Page 39 of The Shard and the Serpent (Shard Daughters #1)

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Rayze

The cart halts at an intersection of narrow corridors, chemical stench thinning to sewage. Alcoves open up every few feet, cavernous walls lined with glass cylinders. Preserved bodies float within while others lie flayed across metal tables.

Human experimentation. The Storm’s hunt for the perfect mortal. A hunt for strength, for immortality—for magic .

Bile claws up my throat.

A girl sits restrained in a chair, her eyes wide and unfocused. Pads cling to her shaved scalp, wires pulsing blue. A tube pumps dark liquid down her throat, another draining it from her spine. Her fingers twitch in sync with the current, a crony jotting notes down as he examines her.

Sonya’s hand finds mine. She’s wedged between two Skin, her body still, her breath tight. I squeeze her fingers.

Are you okay? she signs.

I release an unsteady breath. I have to be.

Her gray eyes find mine, the worry there instantly thawing me. It always does. I’ve never been able to hide anything from Slayer. This is happening so fast, Rayze. It was never the plan to integrate him immediately into a mission. It’s okay to feel upset.

I close my eyes. Am I upset? I think I’m meant to be, but I also think a much larger part of me is grateful for the distraction.

There’s so much about Warrick I didn’t plan for. Fuck, I practically had to force on a mask of indifference when I pulled him out of Nowhere and into that dungeon. Seeing him, feeling his touch, I wish I could say it’s just the Bond driving me to feel this way, but I know it’s not.

I let go of another breath and peer through my lashes, finding Sonya watching me closely.

We would never let him hurt you, she signs. Never, Rayze Angeline.

I nod. I know . I offer her a small smile before we both turn rigid at the sound of boisterous laughter.

Serpents. Where there’s a nest, there are always snakes.

I turn my head, pressing my cheek against a Skin’s thigh as I peer through the cart’s slats.

Cronies lounge on torn, stained couches, smoking Volt and playing cards. Coins clatter across a table as they argue, every asshole sporting Serpent ink and blades.

One peels away from the group, stumbling with a bottle in hand, and I close my eyes. He approaches the cart, his ale clattering to the ground as he leans over our bodies, his sour breath skimming my stomach.

“Got some good ones,” he slurs to the others. “Five premiums right on top.”

He grabs my hair, and I let my head lull to the side. “Hello,” he murmurs against my ear, dragging me upright and palming my breast.

Thank fuck Warrick isn’t here.

The crony slings me over his shoulder, my head and arms thumping into his back with each swaying step. I glare through my lashes, steel flashing at his belt. A smile presses across my lips, and I reach down, my fingers teasing his Serpent blade from its sheathe.

“Let’s have a go-around,” he announces. “Next win gets her cunt. Second gets her ass. Third her mouth, and remember, they usually bite.”

Laughter erupts, and his grip shifts. Sweaty fingers creep up my thighs, possessive as he grips and kneads. He slides a finger between my legs—

And I jam his blade into his fucking spine.

He jerks, a wet cry torn from his throat as we crash to the ground in a tangled heap.

“Now, Sonya!” I roll off his twitching corpse, wrench the blade from his back, and swing wide.

Metal arcs in my grip, cleaving through a pair of thighs. Steel crashes toward me, but I duck, a blur of movement leaping from the Skin cart.

Sonya appears behind Serpents, green hair stringing around her face. Jagged veins of purple and blue branch from her eyes to her mouth, her grey eyes burning white. Starlight breaks through her lashes and sparks across every lethal fang.

Cronies spin toward her—“Still,” I snarl, threads flaring across my vision. “Be. Still.”

Weapons clatter. Muscles bulge. Jaws shake.

Then the Slayer of Mutants rips out their throats.

Warrick

Gronem used to be a graveyard of scrap and rust. I remember it stripped and flooded, towers snapped at their midpoints.

But this is a fucking monster.

Lightning snaps overhead and the dome surrounding the city pulses. Blue tubes crawl along rooftops, sparking with charge. They snake down building spines and across every tiered street, powering the city with a constant, heady thrum .

