Sagas & Sass began covering The Gilded Wolves trilogy by Roshani Chokshi in May 2022; this is our summary of book 2 – The Silvered Serpents – as it was written to introduce Episode 45 (covering parts 1-2 of The Silvered Serpents) and Episode 47 (covering parts 3-4 of The Silvered Serpents).
AHOY! SPOILERS AHEAD!
NOTE: When trying to decide how to refer to the crew/gang in this series, we settled on “the Cookies”, not just for Zofia’s affinity for literal cookies but because Laila used them to bring the group together.
At the end of The Gilded Wolves, Tristan was dead, Laila and Severin were at odds, and Severin refused his chance to re-take the heir test and ascend to his rightful place as head of House Vanth…but then the matriarch of House Kore told Hypnos, head of House Nyx, that Severin actually WASN’T the heir…and so as we rejoin our Cookies in The Silvered Serpents we are absolutely scratching our heads about ::gestures:: alllll of that.
The Silvered Serpents opens much like The Gilded Wolves did – that being with a prologue focused on Delphine, House Kore’s matriarch. We already knew from Severin that before his parents died, she was basically like a very close aunt to him, but it seems that when he was orphaned, she walked away from him and never looked back. However, it sounds like (as with so much in this series) things aren’t quite what they seem. Delphine certainly loved Severin, and the prologue recounts her being confronted by his mother, who asks Delphine to protect her son.
Noooot that we get any additional information as to WHY that is…at least not yet. Instead, we dive right back into the main story, though it’s a very different start than what we saw in the first book. While Severin and Enrique are still living at L’Eden, Laila has moved out and Zofia has been away for some time, visiting her sister in Poland – supposedly for Chanukah, though we learn that in reality Zofia’s sister was – is? – dying, which Zofia is keeping from her fellow Cookies.
However, Severin quickly brings them all back together with the news that he finally has information on the next item they’ve been trying to acquire – a book called “The Divine Lyrics”, the same book that Laila has been searching for because she believes it will allow her to live past her 19th birthday…but now Severin wants the book as well, and his reasoning is all SORTS of messed up. It all comes back to him hating himself for not protecting Tristan, and now he wants to use the book to become a god so that he can resurrect his friends and, umm, not feel “pain or loss or guilt”.
Sooo yeah. That’s a thing that’s happening.
Next thing we know the Cookies are on their way to Russia, where they immediately dive into Heist #1. This involves them getting ahold of some special spectacles that will allow them to discover the location of the Fallen House’s “Sleeping Palace”, the place where they supposedly stored their treasure and therefore, probably, this V.I.B. (Very Important Book).
Of course this mini heist isn’t without its problems, but in the end they pull it off…though just as they are about to celebrate, they’re attacked! Delphine of all people saves them and then brings Severin and Hypnos to a tea room that specializes in something called blood Forging, a Forging art that is apparently very much looked down on and most often used for, err, sexual things. While there, Delphine admits that she also wants “The Divine Lyrics”; surprisingly, Severin agrees that he will deliver it to her, though he of course thinks that this will only be after he gets what he needs from it.
When the Cookies convene again, they quickly figure out that the spectacles they stole respond to music. So Hypnos plays a C Major scale on the very convenient piano, and the spectacles reveal their secret: coordinates that will surely lead them to the Sleeping Palace.
They meet up with Delphine and two new characters – Ruslan, the patriarch of Russia’s House Dazbog, and his cousin Eva, who somehow specializes in both ice and blood Forging and is also super rude to Laila while making eyes at Severin. ::AUDIBLE SIGH::
Finally, the Cookies and their new companions head to the coordinates revealed by the spectacles, and then use the spectacles to, well, make the Sleeping Palace appear. It turns out to be more cathedral than palace, with a library that seems to be empty of books, a huge room full of ice-Forged animals, and an ice grotto that seems to be empty…until Severin tries to head up some stairs, which causes one of the ice animals to attack and earns Severin a suffocating ice mask.
Zofia stops the animal with a fiery net, but it takes Eva rushing in with her special powers to save Severin in a sort of mouth-to-mouth situation – right in front of Laila, of course.
The Cookies wait outside Severin’s sick room for what they hope will be his recovery. Eventually Laila is allowed in, though Eva objects to this…until Laila and Severin play at affection so that everyone else will leave and they can, umm, talk. Yeah, just talk. Totally.
