Page 83 of A Serpent in the Garden

They can’t do whatever they want, that would wreak havoc, he said, patiently for once. And it was a celestial wound. That glow you saw around it; that only happens with celestial injuries. The light dissipates eventually, so nobody saw it but me, and nobody but my brothers believed me when I told them what I’d seen. For fuck’s sake, I was almost put on trial for my own father’s murder.

That made me pause my cleanup, the parchment rustle fading. The only sound in Finn’s bedroom was the crackling of the fires, sparks from which I could see effervescing through the fibers of the bed hangings. What kept them from doing so?

Witness statements. No blood on my blades, my clothes. There hadn’t been much time for me to do it; they dragged the river to look for a tossed weapon but found nothing. They may not have tried me for it but I’m sure in the court of public opinion a good chunk still thinks me guilty.

I’m sorry, I said, after the silence between us grew deeper, stagnant. About all of this. It’s terrible and unfair, but if you get caught, and you probably will, what sort of punishment do you think your mother would give you then?

I don’t plan to get caught. I plan for Luceric to disappear without a trace. I’ll hack his wings off and stuff them in the back of my wardrobe. But for obvious reasons I can’t do anything until we’re separated. You won’t get caught up in it.

That’s not what I’m concerned about. I think you’re courting disaster again and you’re going to get yourself killed, or worse.

You are worried. Like he was pleased about it.

I rolled my eyes up at the canopy of his brother’s bed. It’s been six years. I’m only human, of course I care. I don’t want you to die or get into any more trouble. I paused, thinking in an abstract sort of way about my mother’s death and how I never mentioned her, never thought about her if I could help it. Livvy had tried to draw me into conversations about her when her death was fresh, but I’d never wanted to talk about it. Maybe it hadn’t done me any favors. I did not have Remy’s talent for bursting into rages, but I felt how her death had shaped and hardened me over the years. How lonely and heavy the grief could be.

Tell me about him, I said, feeling Remy’s eyes on my thoughts. Your father. What he was like. It would be nice to have an idea of who he was after all this talk.

I felt him squirm uncomfortably, and I had the wry thought that he may have been a demon, but he was not that different from any other man in that he would really rather avoid fraught or emotional conversations. I saw it every day back in Monde’s End; sad little boys taught to choke back their tears while the girls were…well, perhaps their tears were not embraced, but expected. Boys were taught to be strong, the backbones of their families. Feelings were women’s work.

Maybe I was no better than a man in this regard. I hadn’t exactly been open about my mother.

A prickle of annoyance as Remy parsed my thoughts. I wondered whether he might say something snide, but after a few moments of him grinding down on my back teeth, he said, He was Fury’s captain. My uncle’s younger brother. He drifted off, focusing my eyes back on his sleeping brother. Flames feathered across Finn’s cheekbones.

He was the closest thing I think my mother ever had to a friend, he added. He taught me how to handle blades and always bothered me about learning my mother’s power even though I never wanted to. Another brief spell of silence, as if he were debating how much more to tell me. He laughed all the time. He was friends with everyone in Fury, from the ranking officers to the pit workers. He said you had to know the ones you were meant to lead if you wanted to be any good at it. He tore my eyes away from Finn. I see pieces of him in all my brothers. It was hard to look at them after he died. I’d hear him in Finn’s voice, the way he sounds, the words he chooses. I’d find him in Casper’s gestures. Valic’s jokes reminded me of him. Riquin looks just like him when he’s being serious. I couldn’t even look in the fucking mirror without seeing him and it felt like taking a knife to the gut a hundred times a day to find these bits of him everywhere; it was horrible and overwhelming and it wasn’t right to just carry on like nothing happened. Radax said it was proof we needed to bring the council but every day that passed was another day that Luceric was out there pulling his shit. It made me crazy.

I’m sure he’d be happy to know you’re back where you belong, I said.

Probably.

So maybe you ought to give it some time to settle in before you go looking for trouble again. You’ve only just got home. I sighed loudly, then remembered Finn was sleeping and swallowed it back. He was so still he looked as if he’d died, shrouded in his gold. Should I sneak out and leave him to it?

Please.

I was careful closing the trunk, did it slowly so as not to wake Finn, and I’d uncrossed my legs and slid halfway off the bed when a hand closed around my wrist.

Finn seemed wide awake when I turned back to him, as if he’d been feigning sleep this whole time. His eyes were bright and loud, full of angelic malice. “Stay with me.”

“I would rather not hang around and watch you sleep.”

He palpated my wrist as if taking my pulse and wove his fingers through mine again, pulling me just a little bit further into the curtained privacy of his bed. “We won’t sleep then. We’ll stay up all night.”

“I’m not staying with you.” I smiled slightly despite myself. I’d never met anyone so ridiculous.

“You’re breaking my heart.” He was glowing and radiant in his lavish bloodred bed; it didn’t seem as if his heart had ever experienced so much as a dent. I suspected his heart was more in the way of an empty room.

“I’m not convinced you have one.”

Finn pulled his bottom lip between rows of white teeth. “What if I’m too tired to walk you out of the pits?” He pressed back into his mound of pillows, his hand still coiled around mine, drawing me into a sort of half-bow over the blankets which probably gave him an excellent view down my ruined shirt. His eyes were slitted as they gazed into mine. He looked as if he’d start emitting sparks at any moment.

“I’m sure Remy can lead me.” You can, can’t you?

I can.

“I don’t like the thought of you all alone in a cold bed in Hell.”

“Does this routine often work for you?”

“I’m not usually forced to get on my knees and beg.”