Snake Keeper by Alexandra Norton

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE STATION HADno clocks, or watches, or the concept of structured time that you could check in any way, but I estimated that we stayed the small dining hall for about an hour before emerging back to the surface.

Xioumar led me back through the part of the ring we had walked, toward the cable shuttle landing zone we had come in from.

Having my belly full and hydrated, I had regained some of my energy. I also felt… happy. Just happy. For the first time in a long time, I felt some version of genuine joy bubble within me. I rejected the offer of Xioumar’s hand, insisting on navigating the crowd myself. I’d gotten used to the bodies, coated in nothing but thin layers of silkskin sliding against me, and learned to wriggle through them like a curious fish. I was still clumsy, awkward, and ruined the flow of those around me; but it wasn’t as bad as my desperate attempts to push through the throng when we first arrived.

I’d gaped at the different stalls around me; even though we had passed them once already, there was far too much to see with one passing. I now noticed crystal keepers, metal workers, stalls full of fascinating objects.

He told me to stay close, but I’d run ahead of Xioumar as trinkets of all kinds pulled me in. Zeetha had offered to carry my flower and would meet us at the cable, so my hands were free to feel the variety of fabrics. At a fabric weaver’s stall, I found myself turned around in the layers of heavy blankets. I pushed my way in a direction that I hoped was forward. There were no Xiorn around me now, though I heard their bustling like waves crashing across a rocky shoreline on all sides.

I lost my footing when something pushed me from behind. I stumbled forward through layers of draped fabric. My hands, raised in front of my face, collided with something hard. A wall. I pushed off and glanced around - I was in a dark offshoot of the main ring walkway, faint streaks of light breaking through shifting quilts covering the exit, and a massive Xiorn stood before me.

A thick brow hooded his glowing orange eyes. Pupils contracted to needles as he slammed a huge hand into my breast, pinning me to the wall.

“Human whore,” he hissed in a low growl, forked tongue between his teeth.

I made to scream, but the Snake plastered his other hand across my face, covering my nose and mouth. I struggled to suck in air, eyes darting this way and that, looking for Xioumar, looking for anybody. But we were alone.

“I will be the one to plant seed in your belly, human,” the Snake hissed, hot breath washing over my face. I clawed and kicked, connecting with his hard legs, groin, anything I could.

“Good, I like a fight,” he laughed and tugged on his black silkskin. It crumpled to the floor. I emitted a muffled shriek as I felt his hardness between my thighs. I writhed beneath his grip, but he held me easily. He ripped into my own silkskin for access. The fabric protested, sensing that it wasn’t its owner initiating the removal, but the Snake was too strong. He peeled the tight suit off of me by force, slamming his knee between my legs to hold me up.

“Xioumar!” I screeched at the top of my lungs when he released my mouth just long enough to tug the silkskin over my feet and toss it to the side.

“Well, now I just have to be quick before your Keeper finds us, don’t I? You have made it worse for yourself, human,” the Snake spat and kicked my legs apart with his own. His shaft slid against my stomach as he positioned himself against me, angling it at my entrance.

I squeezed my eyes shut and resigned to my fate, realizing there was no way out, no way to fight him off. Sobs raked through my pinned body as I prepared for what was to come, focusing only on the blackness in front of me, not wanting to see.

Thick, hot liquid sprayed across my face. Rough hands released me. I slid to the floor. I rubbed the liquid from my lips and peeled my eyes open slowly. Xioumar stood above me. The bigger Snake slumped over in front of him. A long, black spike connected them. It protruded from the Keeper’s left wrist, thrust through the monster’s back, its bloody tip penetrating through his chest on the other side.

What the fuck is that?

I scrambled to my feet as best I could. I collected my skinsuit and clenched it against my chest before remembering how to slide it back into position on against my skin. Xioumar pushed my attacker’s body off of the spike with his other hand. It slammed to the floor, motionless. He turned to look at me, anger flaring in his eyes as he panted, teeth bared. I shriveled backwards into myself as the extent of his fury channeled towards me.

Slowly, Xioumar’s breathing slowed. I stared as the black blade withdrew back into his arm, the opening in his wrist closing with nothing but a faint line of a scar.

“Let’s go,” he grabbed my arm and steered me back towards the main street of the ring. He pushed me through the crowd in silence. The other Snakes must have sensed his tension, for they parted before us like magnets repelled from each other, giving us quiet room to pass.

Zeetha was waiting for us at the cable. Her brows knotted together when she saw us. She took one look at Xioumar’s face, and didn’t ask.

