The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves, #2)

by Roshani Chokshi

women carried into another country while carrying a white man’s child. Not quite wife or lover, but an exotic ghost haunting the halls and edges of society.

The colonies brimmed with treasure—rubber in the Congo, silver in the Potosi Mines, spices in Asia.

The lore of the Order of Babel held that The Divine Lyrics contained the secret for joining the world’s Babel Fragments. Once joined, the book could rebuild the Tower of Babel and thus access the power of God.

She hadn’t forgotten the cruel words he’d uttered, but she could forgive cruelty stemming from guilt as long as he could forgive himself.

That’s what life was. A privilege.

They had each other. Séverin—for all that he could command men without words—had no one. Her anger faded.

That the sound of her laugh might someday mean so much to someone that it was worth any challenge.

She understood how the world cultivated malice between girls, teaching them to bare their teeth when they might have bared their souls.

Eva was beautiful, but bodies were just bodies. Easily broken, and unfortunately, not so easily made. Laila had never had control over her physical features, and she never felt it right to hold another’s against them.

“That is the devil. When a man cannot see a person as a person, then the devil has slipped into him and is peering out of his eyes.”

“This almost feels like a fairy tale, and I’m the damsel in distress.” “You’re not a damsel.” “I am in distress, though.”

What he had done had not looked like love. But then again, love did not always wear a face of beauty.

An expression that said she would love him no matter what he did.

“Love does not always wear the face we wish,” she said. “I wish my love had been more beautiful. I wish … I wish we had more time.”