>>5691752Your gaze shifts to Ekaterine, who looks between the two of you with the half-comprehension you might expect of a political ingénue who can only understand the language used for about a third of the conversation.
“I think we should speak in private,” you suggest to the intransigent Serpent Queen.
“Why?” she asks, genuinely confused. “The human barely understands what’s happening. What does it matter?”
You shake your head, and ask Eka to excuse the two of you. She merely nods, and watches you go, brow creased with concern and confusion.
“I feel as if you are abusing the veto-vow to secure power for yourself,” you begin, bluntly.
“Yes,” the Fleshweaver agrees, equally guileless, and take you aback.
“What?”
“Come now, Dragonborn,” she mocks, “have you spent so long entangled with you ape-woman that you have forgotten? The will to power is CENTRAL. It is what brought us this far—you as well as I.”
“Not only that,” you tell her.
The Serpent Queen hisses and crosses her arms.
“I swear,” she says, “if you begin to prattle on again about love, I shall find a way to murder you without implicating myself?”
“is that a binding oath?” you ask.
The Serpent Queen stares at you, then narrows her eyes.
“You are mocking me,” she realizes.
“I am,” you readily agree.
You look into one another’s eyes for a time, a silent standoff, until the one-time-Novice looks away with a haughty huff. You laugh, and step forward. She flinches, even as you take her into your arms, but her tail wraps unthinkingly about your leg, clinging fast as if afraid to let you go.
“You must come to see that you, the Human Queen, and the Greatworm Queen are ALL equals,” you say softly, “here in Bloodrise, and in my heart.”
“I do not CARE about your stupid hybrid heart, you pathetic hormone-poisoned lummox,” she whines. “I am better than they are. Smarter, more capable, better-suited to rulership1 It is in my blood, in my mind!”
You gently remove her hood and headdress, and caress her scales. The Chaplain’s Daughter, first among equals in your ever-more-complicated love-life, is helpless to resist your touch. She squirms, but it is to cling closer, and her breathing is somewhat uneasy, heavy. She is inhaling your scent.
She is in heat.
“You stopped taking the estrus-suppressant potion,” you note, your own voice unconsciously shifting towards a deeper growl as <appetite> seeps into it.
The Serpent Queen mutters something vague about necessity, which you can barely make out.
