Page 62 of Serpent and Shadow

Please don’t, I told him. Please don’t stay away. Please.

His anger surged back, and that felt like pain, too. I wondered if it was from the collar. Was he awake? Maybe the separation was getting to him, like it was getting to me.

Yes, he thought coldly. Yes, it’s getting to me.

He held back some of what he wanted to say, but I felt some of it, anyway.

I don’t give a toss about you or Malefic’s twisted ideas of “right,” I warned him. It’s not right, Bones. Don’t lose yourself in them. Don’t let them decide your reality. Don’t let them be the only contact you have with the world.

At his silence, I bit my lip, combing my fingers through my hair.

I expected his presence to withdraw, to grow less tangible, but it didn’t.

Asleep, I decided. He must be asleep.

He was always more honest with me when he was asleep.

I’d just drawn level with the enormous Fountain of the Furies that marked the end of the garden. I’d grown used to the quiet of it over the winter, with the water frozen; it still shocked me how loud it got when the fountain was running. I looked up at the stone lions with their regal faces, and the demi-goddesses dressed in what looked like filmy robes. I could see every fold and wrinkle where the stone fabric moulded around their stone skin.

One held up a graceful arm in a gesture towards Lake Vulcan.

I inhaled the air, trying to pin down the scent Bones mentioned, the one left behind by dark magic, mixed in with the spring flowers and the peculiar smell of warm grass at the end of the day. I wondered if the Victorian house in Southhampton, where I’d lived with my brother, smelled of dark magic after the resurrection ritual my Aunt performed in the sitting room.

I wondered what it would be like growing up as Bones did, with that smell, that underlying decay, constantly permeating the air. To have that decay, more than any other scent, be the one that reminded me of home.

Something’s wrong.

I jumped, turned.

That time, Bones sounded like he stood right behind me.

No one was there, but my heart thudded in my chest.

It had unmistakably been Bones. It sounded so much like him I was shaking.

“Bones?” I spoke aloud.

LEDA, SOMEONE’S THERE! RUN!

It was already too late.

Even more than understanding his words, I felt the urgency there, in his magic. Every muscle in my body clenched. I was about to do as he said, to run, no questions asked––

Something slammed into me.

I didn’t feel it coming.

I didn’t see anything.

I didn’t hear anything but him.

A heavy something slammed into me, throwing me, brutally hard, into the fountain’s marble base. Whatever hit me, it was a lot bigger than I was. It was moving too fast. Everything was over before I could throw up magic, or do anything else to stop it.

I didn’t think. Not consciously.

I didn’t do anything else consciously, either.

I held my breath and closed my eyes––