AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“So, which one am I supposed to give the ‘Dad Talk’ to?” He murmured as he walked past her.
“You’re not going to,” she hissed.
“Well, it wouldn’t be right to make Melody do it. That just wouldn’t make sense.” He frowned.
Mykie glared at him. “You know what I mean. You don’t need to have that conversation with either one of them.”
She looked around at the living room, where the two boys made themselves at home. Caspar had decided to perch himself on the edge of the couch cushion while Corbus seemed to be looking through the photos on the wall.
“Where’s Melody, anyway?” Mykie asked.
“She’s with her parents. We’ve got some good news that we were hoping to share with you together when you come over for Christmas,” Chance explained.
“How old were you in this one?” Corbus asked, pointing to a particularly bad school photo.
“I was twelve. It was taken on picture day about two weeks after I got braces,” she explained, rubbing the side of her arm. She hated that photo, and Chance stored it away while she was still living at home. She hadn’t seen the picture in years, so she assumed that Chance forgot about it. It was just like him to bring it back out just before she came over.
“I found it last week when I was going through the old stuff I have stored in our spare room,” Chance explained, swinging his arm around Mykie’s shoulders.
“I hate that photo. I wanted to burn it as soon as I brought it home,” Mykie grumbled.
“I think you look cute.” Corbus beamed over his shoulder at her. “I do like you, sans braces, though.”
Chance frowned. “All right, we’ll stop while we’re ahead.”
He laid a hand on Mykie’s shoulder, indicating that he was ready to sit down and talk. “We’ve got to talk about our next course of action, now that the Vultures have unarguably started a war.”
“They’re trying to figure out who is the Snake King. From what Zack told me, they have a fairly good idea,” Mykie stated as she plopped down next to Caspar. He was still sitting stiffly on the edge of his seat. She put a hand on his knee and squeezed.
He turned his head in her direction, but she didn’t look over at him.
Corbus was the only one still standing, as Chance took his seat in the recliner. Corbus was watching her and Caspar with flared nostrils, and Mykie rolled her eyes. She lifted her free hand off her lap and held it out to him.
She waited patiently. There were going to be times, she knew, that there would be jealousy. She thought it wouldn’t be now, seeing that he was fine with Caspar kissing her in front of him the other day. But was that because Corbus kissed her first?
With their disagreement on how she handled problems in the Cantil, she was not surprised that the united front Caspar and she put off in front of Chance would make Corbus feel like the odd man out.
He crossed the living room in long strides and took her hand before he sat down next to her. He mumbled a few things under his breath, but Mykie didn’t take the time to question him. She didn’t care either when she watched him pull their hands closer into his lap and wrapped his other hand around hers, trapping it in a warm, but possessive embrace.
She sent him a small, soft smile before she turned her head back to face Chance.
“May I ask a question?” Caspar asked politely.
Chance nodded.
“I thought it was already established that you were the king? Or was I just making an assumption?”
“We rely on assumptions, Caspar,” Mykie said, answering his question before Chance could. She glanced at Corbus. She wasn’t happy that they were discussing such important information in front of him, but it couldn’t be helped, now. He said he wanted to be more involved, so this would be a test. A major one, at that.
Mykie continued. “Within the Snake Pit, everyone knows that Chance is in charge and Snake King, but we’ve also allowed rumors to circulate that say Chance is only a stand-in for the real one. It allows some mystery to remain, so if we have an incident like recently where a rat is feeding the Vultures information, it’s unclear whether it’s true or not.”
Chance spoke up then. “It’s more the outside world that we worry about, because of the Vultures. They would be fighting harder to go after me if it was confirmed that I was the leader. It’s true that the Cantil see me as their leader and the one to come to when there are problems, but if everyone knew for sure that I am the King, then my death could cause a lot of panic, both internally and with our businesses.”
“Which the Vultures would take full advantage of,” Mykie added.
“At the moment, they and the public only know that, at the very least, I’m high up in the Cantil and have a say in our culture. They can’t prove one way or another if I’m the Snake King,” Chance explained.
“That’s one of the main reasons that no one is allowed into Chance’s office. If someone was able to get in there and prove to the public that Chance is or isn’t the king, things could turn sour,” Mykie finished.
