Page 158 of Serpent and Shadow

I gripped it so tightly in my hands, I’d scrunched the sides of it inside my fingers.

The sick thing was, a part of me was tempted.

Malefic’s offer actually managed to tempt me, at least in the short term. I desperately wanted to be with Bones, and to see my brother, alive and healthy, face to face. I wanted to see Varya and know she was all right. I could feel the deliberate cruelty of this, to dangle all of them in front of me, and pretend all would be forgiven.

My mind could know it was utter, delusional fantasy to think it would do anything but put everyone I loved in even more danger, but it didn’t stop the longing in me from festering, and making my chest hurt.

“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

If Bones was watching any of this, or feeling any of this, he didn’t answer.

I could almost see Malefic in the darkness behind my eyes, smiling.

I could feel Bones there more strongly, though, and I knew exactly what he would say to this “offer” being put forth by Malefic, whether he chose to voice it aloud in my mind or not.

I’ll kill you myself, he’d growled at me, glaring into my eyes.

Knowing what I knew about Malefic and how he might use all of us against one another, I don’t know what worried me more––that Bones might mean it, or that he might not.

I was still sitting there, staring at the sheets of parchment gripped between my hands, when the first explosion went off outside the tower window.

34

Rat In A Maze

Hard, urgent knocking erupted on my apartment door.

It seemed to come within seconds of that first booming explosion that rattled the windows and sent dust falling from the stone ceiling.

I leapt up from the couch, and felt out for who stood outside my door.

It was Valor, my cousin.

Quicksilver was with him.

I bit my tongue, fighting to think. When the knocking started up again, I ran to the jewelry box I had on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. I yanked it open, grabbed the gold snake bracelet Bones had given me, and performed a quick mudra and muttered an incantation to get it to wrap tightly around my arm.

I grabbed the talisman Alaric had given me next, and stuffed it into the pocket of my trousers, along with the few gold coins I’d left in the bottom of the jewelry box.

The knocking was harder thumping now, and I could hear my cousin shouting faintly through the heavy wood and even thicker cloud of chimaeras. The fact that I could hear him at all told me he was probably bellowing at full volume.

The loud, frantic knocking hadn’t stopped, and I ran up to the door, unlocking the chimaeras before I’d made it halfway across the room.

I twisted the handle and flung it open to find the two mages glaring at me. Three others stood behind them in the stairwell, along with several witches. I could only stare back at them all, panting. Valor motioned with his head towards the stairs.

“Come on,” he said only. “We’re leaving. Now.”

The witches and mages behind him immediately turned on the landing and began descending quickly down the stairs. Valor followed them last, and Quicksilver stood only a beat longer, indicating with a sharp jerk of his chin I was to go ahead of him.

I didn’t hesitate.

“Where are they?” I asked, panting a little as I ran after my cousin and the others.

“Inside the grounds,” Quicksilver growled from behind me.

“How?” I asked. “How did they get in?”

Valor’s voice rose from just ahead.