The cold hand on her throat wasn't a hand at all. It was the whisper, the chilling brush of something unseen, yet terribly real. The festival roared around her, a dizzying cacophony of music, laughter, and the distant cheers for the royal family's entrance. But Arin heard none of it. Her blood ran cold, prickling over every inch of her skin. She knew this presence. She knew the serpent.
She tried to play it off, her voice a forced lightness. "Oh, this?" she said, her fingers instinctively going to the obsidian pendant at her throat, the one Vaeren had given her. "It's quite pretty, isn't it? A gift."
The cold presence intensified, a subtle pressure on the skin of her neck. A voice, silken and insidious, slithered directly into her mind, bypassing her ears entirely.
"Yes, little serpent. The necklace is quite pretty."
Then, the whisper shifted, darkening, chilling her to the bone.
"But the carvings on her chest… they made it so much prettier. Didn't they?"
