Page 86 of A Serpent in the Garden

I wanted to feel him in my hands but he read my mind and pinned me against the mattress, wouldn’t let me touch him. Slick fingers and labored breathing, holding me captive beneath his weight. I felt glazed and nearly stupid, emptied of everything but desire.

Maybe later. He trapped both my wrists with his free hand, and there was a tenderness in his voice to contrast the strength with which he held me down. You’re almost there already.

I was. I felt on the cusp of plummeting through some void into which I’d never stop falling. I craned my neck around to kiss him just before the upsurge when I felt myself fly to pieces. He kissed me back, hard, and kept his hand against me, rubbing me through the crescendo and final rippling tremors until the pulsing fluttered feebly and died, leaving me trembling like a leaf.

And then I woke up wet and aching, a pit in my stomach and a smug, slippery voice in my head, blooming into the darkness.

Good Lord, Remy said. That was a new one. Usually in your dreams you’re just arguing with me about something stupid.

I struggled up against the pillows. My hands felt incapable of supporting my weight and my elbows were juddering, frail and loose. How are you so sure it was you?

Because you were.

How could he sound so self-satisfied? All I felt was sad, dejected in a way I couldn’t articulate even in my own thoughts.

I didn’t know how to say it or even how to think it as I flopped back against the pillows. It felt like the weird afterglow of a nightmare, when you know you’re safe but fear still lingers at the edges. I knew I couldn’t have him but that didn’t chase off the craving, and it wasn’t even strictly sensual in nature. I didn’t just want his migrating fingers, his hand clamped against all my tender places. I wanted to be close to him, his arms around me like they’d been in that dream, but it would never happen, and wishing for it seemed like a doomed, fatal idea. It was useless to even consider, like when people asked what you’d do first if you woke up to mountains of gold—what did it matter, when it would never come to pass? I might as well wish for the moon, and I nearly thought I’d cry from the injustice of it all, the stupidity. I’d never wanted his intrusion in the first place; hadn’t I been saying so from the start? I was beginning to think I had no choice in what I wanted. The decision had been made for me. I never would have wanted something so stupid if I’d been properly consulted. This seemed an awful malfunction, the more that I thought about it. What if your heart wanted something terrible, what if it couldn’t be trusted to make sound judgements? It was a disastrous arrangement, to my mind.

It was silly, a maudlin waste of time, wanting what I couldn’t have.

I could tell Remy hadn’t been entirely prepared for this line of thinking, straining to follow every dashing thought and trap one in his hands.

It’s not silly, he said. My left arm turned cold as he lifted it, lacing its fingers through the ones on my right hand, one thumb rubbing against the other.

I couldn’t help a watery laugh. It was pathetic that that was the closest I’d get to him.

Best I can do at the moment, he said. It’s not silly, okay, I’m not going to be in here forever—

You might be, and even if you’re not, you’re just going to run off and get yourself killed.

I don’t have any intention of dying. I plan on keeping myself alive for eternity out of pure spite.

You think you’re so amusing.

You think I am too, most of the time.

I think you’re an idiot.

I think you don’t mean that. You can’t lie to me, remember?

My left hand squeezed my right, one thumb still stroking the other. It was sweet, but it didn’t make me feel any less shipwrecked.

Even if I do leave, he said, you don’t think I’d spare three fucking seconds on you before I took off? That I’d go without so much as a backward glance, a nice knowing you? We’ll have some things to sort out before I go anywhere. Frankly I don’t have any intention of letting you rush back through the wood on your own, or at all.

I have to look for Serich.

No you don’t. I’ll take you back to the village and look for him myself. I’d be faster on my own. You can check if he’s made it back home while I’m out there.

I blinked into the blackness, not knowing what to say for a moment. You don’t even like him.

I dislike the thought of you in the wood again more than I dislike him.

I can hardly go back to Monde’s End without him. They think I’m a murderer. If he’s not there to vouch for me I’ll be either hanged or cast out. That might happen even if he is there to speak for me.

Obviously, Remy said, his voice heavy with sarcasm, I’m not going to let anybody kill you. You can wait here, then. I’ll check the wood for him. I’ll take him back to the village if I find him and come back for you. It might take me a while, there’s no blinking in the wood, only on the outskirts, but if it’s daylight when I go looking, I might have enough time. It hasn’t even been three days. He can’t have gotten far.

And if you can’t find him? I could hardly bear to think of it. If Serich was dead, it would only be because of me.

If he’s dead, you mean? Then I guess you’ll have to stay here, with me.