Page 76 of A Serpent in the Garden

Her lashes were icy against my neck when she blinked up at me, her thin, cold nose nestled into the hollow of my throat. “Mother doesn’t like that she knows my name.”

“I know. But I’d never have told her if I thought she’d use it against you.”

“I thought the fogs weren’t working for the longest time,” she said, “but I still tried calling her to me.”

“They worked.” My hand was moving up and down her back. “Maybe a little too well. Her village is covered with them most days.”

Jessa splayed the fingers of both hands, gazing down at them. Mother-of-pearl veins on her arms, as if she’d bleed moonlight. “I asked them to look for my blood out there. See if they could find you.” She wiggled her fingers, the nails shining like glass. “Mother says it’s a good defensive magic. She didn’t know I was doing anything other than practicing out here.”

“I won’t tell her.” He gave her a reassuring little pat. “God knows I’ve kept my share of secrets from her.”

A shuffle of footsteps coming up from behind, and Jessa flicked a glance up at whoever loomed over us. “I have to go back inside now. I’m only allowed out here twice a day if I get through my lessons.”

“I love you.” He said it in a way that tugged at my heart, pulling her into another impulsive hug as she’d started to get to her feet, her cold little body wrapped up in my arms. “I’ll see you soon, okay?”

“Be good,” she said when he released her, one prim hand dusting her dress free of bits of grass. “Or Mother might not let you.”

And then the Frost guard led her away and no other guard swept in to take his place, leaving me alone on the grass beside a disinterested hellhound.

They’re not going to guard me out here? I asked, glancing around nervously. Black armor glinted from every angle. Hellhound helmets everywhere, red stones for their eyes flashing like fire in the daylight. Demon faces gazing out from between the carved jaws. Plenty of guards, but none approached.

I don’t think that thing around your ankle is a pretty decoration. I’m sure it tracks you somehow. My mother wouldn’t have given us free, unsupervised rein of the grounds. I tried warning you.

So what if it tracks us? At least you won’t be climbing the walls stuck in your room.

She’ll know where we are at any given moment, he said, as if this were intolerable. I don’t like it.

Is there anything you like?

I like my siblings. My hand reached out of its own accord, grabbing my kneecap. I felt ice in my palm through the tight fabric of my pants. I like you.

And yet you wouldn’t tell me your name for years, I said, watching my thumb press circles into my knee, unimpressed by this display. You won’t tell me anything about why this happened in the first place, even though it didn’t just happen to you. It may be your punishment but it’s turned into mine, too. You might “like me” but sometimes it feels like you don’t respect me very much.

I respect you, he spluttered, as if I’d accused him of some gruesome crime, my hand thumping to the grass.

Not enough to tell me the truth. I have to beg for scraps of it.

It was as if I’d struck him dumb for a moment. What do you want from me, Des? You want me to paint you a fucking picture? My father was murdered. I was sixteen and angry. I did a lot of things that I’m not proud of anymore. I wasn’t even proud then, I just…I had to do something. Nobody else was.

What did you do?

It was like I’d asked an unanswerable question. I felt him grappling around for words and immediately discarding them as if he didn’t like their shape.

You don’t have to make it complicated, I said, blowing out a sigh of exasperation. You don’t have to try to soften it somehow or cast yourself in a certain light. Just tell me what happened. I’m not laying a trap, just asking for an answer.

He was quiet so long it felt like I’d made a request that was doomed from the start. Generally every question I’d ever asked him over the years had stumbled over a cliff and died a spectacular death, splattered and ignored. Of course he wouldn’t tell me; why would he? I was an object to reside within until he could cast me off like a bad habit. The alchemy of six years with him didn’t magically transform me into someone worth confiding in. I was only human, after all.

Stop, he said, half annoyed, half appalled, restless in that liminal pocket in my mind. That’s not what I think. Gathering himself, fingers to his temples; were they covered in frost like his mother’s, his sister’s? I went out to the In Between when the council was in a judgement session one night, he said, as though it cost him a lot of effort to grit the words out. The guard is thinner at that time; they need to herd the damned into chambers and depending on crowd size that can take a while. It’s mostly the hounds outside then, and they’re more concerned with intruders breaking into Hell or the damned sneaking out of it, not demons coming and going. There was a big crowd that night, not many guards around. So I climbed down to the In Between and threw open the gates.

It took the souls in there a minute to realize what I’d done. His voice sounded flushed, quick and strained. When the fogs inside started thinning with all the fresh air, they all came stumbling out.

I couldn’t find words for a moment, staring off into the wood in blind amazement. You freed every soul damned to the In Between? What, as some kind of protest?

Demon children squealing from somewhere behind me; they sounded like any other children back in Monde’s End. I felt like I was on another planet.

I wanted to get the attention of the asshole who killed my father. I wanted him to come down and do something about the breakout. A humorless laugh. That’s not something they can just ignore. It would wreak havoc. He would have had to come deal with it, and when he came, I’d kill him.

You keep saying come down; come down from where? I asked, but I thought I had an inkling what he was implying.