Gods & Monsters (Serpent & Dove #3) by Shelby Mahurin

“Let me go!” She bit my shoulder like a rabid animal, but the thick wool of my coat prevented much damage. “You’ll kill us! Do you hear me? We’ll drown! We cannot dance beneath these waters. We are too heavy, too many—”

“Enough.” I marched her toward the water with steely determination. This time, my feet broke its surface without resistance. We’d been granted permission to enter. To heal. Behind us, Constantin vanished, leaving Coco to stand alone. She gave a curt nod. “We finish this now, Nicholina. Get. The. Hell. Out. Of. My. Wife.”

She shrieked as I threw her headfirst into the waters.





Mathieu


Lou

The water was freezing—shockingly and cripplingly so. My muscles seized on impact, and my breath left in a painful, startled rush. My lungs immediately shrieked in protest.

Fucking fabulous. Fucking Reid.

He’d meant well, of course, but couldn’t the heroic brute have checked the waters’ temperature first? Perhaps taken a dip himself? I certainly couldn’t dance as a block of ice. And my eyes—I couldn’t see anything. Whatever moonlight had shone above hadn’t managed to penetrate below, plunging us into pitch blackness. A fitting end for Nicholina, that. A true taste of her own medicine. If possible, she seemed to like the dark even less than me, and in her utter hysteria, she thrashed wildly, vying for control. Sinking us like a brick.

Stop it. Clenching my aching teeth, I struggled to move my arms and legs in unison. She floundered in the opposite direction, and our skirt tangled in our feet, thick and heavy and dangerous. We sank another inch, and another and another, each of our panic feeding the other, heightening to a collective sort of frenzy. Nicholina, I said sharply, ignoring the roaring of my heart. It nearly exploded in my chest. Stop struggling. We need to work together, or we’re both going to die. I’m a strong swimmer. Let me lead—

Never.

The voices echoed her. Never, never, never. They swarmed around us, panicked and hysterical, and we sank faster still, weighed down by our heavy cloak and gown. I pulled at the former while Nicholina tried to loosen the latter. Swearing viciously, I joined her instead, and together—miraculously in unison—we unknotted the laces with stiff, clumsy fingers. She kicked at the skirt as I clawed at our cloak. Within seconds, both floated away from us through the black water, ominous and slow, before disappearing altogether.

Still we sank.

Shit. It was like swimming through oil, through tar. My lungs burned as I strained upward, and Nicholina finally, desperately mimicked my movements. That’s it. Keep going. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot.

We dance, we dance, we dance.

But we weren’t dancing at all. Already, white stars popped in my vision, and my head pounded from lack of oxygen. Sharp pain pierced my ears. And . . . and something else. Something worse. Too late, I realized that Nicholina’s veil—the darkness that had shielded her subconscious—had vanished altogether. The waters had stripped it. At last, her every thought, every feeling, every fear flooded our shared consciousness with startling clarity. Faces flashed. Pieces of memories, bits of sentiment tied to each one. Fervor and affection and hatred and shame. It was too much. Too many. I didn’t want them. Her emotions didn’t stop coming, however—so intense, so painful—and the full force of her being crashed into me like a tidal wave.

And so did my magic.

Gold and white exploded with blinding intensity, everywhere at once. Though I tried to catch a pattern—a pattern to swim, a pattern to shield, a pattern to anything—Nicholina’s emotions overwhelmed everything. They buffeted me.

What are you doing? What are you doing? She urged me onward, voice frantic, realizing too late what had happened. She hadn’t known her veil had lifted. Though she tried to summon it once more, the waters had shredded it beyond repair. Dance, little mouse! You must dance! Right, left, right, left, right!

But the waters didn’t drown us now. She did. Unadulterated emotion robbed what little of our breath remained, pulling us both beneath the onslaught. We sank and sank and sank with each fresh wave. No. We sank into each fresh wave. The darkness around us pricked with light.

And suddenly, we weren’t in the Wistful Waters at all.

Lavender brushed my fingertips. Its scent perfumed the summer air, sweet and sharp and heady, and overhead, a single fat cloud drifted past. I glanced around warily. I knew this place. I knew the mountains all around us, the creek trickling at the edge of the field. As a child, I’d played here often, but it hadn’t been filled with lavender then, only grass and the gnarled stumps of pear trees. Manon said a grove had once grown in this valley, but Morgane had torched it in an inexplicable fit of rage before we were born. Had the lavender preceded the trees? Or had it come after?

Something shifted beside me, and I tensed instinctively, whipping around to face it.

My heart leapt to my throat.

“You’re . . . you,” I said in disbelief.

Nicholina stared back at me, her silver eyes wider than I’d ever seen them. Her skin paler. The scars on her chest shone stark and gruesome in the bright sunlight, and her black dress—tattered and dirty—seemed incongruous with this happy place. Glancing down at my own body, I lifted my hands experimentally, and they responded without hesitation. I flexed my fingers. At the sight of them straightening, curling back into my palms, a bubble of laughter rose in my throat—my throat. Not ours.