The Silvered Serpents (The Gilded Wolves)

by Roshani Chokshi

All he saw were paths not taken.

Until now, she’d made peace with small dreams . . . more

as if he’d fought the world for the privilege to draw air into his lungs. That’s what life was. A privilege.

“Most myths are just truths covered in cobwebs.”

Zofia frowned. “Sometimes I don’t understand art.” Hypnos raised a glass. “Hear, hear.”

“The difference between a diamond necklace and a diamond dog collar depends on the bitch. And they both have teeth, Monsieur.”

He wanted someone who would enter a room and look for him first, to behold him as though the secrets of the world lay somewhere in his gaze, to finish his sentences. Someone to share cake with.

The butler looked faintly disturbed. “My deepest apologies.” “I prefer shallow ones.”

The artwork made him feel small, but gloriously so, as if he were part of something greater than himself.

Hypnos enjoyed falling in and out of love as if it were a hobby.

She thought she knew what winter was, but the cold of Russia felt . . . vindictive.

“But enough of that. Let’s celebrate before certain doom, shall we?”

“We debase ourselves for the ones we love.”

Laila sipped her tea, assuming an expression Enrique had come to recognize as “smug cat.”

Hypnos snorted. “Ah, ma chère, never change.”

“History is full of ghosts because it’s full of myth, all of it woven together depending on who survived to do the telling.”

Happier times. And even if they no longer existed, she liked the reminders that they had ever been there in the first place.

“Be a light in this world, my Zosia, for it can be very dark.”

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.

“Just imagine it . . . elegant courts and citrus trees, jewels in the hair and poetry dissolving like sugar on the tongue.”

‘Blood flow’d, but immortal; ichor pure, such as the blest inhabitants of heav’n, may bleed, nectareous.’ ”

“What is magic but a science we cannot fathom,”

“In the end, they chose to preserve the thought of the other, uncorrupted, in their hearts.”

After all, what were roots when one could choose not be anchored, but instead be born aloft?

Annoy the ideas under my skull.

Life is cruel, and often without cake.”

“What is the opposite of cake?” “Despair,” said Laila.

My death is not in service to his character, and I will not be a sacrifice simply for him to find peace of mind. He is not my responsibility to save.”

“I assure you that any envy I inspire is ill-deserved.”

“Perhaps we both deserve someone who is not so hard to love,”

Sometimes she needed help, but that did not make her helpless.

but these days Séverin was a ghost who couldn’t even muster the interest to haunt them.

Laila would meet death standing.

Laila wondered if that was the truest death—being slowly rendered invisible so that all she inspired was indifference.

I’m fairly certain you’ll be the death of me, Laila, and yet I can’t bring myself to mind.”

Hope hurt. She’d forgotten the pain of it.

But disuse had turned his tongue clumsy for truth telling,

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

“You make the choice that you can live with. You do not have to like it.”

He would die here, in this cold place that smelled of salt and metal, not at all like the sunshine-steeped earth of the Philippines.

When the devil waged war in the heavens, even angels had to fall.”

She could not see her hope for what it was, nothing more than a silvered serpent.

“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.”