Epilogue

Familiar thoughts trickled in. She wasn’t sure whose, but as her mind regained solid shape Debora recognized they were her own. Duval’s thoughts she could only feel the emotion of, not understand directly.

Debora and Duval woke next to a tree, fog clearing from their minds. As their senses solidified, the warm smell of cooking meat perked Debora up. She saw before them a metal pan on which a cooked bird sat. The smell of spices and seasoning filled the air like a busy kitchen, yet they sat in the untamed jungle surrounded by animal screeches and chitters.

“Mitä helvettiä?” Debora muttered. She tapped her head to make certain her senses were right.

“We didn’t cook that, did we?” asked Duval. “Nothing we’ve cooked has ever smelled that good.”

Debora looked up and flinched. In a tree sat the lamia who’d attacked them.

“Please, go ahead,” the lamia said with a sweep of her hand. “Eat what you like. Though, not too much—just enough to keep your energy up.”

She gave Debora the impression of a cat toying with its prey. Did she seek trust to trick them? Did she want to feed them like a pet she now owned?

“Oh,” Duval said. “Well, thank you very much.” Debora slapped his side of the face.

“Are you crazy?” she whispered. “It has to be poisoned or something.”

“Why would she wake us just to kill us?” Duval asked.

“I don’t know, she’s a damn snake,” said Debora. “She probably wants to toy with us.”

The lamia chuckled and lowered herself to the jungle floor.

“Yes, but not in such a pointlessly roguish way as that. I promise the meal is safe.” She tore a bite off the bird and ate it. “I cooked it myself, and it would be a waste to cook poisoned food.”

Debora would rather have sat and pouted, but Duval ate the roasted fowl. As usual he would follow even the most asinine of orders.

Loath as Debora was to admit it, she’d not eaten anything so delicious in ages—the meat was moist and spicy, with a texture that melted in their mouth. It made her want to punch the lamia, and it made her want to kiss the lamia, which also made her want to punch the lamia.

“Now, I would like to propose a challenge,” the lamia said.

Duval raised his hand.

“Pardon me, but we never learned your name. Mine is Duval, and my other side is Debora.”

Debora glared at Duval, but she supposed giving their names was probably harmless.

“Oh, of course.” The lamia chuckled. “My name is Mira.”

“So a challenge, you say?” Duval asked.

“I realize I wasn’t completely fair to you before,” the lamia said.

Debora tried to throw a snippy remark—of course she hadn’t been fair!—but only half-spit the food Duval chewed on.

“I made it too easy for myself. I didn’t give you a fair chance. So, I’m going to chase you. You’ll flee, and if you escape the jungle I’ll let you go on your way. If I catch you—well, it depends on how well you do.”

Debora stared at the lamia. Every word increased her feeling like a cornered animal slapped by a babbling lawyer. By the time she finished, Debora had a whole tirade of swears to shout.

“Very well then, thank you for giving us a fair chance,” Duval said.

“What?” Debora hissed. She could practically feel her eyes get bloodshot from how hard she glared towards Duval’s half. “She’s literally saying we’ll be her prey!”

Duval shushed her. Debora sputtered, speechless at how her fool half would take a smarmy predator’s side over her.

“If we don’t take this offer, do you believe she will just let us go?” Duval whispered.

Debora went from speechless to sputterless as her train of thought halted.

“At least this way we have a chance, yes?” Duval said. “Let’s not make her angry, or she might think we need an attitude adjustment.”

He stood their body and cleared their throat.

“Do we get a head start, Ms. Mira?”

“Yes,” said the lamia. She smiled. “It makes it more fun to track you.”

“Then we had best be going, shouldn’t we, Debora?” Duval nodded to the lamia. “Thank you for the meal to prepare us. I would say I hope to see you again, but, well, you know.”

The lamia chuckled.

“I know. I certainly will see you again, though.”

As Debora and Duval sprinted to gain their head start Debora pondered her other half.

Duval was too trusting, easy to trick, and fell to mental manipulation quickly.

Debora wouldn’t be anywhere without him, though. She took care of active danger, but he could talk his way out of potential danger. She saved him from threats, and he saved her from agitating them. They were a team.

Now they just had to team their way out of the jungle.

Mira watched them run until they were out of sight. They were a strange pair, arguing with themselves in one body, but clever. She looked forward to exploring their minds—and body, of course. She chewed on the leftover roasted fowl and thought about the vial of venom hidden in her tunic.

She didn’t need it. Her eyes were powerful enough on their own, and besides, more fun. She’d wanted the venom to catch fleeing prey from afar, but then where would be the chase?

Well, it would be good for an emergency. A backup in case her own talents ever failed—but she doubted she’d ever need to use it. The rest of the jar would sit hidden in her cabin, unused.

She counted time until the end of the head start, then began her hunt.

Here Have Another Epilogue

“Did she get any venom after all?”

“Sounds like she did,” Ainsley said. “I overheard her leave to get the catch Maestra wanted.”

“Interesting, although I doubt Mira will find much reason to use it. It didn’t seem in her nature to take the easy way. Thank you for your report, and do let me know if your research comes up with any interesting results.”

“O’course!”

Veda ended the call and sat back in the padded limousine seat. Her tail curled throughout the olive-scented passenger compartment. As the motorcade left her ancestral home she parted the window curtain to watch the jungle pass.

In a few hours she would be back home. She really had wanted to visit Maestra, but she supposed she dodged a bullet. The one time she’d met one of Maestra’s offspring had nearly led to an international incident. Lucky, then, that Mira arrived before Veda could after Ainsley called for help.

