The Viper's Queen

Chapter 8: The Friction

The SUV door sealed shut and cut the world off completely.

No rain. No music. No crowd.

Just the two of us and the hum of the engine and air that felt like it was slowly getting smaller.

Tor hit a switch on the dash without being asked. A thick glass screen rose between the front and the back and locked us in together. The city moved past the windows in streaks of neon and wet light.

Varek stared straight ahead at the dark glass.

The muscle in his jaw was going. Hard and fast like he was biting down on something he didn't want to say yet.

I rubbed the marks on my wrist where the armor had dug in all night. My hands were still shaking. Not from the gala. Not from Syris or the hand around his throat or the five hundred people watching.

From what he'd said about my mother.

From the math that was rearranging itself in my head and coming out in a shape I didn't want to look at.

She was killed. On purpose.

"Three minutes," Varek said.

I said nothing.

"I leave you alone for three minutes," he said. His voice dropped lower. Rougher. "And you stand there listening to the man who's been trying to have us both killed."

"He came to me," I said.

"You didn't move." Varek turned his head slowly and looked at me in the dark. "You stood at that pillar and you listened to every word he said."

"He knew about the fire," I said.

The words came out before I could stop them. Pulled up from somewhere deep. Raw.

Varek's jaw went tight. He didn't flinch. Didn't look away. He just waited.

"My mother's fire," I said. My voice was starting to crack at the edges and I couldn't stop it. "Ten years ago. He knew the smoke report was a lie. He knew things that weren't in any file."

"Syris tells people what they need to hear to bleed," Varek said.

"He knew her veins turned black."

The words landed in the car like something dropped from a roof.

I turned to face him fully. The red velvet dragged across the leather seat.

"I never told anyone that," I said. "Not my father. Not one single person in my entire life. I have never said those words out loud." My voice was shaking now and I was done trying to hold it steady. "She was poisoned. He told me what it was called. He said it stops your lungs. He said the fire was thrown in after to cover it up."

Varek was very still.

Not his normal still. Something different. The still of a man who already knew the answer and was hearing someone else say it for the first time.

"Who signed for it," I said.

He said nothing.

"Who gave the order, Varek." My voice broke on his name. I felt it happen and kept going. "Was it your father? Was it the board? Did you buy my contract to keep me quiet about what I saw in that bedroom?"

I hit him.

Both hands flat against his chest. It was like hitting a wall. He didn't move at all.

I pulled my hand back.

Varek caught both my wrists before the swing landed. Fast. No warning. He pushed me back against the seat and his weight came forward and he pressed my wrists flat against the cold window above my head.

"You don't hit me," he said. Low and rough. Right against my ear.

I pulled against his grip. "Then answer me."

"I am the reason you are not dead." The words came out stripped of everything. No control left in them. Just the raw fact of it. "I am the only reason."

"That is not an answer!"

"It is the only one that matters right now!"

His voice filled the car. I felt it in my back teeth.

We stared at each other.

Both breathing hard. Both furious. His face inches from mine in the dark. The neon from outside flashing through the windows across his face in broken colors — blue then red then gone.

His breathing changed.

I felt it happen. Slowly and then all at once. The hard angry pulls of air evening out. Getting slower. Deeper.

His eyes moved across my face. And then they stopped.

On my mouth.

He didn't move. He didn't look away.

His grip on my wrists didn't get tighter. But his thumb moved. Pressing down against the inside of my wrist where my pulse was going absolutely crazy.

Reading it.

I went still underneath him.

Not because I gave up. Because the air in the car had changed into something else entirely and my body had noticed before my brain had caught up and I was furious about that. I was still angry. The anger was still right there, hot and real in the middle of my chest.

But his body was too close and too warm and I had almost died three times in the past week and something about that made everything feel very immediate in a way I didn't know how to deal with.

"You already know," I said. My voice came out quiet. "Don't you. You already know whose name is on those forms."

Varek looked at me for a long time.

His jaw moved once.

"What I know," he said finally. "Would burn this car to the ground. And you with it."

"Then burn it," I said. "I've been living in ash my whole life. I'm not afraid of fire."

Something cracked in his face. Small. Controlled. But real.

He let go of my wrists.

He didn't pull back though. He stayed where he was. His arms on either side of me against the seat. Looking at me in the way that had no name yet. The way that had been getting harder to look away from every time I saw it.

"When I tell you what I know," Varek said quietly. "Everything changes. What you think of yourself. What you think of me." A pause. "What I can keep you safe from."

"I'm not asking to be kept safe," I said. "I'm asking for the truth."

"Those aren't the same thing," he said.

The car slowed. The estate gates groaned in the distance.

Varek pulled back. Sat on his side of the seat. Became the boss again in the space of one breath — suit straight, face closed, eyes forward.

But his thumb was still pressed against my wrist.

He hadn't let go.

"Tomorrow," he said.

I looked at the side of his face. The scar along his jaw I'd never had time to notice before.

"Tomorrow isn't a promise," I said.

"No," he said. "It's a warning."

He let go of my wrist as the car stopped. He pushed the door open and stepped out into the rain without looking back.

I sat in the dark for a moment.

I pressed two fingers against the inside of my own wrist where his thumb had been.

Still racing.

I got out into the rain.