We rode the cable shuttle in silence. The tension in the air was palpable. I was afraid at first, but as we approached Xioumar’s planetoid I just became more and more angry. What was he mad about? How dare he grab my neck and treat me this way? One of his kind just nearly raped me, and he was mad at me? I seethed, preparing harsh words in my mind, tasting them on my tongue.

Zeetha scuttled off without a word as soon as we landed. Coward.

I trailed behind Xioumar to the nest. Once there, he rounded on me.

“Never leave my sight again,” he growled in my face.

“That’s what you have to say to me?”

“I told you to stay close, not go prancing around through the ring like a morsel.”

“What am I, a fucking puppet?” I hissed, stepping towards him, hands clenched into trembling fists.

Xioumar’s eyes flashed as he loomed over me: “I told you it was dangerous. That Xiorn would have-”

“Raped me? Killed me? One of your kind just attacked me, and you’re acting like I’m the one to blame?”

“Everyone is to blame!” He roared in my face. “You are to blame for not obeying me. He is to blame for his assault. I am to blame for letting you out of my fucking sight.”

I stood my ground, stretching myself up, chest puffed out and chin up to meet him. “No, Xioumar. Don’t blame me for the despicable act of one of your people. It was only his fault. Not anybody else’s, and certainly not mine. If you can’t get that, this ‘evaluation’ period may as well be over now.”

Pain radiated up my ribs as I spoke, where my dead attacker had dug his massive hands into me before. But in the long silence that followed my words, I could hold back no longer. I winced and grabbed my side. I leaned back against the wall for support, but couldn’t hold myself up and slid to my knees on the floor.

Xioumar’s eyes softened. I flinched back when he sat on the floor in front of me.

“No,” I was adamant. “You acknowledge what I just said before you touch me.”

Xioumar sighed. “Alright, my Kept. As you wish. It was not your fault.”

I wasn’t an idiot. I could tell he didn’t really get it yet. But his acceptance of my boundary was enough, for now.

I allowed him to pry my hand from my side.

“Let me see,” he pressed his fingers against the silkskin that covered the area.

I bit back a sob and slid the silkskin down to my waist, covering my breasts with my arm. I gasped as the material came off of my right side, revealing a dark blue bruise across my ribs.

“Come,” Xioumar slid his arms under my back and knees and stood, lifting me against his chest. He lay me onto my left side on the bed, my bruised ribs exposed. His gaze flicked to my chest as I removed my arm, then back to the blue-black welt. He placed a large hand over the injury. I yelped as the heat of his palm burned my already sensitive skin, but he pressed firm.

“I do not know if this will work,” he explained, “but if our currents are as fit as I suspect, it might help.”

I nodded through gritted teeth, squeezing my eyes shut against the pain. Pinpricks traveled from his hand to my side, buzzing through my injured bones. I clenched the foam of the bed, bracing against the pain.

Slowly, the pain subsided. The area went numb, then it just felt warm. I craned my neck to see and gasped: the bruise had almost entirely disappeared. It faded into my olive skin before my eyes.

Xioumar looked as surprised as I did. He rubbed his palm against my side, lost in thought, as the last traces of injury faded to nothing.

I was exhausted. Being in the comfortable foam of the bed dulled my senses and sent my body into sluggish relaxation. This sudden urge to sleep had to be more than the ordeal of the day, however. It felt like I’d just taken a sleeping pill.

“I don’t feel right,” I muttered.

“Current mending can do that. Make us both feel dull, numb. Don’t fight it.”

The Keeper lay down beside me. I shifted against him, instinctively searching for his warmth. I rested my cheek against shoulder and drifted into a warm, healing sleep.

***

HE WAS STILLasleep when I woke up next to him. We hadn’t moved at all, slept dead as rocks. I propped my head up on my hand. What am I doing?

My eyes searched his face. The bags underneath his eyes were gone, fixed by a few nights of actual sleep. It wasn’t bad, sleeping next to him. At first, I couldn’t stand the thought of being in contact with this cruel creature. Later I was afraid. I told myself I was scared of what he would do to me if I allowed him to touch me. Really, I was scared of liking it. I did like it. But last night he’d crossed a line. If he would be so ready to blame the victim of such a horrendous act, to punish me for something I had no control over…

But he relented. He met my demand, accepted that it wasn’t my fault. Just words, for now. Was his kind capable of more?

“I guess that’s the point,” I thought. “I’m here to find out.”

