Serpent's Touch (Serpent's Touch 1)

AMIRA

Boarding the train proved easier than I thought. After lunch, we bought the tickets, then snuck on the train early evening, avoiding customs. Kyllen worked his magic, and it only took a few doors to open at exactly the right moment when they were supposed to be locked, and a few turnstiles to move against the direction they were supposed to.

Once on the train, I dropped into my seat next to his, feeling exhausted.

“Tired?” Kyllen caught on to my state. “Come here.” He wrapped his arm around me and brought my head to his shoulder. “We have two hours of being locked in this tube of a vehicle. You may as well have a nap.”

On the surface, it had been a rather relaxing day. We’d had breakfast, gone shopping, then had lunch, and boarded the train in the evening.

In reality, I was cuddling with the man who had killed four people that morning, and he’d done that by simply looking at them.

In a way, Kyllen was even more dangerous than Madame.

He had snakes growing on his head. I should be running away from him. Instead, I snuggled closer. Being next to Kyllen relaxed me. It made me feel safe. His voice comforted me. And the “snakes…” Their touch excited me, instead of making me repulsed or terrified.

I’d never spent so much time with anyone before. I’d never had a friend I could go out for breakfast or clothes shopping with. Things that people did all the time and took for granted were new and exciting to me. And having all of them at once, like today, exhausted me.

“But we’re going to travel underwater,” I mumbled, fighting to keep my eyes open. “I don’t want to miss that.”

“From what I gathered,” he said. “It’s going to be a dark tunnel. You won’t miss much.”

I never found out if he was right. I ended up falling asleep within minutes and slept until the end of our trip.

When we got off the train, it was already dark.

“We should get a hotel, rest a little, and look for the portal the day after tomorrow,” Kyllen suggested. “Or do you want to find Lero’s house instead? Would he mind if we spend the night at his place?”

We’d left the station, and I found myself on the street of yet another unfamiliar city. Only this time, I was also surrounded by people whose language I didn’t understand.

I felt restless, suspended in transit with the final destination almost in sight already. I didn’t think Lero would mind if we stayed at his place for the night, but I was anxious to keep going.

“We need to go to the park,” I replied. “Lero said the portal opens around three o’clock every morning. It’s only ten-thirty. We can cross when it opens next, in four and a half hours.”

By the time the sun rose, I could already be in the place that would become my home for the rest of my life. Maybe I could finally belong somewhere.

“Is that what you want?” Kyllen asked. “To cross tonight?”

I nodded. It had been a hard decision to leave. But once I’d made it, I didn’t want to linger any longer.

He turned to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. “I want you to think about this very hard, Amira, one last time.” I couldn’t see his eyes, but the intensity in his voice was unmistakable. “After this, there is no coming back. You’ll never be able to return.”

“I know.”

“You will never see Radax again.” His voice softened. “He’ll never know what happened to you.”

At that, my heart pinched painfully.

Leaving Radax hadn’t been easy. By bringing me to the menagerie he’d taken the role a brack was never meant to play—taking care of a child. And he’d managed it well. He’d taught me everything I knew. He’d been my support, my comfort, my safe place for years.

But it cost him. His life would’ve been so much simpler without me.

When I’d hugged him the last time, it felt like a piece of my heart had chipped away. I knew I’d never get it back, but it brought me comfort to know that Radax gained some freedom, too. He was now free of any responsibility for me. Madame could no longer hold me against him to manipulate either of us.

She had no reason to suspect him of helping me escape. He’d refused to tell me anything about the portal. Even if she searched his brain, that would be all she would find. He knew nothing about my plans. And if that wasn’t enough, I’d shot him…

The pain in my heart grew unbearable, burning my eyes with tears.

I stifled a sob and steadied my breathing before replying. “Radax is far better off without me. He’s immortal. I’m but a tiny fleck on the endless road of his existence. He’ll forget me soon enough.”

Kyllen stood in silence, his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs rubbing my muscles through the coat. Maybe he just wanted to give me some time to listen to my heart before I made the final decision—I was so new to being in control of my life. Or maybe he was thinking about what it meant for him, too.

No matter what, the life as we both knew it was gone. No one could tell us what would find us on the other side of the River of Mists.

Kyllen dropped his hands off my shoulders. “Let’s do it, then. We’ll have time to get dinner, then I’ll find someone to take us to Parc des Brouillards.”

We stood on a busy street. Despite the late hour, a steady stream of pedestrians rushed by us. Life throbbed all around, and it was hard to imagine that in a few hours we would no longer be a part of it.

By the time we found a place to eat and had dinner, it was past midnight. When we got into a taxi, however, the driver refused to drive all the way to Parc des Brouillards.

“It’s too far,” he said in heavily accented English. “Best take the train in the morning.”

“But we need to go now,” I pleaded.

“How much?” Kyllen enquired calmly. “What would it take for you to drive us, now?”

The man squinted through the rear-view mirror at Kyllen and named a sum that made a breath stuck in my throat.

“Fine.” Kyllen took a stack of bills from the wad he kept in his boot. “Here.” He handed the whole thing to the driver. “Take us. Now.”

The driver stared at the money, clearly dumbfounded. “That’s British pounds, not euros.”

“Isn’t a pound higher in value than a euro?” I wasn’t entirely sure myself. I’d had no chance to look into that yet and probably never would now.

“Here.” Kyllen threw a few more bills his way.

I cast a cautionary glance his way. Sure, we’d have no use for this money where we were going, but I worried the driver would get suspicious with Kyllen tossing bills at him like candy wrappers.

Thankfully, all that rain of money convinced the driver to take us. After a long but beautiful drive through the nightscape of the City of Paris and then through its suburbs, we arrived at the park.

“It’s closed for visitors at this hour,” the driver warned as we exited his vehicle. He waited for a minute, maybe to see if we’d change our minds having seen the place closed with our own eyes. Kyllen waved him to go, and the taxi drove away.

The two of us were left standing in front of the wrought-iron gate built in between two stone columns. As far as my eye could see in the darkness, the iron fence ran in either direction from the gate. Lero had mentioned that Parc des Brouillards was a private property. The owners obviously valued their privacy, even if they had the place open to the visitors during the day.