She’d hoped to meet Mira once more, but she had business to attend to. She had to keep stock of her many ventures. The schedule held no room for traipsing around the jungle indefinitely.

“Permission to ask your thoughts, Lady Rios?”

Veda smiled as she watched the jungle. She’d known Eduards longer than most people lived. If she trusted her thoughts with anyone but herself, it was him. He had no need to ask permission, yet he always did. He always followed decorum, and this pleased her.

She looked at him in the corner, sitting small despite his tall frame so Veda’s expansive tail could fill the compartment.

“It’s too obvious, Eduards,” she said. “Orphaned in the jungle, no memory of parents, survived on her own. It’s straight from a story. All she needs is a magic sword—but, well, she uses the bow. Have you ever heard a lost hero of prophecy wielding a bow instead of a sword?”

“No,” Eduards said, “but you’re not looking for a lost hero of prophecy.” Veda chuckled.

“No, but the thought amuses me.” She tapped her chin. “Now that I think of it, I believe Sir Garrido once wrote a similar tale . . . but, I digress. I worry judgment on Mira could be muddled by the tradition of stories. Just because we don’t know her lineage doesn’t make it any more likely one way or another.”

“You believe her natural ability is strong enough for it to be the case?” Eduards asked.

“Natural ability is a difficult judgment to make,” Veda said. “She lived on her own. Perhaps she honed her hypnotic ability through hard work until she had significant power behind it. Natural ability and honed skill would feel the same.” She smiled. “Besides, a pure lamia lineage doesn’t necessarily mean overwhelming ability, despite what many from such a lineage will say. Personally, I would like to think I developed my power through hard work and not inherited gifts, but”—she shrugged, still smiling—“I inherited wealth, so such a discussion is a little shallow.”

“You’ve done much more with that wealth than what you started with,” Eduards said. Veda waved her hand and scoffed.

“All I can say is there are far worse people who could hold it. Philosophical civics aside, Mira is a loose end.” She looked at the passing jungle. “Perhaps I will schedule a visit with my old friend Maestra, and while I’m back in the region I’ll ask about Mira in the villages.”

She shut her eyes.

“Perhaps not. All I can rely on is that her hypnotic ability is consistent with pure lamia lineage and that we don’t have a solid history for her. We don’t even have her age, although by her words I don’t imagine her much older than a few decades—not old enough to glean anything from.”

She looked at Eduards as she spun the gears in her mind. She’d sent so many inquiries across her ancestral home, mapping ancestries across every village she could find, in a jungle that her powerful forebears had fled before she was born. Every lineage she’d mapped had humans.

“I have considered that I am searching in the wrong place.”

“You believed your mother’s home would hold descendants from your lineage,” Eduards said.

It wasn’t a question—he knew precisely the reasoning she had given to search that jungle. He acted every bit as secretary to her as butler.

“Yes, but that was centuries ago,” Veda said. “There have been many opportunities for the remaining lamias to reproduce with humans. I supposed that having their own villages isolated them from humans, but the human villages are more aware of them. Interspecies relations would have a lower barrier, and, well”—she placed a hand over her mouth to stifle a smile—“I hate to stereotype my own kind, but I’ve yet to meet a lamia who didn’t fire up at the thought of a human, compared to one of our own.”

“Certainly not yourself,” said Eduards. Veda covered her mouth to stifle a guffaw.

“Come now, Eduards, I don’t keep my activities from you a secret, you know what I’m like.”

“So,” Eduards said, “you’re considering refocusing your search to somewhere lamias can’t copulate with humans as easily?”

Veda smiled as Eduards, ever the professional, shifted back to business with hardly a pause for the banter.

“Paradoxically,” she said, “somewhere with more humans makes it harder. It’s more dangerous; I’ve heard many stories from charming young lamias whose date, partner, or new spouse fell to a horrified panic when their snake side was revealed.”

She sighed recalling the consolations, the relocations she’d had to arrange.

“The lamia grapevine is long in the modern world, and it’s easier, and safer, to find a partner of your own kind now.”

“You didn’t start your search there,” Eduards said. “One piece of that puzzle makes it less likely.”

“Just because it’s safer to have a lamia partner now,” said Veda, “doesn’t mean it wasn’t easier to take a human partner in centuries past.” She looked at her reflection in the window. Her face darkened as she remembered the horrors she’d heard and witnessed her kind do. “For reasons that the lamias of today would not wish to hear of their ancestors, I assure you.”

“Of course.”

Of course. Veda could hear the rare woe in his voice. He’d assisted her long enough to have heard the horrors firsthand.

“So,” Eduards said, “even if one’s family tree is lamia several generations past, two or three centuries ago an ancestor may have mated with a human.”

“Indeed,” Veda said. “That time span makes being certain of their lineage all the harder, and the descendants of a lamia and human will never revert back to a descendant of only lamias.”

She gave a tense sigh. She almost reverted to the old language her mother would use.

A demihuman would never revert back to a demigod.

That was what her mother had viewed herself as, and her father, and Veda. She’d truly believed they were demigods to be worshiped, as she had been in her homeland, years before Veda was born. She wasn’t even the worst from that era of divinity-claimed domains whom Veda had met, but still—to believe oneself divine, worthy of worship . . .

So why did Veda seek one who, like her, had a pure lamia lineage?

This, a secret she kept even from me, the author. I’m sorry, I’ve tried to get in her head to find out, but she’s been able to keep her full reasoning really hidden! There’s some aspect of helping them learn to control the extra potential their powers could have, but there’s something more—I can tell—I just can’t tell exactly.

Oh, whoops. I interrupted my own narration.

Veda looked at Eduards.

“I think it’s time to move my search closer to home.”