Page 107 of A Serpent in the Garden

Something feathering at the small of my back, a froggy voice shushing me. When my stomach stopped contracting, I dropped down on the stone steps of the cottage and wiped my streaming eyes on my sleeve.

Blathilde squinted over at the mess I’d left as she joined me where I sat. “What have you done to yourself?” She tipped my head back to peer into my eyes.

“An incubus gave me his blood to help me through the wood.”

“And you drank it on an empty stomach?” She examined the puddle again with professional curiosity.

I supposed I had. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d eaten, the last time I’d properly slept. I didn’t answer, still adjusting to the fact that I had even made it to her cottage.

She patted my shoulder. “Up you get.”

“What would you have from me?” If I hadn’t felt my own lips forming the words I didn’t think I’d recognize my voice. “I wouldn’t intrude without a barter. I don’t want to impose.”

Her lips twitched to one side as if assessing what little I had on offer. If she wanted my body again, she’d find it rundown and weakened, devoid of Riquin’s blood now, hardly capable of moving under its own power. As soon as I’d vomited, I’d felt all those miles I’d traveled pummel into me at once. My legs were like noodles, my heart a limp bird inside its cage.

Perhaps she knew what I was thinking, or else suspected my body was in very poor condition indeed. Perhaps I looked so pathetic she took pity on me, gave me an easy one. “A secret,” she finally decided. “Deep and dark.”

It took little soul-plumbing to think what to tell her.

“I think I’m in love with him,” I said numbly, staring off into the garden where her lovelace was flourishing, and it didn’t occur to me to specify the who. “It’s only been a couple hours since he’s been gone and I miss him so much it hurts. All I wanted for so long was to get rid of him, but now I don’t know what I wouldn’t give to have him back.”

The secret floated off into the wood surrounding her property. Unburdening myself didn’t soothe the ache of Remy’s absence.

Blathilde said nothing for a moment, but I felt her eyes on me, her strangely comforting presence. She asked for no specifics. I doubted she needed any.

“It’s hard to be alone with yourself,” she finally said, her wizened old hand in my hair.

She brought me inside, plied me with water and some crusty bread, scrambled a few eggs in a skillet over the hearth. “Serich dragged himself up to my door just last night. Said you’d been separated. I had him do a few things for me around this old place before he fell asleep right where you’re sitting now, and in the morning he left.”

“I have to go after him,” I said, as she dumped the eggs on a plate for me.

“I don’t think you’re in much of a position to be going after anyone.” She slid over the plate and wedged herself into the chair across from me. “I gave him a cloaking draught; it should last him a while. He caught me at just the right time. Only the night before did the silverseeds mature, so I mixed it up for him and then off he went. Back to the village, he said. Between the draught and the alcerin I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Cloaking,” I echoed dully. “What’s that? Will it make him invisible?”

“No, it’s not that strong. But it will help him blend in, and it’ll mask his smell. I’ve used it myself back when I still ventured out to hunt rabbits.”

“Was he hurt?” I couldn’t touch the eggs, didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry.

“Just tired and shaken. Needed a good, safe night’s sleep more than anything.”

“There was this awful mist.” I sniffed back a sudden onset of tears in a hasty gulp. “I don’t know what it showed him, but I only made it through it because of Remy, the—the demon, his name, it’s Remy—and I waited, but Serich never emerged.”

“He told me about it. Said it spat him out what felt like days later, only when he broke free it was on the wrong side, back in the gold place. Apparently didn’t trust himself to make it through the mist again. Thought he’d been in it too long and that you’d gone.”

“What did he see in there, did he tell you?” What had it shown him that had been so terrible he couldn’t break free for ages?

“Something about his father. Said he found himself back by his sickbed, plagued with guilt because he’d known his father had needed a healer, but the stubborn old goat refused to call one. When he finally got up from his father’s bedside to leave the room, the mist must have decided he’d failed the test, so back he came.” Her hands found her creaky knees. There was an impatient glitter in her black eyes as she looked at me from across her little table. “Eat. Incubus blood on an empty stomach. I’ve never heard such a bad idea in all my life. Eat, girl.”

I did while she puttered about, tsking my idiocy and straightening her home. I don’t remember if I finished the plate she’d given me. I don’t remember what we talked about, if we even did. There were many things I could have told her but I felt capable of articulating exactly none of them. The last thing I remember seeing was her cheerfully crackling fire, which had reminded me forcibly of Finn, before darkness closed up over my head.

The icy black hours of deepest night pressed against her cottage windows when I woke with a squally stomach and a horrific taste in my mouth. Blathilde’s ever-present fire from the hearth painted the walls in a sunset palette of yellow and orange, and her snores rumbled from the corner where her bed stood.

Too dark to set out, though I doubted I could manage to fall back asleep as I lay back down on the bench. The last time I’d been here, awake in the night, it was Remy’s voice that spoke to me, kept me company. Was it right here in this cottage that I’d begun to change my mind about him, see him as something not wholly evil? Had I ever thought of him as such?

Would something in me recognize him immediately, should we ever meet? He would be pale, I knew that from the memory he’d shown me of his father’s death, the white hands I’d seen opening the gates of Hell. All his brothers, the ones I’d met anyway, had dark hair; he probably would as well. Tall, I knew that from the size of his clothes, but the face, the eyes…I had no idea. I should have asked. It would have felt silly to question him about it, but I should have. Now I might never find out, a prospect that seemed too terrible to consider. I considered it anyway, feeling as threadbare as one of my blankets back in Monde’s End.

My eyes glazed as I stared into the flames and listened to the embers in the hearth hiss and snap.