“Cato, do something!” Nonna screams at him.
He unsheathes his sword and lifts it. The serpent latches on to my middle and drags me backward, to the heart of the canal, then lifts its head and hisses at Cato.
“Fallon,” Nonna weeps.
The serpent laces its body around mine, and although my heart palpitates, I don’t dare move. Barely dare breathe.
“What the Cauldron is it doing?” a male Fae on the glass bridge above me exclaims.
A Tarecuorin lady ensconced in red and gold brocade shades her eyes to better watch the spectacle. “Playing with its food.”
Tentatively, I try to squirm away, but the creature’s head swivels. I freeze. Although it doesn’t hiss at me, its tongue darts out and swipes the underside of my jaw.
Did it just—did it just . . .lick me?
I frown, raising a hand to snare its neck and wrangle it back, but it does it again, its velvet tongue lashing up my throat to the underside of my jaw. When my palm connects with its scales, the creature stills, stares at me, then laps the broken flesh of my knuckles. My skin prickles, and before my very stunned eyes, begins to knit.
The creature pushes its stubby horn against my palm as it continues to lavish my skin.
“Tasting its supper,” the lady garbed in a curtain answers.
But I don’t think that’s what it’s doing.
I think the serpent is healing me.
Instead of pinching its neck, I let my fingers drift down its retracted dorsal fins. The animal’s eyes drift closed, and its long body rattles, the vibrations breaching my skin and rattling me in turn.
“You healed me,” I murmur in awe.
Its black eyes open.
“Why would you do that? I’m the enemy.”
“Is she talking to the beast?” Curtain-woman asks.
“In what tongue?” her neighbor remarks.
As they gossip, I caress the serpent’s scales, and the creature vibrates.
Mareserpens don’t have hearts, Fallon.They’re animals. Dangerous and insensitive.Our flora and fauna professor, Signora Decima, has boxed my ears with these decrees.
But this one must feel.
Flames spark in my peripheral vision. “Move your face to the right,” the commander shouts, “or I will burn youandit.”
“NO!” My voice is hoarse, yet carries to the fire-Fae on the bridge with the extended palms.
The serpent’s body hardens.
I stroke my hand down its neck and whisper, “Go.”
It doesn’t.
I push it away and repeat the word. Still, it doesn’t move, but then suddenly its coiled body falls away from my legs, and it whimpers.
“What have you . . .?” My words turn to breath as I spot Nonna wriggling her fingers as though wielding puppet strings.
She’s growing the floral vines wrapped around the bridge, transforming them into ropes. They scurry around the harmless dragon and snare it. The serpent whines as my grandmother hauls his body out of the water.