Aleksi and I move fast, boots hammering over a grated catwalk bolted between towers. Below, canals churn with water, murky and steaming. Glass tanks line the riverbed, half-sunk and caged in moss.

Bodies float inside.

“Fucking Satori.” I glance at Aleksi. “She sends a report about The Storm infrastructure every week per The Accords, but this shit is more advanced than she ever described.”

“All the Bossdoms lie,” she says with a shrug.

“Yeah, but this ? How the fuck did they progress this fast?”

Balconies cling to towers like scaffolding. Bridges thread the air in crooked lines, trees growing sideways from the concrete, their roots ripping through windows like claws.

“You know your precious once in a lifetime Bids?” Aleksi asks.

“What about them?”

Crowds push past us. A girl brushes my shoulder, wires growing from her jaw and curling into ports along her neck. She drags a crate stacked with spare eyes. I repeat: spare fucking eyes.

“The Storm doesn’t host Bids, Ivor. The whole city is a Bid.

” She points ahead to the skyscraper in Gronem’s center, lighting curling over its towering spires in a constant stream.

“Sonya could tell you more, but the rules are if you live in that tower, you’re the wealthiest. The further out from the tower you are, the shittier your life.

Trials are held throughout the city to earn keys to the—” She throws up air quotes. “Kingdom.”

More mutants pass. Twisted spines. Fused limbs. Grafted mouths pulled into false smiles. They’re not simply reinforced like Satori’s crew. These aren’t upgrades. Side effects , I realize. Failures. Mutants shaped by trial, not design.

“You’re telling me The Storm’s turned her city into some kind of game?” I ask, eyeing a passing group who talk in brisk sign language. Each have keys hanging from their necks.

“You can’t find the perfect specimen without thorough testing, and Gronem has a long history of using trials to decide on future maneuvers.

Even before the old kingdoms fell, alliances were made through bride trials.

” Aleksi grimaces. “All these poor fools think victory is that tower, but you’ve seen The Storm Heir. ”

I think of Satori’s crude stitches.

“If Ezma’s doing that to her daughter, the very same who lives in the penthouse —” Aleksi shakes her head. “Sonya tries to get them out, but it’s been harder with the fucking dome.”

A mutant turns a dark glare on me when she skims my Serpent ink. Other venomous looks cast my way.

I hunch low, voice rough in Aleksi’s ear. “I’m getting too much attention, Red. How far to the sewage lines?”

“I portaled us as close as I could.” Her eyes flick to my ink. “We need to move faster.”

Engines rumble down the street, and crowds split as stormrigs ram through. I expect cronies on the bikes, but only a few wear helmets like Satori did. The rest are mutants with bulbous joints and twitching, overgrown muscle.

I spy a set of stormrigs parked outside a bar. “Would that be fast enough?”

Aleksi follows my gaze. Her lips pull into a broad smile. “Definitely.”

“I don’t know how to drive,” I tell her as we lurch across the street.

She moves toward a three-seater with a wicked grin and swings her leg over, kicking up the stand and pumping the clutch until the engine turns over. She shoves her wild hair beneath the collar of my leather jacket, zipping it to her chin and patting the seat behind her. “Hop on.”

I raise a brow and straddle the bike. “If Rayze asks, then I drove.”

Aleksi throws the stormrig in reverse with a laugh, shouts ringing out from inside the bar. The doors bang open, the eight-eyed owner of the bike charging toward us.

“Hurry up,” I hiss between my teeth.

She slams her boot back, the wheels screeching beneath us.

“Don’t rush me,” she spits, and the bike jerks forward.

I slam into her back. “ Ow .”

She laughs harder. “Hold on tight, princess.”

Rayze

Sirens blare through The Womb.

Sonya and I sprint, her fangs and my newly acquired Serpent blades dripping. She hauls ass, and I yank back on the threads controlling her gravity.

Slayer spins through the air, fangs tearing over mutant skulls. She doesn’t have to bite to wound.

Just a scrape will do.

Their bodies fold in on themselves, her poison sinking deep. Foam slides from mouths. Red seeps from eyes.

