Page 74 of A Serpent in the Garden

The frost at her temples glittered in the firelight as she tilted her head. “Surely you do something to fill up your time. Do you make candlesticks? Plow fields? Apprentice with a seamstress? You must need to work to support yourself.” She looked from my face to my borrowed, overlarge clothes, and down to my bare feet. “You don’t strike me as any sort of nobility. Not that I’m told there are many of those in the village.”

“I work for a lord in his manor. Mostly in the kitchens, but also other tasks to keep the household running.”

“Do you have a family?”

“A borrowed one,” I said, wondering what it mattered. “My parents are gone.”

“And how has he coped, with all that excitement and stimulation?” It took me a moment to recognize her icy sarcasm. I’d heard it before, in her son, but I hadn’t thought her capable. “I told him he’d only bind himself to his host further if he used them like a puppet. I imagine he was bored much of the time if he was afraid to cause a ruckus. Made your life difficult.”

“He didn’t want to be there, obviously. But he made the best of it over time, I think. Taught me things. Told me little, but probably warmed up as much as he was able.”

“I thought it might do him good to see how much worse he could have it,” she said. “To show him that life doesn’t revolve around his whims and wants. Not to mention the very real threat to his life he’d brought down on his own head. He was safer out there.” She turned brisk and businesslike before I could articulate a question. “My daughter wants to see him. She’s in the meadow. If he wants to see her before her lessons, I need your ankle.”

I felt Remy smack the side of his cell, and somehow his mother must have felt it too, because she gave me a wry, restrained smile.

“He’s wary of my power. It won’t harm you if you follow its rules. He’s never done well with those.”

That smack felt like a warning, but he wanted to see Jessa, hadn’t he? I didn’t like to think what his mother would do if I refused her.

So I sat on the edge of the bed and pulled up my borrowed trousers to expose my ankle, which she traced with a cold fingertip. A thin, glittering thread of ice sprouted in its wake.

“To ensure you don’t leave the grounds,” she said. “I can’t have guards being mauled by his brothers while we sort through this issue. I’m afraid you’ll hurt yourself rather badly if you try getting past the meadow, so heed me when I ask you not to try.” She looked into my eyes then, one finger beneath the underside of my chin. “Don’t tempt me, Remy.”

She had turned her back and headed for the door by the time he was able to hijack my voice again. “Mother,” he said, my blood running cold as he pushed one of my sleeves up past my elbow.

In a swirl of ice, she turned back to me, an eyebrow slightly raised on her marble-white forehead.

“If you have to send a guard, make it one of yours.” He lifted my arm, showed her the curdled black-and-purple bruising on my elbow. “She wasn’t even fighting Marcic but he manhandled her as if she were one of the damned. I don’t want him touching her again. He hates me but he’s taking it out on her body.”

“You’re not really in a position to make demands,” she said, though her eyes lingered on the patch of ruined skin. If it troubled her, she didn’t show it, though I imagined a bruise wouldn’t make much of an impression on a demon.

“I’m not making a demand.” Our blended voices rose, quick and angry. “I’m your son and I’m asking you a favor.”

She must have decided to suffocate his flame of temper with silence. She gazed at me for a while, her skin so light-rinsed and pale she glowed, as if even in here she were ghosted with moonlight.

“I’ll see about getting her some proper-fitting clothes,” was all she wound up saying. “She looks ridiculous in yours.”

He was a twist of rattled nerves, trying to hide it but doing a bad job. My voice shook with poorly disguised insolence when he said, “Never mind the clothes; you need to feed her, Mother.”

“It’s been a while since I’ve kept hostages,” she said, on a slightly put-upon sigh. “I’m afraid I’m out of practice.”

Do you have any idea how infantilizing she is? he asked once she’d gone. A path of ice crusted upon the stone where her feet had trodden. You’d think I was sixteen again.

You look like a demon, he said later as I stood before the looking glass in his washroom. I was shifting uncomfortably in the clothes his mother had sent up with a solemn, silent Frost guard along with a tray of food.

He’d said it like a compliment, but I felt sure no demon ever looked so uncomfortable. They were close-fitting, tight and dark. I may have been covered from my throat to my ankles but I’d never felt so on display before. Some sort of small, front-tying, half-corset contraption supported my chest beneath a black shirt. A line of iron buttons marched down my collarbone, over my breasts, toward my navel. Buttons held the trousers in place, though they seemed pointless when the material was so constricting they felt sprayed on.

Why is it all so tight?

Easier to move. Plus the damned have the irritating habit of scrabbling at you when you’re walking by. They have a harder time grabbing hold when your clothes fit closer.

Your mother doesn’t wear such tight things.

My mother’s subjects are frozen solid and she’s never seen combat. Who could get close enough to touch her? I doubt she’s even held a weapon.

I grimaced at my reflection as I braided back my damp hair, the buttons at my chest straining.

Well, I like it, he said unnecessarily, as if this settled the matter. I already knew he liked it, the way he kept drifting my eyes back on specific parts of my reflection.