Page 89 of A Serpent in the Garden

Head tilted, red lips burnished in the candlelight, eyes like glossless ink fixed on mine. I rather felt as if he were trying to lull me, though I knew it was impossible when I had a demonic roommate who had incubus blood himself. Riquin held my gaze, didn’t blink. I had no idea what to say. The stillness between us was crushing.

Remy cut in through the silence. “You can’t honestly expect me to have gotten over everything that happened. I’m not going to just forget that our father was murdered.”

“I would never expect that.”

“You wanted him dead, too, last I heard,” Remy said, my voice dark with anger. “He’s a fucking scribe, all he’s supposed to be doing is recording what happens. He isn’t supposed to intervene and hand out second chances to certain people and to Hell with the rest. It’s not fair.”

“Fair?” It looked as if Riquin would like to laugh. “Remy, you tell me where Fair is. We’ll all fucking go.” He sat there perfectly still for a moment, bottomless eyes locked on mine. “I do want him dead, but I don’t want you to be the one to do it. Your sister hasn’t seen you in six years. She’s missed you terribly. You should have seen the way she’s clung to us since you’ve been gone. You were her only brother and you left her. Leave Luceric to the rest of us. You need to focus on rebuilding your life here, on getting into the good graces of the council. They forgave a lot because of your mother’s standing but if you think her credibility didn’t take a hit from all your shit, you’re delusional. I realize you were young when it happened, that you weren’t thinking straight, but you’re older now. You don’t have any more excuses, and you won’t get any more passes.”

The mention of Jessa had caused Remy an uncomfortable twist, but the reference to his mother had him on his feet, smacking at the bars. “She made the fucking council and I’m hardly the first scandal they’ve dealt with. Who could ever throw her out? Do you think you became my father when ours died?”

Riquin looked almost sad, then, as he got to his feet. “I think I’m your older brother and I love you, probably more than you deserve sometimes. I want you to get your life back. You won’t if you pick up right where you left off.” He looked down at me and sighed, his breath a blood-soaked, bilious blast that made my head swim, made me feel quite sure of what his own breakfast had consisted of. “Your mother wants to see you when she’s finished eating.”

I bundled myself up like I would for a blizzard, my stomach like a kettle on full boil, butterfingered with buttons, fumbling with bootlaces. I headed for Frost alone, past the grasping gauntlet of the unjudged damned, feeling the eye of every demon I passed against my back.

Wails echoed along the stone walls as if from some many-headed monster. The antechamber overflowed with shoals of jostling souls. Screaming, crying, one lone male voice riding high above the rest, yelling about there must be some kind of mistake. One man stalked me as far as he could down the chamber—sweet girl, please help; a flash of vermeil, a swish of a flamboyantly cut robe; that’s all I saw from the corner of my eye—as if I had any sway at all in this place before one of the guards took notice and cracked him across the face. It didn’t help to settle my guts, which writhed like a fish on a hook.

My mother wouldn’t have asked you about your life, your family, if she were planning on doing away with you, Remy said in a bid to soothe my nerves, blotting out the screams rocketing up from Fang as I descended the staircase. She wouldn’t have bothered speaking to you at all.

Quick flash of Fury’s frantic, energetic din as I passed by and kept moving down the frozen staircase. Ice dusted Frost’s landing, illuminated by that overbright moon pouring through the archway.

You’ll be fine. She probably just wants to berate me some more, he said, with a decent stab at humor. It’s her favorite pastime. I’m sure she missed it when I was gone.

Snow fell softly inside Frost, and there was a vast, bewitching loneliness in the sight of it, a sort of exhilarated despair I could see myself being easily seduced by, if I weren’t so off-balance with nerves and cold. Even through my layers, I was freezing. My muscles jumped, springing in fitful jerks.

I found her the moment I stepped beneath the archway, though she wasn’t on her throne and neither was her guard anywhere in evidence. She knelt, alone beneath the boundless star-encrusted sky, in the nearest snow bed, speaking softly to one of the protruding heads, a hand ruffling frost off the ice-threaded hair.

It was such a bizarre sight it stopped me dead. How could she be so tender with the damned? That sweet, fond little smile on her face, the moon silvering her edges; she looked like something from a fairy tale.

What is she doing? I asked.

Her duty. Reminding them all of what they’ve done to earn this. She can show them images with her touch. The people they hurt, their treacheries, the messes they’ve left behind. Every day, she shows them.

Is that what you did to me, planted images? I said, unable to help being suspicious, even as I stood there with my teeth chattering. You forced that dream into my head?

Sweetheart, I don’t have her power. I’m sure I’m mediocre to the last degree when it comes to any ability I might have inherited from her. That dream was all you. I was just its lucky audience.

His mother rose from the snow, her dress billowing about her ankles. It seemed made from starlight, like she’d plucked the surplus from her skies and fashioned it herself. Eyes like smoked moonlight, her hair in elegant silver waves. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful and disturbing.

She didn’t lead with greetings or niceties. “There’s something we need to discuss before I decide what’s to be done about this mess.” She paused, studying me, my ludicrous layers, my probably-terrified expression. I doubted she had had a conversation with something of my like in all her life. “I need certain assurances that you would never use her name to bring any harm upon my daughter.” Her voice came tight, crisp as the temperature.

“She’s just a little girl,” I said reflexively. What reason would I ever have to harm a child?

Her dress, swagged with a fringe of icicles at the waist, shimmered in the light of the omnipresent moon. The expression on her face told me I’d said something ridiculous. “She won’t be forever.”

“I would never hurt her. I have no interest in bringing harm to any of you. All I want is for my mind to be my own again.”

“If she comes to any harm by your hand I will lay a curse upon you that would make you wish for a mere possession.”

I expected nothing less from her, the regent of this hauntingly beautiful Hell circle. “That seems reasonable.”

A lift to her silver brow. “Would you make a promise of it?”

“Of course.”

Making a promise to her isn’t a simple exchange of words, Des, Remy said from behind his window. His mother looked at me as if she could see him there as plainly as she saw me.

What does that matter, if I never intend to go back on my word? Whatever she threatens me with, it won’t happen so long as I don’t harm her daughter. Which I would never do.