The Elysean Trials (The Holy Bloodlines, #1)

by D.N. Hoxa

The next second, they were everywhere. Snakes on my legs, climbing up my body, wrapping themselves around my thighs and hips and waist, moving farther up to my neck. I screamed, I jumped, I slammed against trees to try to get them off me—what the hell were they doing?!—but they didn’t let go. So many of them. There must have been at least fifty, and eventually they wrapped around my ankles, and I fell to the ground on my back, unable to move. Screaming bloody murder, about to be eaten by goddamn snakes.

They were everywhere on me, their bodies like ropes holding me down, holding my arms against the ground and my legs together, holding my head down by the neck, too. I had never been more scared in my life. God, I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t think. And then I felt the wetness in my ear. I must have passed out at some point, possibly when I realized that those snakes were sticking their tongues in my ears, licking me. When I came to, the panic was equally intense, though, but I was somehow still alive.

Alarms rang in my head as things clicked into place, and my mind was flooded with memories once more—of Miss Aldentach and her teachings, of fucking Melampus and his snakes, the details of his stupid story. How the snakes he’d saved had licked his ears and cleaned them so thoroughly that he was able to understand animals speaking to him since. “Goddamn it, Sera,” I hissed at myself. How had I not remembered that part of the story? I would have never gone near those damn snakes if I did. Not ever, not for any reason would I have willingly let them lick my fucking ears!

The moment I grabbed him in my hands, he fell on top of me, knocking the breath out of my lungs. But his cock was in my hands so who needed air?