Poison Priestess by Lana Popovic (some good books to read TXT) 📗

with Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I have acquired so many others that I have not bothered giving them all names. They live along the walls of my banquet hall, kept safely in the series of vivariums I asked Antoine to build for me. I walk among them for a while, trying to match each species with its name.

“King snake, emerald pit viper, coral snake, rosy boa,” I whisper to myself, trailing my fingers along the glass. “Regal ringneck, jaguar carpet python, sunbeam, yellow-headed calico.”

The hypnotic motion of their bodies, as they weave silkily around one another, captivates my eye. It tickles the gift awake as well, if only just a whit, like a feather run teasingly along its length.

But it is not quite enough to bring forth any real revelations.

“But what if I could see you better?” I muse to myself, pressing my palm against the glass, where a corn snake lifts its little head to flick a searching tongue over the pane. “What if you were free?”

As I envision lifting them from their captivity, letting them slide their way unfettered across the banquet hall parquet, I am rewarded with a brief flash of vision.

My gloved hand tucked into the Sun King’s own arm as we meander through the wintry paradise of Versailles.

“Yes,” I mutter, lifting one of the vivarium lids as a frenetic excitement pulses to life inside my belly. “Yes, this will be it.”

A quarter of an hour later, I stand barefoot amid a shifting sea of snakes.

Most of them are not venomous, as I have no intention of dying in my pursuit of a solution. The ones that are, are also my favorites; specimens I have handled time and again, so often they have become familiar with and fond of the scent of my skin. I let them curl around my ankles and even slither up my calves if they so choose, though most of them are not inclined, content instead to inscribe their winding paths across the floor like runes. I let my eyes go soft and hazy as they seethe around me, a great writhing mass of captivating color.

As if I am some dark pupil, floating in the center of a colossal iris.

When the visions come upon me, they are nothing like what I see for others.

Instead of showing me the future rendered with the hazy texture of a dream, they assail me with a violent mixture of symbolism and sensation. I see blood spiraling through water, a glinting knife raised high above an altar, a brief snatch of Adam’s painted devil’s face leering against moonlit clouds. There is snow sparkling against a mesh of dark and lacy lashes, a barred door swinging open, a blazing fleur-de-lis tumbling from the sky like a comet run amok.

All of it is shot through with elation and reinforced by a column of cataclysmic fear. And there is a sanctity to it as well, as though I am praying without so much as uttering an imploring word.

Praying to the snakes themselves, and to whatever slit-eyed deity claims them as their own patron.

By the time I lie down among them and let them course coolly over my limbs, I know exactly how I must proceed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Stratagem and the King

I arrive at Versailles two days later for a private audience with the king.

Despite my posturing for La Reynie, I am stunned that the king would receive me so readily upon my request. As the marquise said, Louis knows me now for Satan’s wench. That he would open his doors to me again so willingly is telling.

Though I do not yet know whether it bodes ill or well.

When I arrive, I am escorted at once to the château’s famed Galerie des Glaces. The decision to receive me here is revealing, too; this is the château’s central and largest gallery, reserved for greeting the brightest of visiting luminaries. With the heavy glass chandeliers still unlit, the gallery glitters with frosty light streaming from the arcaded windows, reflected by the bank of mirrors on the hall’s other side. Frescoes of Louis XIV’s many triumphs adorn the vaulted ceiling, should a guest be willing to part their eyes from the grandeur of the walls to look up.

The effect is spectacular, as if one stands between the facets of a jewel set into the château’s very heart.

As I walk along this corridor of wintry light, I catch glimpses of myself in the partitioned glass of the arched mirrors set between slim marble pilasters. They reflect my curls’ foxy sheen, vivid against the pallor of the light; my profile, picked out in sharp silhouette; the swirl of my emerald manteau over the intricate lattice of the parquet. I have taken great care with my appearance, remembering that the king called me a siren of the damned. Today is not a day for drab cloaks nor covered hair.

Today I must present only the very brightest of myself.

At the great hall’s end sits the king, in a resplendence of blue silk and cloth-of-gold, ruffles pouring forth like cream from his neck and wrists. His two captains of the guard stand at his shoulders, gimlet-eyed and at the ready.

I dip into a deep curtsy before him, taking care that my face betrays nothing but serenity.

“Sorcière jolie,” he says when I rise, his mild tenor surprisingly approachable. Much softer than it was during the ritual. “Welcome back. Has le Diable perhaps sent you to me himself, with some message from the nether realms?”

“No, Your Majesty,” I respond. “Nothing so otherworldly as that. I come to warn you of a very earthly plot to end your life.”

The captains stir behind him into even greater vigilance, their already stern faces hardening, as though I might be not just a messenger but the threat itself. But the king looks far more curious than afraid, lifting a pensive finger to his cheek.

“Nothing terribly new, I fear—though it has been some time since the last such scheme sprang up.” He appraises me,