This is a ritual we have practiced before, often enough that the more devoted of our guests will recognize it. I even presented it to the marquise as a choice: Did she wish to court the daystar’s ultimate favor, by allowing me to place my serpent around her throat? Of course she would never have said no, not when I phrased it in such an insinuating way. And unlike many, the marquise is no shrinking violet. She has never shown any fear of my snakes.
But as I move from the altar toward one of the vivariums, I notice something for which I did not prepare.
The substance is much faster acting than the grimoire led me to expect.
My fingertips are already numb and chilly, my lips tingling as blood rushes away from them. Worse still, my mind begins to cloud and my vision to blur, the flickering candles set all around the room coalescing into a single smeary haze. I should have had at least another five minutes before the concoction did its work; but perhaps I failed to eat enough today. Or I may, by some quirk of the constitution, simply be more susceptible than most to this toxic tisane.
Whatever the case, I can feel that I have much less time than I planned before I fall into my death-mimicking faint. Unfortunate but manageable, I tell myself. I need only dispense with the quick prayer I was meant to lead, gather up Tisiphone, and then goad her into biting me with haste.
But by the time I reach unsteadily for the vivarium’s top, I am confronted with a much worse predicament.
Since Adam knows full well that I would never spend an entire ritual with a venomous and unpredictable serpent slung around my neck, I made my substitution by placing Tisiphone in the vivarium where the coral snake normally dwells. Tisiphone is the most mercurial, the least readily handled of my three king snakes; there are certain ways she dislikes to be held. She has even bitten me once or twice when I failed to take her up in a manner she deemed acceptable.
Her bite will do me no harm, of course, but it will leave a convincing mark. Enough to assure Adam and the gathered that I met my death by the coral snake’s lethal venom.
But somehow, caught up in sizzling nerves and all my trepidation, I have made a terrible mistake. When I put Tisiphone in the tank earlier this evening, I forgot to remove the coral snake.
I pause in front of the glass for a moment, struggling to gather my rapidly fraying self. The room begins to swim around me, and I have trouble focusing my eyes on the curled snakes below the glass. Were it daytime, this would still cause me no trouble, as I am deeply familiar with my girl’s pattern and her shape. And though king snakes and coral snakes are identically colored, there is also a subtle difference to the order of their red, black, and yellow bands.
But the banquet hall is only dimly lit, by firelight and the candle clusters strewn about the room. And with my glazed eyes and wheeling brain, I can barely even make out the snakes’ individual hues.
“Red touches yellow, death to a fellow; red touches black, friend of Jack,” I mutter under my breath, but it is as if the words have lost their meaning altogether. Their bands blur and waver in the dim light, until I can barely even tell where one color begins or ends. And though the two serpents sit a wary distance from each other, coiled against the vivarium’s opposing sides, I simply cannot tell which is venomous and which one my old friend.
I can feel Adam draw near to my elbow, puzzled by my delay. “What are you waiting for, Catherine?” he mutters in my ear, his voice warbling as if it reaches me through water. “Is everything well?”
I swallow hard, because this is my last chance. If I fall now without having feigned my snakebite, Adam is more than clever enough to guess that I took some pernicious substance—which will lead him to wonder about my original intent. Perhaps he will even discern part of my plan, enough at least to know that I did not mean to see our undertaking through.
He will certainly be far too suspicious to make any formal announcement of my passing—much less to allow Marie and Antoine to claim my corpse, once the Black Mass guests have scattered to the winds in their panic—until enough time has elapsed that he is certain of my true death.
Bodies are only given to the undertaker once they have lain for three days in their beloveds’ keeping, and I will wake from my deathlike stupor only two days hence.
And if the marquise should leave this Messe unharmed and the king learn that I am still alive, his murderous wrath will fall upon my head.
Only if I can convince them all that I have met my death of snakebite will I be truly safe.
“Of course it is,” I whisper back as clearly as I can, though my tongue has grown leaden and my ears shrill with a frightful hornet buzz. The inside of my head lists back and forth like a vessel on high seas. “Quite well.”
I reach into the tank, biting on my lip until I taste the rusty tang of blood, my hands drifting toward the snake that feels the more familiar. There is something to the shape of her head, and the way that she lies coiled, that makes me think this one is my Tisiphone.
I cannot be certain, but from the way my consciousness already pitches out of my grasp, I know that I’ve all but run out of time.
I must make my gamble now, or fail to ever win my freedom. Certainly I will not have the chance to become the mistress of my own fate again.
My vision rapidly tunneling, I pick the snake up
