Page 148 of The Serpent’s Shadow

My lips moved, and Kelvar silenced me with a raised finger. “You must watch your back now, boy. I won’t be there to protect you.”

I clenched my jaw. “I don’t need your protection, Whisperer.”

He laughed. “Of course you don’t. Stubborn as ever.”

The fuck is he on about?

He walked toward the corner of the room, pointing. “Stand there in the shadows.”

I didn’t move, watching him walk away. Then I called out, “Why are you helping me, Kelvar?”

He froze. Without looking over his shoulder, his voice went low. “Because I made a promise, bloodrender.”

I choked back more questions. Clearly, he wasn’t going to tell me everything I wanted to know. I could deduce enough, and was starting to piece things together.

Ravinica’s blood made me stronger. When I was at my weakest, when the poison of the Tomekeeper’s “concoction” was invading my organs and turning me inside out, my silvermoon’s essence saved me. It fought back against the infection of the plasma.

I could never thank her enough. All I could do was warn her that something was going on here, much darker than anticipated. The leechings no longer only concerned me. They concerned the woman I loved with all of my dead heart.

“Now stand in the fucking shadow, Magnus,” he ordered, and his words forcefully wormed their way into my brain to command my feet to move. “So I can get you the fuck out of here. We can discuss more when you’re safe.”

I walked to the shadow, merging into the corner of the dark room beneath the overhead ledge.

Kelvar grabbed my elbow, the shorter man flaring his nostrils at me with a wicked smirk. “This might be uncomfortable, though I doubt it’ll be any worse than what you’ve been subjected to in the testing rooms, boy.”

And with that, we vanished from the corporeal plane as the Whisperer shadowwalked.

Chapter 42

Ravinica

ARNE AND I SAT IN Adreary holding cell all through the rest of the night. As moonlight gave way to the gray clouds of a new morning, despair set deep in our bones.

This was not how I had hoped our liaison with Corym E’tar would go. From the highest highs of elation to the lowest lows—we’d found ourselves back in the muck. The swamp, where I was born, and apparently, fated to die.

I tried to console Arne at one point, noticing his bowed head, his knees pulled up to his chest, and his slumped shoulders. He’d sat on the cold ground of the caged room, giving me the single bench in the cell.

“I’m sorry, Arne,” I eked out.

His head turned to me, incredulity on his face. “For what, Vini? You didn’t put us in here. I did.I’msorry.”

I struggled with that for a moment. “I’m sorry for all of it. For not trusting you, when I knew you were only doing what was best for your family back at the creek.”

“I was an asshole. A traitor. I don’t deserve your apology, lass.” He shook his head morosely.

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