Okayyyy, they really do just talk, and then Laila stays in Severin’s room because ya know that’s the stupid arrangement they have with her as his “mistress” (::eyeroll::). But more importantly, they head back down to the grotto the next day and are able to determine very quickly that the security system is triggered by heat. Of course this leads to Eva – ya know, the blood and ice Forger – being imperative to their plans…buuuut as soon as they know that the special forging she does works, Severin orders her and Ruslan away, because in case anyone didn’t know, THEY AREN’T COOKIES!
Aaaanyway, they STILL trigger something – a mechanical leviathan that Zofia eventually names “David” rises out of the pool in the grotto – and yet that’s not even the most worrisome thing about the situation! Because Laila realizes that the statues in the grotto – statues of girls with ruined mouths – are likenesses of ACTUAL FORMERLY ALIVE NOW DEAD girls. They’re all disturbed by this, but none so much as Laila, and Delphine actually offers to remove her from the situation, while Enrique asks Hypnos to escort him to the book-less library. While Hypnos abandons him fairly quickly cuz ~ADHD~ or something, Enrique does figure out how to get the books to appear AND has a moment with Ruslan before getting distracted by the realization that the girls with their ruined mouths are the key to the treasure.
So Enrique works with Zofia to crack the code, as it were, and after Hypnos and Eva arrive and they come to the conclusion that blood will unlock the obvious Tezcats in the grotto, they end up in one hell of a pickle…because while two of the Tezcats are bricked up, one is open, and Enrique, Zofia, and Eva wander INTO FUCKING ISTANBUL, where they are attacked by forces that we can’t even begin to explain and only make it out because Enrique is about to sacrifice himself but then instead of just running off, Eva stops to create an ice bridge that allows him to escape from the giant stone statues that are attacking them.
Meanwhile, Laila reads the statues of the girls from the grotto, and realizes they were all women who were taken and murdered in the name of sacrifice because they “wouldn’t be missed”. TALK ABOUT FUCKED UP.
However, between the reminder of her touch and what she can do with it and what they have learned from the library and the Tezcats, several of the Cookies come to the conclusion that if one has to have a certain lineage to read “The Divine Lyrics”, that person MUST be Laila, designated team magical girl…not that anyone TELLS her that, because lol, who shares their hypotheses? Clearly not a functional team. ::insert giant sigh here::
Oh and by the way, remember David? The mechanical leviathan, that is? At some point Zofia walked into its mouth and saw that there were stairs leading down, and that comes back when they fully crack the code, which says “The teeth of the devil call to me”…and the teeth it’s speaking of turn out to be the leviathan’s, because the symbols in its mouth read “I am the devil”.
Only that wasn’t the only thing that Enrique and Zofia figured out – there is also some writing on one of the portals that reads “To play at God’s instrument will summon the unmaking”. This is clearly a warning, and one that they take to mean that reading “The Divine Lyrics” will undo all existing Forged things.
And yet…they still go into David’s mouth, where they discover a literal treasure trove…that unfortunately doesn’t include any sort of book. While they are celebrating the discovery of the treasure – despite the lack of the book for which they are all desperately searching – they hear that the entire Winter Conclave is on its way to the Sleeping Palace. For obvious reasons NONE of the Cookies are happy about this, and when Enrique tries to talk to Hypnos about the situation, it leads to their final break. Because all this time, Enrique has seen that Hypnos prefers Severin’s companionship – or even lack of it – and Enrique is entirely exhausted with being ignored. Unfortunately, this leads to him being attacked, while at about the same time, Zofia’s curiosity leads to HER being attacked.
However, it’s important to note that right before he is attacked, Enrique realizes that The Divine Lyrics isn’t a thing that exists at all – that it’s the Divine LYRE – an instrument, not a book! HOLY SHIT!
Sadly, Severin and Laila are ignorant of their friends’ plights, and for a moment Laila is trying to have some fun dancing at the Winter Conclave ball…until Ruslan mentions that he saw her with Severin when she absolutely wasn’t with him, and she realizes that in an earlier confrontation, Eva cut her and therefore HAS HER BLOOD. This is all sorts of fucked up, because while Laila rushes to Severin’s room and we all are super UGH about him right now, Eva is using Laila’s blood to wear her face and come on to Severin – which is absolutely sexual assault. NO GOOD VERY BAD EW EW EW. PUT THE WHOLE EVA IN THE GARBAGE CAN.
