Page 100 of Serpentine Valentine
“Hello, Lux,” she murmured low and quiet, the way one would speak to a spooked animal.
I fidgeted. “Why are you here? Are you okay? Do you need something?”
A little smile like the flicker of a snake’s tongue. “Hush for a moment. Let me look at you. It’s been too long, and I’m too greedy to speak before I get my fill of you.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.
“I haven’t been sleeping well,” I explained with a flap of my hand to explain why I looked bedraggled, not even half as gorgeous as her.
“Mmm,” she hummed, rocking back on her feet a little. “Well, we’ll have to see if we can change that. No matter anyway, you look absolutely divine to me.”
Absolutely divine.
How could anyone resist someone who thought that of them?
She offered me her gloved hand, then frowned when I reached forward without thinking to accept it in mine. Clucking her tongue against her teeth, she pulled back to tug at the finger of each glove with her teeth and remove them. Then stepping close enough I could smell the bruised violet scent of her, she carefully worked the leather gloves over my own hands before chafing them between her own.
“Always so cold,” she teased softly.
I’d never seen her soft, not an ounce of tension in her face, not a coiling of muscle anywhere in her long, curved form. I realized she was a predator making herself small for me, exposing her belly in a show of submission. An animal kind of apology and one that suited her.
I gulped hard as she tangled her hand with my own and tugged me forward down the path.
“Will you let me show you something?” she asked, even though she was already leading me away. Even though she had to know the answer was and probably always would beyes.
I peered at her as we walked. “How are you, though? Today, I mean.”
She squeezed my hand. “Better than I’ve been in a long time. It’s not a bad day, love. It’s a day of celebration.”
“Because you got your revenge?”
She stopped so suddenly, I slammed into her shoulder, and she had to steady me with both hands on my hips. Her face was utterly somber, black and white in the shadows and moonlight.
“Because I gotjustice,” she amended firmly, shaking me a little. “I got justice because you helped me see beyond the simplicity of revenge.”
“Is it enough for you, though?” I asked, and there was one of my fears buried in those words.
Will you be able to move on now?
Will you be able to accept goodness in your life now that the monsters have been vanquished?
Do we get a happily ever after, or is this like those myths with only tragic endings?
Her gaze scoured my face as if committing it to memory. My heart thumped so hard it made it difficult to breathe.
Her sigh unwound between us, tickling my throat.
“For now,” she admitted, shifting her hands up my sides inside the open flaps of my coat until she could cup my cool cheeks. “One day, I’m going to kill him, though.”
I blinked. “What?”
Her thumbs shifted to my temples, fingers digging through the sides of my hair. She brought me closer to speak the words hotly against my parted lips. “One day, when Morgan is out of prison, and he thinks the nightmare is over, I’m going to kill him.”
When she pulled back, I was blinking madly, mute with shock.
“I’m not joking, Luna,” she said, each word carefully enunciated so I couldn’t mistake her meaning. “I learned a lot of valuable things from you. How to be a better person, how to seek justice for everyone and notjust myself. How to put things to rest so I can finally figure out how to look forward. But at the end of the day, there is no changing who I am inside. How what happened changed me irrevocably and eternally.” She took my hand and placed it on her chest. I could feel the calm beat of her heart, and it steadied my own. “I’m never going to be as good as you, and I don’t want to try. The person I am, I believe Morgan should die for what he’s done, and I’m okay with being the one to see it through to the end.”
A heavy pause, just the beating of two hearts falling in tandem.
