Page 112 of Embrace the Serpent

Trapped his soul in stone? I’d done nothing of the sort. Grimney had full control of himself. “Not all jewelsmiths are the same. I don’t share Darvald’s beliefs. But...” I showed the collar. “I am as talented as he was.”

I let her consider that, until there was an opening in her expression—the slightest pinch of her eyebrows, the faintest glimmer in her eyes.

“I’ll trade you,” I said. “The heartstone for your freedom.”

She grew still.

“Tell me what Darvald made. How does the Emperor control you?”

A long silence stretched between us, taut, trembling.

She spoke in a whisper. “There is a lamp. My heart is inside. A flame...”

“I need your word,” I said, but I knew I had her. She didn’t trust the Emperor. And once she had her lamp, she would have no need for the heartstone. But I still wanted to hear her say it.

I held her gaze, even Grimney thumped to the floor, his little footfalls sounding as he scampered away from a panting Mirandel, and a shadow moved in my peripheral vision, as Mirandel strode toward me, her blade raised.

Incarnadine raised a quelling hand. “If you free me, the heartstone will be yours.”

22

The Emperor’s tent was easy enough to find; it was the largest and bore flags emblazoned with the crown. Grimney was at my side, and to my great displeasure, so was Mirandel.

As we drew closer, I drew the collar around my neck, holding it in place with one hand. I tried to muster up gratitude that Mirandel had only sliced through the clasp and not through a part of the goldwork that would have rendered the collar useless, but gratitude proved too ambitious of me. I settled on ignoring her.

She made it hard. She stole looks at the collar, scoffing every few seconds, and as I called a halt and peeked around the corner at the tent’s entrance, she finally found her words. “Don’t you think I tried to get the lamp when I had the collar?”

“Maybe you did,” I said. “But I’m not you.”

I scampered toward the mouth of the tent where two guards stood.

She followed, trying to kill me with her eyes alone. “You are not better than me.”

I shushed her, mimed at her to cover her ears. I cleared my throat and said, “You will fall asleep.”

They collapsed, chests rising and falling.

Mirandel snorted. “You stole that from me.”

“It was a good idea,” I said.

She scowled like I’d insulted her, and in that fleeting second, I saw the little gargoyle girl she had once been.

We snuck through the flap, into a sitting room of sorts, where a half dozen courtiers jumped to their feet in alarm. They fell asleep at my command, and we moved deeper into the tent. My heart thudded every time I pulled aside a fabric curtain, not knowing what I would find.

Mirandel scoffed at my jumpiness.

It got on my nerves. “That’s the thing,” I hissed. “I never wanted to be better than you. I never tried to be better than you. I wasn’t competing. You wanted Incarnadine’s favor so much that you saw me as a rival.”

“You never understood her. In her way, she gave us power.”

“And you don’t understand me. I don’t want power, not if it comes her way.”

She fell quiet.

At last, in the very back of the tent, we found the Emperor.

He was asleep on a settee, and for a moment, I thought that somehow I had put him to sleep, that my voice had miraculously carried across the distance and through the layers of thick fabric that made up the tent’s walls. But on the small table beside him lay the remains of a lavish meal, and I realized we had merely caught him during his post-lunch nap.

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