I frowned, my gaze sliding to his broad, high cheekbones, then down the strong nose. Full lips on a straight mouth. A sharp jawline leading to a tapered chin. A beautiful outside on a rotten core?

My scan continued. The lean neck curved into defined traps connecting with capped shoulders; deltoids connecting to biceps, a dark vein pulsing in the crook of the elbow leading into a wide, tapered forearm; broad palms and long fingers, slightly squared at the tips.

I’d grown to like his hands.

“You need to apologize,” I murmured. I knew he would hear.

His eyes flicked open, vertical pupils dilating as he focused on my own.

“What?” he asked.

“For how you acted yesterday. For how you dragged me, hurt, from the ring. For blaming me.”

“But I have to teach you to be safe.” He reached up to tuck a curl behind my ear.

“Not like that. You need to apologize.” I persisted. He agreed not to blame me in the heat of the moment the night before. Would he still feel the same the next morning?

Xioumar searched my eyes. “I apologize, my Kept. I see now that your kind is more delicate that mine, no matter how hard your spirit may seem. The Xiorn believe that each of us holds responsibility for the situations we find ourselves in. But any act of such violence calls for immediate punishment of the perpetrator.”

“What punishment?”

“What do you mean?” Xioumar cocked his head.

“What would his punishment have been if you hadn’t killed him?”

Xioumar looked confused. “Death is the only punishment we know. I doled out his punishment.”

I swallowed. What a fool I was to let myself believe that I’d been beginning to understand these creatures. My mind jumped back to the sight of the big Snake slumped over before me with a spike in his back, naked, black blood oozing from his lower lip to pool in a puddle at my feet.

I looked up at the spiked flower he’d gotten me the day before. It sat in front of the window, crimson blooms breathing in unison.

“Regardless. I am not your kind. Of course, I know I need to be safe. But you can’t drag me through the ring and yell at me.” I spoke slowly, enunciating each word, making sure the seriousness of my demand went through.

After a long while, he nodded. “I think I understand.”

I sighed my relief. He was trying. I wouldn’t have to hate him. It surprised me to realize the prospect of loathing him was now as frightening as the opposite had been when I first arrived.

I lay back down, resting my chin on his chest, feeling it rise and fall underneath me.

“And another thing.” I jumped up to sit cross-legged next to him. “What was that thing coming out of your arm yesterday?”

When he looked confused, I leaned forward to take hold of his left arm and turn it palm-side up. I traced the black line that ran down his forearm. It connected with the thin line of scarring through which I saw the black spike disappear the day before, pointing it out with my finger. “This one.”

I brushed my fingers up his arm, palpating the skin but unable to feel any presence of a foreign object.

“It’s our hath,” he said. “It is a very personal defense mechanism we are born with, but most of us never dare use it. A second heart, of sorts. If it is damaged…” he hesitated.

“-you die?” my eyes widened.

He nodded up at me from the bed.

“And you exposed it, for me?”

Xioumar frowned. “The Father would say that was foolish.”

I squeezed his hand. “Can I see it?”

Xioumar began to pull away, shaking his head. But then he paused. He held his arm up in front of him. He watched my eyes as the scar on his inner wrist parted, pushed open by a glistening, moist black spike sliding from its sheath.

I held my breath. It was revolting, raw, yet somehow beautiful. I gaped as he withdrew the spike to its full length: almost the length of his forearm. My hand trembled as I reached for it, glancing at his eyes for approval before running my palm over the glistening object. It was ice cold, so unlike the rest of him. So sharp, but so fragile. Could I break it with my hands? I thought so.

There was something about it, a pull that drew me in. I felt my Keeper’s second heart with trepid fingers, stroking along its length. I moved closer, brushing my cheek against the glossy surface. It was freezing against the skin of my cheek, but my cheeks, I realized, were hot and flushed. I longed for it. I wanted to kiss it, to taste it.

“Don’t,” the Keeper warned me with a raspy groan. I glanced back at his face. His pupils grew big and round, filling nearly half of the surrounding crimson. “Don’t, or I won’t be able to stop. I can smell your heat.”

“I don’t want you to stop”, I wanted to say. But I resisted. My logical mind prevailed, thankfully, and I forced myself to break contact and sit back. The spike slid slowly back into Xioumar’s arm, the faint scar closing back in on itself as it disappeared.

“Thank you. For showing me.”

Xioumar watched as I slid from the bed and turned my back to him to pull on my silkskin, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach or the slickness between my legs.