Page 6 of Quiver of Cobras
‘You don’t need to be recognised to be a hero,’ he told me.
Then his knees gave way.
Chapter One
Ten days later. Post amnesia.
I peered down. We had to be at least ten storeys up. I had no idea what Rubus was planning but I suspected that I wasn’t going to like it one little bit.
‘This entire city is mine, Madrona,’ Rubus said, sweeping out an arm. ‘Those humans down there might not know it but I am their lord and master. I give them protection.’
I scratched my head. ‘But you’re looking for this dragon-sphere magic-sucker thingumabob that belonged to some dude. Chen? Chin? Whatever. If you find it and use it, won’t all these people be killed?’
His handsome face darkened with fury. ‘There’s no if. Iwillfind it. That fucking bogle, Charrie, took it and he has to be somewhere. He can’t just have vanished into thin air. Besides, over-population is a serious problem. The humans could do with a bit of culling. Magic never did any of us any harm. I suspect it will be the making of the entire race.’ He leaned towards me. ‘One day they’ll thank me for it.’
‘Only if any of them are still alive after you’ve flooded their world with magic that doesn’t belong there,’ I said.
He glowered at me, his green eyes spitting venom. ‘I’m rather tired of this attitude. It was very tiring moulding you into the Madrona I needed last time. I’m not sure I have the energy to do it all over again.’
I shrugged. ‘Then let me go.’
‘I can’t do that. I won’t let Morganus have you.’
Like I was a thing to be passed around between the pair of them. I sighed and rolled my eyes. ‘Then kill me.’ I waved a dismissive hand in the air. ‘Push me off this building and be done with it.’
‘I thought this had been explained to you,’ he snapped. ‘The truce prevents me from hurting you in any way. It cannot be broken.’ He scowled. ‘Believe me, I’ve tried to break it.’
I arched an eyebrow. ‘Really?’ I asked, genuinely curious. ‘What did you do?’
‘Do you really, truly, want to know?’
I licked my lips. I didn’t know who I was before all this happened; I didn’t remember. What I did know for sure was that I had to get Rubus to trust me. And to do that I had to be Miss Evil Incarnate. Shamefully, I didn’t think it was going to be all that hard; I already had the evil inside me. ‘I do,’ I breathed. ‘Tell me. What did you want to do?’
Rubus eyed me for a moment, suspicion clouding his gaze. ‘I wanted to punish Morgan,’ he challenged. ‘I wanted him to suffer for suggesting we bide our time and wait for the border to re-open. For telling me that we should keep our heads down and not draw any attention our way. For ordering me to let the humans remain in charge.’ He sniffed. ‘So I tried to grab him. I was going to teach him a lesson and use a red-hot poker to blind him in both eyes. It would have been poetic justice – he kept telling me I wasn’t seeing things clearly. Ha! If I’d taken his eyes, it wouldn’t have been me with the vision problem!’
‘A spoon,’ I said, my own eyes wide. ‘You should have scooped them out with a spoon, one by one. You could have fed the first one to a dog while Morgan watched with his other eye.’ I bared my teeth into a grimace of a smile. ‘Then you could have injected him with rowan. That shit hurts like buggery.’
He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘What do you know about rowan?’
‘I inadvertently poisoned myself with some,’ I said, suddenly realising that my big mouth might get me into trouble here. The last thing I wanted was to tell him that I’d cut myself on a rowan-edged sword that was laying underneath Charrie the Bogle’s body. The very bogle that Rubus was so desperate to locate. ‘It’s a long story.’
Seeking a way to avoid telling him how I’d poisoned myself, I tried to draw attention from thehowtowards thewhat. ‘Do you know that when you’ve got rowan in your system, your faery skills change? I glamoured myself without realising it and then I couldn’t change back to my normal gorgeous self until I’d taken nux. It was quite disturbing.’
Rubus looked me up and down for a long moment.
‘You’re trying to imagine me as a hairy man right this second, aren’t you?’
‘No.’ He tapped his foot impatiently. ‘Maybe.’
‘I had very itchy balls,’ I informed him.
Even the blank-faced minions standing behind us looked horrified at that particular titbit. ‘Where did you get the nux from?’ Rubus asked, through gritted teeth.
‘Morgan, of course.’ There were some things I couldn’t lie about.
‘If you’d been with me, I’d have helped. I have more nux than he does.’
This sounded like a case of comparing dick sizes. ‘I’m sure you would have helped,’ I told him. ‘But I wasn’t with you so I had to take help where I could get it. Rowan is freaky stuff.’ I shrugged. ‘Using it would work wonders if you wanted to hurt someone. Like your darling brother.’