I stab through their hearts. One after another.

We need to find an exit , Sonya signs ahead, her chest heaving as she surveys the slaughter. The Storm will send reinforcements with those sirens. We don’t have long.

I survey the Skin on tables and in carts. None of them move, either unconscious or dead.

Rayze, there isn’t time to save them . Sonya flashes me a worried look. Their Fates are sealed.

“What if this were you, Slayer? Me or Ender?” I shake my head and move around to the harness on the largest cart of Skin. “They tow them out of here somehow. Scout ahead. Find the tunnel that leads to the city.”

You want to split up? Sonya watches me as I hook into the harness, strapping it over my shoulders.

“Go,” I say again. “We don’t have time to argue.”

She nods and disappears around a corner, the slap of her bare feet echoing through the corridors.

I summon my power, threads swimming across The Womb’s laboratory. “ Pull ,” I command, and knots form along the cart’s harness, down to the wheels.

I grit my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut as the cart barely moves an inch, the weight of the bodies too heavy.

“PULL,” I shout, sparks spiking from my hands.

The wheels turn over once and stop, sweat breaking across my forehead as the first specks of blood drip from my nose.

I curse but shove against the harness, willing the cart to obey my power. My gut writhes, my magic crashing with exertion.

“Lighter,” I try, adjusting the threads of gravity rather than focusing on the mechanics of the cart.

Finally, it moves.

Warrick

“Do you really think now is a good time to be drinking?” I shout over the engine.

Aleksi tilts a flask back—the fourth in a set tied at her waist. She gulps ale while squinting through her glasses and careening down a steep bridge.

“Yes,” she answers and hands the flask over her shoulder.

I take a swig. Then guzzle it when she skids around a corner.

I’d rather not be sober for this.

“I can’t see without it,” she continues.

“You’re telling me you’re blind?” I hook the flask back onto her belt and hug her from behind.

She shrugs. “A bit. Yeah.”

“And getting drunk makes you see?”

She cringes. “It helps with the headache.”

Perfect . “Your glasses don’t help?”

“I see threads, Warrick.”

“You should get that looked at.”

She revs the engine and speeds forward, weaving between sparking power lines. “It’s my magic. My eyes are always behind the veil.”

“Can you try putting them on the road?”

Her knuckles whiten against the handles. “I don’t know what Sin sees in you.”

I chuckle. “It’s more about what I’m putting in her.”

She jams an elbow into my stomach, and I fold with a groan, my arms tensing around her waist.

“Damn, you’re all so wonderfully violent.” I grin and hold her tighter. “I see the family resemblance.”

“If that’s a fucking hard-on I feel, I don’t give a shit about your Bond with my sister. I will throw you off this bike.”

“You know, you say that like Rayze has talked to you about the Bond, maybe even liking it?” I try.

“Fuck off, Ivor. You got a question, you ask Sin.”

I sigh. “Can you at least tell me if I’ve got any chance with her?”

She’s quiet, the wind ripping past us. Then she shrugs. “Do you deserve a chance?”

I clear my throat. “Are we there yet?”

She flicks a knowing look over her shoulder. “No.”

I squint ahead. “Now? Those could be pipelines.”

“ No .”

“So you see threads,” I say.

She sighs. Orange curls whip in the wind, adding to her clear lack of vision as she narrowly misses smearing our guts across a building.

“I see maps,” she says. “Everywhere. All the time.”

“Meaning you can’t fuck with my head?”

She flashes a dark smile over her shoulder. “I have my ways.” Then she looks down the bridge of her nose with a frown. “Push my glasses up, will you?”

“Fucking hell, quit looking away from the road, Red.” I press her glasses up in time to avoid a plummet off a bridge.

“It’s how I knew how to drive this thing,” she says, ignoring my panic and ripping her flask free for another drink.

“As in you’ve never driven a stormrig before?” I growl.

She shrugs. “The threads know the way.”

Fuck me. “Crazy runs in the family, too, then?”

Aleksi shifts gears and plunges a lever. “We’re going to jump now.”

“ Jump —?”

The stormrig flies over the edge of a dead end.