“You insolent, little shit—” Malazan snarled, spinning to face me fully as she took a step in my direction.
“This conversation grows tiresome,” Mab said, the words making Malazan hesitate in her hurry to get to me. “It is not your bond to Caldris that interests me, and I should like to get to know the parts of you that are not connected to him. Take off her collar, Malachi.”
“But my Queen—”
She turned a glare to him.
“Estrella, your mate is severely weakened and injured at this moment. You will never harm me more quickly than I can end his life, and with him out of your sight, you won’t have any warning before I kill him. Harm me, or even attempt it, and you will be alone in this world. Do you understand?”
I ground my teeth together, toying with the idea of trying to decipher any deception to her words. There was none to be found, at least not easily, and I’d already known as much from the pain I’d felt the night before.
“What have you done to him?” I asked, gritting my teeth as I shifted my feet.
His blood coated the bottom of my shoes, making it feel as if he was still with me, even when I could not sense him. I’d know if he was gone from this world, but why did he continue to shield me from him?
“I think it pertinent that you worry more about yourself for now. Caldris is still alive for the moment. That’s all you need to know. Understood?” Mab said.
“Yes,” I hissed, bowing my head forward as Malachi swept my hair over my shoulders.
He grasped the back of the collar, the click of the hidden lock separating as he opened the heavy iron. He drew it away from my neck, guiding it away from the front of my throat. My eyes closed as I breathed deeply, feeling warmth flood my Fae Mark. I turned my head toward it, opening my eyes slowly as I stretched my arm, reveling in the way the golden light shimmered like stars.
Raising a stare at Malazan, I watched her flinch back the moment my eyes met hers. I could only imagine what she saw, wondering if the same thing filled them as it had that night in Blackwater when I’d banished the stars from the sky.
“What is she?” she asked Mab, her voice a breathless whisper.
“I have every intention of finding out,” Mab said as Malachi brought me the chair from the day before.
I glared down at the iron shackles hanging from the arms, wondering if she’d freed me for only a few moments to make her grand show to her court. She didn’t banish them as she had before, allowing them to stay and watch as I walked around the side of the chair and lowered myself into it.
Mab stared at me in silence, and I couldn’t shake the knowledge that we were waiting for something. That whatever came would be even worse than before.
A single snake slithered across the throne room floor, making its way to my feet and rising onto its tail to stare at me.
“I want to know what’s inside that pretty head of yours, Little Mouse. Unfortunately, I cannot rely on you to just do the easy thing and tell me.”
The snake wrapped around my ankle, slithering over my skin as it climbed up my leg and settled in my lap. I swallowed back my nerves, fearing snakes for the first time in as long as I could remember.
This one looked at me as if I was something to devour, as if it was entirely under Mab’s control. The temptation to test who it would obey was strong within me, but I shoved it down. Some secrets were better left in the dark, and I had to protect mine to the best of my ability.
He climbed up my arm, wrapping around my bicep until his mouth lay against my shoulder and his tongue flicked out to tease my neck. His eyes connected with mine, leaving me with no doubt that he knew what I was. That wherever my affinity for snakes came from, he recognized me as being like him.
Still, his teeth sank into the flesh of my neck. Blinding pain followed the puncture wounds, the heat of his venom filling my veins. Reaching up to grasp him, I moved to tear him away from my throat.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Mab warned with a tsk. Her voice turned mocking, her eyes clouding over like a snake on the verge of shedding her skin. “I would hate for Caldris to pay the price of your insolence.”
“You would hate no such thing,” I hissed.
I lowered my hand to the arm of the chair and gripped it to keep myself from tearing the snake free. The heat spread, filling my head with a grogginess that felt unfamiliar. I couldn’t shake the dream-like state it induced, couldn’t break free from the mist swirling in my mind. The throne room disappeared until only a room filled with steam in the night sky remained.
Mab stood on the other side of it, her voice carrying across the emptiness that lay between us as she spoke.
“What are you?” she asked, the command pulsing up through my body from the point where her snake had sunk its teeth into me.
In the same way the snakes controlled her victims, binding them to her will, that very venom existed within me for the moment. I felt her will pressing down on me as I gritted my teeth, molten lava following when I didn’t answer quickly enough.
“I don’t know!” I screamed, bowing my head forward as the snake adjusted his bite to get his fangs even deeper. I was still screaming when the mist faded to a moving portrait in my mind. There was only the faint vision of Mab beyond it, her eyes glowing with an eerie white.
The day at Blackwater filled my head, the moments where the moon and stars had faded from the sky replaying like a memory. Whatever power the snakes gave Mab, as the scene played out, her eyes moved as if she was watching it in her head. My fingers twitched in response, the memory of that all-consuming rage washing over me as if I was back on the bridge once again, discovering the lifeless body of a human boy who had been entirely innocent and died for nothing.
There were no golden threads hiding in the mist. There was nothing for me to grasp onto to unleash that rage as my Fae Mark glittered in the dim lighting.
Mab didn’t seem appeased by the memory she’d brought forth, making the rest of my journey toward Alfheimr skim through my head quickly as she searched for the answers I couldn’t provide.
I fought, struggling against the hands moving through my memories, rifling through them as if they were hers to command. An eternity seemed to pass, my blood boiling with the venom her snake kept within me. She rifled through weeks of memories, flashing across them quickly. She paused every moment Caldris stared down at me with affection, noting the love he showed, and I could practically hear her planning to use it against him.
If love was weakness, then what Caldris felt for me would be his ruin.
She paused when she found the blight dying in the snow, her eyes widening as I approached. I reached out with shimmering fingers to touch the feathers of the bird, his eyes glowing with gold once more as if it recognized me.
“Through death comes life.” My voice echoed through the mist between us.
The white in Mab’s stare faded suddenly as she reared back. Her snake released my neck finally, the mist around me fading slowly as the venom no longer pumped through my veins, stagnating within and leaving me weak.
I rolled my head to the side, finding Mab standing before me and staring down at me. Her mouth was hidden by the hand she’d raised to worry her bottom lip between her talon-like nails, shredding the skin that healed as soon as it bled.
“Did you find your answer?” I asked, my head filled with a dull, throbbing ache.