Page 93 of Be the Serpent

The smell of roses wafted down the hall, light and effervescent and entirely at odds with the growing tension in the room. I stepped forward, and Tybalt allowed his hands to drop away.

“Quentin,” I said, very quietly.

He came the rest of the way into the room, moving to stand beside me. May stayed where she was, staring down the hall.

“Child of mine,” said a new, terribly familiar voice that sent shivers running up and down my spine. May stiffened. “Child of mine, you cannot stand against me. Stand aside.”

May cast an agonized glance in my direction, then moved out of the doorway, clearing a path for the woman who appeared where she had been standing. Titania stepped into the dim rectangle of light coming in from the hall, looking flatly in my direction. She wasn’t frowning. She wasn’t smiling, either. She was looking at me the way I’d look at a spider I found unexpectedly in my bathtub, something unwanted and small and unwelcome in my space.

“You can’t hurt me,” I said, wishing my voice wouldn’t shake. “You can’t hurt any of us. You’re not allowed to harm my family.”

“True, child,” she said. “But you forget how young you are. You forget how much more time I’ve had to play this game. So much more time than any of you. Only the distorted child of mine comes anywhere near to me, and hers is a dilute and unwarranted claim to her age. I know the way of ward and wording. I know the roads through riddle and restriction. Do you truly think my husband can stop me from doing anything I want to do?”

“Get out of my house,” I said.

“I can’t hurt you.” She finally smiled. “But I can make you someone else’s problem.”

The smell of roses grew stronger, until the air was too thick for me to breathe without sticking in my throat. I couldn’t feel my fingers. I couldn’t feel my arms. I couldn’t feel anything at all, and then the light was red, red as roses, red as blood, and then there wasn’t any light at all.

Everything went away, and the space after the sentence was blazing white, and silence.

TWENTY-THREE

Light cascaded through my bedroom window, silvery bright and warming. I yawned and rolled over, burying my face in the heap of lacy pillows Mother insisted I keep on the bed. She said a proper lady should never leave room for anyone to assume that she’d been joined by some unworthy suitor during the day, and so long as the pillows never touched the floor, my virtue would be unblemished and understood.

Sometimes I thought there was a reasonably decent chance my mother might be making things up to mess with me.

The light continued cascading into the room, bright enough that there was no way it was being filtered through curtains. I groaned and sat up, pushing my hair out of my eyes as I blinked at the world. “I wasn’t ready to rejoin you,” I informed it.

The world persisted in existing.

Groaning again, I slid out of the bed and padded toward the window. The curtains, which I knew had been closed the night before, were standing open and letting in the early-evening air. Mother must have aligned the moonrise to her mood again. That, or she thought it was time for me to be awake and getting on with my night. That was considerate of her, even if it made me want to crawl into the closet for another few hours of sleep. But Mother wouldn’t have opened my curtains. She didn’t like to come into my room after I was in bed; said it was inappropriate, and that as a grown woman, I should have been able to put myself to bed.

“August,” I muttered, leaning over to grab the curtain and jerk it shut.

The light mercifully dimmed.

My older sister was more rebellious than I—a dire consequence of having no human blood to make her recognize the privilege of her position—and my room, being closer to the ground, was all too often her chosen pathway out into the world. She had been refining the skill of creeping through the room and climbing out the window since we were children, and no longer woke me with any sort of regularity. That didn’t make it something I approved of.

Mother kept us in the tower to keep us safe. Mother loved us. Mother loved us like the precious treasures we were.

Mother would forgive me if I went back to bed.

I turned, eyes half-closed, and walked over to collapse onto the mattress. I had been so tired lately, and for no reason I could possibly see. If it was still bothering me after a little more sleep, I could talk to Mother.

Or I could talk to August right now, as she came bursting into my room and ran over to drop down beside me on the bed, the drapes rustling with the motion. “Are you going to get up tonight?” she demanded.

I hit her with a pillow.

“Violence! Really, October, where did you learn such a terrible reflex?” She picked up another pillow and pressed it over my face, leaning on it with all her weight as I squirmed and shoved. “You’ve been spending too much time with Father, if you’re going to be so aggressive.”

I managed to get my hands against her stomach and shoved her away. She tumbled back on the bed, laughing. I sat up, glaring at her.

“I was still asleep, you wrecking ball,” I scolded.

“What’s a little suffocation between sisters?” she asked.

I hit her with another pillow.