“Go on,” Shane said, his sleepiness receding.
There was a flash of light, and suddenly a jackal stood beside Zerif, watching Shane with curious eyes that reminded him very much of Zerif’s own.
“Just as I suspected,” Shane said. “You have a spirit animal.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t seem sick.”
“No.”
“You’ve been cured?”
Zerif shook his head. “I was never sick. Here’s the truth, Prince Shane: The Greencloaks cured the bonding sickness long, long ago. Everywhere but here — and here, whether by curse or foul luck, the sickness is more common than it ever was anywhere else in Erdas. Despite this, the Greencloaks have ignored your plight.” He ran a shackled hand along his beard. “They left your people to suffer while they silently took over the rest of the world.”
Shane ground his teeth together and growled like a cornered animal. “Tell. Me. Everything,” he commanded.
The Jade Serpent had been right under Shane’s nose all along.
He realized it as soon as he had Zerif repeat Kovo’s words. “Tell me exactly what he said,” Shane insisted.
“ ‘The Jade Serpent is where only Stetriol’s king may retrieve it, hidden away in his seat of power.’ ”
Zerif had assumed the king’s “seat of power” was the capital, or the keep. He wasn’t thinking literally enough.
“The throne,” Shane guessed. And sure enough, when he touched the throne for the first time, tugging at the ornamental snakes, one of them came free in his hand. A heavy green snake carved from jade.
The sense of triumph he experienced in that moment was nothing compared to what he felt when, at Zerif’s bidding, he submerged the talisman in a bowl of murky swamp water. The water changed instantly, becoming a warm amber color, almost glowing with its own light. Shane didn’t doubt for an instant that it was magic.
Drina grimaced as she drank it in the morning, and Shane frowned to see the sour twist in her features, bracing himself for her verbal abuse. But she swallowed, and blinked her eyes rapidly, and then she broke into a smile.
“How do you feel?” he asked her.
And he knew the answer just by looking at her. Her cheeks were a healthy shade of pink. Her fever was gone, and her blue eyes caught the sunlight, flashing a bright, vibrant yellow.
The curse had been broken.
Shane stood upon the beach that night and watched his sad little handmade boat go up in flames.
It was his thirteenth birthday. And no one in his family had ever summoned a spirit animal later than age twelve.
Which meant he was free. The one thing he’d always feared above all others had not come to pass.
He used to ask himself what kind of person would want a spirit animal.
Now he regarded the amber fluid in the stoppered vial, holding it up to the dancing light of the flames, and he thought he knew the answer.
Two castle guards came crashing through the dry brush at the edge of the beach. They saw Shane there and they bowed, immediately and deeply, planting their knees into the sand.
“The … the king is dead,” one of them said. “Long live the king.”
“My father is dead?” said Shane flatly. “What happened?”
The guards kept their heads bowed. They seemed hesitant to answer.
“Well?” said Shane.
“A … a dog,” said one.
“Some kind of wild dog,” continued the other. “It got into the castle and tore out his throat. We don’t know where it came from.”
They kept their eyes turned toward the sand, giving Shane a quiet moment for anger or for grief.
He felt neither. But while their eyes were averted, he allowed himself a furtive smile.
“Sire, if there’s anything we can do —”
“There is one thing,” said Shane, and he slipped the vial into a pocket over his heart. “I’m going to need a crocodile. A live one. A big one. I know just where you should look.”
What kind of person would want a spirit animal?
A ruler, thought Shane.
A king.
Shane dreamed he’d bonded with a crocodile.
It was the largest beast he’d ever seen: a prehistoric nightmare with razor-sharp teeth and pitiless eyes. They brought it into his throne room in chains, but it had not come easily. The creature had drowned one man and maimed two others before it had been subdued. All who looked upon it felt awe.
Shane drank down the Bile in one gulp, and the crocodile was his.
He woke slowly from an untroubled sleep. For a moment, he worried it had just been a dream.
Then he looked down at his bare torso, and saw the image of the crocodile branded there.
And Shane knew there would no longer be any question who was in charge.
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Copyright © 2015 by Scholastic Inc.
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First edition, January 2015
e-ISBN 978-0-545-81262-7
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