Page 14 of Embrace the Serpent

But Galen only bowed. “Of course.”

I swallowed a sigh. There’s no better way to measure ring size than to try them on. I had a set made out of iron, with half sizes, quarter sizes, and every increment in between. I dug it out and handed it to Galen.

Mirandel’s gaze caught on me. “Oh, Master Galen, go on and mingle. Your assistant can take care of me.”

The bundle of rings fell onto my palm. I kept my gaze on her ring finger.

My hands barely shook as I slid the first ring past her knuckles.

Her voice was honey. “It’s nice to see you, Aria.”

Ice ran down my spine. “I’m sorry, my lady, but my name is Saphira. This looks to be your size. Is it comfortable?”

“No, it’s too tight.”

I slid the next size up onto her waiting finger. “How is this?”

“You remind me of her. She was so aggressively uninteresting. It was like my eyes couldn’t bear to look at her. I hated that. I forcedmyself to look at her, to pay attention to her face. And the funny thing is, my eyes can’t bear to look at you in the exact same way. No,” she said, “still too tight.”

I went up a size. My stomach was wound into a knot. She’d recognized me by the power of my mother’s ring?

“I would be so interested to know what became of her.... Perhaps Lady Incarnadine would, too.”

My mouth was dry. “H-how is this size?”

She studied me. Her voice was steely, frustrated. “Why would you choose this life instead of what you could’ve had? You’re an assistant, not even an apprentice—why would you make yourself subservient to a man like Galen? There are men with more power. Lady Incarnadine would have bound one to you in marriage. You could have been a lady, a duchess, with land, servants, a household of your own. Look at what you’re wearing. I haven’t seen more wretched clothes.”

I should have been nothing to her. She had everything she ever wanted. But her eyes were searching me, investigating, like I had committed a crime.

Galen was too far away to help. He was gesticulating grandly with a drink in hand, already ensconced in a circle of admirers.

I chose my words carefully. “My lady, I don’t know your friend, but I’m sure anyone would be jealous of your life.”

Her hand encircled my wrist. “Are you? Are you jealous of me?”

Most definitely not. But she didn’t know—and she couldn’t know—that I was the true jewelsmith behind Galen. She didn’t know what jewelsmithing meant to me. “Yes.”

Her hand tightened; the bones of my wrist pressed together. “You’re still a bad liar.”

I flinched and waited for a blow. But a sudden hush had fallen over the party.

An icy wind ruffled hair and rustled gowns and shawls. Gooseflesh prickled on my skin.

I rose on my tiptoes. The Serpent King was head and shoulders taller than the next tallest person in the room. He was built on an inhuman scale. And though his sharp eyes and aquiline nose were human enough, they were framed by silver skin and hair. His cheekbones came to an unnatural point, and when his lips parted in an amused, mocking smile, they revealed pointed fangs. They didn’t part enough to reveal whether his tongue was forked or not, though I was sure someone would find out by the end of the night.

His cobra’s cowl headpiece and silken wrap gleamed with ornaments and beads, but he wore no jewels at all.

There was something unreal about him. He was everything the stories promised.

He and his kind—the divine peoples—had left us over a hundred years ago, when the great jewelsmith Darvald found a way to counteract the power they had over us. No longer were renowned poets and scholars stolen away and spirited to hidden kingdoms. No longer were babies whisked from their prams and replaced with grinning imps. No longer were kings and queens seduced on the eve of battle and returned bearing the twin marks of a snakebite, with their minds quite changed.

Under the Emperor’s command, Darvald trapped djinn in magicrings, in jewel-studded lamps. The serpent folk were lured by sweet music from jeweled flutes and hunted. The eagle people, household spirits, the little village imps, the fey of wild places—Darvald crafted cages for them all that let us use their power for our own purposes.

Until the Serpent King drew all the divine peoples inside the borders of his land and raised an enchanted barrier over his kingdom and erased it from our maps and our memories. It couldn’t be found; it couldn’t be entered.

And here he was. A fairy-tale beast come to life. His huntsmen flanked him, helmed figures in dark armor.

Mirandel released me, pulling the iron measuring ring from her finger and dropping it onto my palm. “The first size was the best,” she said without looking at me.

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