Page 90 of A Serpent in the Garden

She drew closer, so close I could count the snowflakes tangled in her lashes. With icy, precise hands, she flicked aside my cloak and unfastened buttons to expose my neck. So cold was her finger that it felt like a knife tip slicing across my throat, and when she pulled away, a frosty necklace of what looked, from what little I could see, like diamonds had bloomed against my skin.

“It will know the moment you go against your word,” she said, tapping the large, cold center stone, her eyes boring into mine, “and it will choke the life out of you.”

That was all well and good, but I could feel how finely wrought, how ostentatious, the necklace was as I groped it with my numbing fingers. “It can’t look like this.” I tried to disguise the derisive laugh building in my throat. “I’ll be attacked for it; people will try to steal it. It will make them think I’m rich, they’ll kill me and try to prize it from my neck.”

I think she thought you might like something pretty. She knows very little of the human world. This is good, Des, this means she’s going to let you go. You’ll be back home to Livvy by nightfall.

The silence of Frost echoed in my ears. I was suddenly quite keenly aware that I stood in the middle of a brightly glinting almost-nightmare where the monsters had no teeth or claws, only blood cold as ice and unearthly moonlit eyes. My heart beat unsteadily. I couldn’t tell if I’d offended her by rejecting the necklace. Her face was still, too still. My breath was freezing in my lungs and Remy was shushing my mounting fear as his mother reached for my throat again.

The weight of the diamonds disappeared, replaced by a long, spindly silver chain that still might draw unwanted attention, but I would at least be able to better hide beneath my clothes.

She rebuttoned me into my layers, her eyes on mine, so cold and clear I could see the moonbeam veins running through them, the starlight glinting from her pupils. “I’ll need your ankle next.”

My pulse was humming. I hadn’t thought this would happen so quickly. I thought she’d deliberate for weeks, a month, more. I dropped down to the ground beside a snowcapped head and unlaced my boot with clumsy fingers. I had trouble with the knots, could hardly feel them when I was so numb, and I had almost won the struggle when a sound like some sort of enormous trumpet blasted through Frost.

What the fuck is that about, Remy said. His mother’s head snapped up to the archway in time for the noise to crash through Frost again.

I heard its earsplitting echoes and felt it thunder from above and below as if it were sounding through every floor of Hell, and armored guards had begun to spill out across the snow as if they’d been drawn from wherever the back rooms of Frost lay.

“Go.” She pushed me toward the stone landing of Frost. “Go back to your room. I’ll find you once we’ve figured out what this is about.”

What’s happened? I flattened myself against the archway as the Frost guards raced up the stairs toward Fang and the antechamber. I know it’s an alarm, but for what?

Nothing good. An attack, a mass breakout, a mutiny. The last time I heard it was when they realized I threw open the doors of the In Between. He sounded more perplexed than worried. Go down toward Flame and up to the apartments. It sounds like you’ll be crushed if you try wading through the antechamber.

I did as he said, slow and cautious down the slick stairs until the frost began to melt beneath the heat emanating from Flame. The torches guttered out for a moment, leaving me in a darkness so complete it was as if ink had been poured into my eyes. The stone above my head throbbed beneath pounding demonic feet, and when the flames sprang back to life and I glanced up nervously, I smacked straight into a hot, solid mass which turned out to be Finn.

“I’ve been looking for you.” He spoke in a rush, his hands clamped around my shoulders. “You weren’t in your room; one of my contacts lit a fire. Valic set off an alarm. We’ve got to go.”

“Go where?”

“There’s an event.” Finn’s golden eyes danced in the torchlight, his skin made brighter by the flames. “Organized by humans. Celebrating the many blessings Luceric has laid upon their city and a community prayer for more of the same. What’s the betting he won’t show up to watch them revel in his divinity?”

Footsteps pounding up. Finn whipped his head around, and over his shoulder I saw Valic hurtling toward us.

“We have to go,” he said, “now, before everyone knows it’s a false alarm and realizes we’ve gone.”

“I can’t go anywhere.” Remy’s voice coiled around my own as he smacked my palm against my right knee. “She can’t go anywhere, my mother’s got an ice manacle at her ankle—”

Finn knocked my legs out from under me, ripped my boot off, and peeled off my three layers of socks. Saw the ice circling my ankle, glittering in the glow of his own skin.

“Where’s Riquin?” Remy asked. “Take him, he’s better at lulling if that’s what you’re after—”

“It’s daylight, dumbass,” Valic said, with a we’ve-got-to-go bounce on the balls of his feet. “He can’t go anywhere and he’d lose his shit if he knew we were taking you.”

“What about Casper?” After being contained and bored into submission by my humanity for years, Remy’s heart was thrashing like a wasp beneath a glass, zinging my eyes between both of his brothers.

“He’s been gone even longer than Finn was and he doesn’t have any clever ways of getting or sending word—” Valic broke off when a ball of flame sprouted in the center of Finn’s hand, licking up his fingers. Finn had been gazing down at my exposed ankle but now he looked up at me, eyebrows lifted.

“No,” Remy snapped, fitting the pieces together quicker than I had. “No, you’ll have to burn her so badly you’ll see her bones.”

“Maybe not. It’s only a bit of ice. She can handle it.” He tilted his head, as if to see me better. “I bet you can handle a lot.”

“It’s not just a bit of ice, it’s my mother’s ice.” Remy wrenched my ankle out of Finn’s grip as he snatched the reins from me. “She can’t heal like we can. You’ll leave her with a charred stump and she’ll die from infection.”

From a pocket of the bag slung over his shoulder, Finn produced a green bottle. “If it works on our stubborn wounds I don’t see why it wouldn’t work on hers. Guards will be coming soon to sweep the staircases, make sure the circles are locked down. Yes or no?” He was asking me, not his brother; I knew that crooked, questioning almost-smile was for me. I felt a burst of longing in Remy’s heart, as if the veins running through it that had been scraped dry for years had suddenly flooded with an emotion I couldn’t place.

It was as if he’d let me in, or forgotten to lock himself down for the first time. I had never felt his thoughts so clearly as I did right then, and they took my breath away.