Ring of Cren [18+]

Chapter 29

I know Damion on my butt will mean I won't get far if I run in a straight line, so I use my knowledge of the Cren to hide from him. I slip into an alcove behind a large statue. This one is in the scribe's corridor. I rarely came down this part as it was mostly legal matters.

Damion passes by calling for my name, but he only lingers in the hall down here for a moment before continuing down the stairs for the kitchen. I feel bad in the sense that I knew he seemed genuine in wanting to halt me and assure me that Axe was just an ill-tempered fool.

But right now, I am weak with the need from blood and the combined ache in my chest. Insults could be passed around so easily. And my Crows loved to tease and bully me at times and I loved to tease them right back. However, I thought from the training in how to become a Crow, we had mostly moved past the divide between them and I.

Their number one priority was defending the realm and being warriors.

Even though I fancied being a warrior too – I was also a woman.

And what Soren and Fanguard confronted me about sent me into a bit of an internal crisis.

Who would I marry? Politically?

I thought marrying the Cren was a bond of loyalty in the Eye – but I assumed it extended into reality. My Crows were my husbands, but if Soren and Fanguard dismissed them so easily, did others too? What was my Father saying, as King, was he saying I was still available to marry?

I have not noticed this statue before but it reminds me of the Mother of Wrath, but different in appearance.

This female statue has no weapon, and no tears, instead, she's dancing with a snake wound around her arms and shoulders. I sit behind it and look up at the sculpture. I had read a story about the Snake Dancer. Maybe she was the inspiration behind it. The story is vague in my mind since I read it long ago, but I do remember the snake was her companion, her best friend. While it brought her peace, it also meant she was shunned by everyone. Everyone was scared of the snake, even though she was delicate and small and harmless. A small, quiet spoken and elegant dancer.

She's looking over her shoulder in the pose of her dance, and the snake is wound around the wrist, looking down at me. The only thing I can understand from that story is the juxtaposition of what it means to be female. Soft and quiet. Alluring to scary creatures. Shunned not for being the female things, but for what we attracted. The power we held.

Axe shunned me because I attracted the attention of Soren and Fanguard. Soren and Fanguard were weary regardless because I attracted Crows and Daemons. I was somehow the villain. It wasn't fair. I was just a princess trying to survive as best as I could with no mother and no sisters!

I'm guessing the sweet quiet dancer lived a life of solitude while basking in her own power with her one creepy reptilian eyed companion. I glance around the statue and I see the expression of the dancer. She's smiling, eyes downcast on the snake.

I hear a door creak open and some scribes walk out, so I hide back around the statue, kneeling down, I notice a carving on the back of the foundation stone. An eye with eight legs for eyelashes. I hold out the handkerchief and I touch the marking.

Is this a gate to the Eye? A backwards entry?

As I think it, the statue whispers into my head, a feminine confirmation... yessss.

"Take me to the Eye," I whisper, and then I close my eyes and open them when I feel a shift in the air.

Grey overtones. A warmth of a dream.

I'm not in the scribe's hall, I'm in a dark, rank, spider webbed place. The statue is still above me, but she's dancing in a different position. She's holding the snake above her head, on one set of tip toes while the snake winds back down around her arm.