Page 81 of Embrace the Serpent
He cursed. “The wards have you. They should’ve recognized that you’re with me—”
I wasn’t with him. We were strangers, making a deal. “Stop the horse.”
“Of all the times for the wards to work perfectly—”
The horse wasn’t stopping, it wasn’t even slowing—something was squeezing my heart. I had to go—
My hands scrambled on the reins, and when I couldn’t force the horse around, I swung my leg over and leapt, just as Rane clicked his teeth and the horse slowed. I was thrown free, crumpling to the ground.
“Saphira!” Rane’s voice blended with the howling of the wind, of the voices—I had to go back—
Acrid, sour bile filled my mouth. The sky was spinning. The air itself seemed to hiss,Youare not welcome.
Arms circled me. “Saphira, I’m so very sorry.”
I looked up into Rane’s eyes, those dark eyes that I liked so much, the eyes that were a lie, an illusion, and I looked past them, to the dark clouds. My skin was hot, my head spun. “I have to go.”
His voice came from far away, frantic. “It’s the enchantments—let me help you.”
I burrowed into his neck. His warmth, his smell took the edge off the wrongness. I was shaking, and I couldn’t stop.
A hand stroked my back. “Do you trust me?”
Trust? Trusting only led to pain. If I had learned one lesson in my life, it was that. My heart was a small thing, bruised and brittle, and I didn’t know how much more it could weather.
I breathed in his scent, and I wanted to cry. “Yes.”
The warmth left me as he took a step back. A circle of heat remained around my wrist. Softly, he tugged at my hand, and I gave it to him.
He lowered his slightly parted lips to my wrist, and his breathpuffed against my pulse. In the fading pink-gold light, his fangs glinted as he scraped them, ever so gently, across my skin.
Like a prayer, he whispered, “Forgive me.”
He bit down. His fangs sank into the flesh of my wrist. The feeling was so white-hot sharp that I couldn’t even scream. The stinging pain ran up my arm and cut through my veins. A flood of warmth chased it.
All was sensation. My eyes were open, but I could not see. Colors exploded in my vision, bright and endless, like staring into the sun. I felt myself rising through my body, higher, higher—
Ecstasy. A reverent stillness beyond myself. It was everything. I was everything.
I trembled there, on the line that divided myself from the rest of the world. My vision was inward; I saw in myself an expanse so endless, full of possibility, full of desire to see where my art could take me and what I could yet create; and then I saw lips, they smiled at me crookedly, and was this inside me or outside? The lips parted and shaped words, and how I wanted them. This was a dream; those lips had come to my dreams before, dreams that disappeared from my mind before sunrise. And then I saw dark silver eyes, wide and searching, ringed by dark lashes glistening with tiny drops of unshed tears, like diamonds.
I was carried, but I did not look away from those eyes. My hearing returned first, a rushing of blood in my ears. And under the rushing came words. When I was small, before Galen, I had listened outside theaters, hearing the dialogue of plays and filling in the action from my own imagination. I wasn’t sure if I was small again, lying on a roof, eyes open to the stars, listening to a story that was never meant for me.
Part 3
The Death
16
The world rocked back and forth, and there was a pressure under my knees, behind my back. My eyes were crusted with salt, and the world swam into focus. My surroundings—a blur of shadows and muted colors—dipped and rose like I was on a boat, and—oh, I was being carried.
Strong arms cradled me against a broad chest, the steady rhythm of his steps drawing me from the haze of sleep. My heart quickened, a flutter of shy uncertainty mingling with a strange sense of safety, of being home.
I shifted slightly in his embrace, angling for a better look. The softest hint of light came through the trees overhead, casting soft shadows across his face: inhumanly sharp cheekbones, a straight nose, brows of dark silver. His hair spilled across his chest and pooled in my lap, a river of moonlight.
As if sensing my scrutiny, he glanced down at me, his gaze softening with a hint of a smile. “There you are.” His voice was a low rumble that sent a shiver down my spine.
“You’ve changed,” I said, tugging at a lock of his hair. He wore the guise of the Serpent King, but now, having seen what I thought of as Rane’s secret face, I felt myself comparing the two. The SerpentKing seemed several years older, several times more foreboding, and quite a bit less handsome. I felt my cheeks warm at that last thought.
