Page 53 of Take Me Darkly

Chapter Sixteen

Serena

* * *

The house is burning.

I know it before the smoke even clears the tree line—the acrid, suffocating scent of scorched plaster, hot copper, and eucalyptus reaches me first. Beneath it all lingers another stench, dark and terrible, that my mind refuses to name.

I stand frozen on the dirt road outside the estate. Barefoot. Sharp gravel bites into my soles, but my legs feel like poured concrete. I can only watch, paralyzed, as violent orange flames lick through the window frames, devouring everything I have ever known.

My mother is inside.

The realization doesn’t arrive as a thought. It hits like an icy spike through my chest. The cold, unyielding certainty locks my lungs. I try to scream her name—try to tear the silence open—but no sound escapes my throat. My voice is gone.

Then come the serpents.

They slither out of the inferno, pouring through the shattered, burning window frames in a silver-and-black tide. Their scales glint under the fierce, dancing light of the blaze as they glide down the road, coming straight for me with a patient, terrifying purpose.

One of them rears up before me.

Its eyes aren’t slit-pupiled and cold like a reptile’s—they are human. Dark, flat, and chillingly familiar.

I recognize Cade’s features warped across the serpent’s face. When its jaws part, what spills out isn’t a hiss, but a low, rhythmic chant in an ancient tongue I almost understand.

Almost.

Ash rains from the sky, accompanied by burning pages floating on the superheated air—dozens of leaves torn from my father’s field journal. I reach out a trembling hand, but the moment my fingers touch a fragment, it disintegrates into dust.

Papa.

I form the word with my lips, but the air in my lungs is empty. I am completely helpless.

With a deafening roar, the roof of the estate caves inward. A wave of suffocating heat blasts against my face.

I still can’t run. The snakes are already coiling up my ankles, their scales surprisingly ice-cold against my burning skin. One of them holds a charred piece of paper between its fangs—the tablet rubbing of Mark Antony’s children. As I watch, a spark catches the edge, and the ancient cipher bursts into white-hot flame, consuming my father’s final secret.

Mamma.

A shadow emerges in the burning doorway of the ruin. My mother stands back-lit by the roaring inferno.

Her face is wrong. The lines keep shifting, her cheekbones blurring and reforming as if she is dissolving into the light. Panic seizes my throat as I realize I am losing her—I can’t hold onto the memory of her face.

A serpent coils tightly around her ankle.

She doesn’t look down. Her dark eyes remain locked on mine, her lips moving silently.

“Run,” she seems to say. Or perhaps she is telling me to stay. The roar of the fire swallowed her voice, leaving me to guess at the words I so desperately need to hear.

The snake tightens its grip. She begins to fall backward into the flames⁠—

* * *

“Serena.”

The nightmare shattered.

“Serena. Hey... I’ve got you.”