Chapter 22
The serpent hurtles through layers of darkness; each one we pass is like a breath caressing my face. I squint through the wind, catching glimpses of a hundred of the Storm’s guises: a midnight lake that eats the stars from the sky, a desert of black sands, a jungle where vines fall like women’s hair.
We fly at breakneck speed, slithering past a dozen nightmares until we find ours. A mountain and its mirror image, stacked on top of each other so from afar they appear to make a great diamond balancing on a single point.
The serpent dips into a nosedive, rushing faster and faster toward the widest part of the diamond, toward a great face carved on its side, with a gaping mouth that stretches into a tunnel.
The tunnel is too small, but the serpent doesn’t slow. I wedge my fingers under its scales, desperate to hold on. We’re squeezed as we enter, stone scraping my back, until we burst into a wide space and I lose my grip; its scales come free in my hands.
I fall, screaming. Scales plink against the stone walls of the space around me, and a pale something, like a length of fabric, follows me down. The serpent is shedding its skin andme with it.
I tumble down into the dark. The snakeskin brushes my hand, andI grab it and wrap it around me before I hit the ground with a thud. I get to my feet, hurting less than I ought to. The snakeskin gives off a pale silver light, just enough to see by.
I’m in a pit. There’s only one way forward: a tunnel carved into the stone, lined with stalagmites that glint like teeth. A dim light comes from the end of the tunnel, and I make my way to it.
A lush garden greets me, full of trees heavy with fruit, lit by fireflies that glow with the colors of dusk. The air is sweet, intoxicating. This is so much gentler than the road of bones the Storm cooked up for me.
Casvian sits on a rock at the edge of a pool, gazing into the deep. Velvet-petaled flowers, white as salt, surround him. He’s gotten back his Wardana uniform and his cloak, and the blood-red seems to seep into the white flowers.
He looks like a painting, like he belongs here.
I step closer, sending fireflies flying as grass crunches underfoot. “Casvian?” He doesn’t answer, too entranced by what he sees. The sweet, honeyed smell is stronger here. I can’t get enough of it. I want to pluck a flower, inhale its scent deep; I want to lie down in this idyllic meadow and dream.
A different sort of danger grows here. I cover my nose and mouth with a sleeve and peer over Casvian’s shoulder into the surface of the pool.
Ripples mar the surface. Casvian’s reflection is strange. It has broader shoulders, a spattering of pale stubble on a square jaw, a nose that’s been broken at least once. It’s a Casvian with all the softness pared away, a vision of brutish power. His Wardana uniform melts into one of black and gold, heavily armored as befits a fighter, not an ikonomancer. Ragno Haveli appears in the reflection, and I start, glancingover my shoulder and finding no one. In the reflection, he bequeaths the warrior-Casvian his scythe, the same one he held to Pa’s neck not so long ago.
The real Casvian stares down at all this, his eyes wide as a child’s. I never thought of him as anything but proud to a fault. Not once did I imagine him wanting to be someone else. But something about this place puts his prickliness in context. Of course he’d want to be someone else. He’s pathologically rude, twice as cocky as he has any right to be, incurably and unapologetically classist—speaking kindly, he’s a pompous ass of mythic proportions. He’s like a half-rotted apple; by the time all the spoiled bits have been cut out, there really isn’t much left. I catch myself in the middle of a tirade, feeling the annoyance I have for him growing into something darker. The garden wants the seed of irritation within me to grow into hate.
I get ahold of myself. I think of how he volunteered to follow Dalca into the Storm despite the fear he couldn’t quite hide.
I have to see him for who he is. The jerk and the loyal friend both. If I can do that, I can save him. I have to be kind. I have to understand.
“You’re an idiot, Casvian Haveli.”
Dreamily, Casvian tilts his head toward me, his eyes still locked into the pool. I can’t quite bring myself to offer him platitudes likeyou’re perfect the way you are! Never change, Casvian!
“What now?” I ask. “You spend the rest of your life staring at this guy?”
“I’ll trade places with him,” Casvian murmurs in a voice half convinced. I imagine him trapped in the pool, watching from a watery prison as his dreamt-up idea of a perfect son takes his place. He doesn’t deserve that. No one does.
“Why would you ever want that?” Yet I already know the answer;he wants his father to be proud. I begin to make sense of his loyalty to Dalca, who values him for who he is and treats him like a brother.
“Is that too much to ask for?” he says on a breath, not to me but to himself, and as the surface of the water ripples, the warriorCasvian swings his scythe in a complicated maneuver that showcases his prowess. He falls into a fighting stance, and behind him, a shadow in the depths of the pool mirrors his move. As warrior-Casvian leaps and swings through a series of fighting stances—each flawlessly executed—the figure in the back mimics his moves perfectly, drawing closer with every parry and thrust, until his face resolves into that of Ragno Haveli. They move in a beautiful and exact synchronicity, warriorCasvian’s armor slowly darkening to match the black and gold of his father’s.
Poor man. “You’re forgetting that Dalca needs you. The you that’s a brilliant ikonomancer. The clever you.”
If he hears me, he doesn’t show it. A hollow certainty takes hold of my heart: if I fail here, if I can’t get him to hear me, we won’t get out of the Storm in one piece, much less with the Regia’s mark.
“Where’s your pride, Casvian? That thing isn’t better than you.”
The two warriors in the reflection fall out of sync, but Ragno corrects warrior-Casvian with a sneer and a prod of the scythe. Warrior-Casvian falls back into line, but his movements are jerky, stilted, like a puppet’s—he’s invisibly leashed to Ragno, doomed to follow his every move.
I grab his chin and turn his face toward me. His dark pupils eclipse his irises, but some silver returns as he struggles to focus.
“Is that what you want, you foolish boy? Your father already has an army of pawns eager to earn his approval and feed his vanity.” His eyes drift toward the pool. I block his view with my body. “There’s a reasonDalca chose you, why he trusts you over everyone else—and it has nothing to do with how you twirl a scythe. Casvian, come on. Where’s the confident asshole I know and despise?”
His brows furrow, and a little blue comes back into his eyes. But he peers over my shoulder, the reflection proving irresistible.