“Fallon, no!” Nonna yells my name instead of the nickname she baptized me with when I was born and Mamma, in a rare moment of lucidity, touched my forehead and whispered, “Raindrop.”
I zigzag through the throngs of Fae, tossing apologies as I jostle arms laden with exotic wares. The thieves book a right, and I zip after them, across a glass bridge. They pivot and so do I.
One of them bangs his head on the awning of a floral candy shop. Muttering, the winged pest dips, dragging his companion along.
I lunge toward them, and my fingers close around the fragrant sprigs that cost us a full copper. “Gotcha!” My victorious grin flashes off my face as my slippered feet catch on a mooring post and I list sideways into the canal, thumping my shoulder against a passing gondola.
The Fae inside shriek as I jostle their boat.
“Merda.” My curse word gets lost in the grand splash my body makes in the blue-blue water.
Fear hits me at the same time as my feet hit the sandy bottom of the shallow canal. For a moment, I’m paralyzed, hair fanned out around my face like the spokes of a wheel. My lips part and water sneaks in. I slam my mouth shut, lungs hugging the air inside.
Although I’ve never swam—no one in their right mind does, not with carnivorous creatures slithering around the kingdom—my water-Fae heritage kicks in, and I flutter my legs. I hook the side of the gondola and heave myself up. I’m about to kick my leg over the side when an oar whacks my hands.
“Scazza, let go before you upturn our boat!”
I blink at the Fae who just called me a street urchin and hit me. Blood beads from my knuckles, dribbling around my fingers.
When he raises his oar, I spring my fingers open and sink back into the water. I reel my hands into my pumping chest, shocked by the man’s cruelty, shocked that he made me bleed.
The current shifts, stealing my attention off the blurred shape of the gondolier overhead. My eyes burn from the heavy glint of sunshine and copious amount of salt, but I keep them open and set on the pink scales glimmering off one of the malevolent beasts that inhabit our canals.
I kick my feet and glide my arms up and out, pulling myself through the water toward the embankment. My fingertips meet the wall just as the serpent strikes, snagging my ankle and towing me under.
All the faces of the people I love, which aren’t all that numerous, flash behind my prickling lids—Nonna, Mamma, Sybille, Phoebus, and Dante.
I fling my arms out and pump them through the water, kicking to dislodge the shackle of pink scales. The creature’s grip turns viselike, and I think it might just snap my foot clean off my leg.
Heart in my throat, I twist, hinge at the waist, and punch the head slithering up my body. With a whimper that sounds all too human, the beast releases my ankle.
Although the serpent is twice my size, the width of its body is no larger than my thigh, and the ivory horn atop his head, a mere nub. A juvenile, like me.
Please be kind. Please spare me.
I tip my head toward the faces dappling the clear surface, finding the green gleam of Nonna’s eyes and the black curtain of hair she keeps trimmed as short as mine, even though she’s allowed to grow it however long she wants.
Her mouth opens around shouts muffled by the water pressing in around my body. The serpent darts his equine muzzle in front of my face, obsidian eyes leveled on my violet ones. Like Dante taught me, I hover my fists around my jaw to protect the tenderest parts of my body.
The creature swipes his forked black tongue through the crimson ribbon pluming off my knuckles, slitted nostrils flaring, head tilting.
Mareserpens have little love for our kind who hunt them relentlessly, snaring them with metal nets, burning them with Fae-fire, and skewering them with spears. Although no parts of them are wasted—their meat roasted, their skins sewed into accessories for the wealthy, and their horns ground into elixirs or displayed as art—their barbaric killings have always enraged me. All animals’ deaths, be they big or small, dangerous or tame, incense me.
If only the young serpent could sense that I mean it no harm. Perhaps I could show him. Or her. I relax my fists, spreading my palms wide to show the creature I’m unarmed. Mareserpens may not have empathy, but they’re unarguably smart.
The water vibrates with noise, shrill yells and raised voices. Although pure-bloods bleed, they can’t die, and yet none have jumped in to succor me. Why would they? Bastard children are the lowest of all the lows, one notch over humans. I bet some of the onlookers are hoping the serpent will lasso me down to Filiaserpens, its lair thousands of meters beneath sea level.
When its tongue darts past its lipless mouth, a full-body shiver rakes through me, doing away with my residual oxygen. I propel myself upward, and my head breaks the surface.
“Fallon, Fallon,” my grandmother cries.
Although two guards are restraining her, she shrugs them off and falls to her knees, her arms shooting out and down, palms extending toward mine. “Goccolina, my hand. Take my hand!”
But the pink serpent loiters between us, preventing me from getting close.
The white-haired guard who was holding Nonna stares with wide eyes between me and the pink-scaled body. He’s probably wondering how I’m still alive.
I wonder the same.
