Page 108 of Embrace the Serpent

The air smelled of copper and ash.

The reports had come in promising, at first. They were close to breaking through the ranks. They had stopped the advance on the town. They were hopeful they could fight to the heartstone.

And then something changed. The tone grew nervous.There’s something wrong with the king.

My fingers traced the edges of the silver scale, over and over again.

I knew my husband was capable of wearing a thousand faces. Perhaps he would always have new faces, new sides that I could never know.

I understood him. He didn’t value himself. He valued his responsibility. His people. He was willing to become a monster to protect us.

Hehadbecome a monster.

The trees in the woods were falling.

The army was focused entirely on the Serpent King. He rose from the tree line like a knife, silver scales glinting, and cut down.

He rose again, higher, and I leaned over the railing, straining to see across the distance—his scales seemed mottled and marred, and it almost looked like he had grown thin spines—

They weren’t spines. They were spears, stuck in his body from where he’d been stabbed.

Let it be dust and dirt that mottled his scales, not blood.

He would kill everyone, or they would kill him.

I gripped the balcony railing. I knew how to deal with horrors. I only had to run away, take my mother and Grimney with me. That was what I had always done. What I was good at.

Rane had given me all the means to do so. We had said our goodbyes, and part of me thought he wanted me to run.

Everything faded.

And in that empty space, that sun-bleached whiteness, I came to the end of myself.

The old Saphira was dead.

21

Ash fell from the sky in soft flakes. One fell onto my palm, and I made a fist, crushing it into a dark smudge.

The palace courtyard had turned gray with it, smeared across the flagstone in streaks from the huntsmen’s hurrying feet. Most of them had gone to fight, but a few remained to receive the injured and relay reports to and from the watchtower.

One of the watchmen skidded to a stop when she noticed me. “My... lady? Has something happened?”

Her gaze shot to the palace.

“No, everything is fine,” I said. Well, my husband was a heartless snake, and we were at war with an undefeated army, but I figured she meant the townspeople. The children and those who could not fight were well protected within the palace. When I left them, Rane’s grandmother was marshaling all the other grandmothers to dump hot oil over the balconies if the Imperial Army made it across the lake.

I continued, “Could you call up a horse for me?”

She blinked very slowly. “A... horse?”

“I’m going to meet with Lady Incarnadine.”

“My lady, forgive me for asking, but is that wise?”

She was head and shoulders taller than me, and even through the bulk of her armor, it was clear that she was corded with muscle. Shelooked so very strong and capable, like she could face anything, and I vowed to myself that if I came back from this, I’d lift heavy things or do whatever you did to look like that.

She probably saw me as having gone a little mad. My face was likely peaky from lack of sleep, and there was a good chance that more of my hair had escaped my braid than was still in it. I was in a too-fine tunic of green silk that a well-aimed toothpick could cut through, never mind a sword, and slung across my chest was my bag of tools. I had thought of leaving them behind, but I felt more myself with them. I was what I was, and the way the huntsman was looking at me, I had a feeling I was never going to inspire her confidence in me.