Order of Scorpions

by Ivy Asher

“Because even though we won’t demand anything from you, we’re still going to do everything in our power to make you want to stay.”

“Tarek’s sire is the King of Dawn, and Riall’s is the King of Dusk. We’re the Order of Scorpions, but we could have just as easily gone with the Order of Royal Bastards,”

Things are as they are, and no amount of pity or empathy is going to change it.

“What doesn’t kill us fortifies us,” I offer gently, my strokes through her hair slowing as we stare at one another. I feel as though a part of her is reaching out to me, and something in me takes a hold of it and vows to never let it go. “We can take those things…” I continue, my voice growing deeper as purpose and regard settle like a tether between us. “Melt them down, mold them, and reshape them until they work for us instead of against us. Then, when we have weapons instead of wounds, we make the fuckers pay for what they did to us.”

He’s the touch of chaos I’ve been craving, and that realization slaps me across the face hard.

“I’ve had enough with the three of you looking at me like something you need to conquer. I am not yours to own, Riall. I never will be,”

“I felt fortified, indomitable, like it no longer mattered who owned me, who I had to answer to, because in the end, I held life in my hands. I decided what to do with it, and no one could ever take that away from me. It felt right.”

“You’re a powerful, magnificent force, Auset, and there isn’t a fucking thing wrong with that.”

It was all so much simpler when it was just about survival, about freedom. I had no idea how hard it would be to simply live. To choose a life and figure out what makes you happy.

but it’s time to get back to the truth I do know about this world. I am the only one I can really count on, and I need to figure out who the fuck I am and what the fuck I want, and I need to do it soon.

“We need to show her who we are and who she is to us, who she could be with us. She’s smart enough to figure the rest out.” “She’s stubborn,” Riall argues. “Good, it’ll make earning her all the more worth it,”

“She’s special, we all know it. She’s one of us. She’ll get it, and then we’ll get her,”

“She’s Sanguinna,” he professes, the statement pained. “A female. I didn’t think they existed anymore, and now here she is wandering around my home in Curio’s tunic and nothing more, loathing me and everything I stand for. She’s my Blood, I don’t think you two understand how hard it is not to sink my fangs into every inch of her, to claim her and demand she claims me right back,”

Now, here he is fighting who he is at his core, all for a female his kind would raze the realms to find if they knew she existed.

“We are the Order of Scorpions,” I assert, looking from Riall to Curio. “Auset will realize that we are where her fate has always been leading. Be patient.”

I don’t know what I’m arming myself for, but experience has taught me not to waste time on questions when I could be adding another blade to my body, one that might be the difference between life and death.

“Is it a fae trait to answer every direct question with cryptic bullshit?”

She chose good where possible. She fought for justice and decency when I didn’t even know what they meant. I learned though.

“I choose good when I can find it,”

Let that fucker feel what light can do when ya get too close. Let him melt with it.”

I suddenly feel tethered to these fae as though dark sees dark and revels in it,

Blood and death pool all around me, and I feel more free and alive than I have since I can remember. This, all of this chaos and loss, is because I chose it. I wasn’t forced, threatened, or coerced. I was asked and entrusted, and I showed up in a way that feels right…even if ultimately it’s wrong.

“Nicely done, Baby Scorpion,”

“And thank you very much, Poppet, but I’ll call you what you are, and this…” she declares, pointing at the dead fae spread around the deck, “this shows me that you’re a Scorpion.”

“Partnership isnnae ownership, Poppet. That’s not how mates work. Trust takes time to build. You need to nurture it, give it a chance to take root, and then tend to it thereafter,”

“I love her, Poppet. That means I will rip the realms apart if that’s what she needs, destroy anyone who’d dare ta stand against her. But it also means I’ll wait.

Wait fer my strong incredible mate ta mourn and grieve and come back ta me. I’ll hold every piece of her shattered heart safe in my arms until she’s ready to put it back together. And do you know what’s so beautiful, so astonishing about it all?” Rink asks as my eyes begin to sting with emotion. “She would do the exact same for me.” “Without question,” Eacon agrees as

“No matter what you choose after today—death, life, Scorpion or not—you deserve to be loved. You deserve to find others who make you happy. Build a life around that, Auset. I vow to you that you can never go wrong if that’s what’s at the center of your purpose.”

I crave death and destruction in some facets of my life, but I don’t want to battle and bleed and run in all aspects of who I am.

How many times will I watch the Scorpions sting themselves in an effort to prove the sincerity of their actions and words?

The Scorpions are willing to sting themselves to keep me safe.

I’ve been tortured and beaten, violated and poisoned, abandoned and stripped of who I am for as long as I can remember, and I’ve had to survive it all alone. But now, as I struggle to find the surface of this suffering, I feel them.

Well, maybe they need an idea of who they’ll be fucking with if they don’t honor that gift the way they should.

She’s fierce, the stunning fae who’s staring back at me. Bright hair is plaited back from a face that glows with health and contentment. Even the sun spots that dot the bridge of her nose and cheeks look pleased. Raw, wild power simmers in her eyes as she stands there encased in protective perfection. She’s strong, intimidating, formidable…she’s…me.

“Full moons, half-moons, crescent moons, all the moons, now just as deadly as my Moonling,”

I’m his equal in every way.

I’m worthy of veneration and fervent regard needed to create something this exquisite. I’m worthy of the blood, sweat, and time that went into the stunning, thoughtful details that I’m discovering on my body one by one.

“What doesn’t kill us fortifies us,”

I’ve spent as long as I can remember surviving and adapting, and now it’s as though I’m holding the physical manifestation of that struggle in my palms. Something that should have killed me but didn’t, something that I survived will now cut down anything that stands in my way.

She tastes like home and fucking vengeance, two things that call to my soul and anchor me to this world.

“You Scorpions keep promising things to that effect, and yet here I sit…unfucked,”

but treat her like some frail, frilly-frosted female, and she’ll shove a dagger somewhere unpleasant.

They should really consider a name change from Order of Scorpions to Order of Confounding Cunt Teasers.

I knew before I walked into this room to be glamoured that there was no going back from here. I may not have said the words, but my actions are speaking loud and clear. I’m all in, and I can see in the black depths of each of the Scorpions’ piercing gazes not just that they know it, but that they are too.

Auset is tucked away for the time being, and in her stead is Telson of the Order of Scorpions.

“That has nothing to do with me,” I tell her evenly. “This does,”

She’s a fucking Realm Breaker.

“I’m Telson, the newest member of the Order of Scorpions,”

“You can bathe in the blood and tears of anyone who’s ever hurt you, including us, all you have to do is say the word and it’s done,”

“Pick your poison, Scorpion, and we’ll help you strike at everyone who ever hurt you.”