Page 128 of Serpent and Shadow

For a few seconds, he only stood there, his back to me, his coat still only halfway on. Then, like a switch flicked, he pulled it the rest of the way up over his shoulders, yanking it tight over the front of his chest. Only after he’d adjusted the collar did he turn.

He walked over to me, still avoiding my eyes as he reached the side of the bed. When I leaned up, kneeling on the bed, and rested my arms on his shoulders, he only stood there, his face taut. He stared past me, over my shoulder, and swallowed.

“Please trust me.” He said it quieter than anything he’d said until now. He kissed my face, and his fingers stroked my cheek. “I’ll get Arcturus out. Somehow. I’m working on it. But don’t come back to the tower, Leda.” He swallowed again, a pleading look in his eyes. “He really does want you there. Badly. Don’t make it easy for him. Please.”

He leaned his forehead against mine and swallowed again.

“If I can’t threaten you convincingly, believe this,” he murmured as he nuzzled my cheek. “It would kill me. It would fucking kill me, Leda, to have you there. Please don’t do that to me. Don’t do it to Arcturus, either. Or my mum.”

Tears came to my eyes before I could hold them back.

I kissed his mouth, and he returned it, bending lower to reach me.

He kissed me tenderly again, but didn’t pull me against him, and it was over before it felt like anywhere near enough. He pulled away from me with a reluctance that closed my throat, only pausing to press his face briefly against mine.

I could only kneel there on the mattress, gripping his shoulder and the back of his neck. I still hadn’t moved when he began to disentangle himself from my hold. I fought to speak, to say something, but he didn’t seem to want to hear whatever he could see in my eyes.

I hadn’t yet managed to get to there, to form words, when Bones turned away from me entirely and walked towards the wall beside the bed.

An instant later, he disappeared in a flash of white light.

27

Fire Fox

“Where were you?” a quiet voice asked.

Caelum froze where he’d been walking across the stone floor.

They hadn’t chained him to the wall this time, or even walked inside the long holding cell with him, but merely left him at the door.

He supposed that was a reward for finally losing his self-control enough to go to her.

He turned towards the young-sounding voice, and struggled with a painful twinge of guilt. He should have asked her. He hated the idea of it, hated doing that to either of them, but he should have asked her anyway, if she’d want him to pass on a message.

He dumped his coat on the dungeon floor, grateful they’d left it with him, as it got cold down there a lot of nights, and sat down on the floor by the wall.

The kid was sitting like he usually sat, cross-legged on their one and only rug, a thick, forest-green luxury that covered about ten square feet of the cell. Several pillows were strewn across the rug, including the dark blue one where Arcturus sat. A book lay open in front of him, and a few dozen more were stacked around him in a shallow arc, making him look a bit like a hoarder, or a scholar huddled in an ancient archive.

A candle burned in a brass holder a few inches from the top of the book. A plate of biscuits sat next to his leg on the left side, along with a mug of something hot, probably coffee, since the kid drank even more of it than his sister.

All were privileges Bones managed to wheedle out of his father for the kid, now that he was doing as he was told and his father was in a marginally more magnanimous mood towards both of them. Caelum supposed his visit tonight with Leda after the raid on Marlborough, which Malefic had been prodding him to do for weeks, might win him a few more asks.

Maybe he’d try to get them a couch.

Really, he should ask for a real mattress they could sleep on, something a lot thicker and softer than the rug he’d won them a few weeks earlier.

The rug was significantly better than stone, of course.

The thought of a couch down there in the dark and damp and rats was almost laughable, given everything else. He looked around at the mossy stone walls, their wooden bucket providing the only water they got, even now, the hole on the other side of the iron bars that made up their toilet, and he wondered how Arcturus was really doing with all of this.

Inevitably, his mind turned towards Leda.

Should he have told her about this? Shouldn’t he have told her something at least, about how her brother was really doing? Arcturus and his rug and books and biscuits either would have infuriated Leda, bewildered her, or possible even given her some relief.

He hadn’t known, so he’d opted to say nothing.

He did wonder if his father would actually move them to a real room soon, somewhere upstairs, inside the main body of the castle. Maybe his childhood bedroom, where his father still hung the uniforms and workout clothes he expected Caelum to wear when he was let out of his cage. Would he just house Arcturus with him?