Thankfully, Laila kicks Eva out of the room, and while Severin is clearly under the influence, he initiates an encounter with the REAL Laila because – SHOCKER – that’s what he wanted all along! It’s still a bit of a touchy situation considering he’s not exactly sober or entirely himself, and also GAH LAILA YOU CAN DO BETTER and THIS RELATIONSHIP IS TOXIC etc. etc. ugh ugh ugh…PLUS in the end, it works out for the people who orchestrated it – that being Ruslan and Eva.
You see, they were ‘waiting in the wings’, as it were, and as soon as Laila tries to leave the room, Eva incapacitates her – because oh yeah, they also believe that Laila is the only person who can play the aforementioned Divine Lyre.
Oh and by the way, remember that guy from earlier in the novel who had an affair with a ballerina and warned the Cookies against some mysterious “She”? That “she” is Eva, who is his daughter, and he literally MUTILATED her so that she couldn’t be a ballerina like her mom.
Yeah, there’s…a LOT going on here.
Eventually Severin wakes up – just in time to save Enrique, though Zofia then needs to save THEM by figuring out how to control one of the ice animals from the palace…only for Severin and Hypnos to end up inside the leviathan with Delphine while Enrique and Zofia are captured by Ruslan and Eva who ARE APPARENTLY BOTH TOTALLY TERRIBLE. RIP our positive feelings for Ruslan 🙁 (Because if you haven’t watched/listened to our episodes, we did actually LIKE him. BIG SIGH.)
Delphine then tells Severin that it’s actually HIM who has the bloodline and can play the Divine Lyre. Which. Gahhh none of us like Severin right now and this is kinda bleh news to be quite honest. Delphine wants to save Severin and Hypnos, but Severin goes against her wishes. This means that Delphine will die, which she does somewhat willingly, while Severin exits the Leviathan to save his friends.
Only…it seems like he doesn’t do that, at least to Laila. There’s a whole side plot with red jam that makes it look like he murders Enrique and Zofia, and then he proves to Ruslan – who by the way is NOT the patriarch of House Dazbog but rather someone from the Fallen House – that he, Severin, is the person who can play the Divine Lyre.
Severin DOES leave a mnemo bug with his ~~~new plan~~~ (cuz this is heists on heists on heists so we gotta have a NEW PLAN) for Laila so she can read it and know he’s still a Good Lad. Ruslan and Eva abscond with Severin and the Lyre, and Laila is left with her supposedly dead friends and, naturally, destroys the mnemo bug that proved Severin didn’t actually kill them. Cuz she big mad.
The Silvered Serpents concludes with a Hypnos epilogue (yay!), although it’s a g-d heart-wrenching moment when he recalls Severin saying “I protect you.”
And so, another dark ending for our Cookies, be they sweet…or Severin.
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Quotes we loved:
“That’s what life was. A privilege. He wouldn’t waste it chasing vengeance. He would do something vastly more meaningful, more important.”
“Hypnos snorted. ‘Ah, ma chere, never change.’
‘Don’t say that,’ said Zofia, sounding rather glum. ‘Change is the only constant.’
“What, exactly, do you expect us to find?”
“I expect knowledge. That’s all,” said Rusland, stroking the sling of his injured arm. “That is all I ever want. It is in knowledge, after all, that we find the tools to make history.”
“A rather ambitious goal to make history,” said Severin.
“Enrique had his ideas, but maybe they were foolish. He was about to say so when he caught the way Ruslan looked at him. Wide-eyed and excited. Tristan used to be like this, eager to hear what he had to say, even if he hadn’t the faintest clue what he was talking about. It was intoxicating, he thought to be so clearly seen by someone else.”
“If there were stairs to hell, would you venture down those?”
“It depends on what was inside hell, and if I needed it.”
“You see that, my Zosia?” he had asked. “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.”
“When she thought of evil, she did not think of mechanical monsters swimming in lake waters, but people. The people who had captured those girls and killed them; the people who hid cruelty behind politics.”
“Speaking of cake…or rather, the opposite of cake.” He paused, frowning in thought. “What is the opposite of cake?”
“Despair,” said Laila.
“A wide smile tugged at Hypnos’s mouth. “Would I prove that I’d do anything to help my friends? Oui, ma chere, I would.” He waved his hand. “Besides, you know I live for antics.”
“This had always been the risk. That she should offer her heart, only to be told it wasn’t as precious as she had thought it to be.”
“Love does not always wear the face we wish.”
