The Serpent's Secret (Kiranmala and the Kingdom Beyond #1)(62)

“Hello, Sssissster,” said a set of seven nasty voices.



I whipped around to see that last-place winner for brother of the year—Naga, the seven-headed snake.

“Oh, booger-nosed snot fest, where did YOU come from?”

“Daughter, your mouth.”

“Yesss, indeed, your mou-sss,” hissed the cobra heads in unison. In a flash, Naga wrapped Ma, Baba, and even poor terrified Tuntuni in his coils. As a last flourish, he slapped his nasty tail over all their mouths. They were effectively bound and gagged.

“Let them go!” Neel brandished his sword. Even in the dark cavern, it glinted with an inner light.

“Now!” I aimed my arrow at the largest of his seven hooded heads. The snake lunged at me, flicking seven forked tongues.

I saw Baba’s eyes widen at something behind me even before I heard the chilling voice. I whirled around, my arrow still raised. I should have known who was behind all this.

“Children, children, why all the fuss?” The Serpent King slithered into the room—his top half human, but his bottom half in his terrible serpentine form. “Do you like my new undersea residence?” he oozed. “It’s a rental, and I’m still waiting on the interior decorator …”

“You!” Neel ran at the Serpent King, his sword aimed at my birth father’s throat.

“Impudent demon-ling!” The Serpent King held up his hand, sending Neel’s sword clattering to the floor with a bolt of green lightning. “Did you actually think you could destroy my glorious kingdom and get away with it?”

“Stop!” I whirled back around and aimed my arrow at the largest of the cobra’s seven heads. “Let them all go—it’s me you want. Otherwise … I shoot Naga!”

The Serpent King waved a callous hand, mocking Naga’s snakey lisp. “Oh, shoot him, what do I care? You’d think those ssssseven ssssstupid heads would make him sssssmarter. But he let you get away last time, didn’t he?”

If it was possible for a magical seven-headed cobra to look hurt, he did. But it’s not like my snake-brother got all warm and fuzzy as a result. In fact, he squeezed his prey even harder. Ma and Baba sputtered, their faces red, and an alarming number of yellow feathers discharged from where Tuntuni must be—almost invisible in the folds of cobra muscle.

“Stop!” I shrieked, turning to the Serpent King. “Please! He’ll kill them!”

“So what?” snarled my biological father. “Did you show my poor snakes any mercy? Hmm? Did you?”

“Let them go!” I sent an arrow flying at the Serpent King, but he stopped it mid-flight with a green bolt. As I aimed a second arrow, the Serpent King shot another bolt of green lightning, this time directly at my hands. My beautiful bow exploded in green flames. I dropped it, before falling to the ground myself. Where the green fire hit me, my arms felt like they were burning, only from the inside out. It was agony.

Neel had picked up his sword again, and ran screaming at the Serpent King. “Aaaa!”

“Oh, will you never learn?” He shot a bolt of green, this time a flaming sphere that imprisoned Neel within it. The prince screamed in pain—a sound that made my blood run cold. He writhed around within the glowing orb, his body twisting in unnatural contortions, as if he was being tortured.

“Neel!” I shrieked, running toward him. The heat of the sphere was scorching, and it shot out green flares. It burned me even at a distance, like the molten surface of some alien sun. “Neel, hang on! Hang on!”

“You’ll join him soon enough, you pathetic waste of a daughter.” The Serpent King aimed his hands high.

“No!” Everyone I loved was going to die. And it was all my fault. My legs couldn’t hold me up anymore, and I collapsed. I was screaming and crying so hard, my tears were tumbling from my face. I didn’t try to control them. I had much more important things to worry about. But where the tears hit my arms, something strange happened. They eased the burning feeling of the green bolt.

My tears. In a flash, I remembered how Tuni had seemed dead, but how he’d come to life in my arms. I’d been crying then too. And why was it exactly I’d spent so many years training my own tears not to spill? Had I somehow known the power they contained?

Unless the pearly waters of the fountain can flow free.

Were my tears the salty pearls that needed to flow free too?

And then I heard her voice, as clean and pure as a bell. The tears of the moon’s daughter are as powerful as the tides. I felt her strength within me, my moon-mother. I had always had it—the strength of the night, the strength of the tides, the strength to reflect the light of others. The strength to weep without weakness.

“You’re not going to kill them.”

I rose from the ground, my arms outstretched. I was my father’s child. I was my mother’s daughter. My face was still wet, and my heart beat in rhythm with the music of the oceans.

“And you’re not going to kill me.”

The jagged green light shot at me, but I met it with a searing white light of my own. Where they clashed, the green glowing softened, became liquid, and fell to the floor like rain.

“No!” the Serpent King cried, his eyes burning orbs. “How is this possible?”

“I guess there’s no getting around it. I am your daughter, at least biologically,” I said. “I can’t hide from who I am. But it doesn’t mean I can’t choose my own destiny.”