The only tether that hadn’t been infected was the flutter of Allie in the back of my mind. Now that I was acutely aware of it, I let my thoughts brush against that bundle of her essence, soft enough that I wouldn’t disturb her.
It kept me sane.
It prevented me from marching into the Serpents’ camp and taking down as many soldiers as I could before they killed me.
This war couldn’t be won with rashness.
We needed a plan.
A solid one–that didn’t involve waiting around in a serene, rolling meadow.
“If this doesn’t work–” I said.
“It has to,” Zandyr said from beside me, narrowed eyes not leaving the river.
“And it will, thank you very much.” Elysia stuck her nose up. “I redid the calculations fifteen times.”
“–we need to already be thinking of a way to reach the Serpents,” I continued. “And destroy that veil that’s protecting the army against our weapons.”
Instead, we were hiding on the knobbly side of a hill, watching the mounds of flowers and grass we’d arranged a few hundred feet away, right at the edge of the trees hiding the meadow.
A feast for any deer or doe that wandered by.
Only this meal was special.
It had been doused in one of the Viper’s most unusual poisons, meant for cold-blooded creatures.
Zandyr took out his brass binoculars, setting his sights on the Serpent camp. Even with our trained eyesight, we couldn’t see that far without help. “The snakes are coming. They look hungry.”
A shiver raced down my back. “Are you sure they’re not heading for our camp?”
“Positive.” He lowered the binoculars long enough to look at me. “Those snakes will not harm any of ours again.”
But they already had.
Geryll was gone.
And nothing we did felt like enough compensation for that.
NothingIdid.
“Myron’s probably already in position, ready to scare the snakes our way,” Zandyr went on, sensing my turmoil. “Kylian and the warriors are raising the riverbank as we speak. If Elysia’s poison works–”
“It will,” she piped up again.
“–then we will get rid of at least one of these monsters.”
I sighed through my flared nostrils. “Then what? Because we can’t poison the entire army. It’s bad enough we’re poisoning deer.”
“The deer will be fine. I carefully crafted the concoction so any mammal could ingest ridiculous amounts and feel the slightest bit loopy at worst,” Elysia said. “But when that poison gets into a reptile’s system,ifwe manage to raise the temperature enough near them, it will destroy them. And it won’t be pretty.”
“How not pretty?” I asked.
“Remember the bloody carnage we found in that small village?” She raised her brows. “Very similar.”
It was always that damn blood.
I looked at her for the longest time, this small woman who looked like a haunted doll come to life, but could kill beasts with one drop. “How’d you manage to do that?”
