Page 102 of A Serpent in the Garden

Valic was as gold as Finn as he looked up, gold with celestial blood, his face pouring with it, his chest heaving, and in an instant, he’d shimmered oddly and disappeared.

My palm felt scorched around the hilt of the blade Remy had stolen off of Finn, which had gone a solid, frosty white. And I don’t know if it was me or Remy who drew it back and sent it hurtling through the air and into Luceric’s eye. It almost felt as if it were a joint decision.

Luceric’s body jerked at impact, the hilt buzzing. Then he grew still as death.

A flash flood of embattled emotion, a plunge of breathtaking depression. Mine or his? I could hardly tell, entwined as we were, the boundary between us worn thinner than gossamer. Joy battled grief, rage crossed swords with calm. And there was satisfaction too, but the most prominent flavor was despair, because still his father was dead, gone forever, unreachable. In a strong light there was still nothing to celebrate here. Throughout this mental tossing flashed head-snapping images of his father, smiling, his father, dead, his father’s blood spreading across the moat of the In Between and marbling the silver water of the river. Remy’s pain felt like my own, branded across my heart. Then my hand lifted of its own accord and squeezed the outside of my shoulder.

It’s not yours to carry, he said.

But I felt it all the same. I would take it as my own, if it would help. You just need time. I was trembling like a leaf despite the wall of heat. It takes time to feel better.

When he shrank back into his cell, he took most of his emotions with him, though the residue clung film-like to my skin.

Finn tipped me a half smile, an eyebrow arched. “Feel better?” He moved forward into the nest of fire to rip the blade from Luceric’s eye and slid it back inside the waistband of his pants. “I’m afraid I don’t have an endless supply of blades like your standard Fury demon, and I’m rather attached to this one.”

Finn lifted his hand to let loose another torrent of flame, shrouding Luceric in fire. He watched him smolder for a moment, calm even as pandemonium raged and seraphim roused, though he overrode everything else in sight: dark hair feathered red by the flames, firelight all mixed up with the bloom of gold on his skin, eyes like candlelight, beauty and malice and a moody sort of pleasure all rolled into one.

He turned back to me in a shower of sparks, his edges shimmering just like Valic’s had. There was enough humor in his eyes to temper the wicked satisfaction as he looked down at me.

“Shall we?” he asked, taking my hand just before we disappeared.

We landed briefly at the top of the hill above The Crossing to collect the bag Finn had left behind, just long enough to admire from afar the blazing ruins in the field, the swirls of embers in the air. The flames looked like demons themselves, thrashing and flaring, the body of Luceric caught between their teeth.

“How long will the fire burn?” I was thinking of the rest of the city, how long it had until it went up in flames. The air below was windblown with pinpricks of sparks, full of smoke and distant screams. The human tide was flooding back into the streets.

I felt Finn’s eyes as he stood just behind me, still as a gargoyle atop a parapet. “If I’m not there to control it, it’ll die out soon enough. The city should be spared.” Bag over his shoulder, he took my hand again and brought us back to the wood in a blink.

I hadn’t missed this place. It was silent as ever and smelled like passing centuries, ancient gnarled trees blotting out most of the gray sky. A silver stream lay at our feet, smooth as a looking glass.

The only difference I could note was the lack of fog. “I thought there was no blinking in the wood.”

“There’s no blinking past the mouth of the Firstborn tunnel,” Finn corrected, only the faintest suggestion of gold frosting his skin in this dim, gray place. He seemed tired, his lashes low. “This is the receiving wood.”

“Where’s Valic?” I revolved on the spot, finding no glimpse of him.

“Cleaning himself up, probably. We can’t all three sneak back in together. We have to stagger our reappearances.” Finn dug through the satchel, unearthing the clothes I’d been wearing when we left.

“You’re a fucking prick, Finn.” Remy’s icy voice crawled up my throat as his brother turned his back so I could change my clothes. “You could have killed her.”

Finn flicked out an irritable hand and then knelt by the stream to splash water on his face. “You wouldn’t have let that happen.”

“You couldn’t know that,” Remy said as my white dress slithered down my body and puddled at my feet. “What if—”

“What is the point in what ifs, I wonder.” Finn tipped his head back toward the canopy. “We’re out, she’s fine, Luceric is dead. I don’t feel as if I deserve a scolding.”

“Fuck you.”

“Very clever. I’d forgotten how witty you are in our time apart.”

I did up my buttons and crouched next to Finn to dip my hands into the stream, rinsing the soot and sweat from my face. Maybe his methods weren’t the greatest, I said uncertainly as Remy carried on grumbling and pacing. But haven’t you gotten what you’ve wanted?

Yes, he said, though his snarl sounded very unhappy indeed. That doesn’t mean he’s not an asshole. You could have died.

Sure. I watched from the corner of my eye as Finn dashed off beads of water clinging like tears to his gilded eyelashes. But doesn’t this also mean he’s believed in you all this time? He knew what you were capable of even when you didn’t.

He scoffed. Finn doesn’t believe in anything but getting exactly what he wants.

Maybe so. I ran a wet hand along the back of my neck as Finn stood. But it seems what he wanted was for you to tap your potential. There are worse things to want.