flora
The laugh is already spilling from her, dry and sunlit and just starting to say, “Well I have had a certain kind of bad luck—” when the rustle becomes a lunge.
Flora sucks in a breath through her teeth, sharp as the serpent’s strike. The air shifts as Colt calls for a knife, but the queen’s already moving—silent and invisible but all precision and purpose. The dagger slides free from wherever she’d tucked it, its feathery edge a blur of grace and lethality as she closes the gap.
Colt’s boot pins the viper down, thrashing with venomous rage, and Flora strikes just behind the head with the sort of practiced certainty that leaves no room for second chances. The blade plunges deep. A final twitch coils up through the thing’s body before it goes still. Only then does the dagger shimmer into view—its curved edge slick with the glisten of poison, light catching on the iridescence as if mocking the dark thing it’s just ended. Flora huffs out a breath that’s half annoyance, half relief, and flicks the blood off the blade before it vanishes again with a whisper of air.
“Gonna guess,” she murmurs dryly into the open dark, “a snake from the shadows wasn’t what you wished for.”
Flora sucks in a breath through her teeth, sharp as the serpent’s strike. The air shifts as Colt calls for a knife, but the queen’s already moving—silent and invisible but all precision and purpose. The dagger slides free from wherever she’d tucked it, its feathery edge a blur of grace and lethality as she closes the gap.
Colt’s boot pins the viper down, thrashing with venomous rage, and Flora strikes just behind the head with the sort of practiced certainty that leaves no room for second chances. The blade plunges deep. A final twitch coils up through the thing’s body before it goes still. Only then does the dagger shimmer into view—its curved edge slick with the glisten of poison, light catching on the iridescence as if mocking the dark thing it’s just ended. Flora huffs out a breath that’s half annoyance, half relief, and flicks the blood off the blade before it vanishes again with a whisper of air.
“Gonna guess,” she murmurs dryly into the open dark, “a snake from the shadows wasn’t what you wished for.”
How can a person know everything at 18 but nothing at 22?
Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
Will you still want me when I'm nothing new?
