Serpentine Tongue Read Online Free Page B

she’d never once told him she loved him back.
    The chair brushed the dirt floor, followed by a swish of skirts. She laid her hand against his hair. “She is cruel, that I will admit. Most of all, she is an imbecile for what she lost in you.” She caressed him over and over. “I take it death was your punishment?”
    “Oh no, she is not that kind,” he said through his hands. “With the royal power behind her, she cursed us. She told me once that I had a serpentine tongue, ready for pleasure and pretty words, later on for immaculate lies. I deserved no better than to reflect what she thought of me. The very make up of our bodies were changed. Dearg was helpless but to be doomed alongside me. Because she felt no mercy for him, I made a grave error.”
    “As would I,” she said.
    Dearg pushed off the hearth. “Never forget, brother, everything I’ve done was in my own good conscious. I haven’t regretted our friendship. Not for a moment.”
    “Even though we are now beasts?”
    He came to his other side, and patted his shoulder. “We are what we are. No helping that now.”
    “And what did she expect to do with two dragon shifters?” Siobhan asked, disbelief and horror dripping from her tone.
    “The Queen dictated that we’d be used for threat in war. Intelligent flying lizards, willing to take her command. She hadn’t accounted for us risking exile, and escaping the castle. In her opinion, who would want to leave the Seelie court willingly?”
    Siobhan snarled. “Me.”
    Fallon lifted his cloudy head, emotionally wrought from his telling. Not once in the resulting weeks of their fate had they spoken of the event that it was about. He hadn’t permitted himself to feel anything but hatred.
    “That is true enough. That is our tale, dear lady,” Dearg said. “But, now it’s your turn. Why did you leave the Seelie court?”
    She deflated. “I suppose, in many ways the woman I used to be was akin to the Queen, much as it ails me to admit. I enjoyed my power in the court. Few under the crown questioned my word. As an elder noble born to the age were the old arts ruled, we were a different people back then. We wielded magick very few people remember now. I had allies everywhere, whether out of fear, or love. Much like you and Bartel, Druantia saw me as a threat.” She paused. “Let me say this here and now, regardless of what she may say, I had no desire for the burning crown. I told her time and again, but she did not believe anyone with my connections and skill would settle for my position. Conceited as I may have been the responsibility of royalty wasn’t something I could handle.”
    Fallon hardened his heart. “And what plot had she wrought for you?”
    Siobhan laughed bitterly. “She claimed her right to marry me off, to a man who would ‘harass me’ or so she claimed. She chose Garbhan.”
    “That cannot be,” Fallon admonished. “For any woman wed to a Knight…”
    “Is to be a royal handmaiden, a lady in waiting at her beck and call. Only then would she be within her rights to wield my magick as her own, as she saw fit. Say nothing of how leaden Garbhan’s hands are when it comes to women.”
    Dearg winced. “There’s a time I couldn’t say a bad thing about the Captain, but I’ve learned much since our fall from favor. He is indeed a hard man.”
    Her hand fluttered to her chest. “Hard? The man is barbaric.”
    Dearg shifted uncomfortably. “Did I not come across you one night with him?”
    “Yes. You pulled him off me within hours of the Queen ordering me to marry him. Together, they’d toasted the alliance, and I left to keep my own counsel. He came upon me in the hall, determined he already owned my body.”
    “I wasn’t clear headed myself, but I remember your ripped bodice, the look on your face, horrified.”
    Her cheeks flushed an angry red. “He had no doubt I’d submit to his will. I taught him differently.”
    He nodded at the green fire in the hearth. “You