonework matched much of the rest of the palace except where the stone bore trace-veins of yellow or green within its depths, giving it a cozy atmosphere. Whereas the other wings were dominated by impressive aesthetic, the north-western wing boasted comfort. A small, spring-fed pool circled around its singing crystal, and galthie grew freely among a riot of flowers of varying sizes in a carelessly cluttered fashion that made it more of a tangled mess in its overgrown state than even the royal courtyard above. But unlike any other wing, it had massive cushions set everywhere as if a real family frequently gathered there and played with their nestlings amid abandoned toys and discarded and forgotten sheets of sahguin cloth, the edges of which fluttered faintly with the errant breeze.

Leaning from the balcony, she stared at the heavy shadows that revealed impressions of residential mounds neatly organized around central gathering areas verdant with growing plant life and shimmering, glowing waterways, and each residential mound with its own courtyard at its heart.

Alex whistled softly to herself. “Not bad at all. I wonder if Therxian has gotten a peek at any of this? What am I thinking—probably not if he wasn’t inclined to venture beyond the royal chambers above as a juvenile. And he’s only really just returned.” She considered his reaction when he found her in the baths, and she grimaced to herself. “Yeah, likely not. It’s probably why he was so paranoid, but I can’t say I regret breaking a few rules to see this. I can’t wait to show him,” she rambled to herself. She breathed deeply and grinned. “Everything certainly looks pretty fucking magical. It certainly seems as if everything was cozier back then. If you like living with all your close relatives, that is. Nothing new to non-gratas. Actually, this place looks much more comfortable than anything we are packed into,” she observed with a chuckle. “It’s certainly an improvement over the colony dorms at Raza.”

Stretching forward on her toes, Alex leaned over the top of the balcony as far as possible to peer over at the western-most balcony tucked against the cavern wall. Unlike the open atmosphere of the other three wings, it was surprisingly angled heavily into the shadows of the cavern.

“Looks mysterious,” she murmured. She fidgeted in place as she eyed it. Would she be pressing her luck with her mate’s patience if she ventured there? “Oh, who am I fooling,” she muttered. “In for a penny, in for a pound—whatever the hell those are, but I am sure it meant something at one point. Regardless, he isn’t going to be pleased if I go or don’t go since I’m already technically out of bounds. Might as well satisfy my curiosity. Let’s see what the western side has.”

Winding her way back through the north-western wing, she accessed the main corridor again and followed it down toward the western wall. Her steps slowed. She would be nearing the baths soon. Why was it that she didn’t recall seeing a fourth access hall every time she had come down that way? And why hadn’t she noticed before how dark that part of the corridor was. It wasn’t quite pitch black, but it was so heavily shadowed that she strained to see much more than the shadowy forms of the walls on either side of her and a distant light ahead where galthie flowers were clustered.