Page 91 of A Serpent in the Garden

For years he had wallowed, seething in the hothouse of my mind, over the injustice of his father’s death. Always, he’d boiled over it; from the speechless rage of our jarring beginning to the pulsing anger of the present. How he wanted to go back in time somehow, make everything different. If only he’d gotten through the antechamber quicker; if only Marcic, fucking Marcic, hadn’t held him up; if only he had noticed, in all his outdoor wanderings, the extra coins in the ferryman’s boat—all that, in a second, just before he sank back into his cell.

I felt myself nodding, heard myself saying yes.

Finn straightened out my leg. “Valic, keep her quiet.”

You don’t have to do this, Remy said as Valic hit the stone steps beside me and curled an iron arm around my belly, pulling me into his lap. This is crazy. You might get hurt out there even if the serum can heal your wounds.

You want to go, I can tell. Valic’s hand slithered across my mouth as the flames in Finn’s hand grew brighter. You want to see him dead and if it can be over, today, then so much the—

Pain like I had never experienced, blistering across my ankle. A hoarse chant of no no no ringing through my head; whether from me or Remy, I didn’t know or care. Everything in me, every particle and atom, spun drunkenly around and homed in on the agony hissing across my skin. I couldn’t wrench free from Valic’s arms, from Finn’s grip on my ankle; I couldn’t see from the careful angle in which Valic held my head, but it hurt so badly my skin had to be blackening like a slab of beef much too close to a flame…

Hands on either side of my face, Remy shouting my name, misty gold coins swimming before me that eventually resolved into a pair of eyes.

“Are you okay?” Finn gave my chin a little jerk. “Speak. Are you all right?”

“Did you kill her?” I felt Valic’s voice rumbling against my sagging back, his arm a steel bar against my stomach. “Can they die from burns?”

“She’s not dead, she just passed out, their bodies sometimes do that when the pain is too great—are you okay?” Light slap against my cheek. I tried to blink the fuzz from my eyes. “The serum can take some time to work; can you manage or will I have to carry you?”

I suppose he found the answer in my face, because he hefted me into his arms and took off down the staircase, past Flame’s blinding archway and up the stairs that led toward the apartments, knocking back a bewildered, lagging Flame demon with a sharp you never saw us, do you hear me?

You’re okay, Remy said, as the shock receded. The pain was still there, every throb sending multicolored lights popping in my peripherals and a sick swoop in my belly, but it grew lighter with every step Finn took.

Bedlam in the antechamber. The echo of voices carried down the hallway, torchlight flashing across the back of an armored guard sprinting away from us.

Finn stopped at a bare stretch of plain stone, one hand braced against it, pausing as if he needed to catch his breath from bearing the burden that was me. But then it was as if the light of the sun shone from behind the stone, a bright thread that formed the outline of a handleless door appearing.

My blood swished in my ears, a glitter not unlike the effects of alcerin seeping into my veins. What is that?

Finn is a lieutenant in Flame. He can access certain exits out of Hell that less ranking demons can’t.

Finn looked down at me as he shouldered through the stone door with Valic right behind us. A swift and searching glance as if to take stock of whether or not I’d faint again.

Daylight blasted into my eyes. For a moment, I saw nothing but Finn’s golden glow and hazes of green and gray. Tree branches from the edge of the wood waved idly in the distance, as if welcoming me back. And in a blink, they disappeared.

Finn’s feet met the ground on a hill overlooking a brilliant white city, stained bloody by the dawn, and how many years had it been since I’d seen a sunrise like this? When it shone over Monde’s End these days it did so almost grudgingly, peeking out from behind clouds and fogs for no more than a few minutes at a time.

The endless glare of the sea as the sun crested the horizon. Black water glittered around three sides of the city, brining the air. Waves slapped at the ports, ships with pale sails blossoming in the breeze. Rosy scudding clouds rimmed with gold hovered above clean streets speckled with white-roofed buildings. It had to be far from Hell, somewhere hours behind if the sun hadn’t fully risen.

Finn seemed unwilling to put me down, studying my ankle. “It looks better. How does it feel?”

“I think I’m fine.”

Valic strode past us to the edge of the hilltop as Finn set me on the dew-beaded grass, his hands already at work on yanking off my topmost cloak. “When I pictured undressing you for the first time,” he said, fingers lingering at the back of my neck, twining around a strand of hair, sly tell-me-to-stop smile— “you weren’t wearing quite so many layers.”

I’m going to smack him, Remy said. Somebody needs to.

I ignored the two of them, squinting over Finn’s shoulder at what I could see of the landscape beyond us. Manses and storehouses sprawling across the coastline, wide cobbled roads between buildings inside the city proper. “I’ve never seen a place like this before.”

“The Crossing.” Finn was very difficult to look at, burning pale gold beneath the pink drench of dawn, so close I could count every gilded eyelash if I’d had a wish to. “It’s a small but wealthy city. Well, it would have to be. They have to have coin to build altars to Luceric, to beg his blessings, to pay for festivals like these. We suspect the people who live here had angelic help in building up the city.” With one finger, he turned my chin in the direction of a spiraling tower so tall it was crowned in cloud. “Remy blinked all the way up to the top to deface the scrolls inside the sacred little chamber. The volunteers who tend to the tower are the ones he threatened to kill. Not that I would have minded much, but it’s really not allowed.”

“Why?”

He unfastened another row of buttons on one of my extra shirts. Deft fingers, like he’d had a lot of practice stripping clothes off. “Hmm?”

“Why is it not allowed?” I flapped his hands away and dealt with the buttons myself, sinking down to the grass, where he followed.

Finn sat back on his heels, watching me fumble over the fastenings. “Not our place to harm the living. The punishment for doing so is steep.” From his bag, he pulled out a white bundle that turned out to be a pair of cloaks. He pulled one on and tossed the other to Valic. “Banished and contained to the wood, only able to walk in darkness?” He stood, the cloak snapping behind him, swirling in the wind. “That’ll put most of us off from killing humans. It’s mostly succubi and incubi in there, the oldest demons who weren’t willing to follow the rule when the council came to power.”