Page 115 of The Serpent’s Shadow

I leaned forward, the hope in my voice clear. “What did you tell him?”

“That you’d been busy studying and preparing for the finals. Which is true, right?”

“Yes. And . . .”

“That you commissioned me to find him.”

I smiled reflexively. “You said that?”

Arne slanted his head. “Um, yes? That’s the mission you sent me on, right? I said I wouldn’t let you down, Ravinica.”

His voice had turned from flippant and jealous to serious in a matter of seconds. For the first time, I saw trust and understanding in those sky-blue orbs, where before I had only seen deceitfulness.

Maybe Icantrust him again.

But I needed more. I wasn’t going to get caught slipping again . . . if I could avoid it.

Some offhanded notion clicked in my brain, converging two threads I’d been thinking about—and it suddenly made sense.A group of people . . .

“When did you return?” I asked pointedly, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Early yesterday evening. I stayed low.”

“Hmm . . .”

Silence. Then, “What is it, little fox?”

The message. A group of people. The Lepers. Handwritten notes—lots of them. A secret space where you wouldn’t get caught writing treasonous things.My thoughts came in fragments, but it was enough to work with.

“Was this your doing, Arne?” I didn’t specify what I was talking about, because I wanted to read the look on his face as it came to him. It was the only way I could be sure I’d be getting a truthful answer. “Because if so . . .”

He cleared his throat, leaning forward to meet the words on my lips, or simply to reach my lips. “If so . . .”

“Just tell me, Arne,” I said with some frustration.

He played coy, cheeks tensing for a flash before smoothing out. “An iceshaper never kisses and tells,” he said cryptically, wagging his fine eyebrows at me.

I rolled my eyes. “Bullshit. You kiss and tell all the time. It’s what you do, gossip queen.”

He gave me a typical Arne smirk. “Let’s say, in theory, that I did. What would you say?”

I played his game, stepping closer, lowering my voice so the whispers played with his ears. “I’d say you did a very dangerous, admirable thing. I’d . . . call you a good boy.”

His eyes widened at the end. The ocean blues seemed to drown out the whites of his eyes completely, enlarging. Somehow, the phrasedidsomething to him, and he shifted from one foot to the other. Perhaps to readjust himself.

Then he chewed the inside of his lip, thinking. “. . . Was it the handwriting that gave me away? I’ve always thought my script was too fanciful.”

I snorted, smiling wider. “Itwasyou! Holy shit, Arne. Do you know what you’ve done?”

He shrugged. It wasn’t one of those easy know-it-all shrugs. It was genuinely asking me to tell him what he’d done.

“You’ve started something that can’t be stopped.” I grabbed him by both shoulders, locking eyes, making sure he understood what this meant to me. “You’ve planted the seed to the rest of the student body, when I couldn’t think of a way to do it before!”

“Well, um . . . excellent?”

For the first time ever, Arne was lacking for words. He was playinghumble, when this was a time for him to expound on his greatness and cleverness.

It brought me closer to him, in that moment, than perhaps I’d ever been.

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