Page 73 of Embrace the Serpent

“You’ll kill me?”

“If I wanted to kill you, would I have spent this long yapping? No. I don’t want to. So don’t make me.”

I’m not making you,I wanted to say.Incarnadine is.

I crossed my arms, and she met my mulish expression with one of her own.

“Let the stars know that I tried.” Mirandel drew out something golden from her pocket.

The yellow tourmaline choker. She put it on in one quick motion.

I clapped my hands over my ears.

“Saphira,” she said, and her voice was like honey, even muffled. “Lower your hands. Come with me.”

My hands fell to my sides, my feet shuffled forward. I tightened my thighs, resisting.

“You want to come with me,” Mirandel said.

I wanted to go with her. My body moved. There was something I needed to remember—

“Take my hand.” She held out a hand, and I took it. “All right, men,” she said.

Imperial soldiers came out of the woods. Dozens of them, from all directions. I saw them at the edges of my vision; I couldn’t look away from Mirandel. Her dark kohl-lined eyes studied me.

One of the Imperial soldiers rose like a shadow behind her.

Her eyes widened, and her hand pulled free of mine, reaching for her neck.

The tourmaline collar fell, knocked aside, and flew into the water.

“Get it!” Mirandel shouted.

A honeyed veil fell from my mind, and I scrambled back, away from her. From the pool came asplash. Grimney had the collar. He waved it triumphantly and dove into the water.

The soldiers trained arrows on him.

Mirandel screamed. “Shoot!”

I darted into the water, after Grimney.

The air filled with haunting whistles.

I glanced back, time slowing to a crawl. Arrows flew toward me, and a soldier sprinted toward me, his illusion melting away, his eyes dark with fear.

Rane’s body hit me and knocked me down into the water. He breathed into my ear. “Are you all right?”

I found myself nodding. He pushed himself up and turned around.

An arrow in his side dripped blood. A drop fell to the water and spread. Another and another, a rivulet of red, twining with the waterand touching the dark soil at the pool’s edge. A hissing came from the water, from the earth, from the air. Serpents poured from the forest. Cobras, vipers, in every color and pattern.

I screamed, and I wasn’t the only one. The soldiers screamed as the serpents slithered up their legs, as they were consumed by the mass of snakes.

The serpents came for Mirandel. She wrested a bow from a soldier and nocked an arrow.

A haunting whistle. An arrow hit Rane in the chest, right in the heart. He fell backward, and I caught him.

I held Rane up as he reached for the water, trailing his fingers in a careful pattern. He murmured something, and a horse rose from the water, so pale it was almost blue.