Page 103 of The Dagger and the Flame
Ransom stood frozen. The only sign he had heard her at all was the pooling of shadows at his feet and the horror in his silver eyes.
‘So if he truly is like a father to you,’ she went on, in a cold voice, ‘then you should know he likes to kill his own children when they get in his way.’
Ransom’s eyelids fluttered.
Sera swallowed, ignoring the silent river of her tears ashe stared and stared at her. Waiting for her to take it back. To smile and say it was a sick joke. But the truth had sat in her heart for so long, it had begun to crush her. The man who had once held her as a baby, rocked her in her crib and sung lullabies to her at night, the man who had loved her to distraction – who had loved her mother to ruin – was the same man that Ransom thought of as a father.
But Dufort was no father. He was incapable of thinking beyond his own desire. The lure of the Daggers had snatched him away before Sera had learned to walk, and all those years he spent descending the ladder into darkness, her mother had fought to pull him back up. She had fought to scour away the shadows that barbed his heart, only to fail. Only to die.
Gaspard Dufort did not want to be saved. He wanted to rule, like a king. And he was willing to cut down anyone foolish enough to stand in his way.
‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ said Sera, hating the yawning silence.
‘If Ispeak…’ said Ransom very, very slowly. Darkness swarmed the clearing, the gathering tide of his anger. A branch snapped behind him, torn to the ground by one of his shadows. And he hadn’t so much as blinked. ‘If I even dare tomoveright now, I’m afraid I might tear this entire forest down so I can shove every fucking branch down that bastard’s throat.’
The wind howled and the earth shook, the leaves trembling at their feet. But Sera wasn’t scared. She marvelled at the fullness of his power, and how it tangled with his emotions. ‘You’re angry.’
His nostrils flared. ‘There is no word for the depth of thisfeeling, Seraphine.’ His voice was as cold as death, the forest so dark, she had to strain to see him. ‘Rage. Horror. Betrayal…Rage.’
‘Don’t hide it,’ she said, quietly. ‘Let me see you.’
He opened his fist and the shadows receded in a rush, rustling the leaves as they scattered. His gaze softened as it found hers, and now the look on his face was one of pain.
‘I don’t understand,’ he said, his voice barely more than a whisper. ‘Please help me understand.’
She blew out a breath, the rain spattering her cheeks as she slumped against the tree. It was such a long and awful story, and she hated it almost as much as she hated her father. She hated that once upon a different lifetime, he might have been a good man. That the three of them might have lived a happy life together, far from the darkness that had destroyed them. She hated it so much she tried not to think of it at all. She certainly never spoke of it. But for this moment, and this man, she blew the cobwebs off the sorry tale her mother had told her only once, a very long time ago.
‘My parents met over twenty years ago in a tavern in the Hollows,’ she said with a sigh. ‘A pair of orphans, both barely seventeen. They were runaways, searching for a better life. They saw each other across the bar and that was it. They danced all night and fell in love by morning.’ She gave a little shrug. ‘I suppose it was simple at the start.’
Ransom wasn’t blinking.
‘They found salvation in each other, a reprieve from the shitty childhoods they’d crawled their way out of. Two lost souls, bound up in each other. They decided they would makesomething of themselves together. A family. Then a fortune. But for a pair of orphans with no schooling or real-life experience, the only way to survive in the Hollows was to turn to Shade. So, that’s what they did.’ Sera didn’t blame them for it, even now.
‘Only my… Dufort wasn’t content with smuggling. Every time he bottled Shade, his fingers itched to try it. To taste it.’ She closed her eyes, cursing her father’s avarice. ‘It changed him. It changed who he wanted to become. It wasn’t enough to be a good husband or a loving father any more. To have a house out in the plains, a good horse, and a field of sheep… He wanted a dynasty. He wanted to be remembered.’
She raked her damp hair from her face, turning her gaze to the shadows at Ransom’s feet. They were creeping closer, as if they were listening to her story.
‘So, my father became a Dagger. And he was good at it. Really good.’ Her lip curled, and she didn’t bother to hide her disgust. ‘And then he changed some more. He stopped laughing and started shouting. He stopped kissing Mama and stared hitting her. Stopped playing teddies with me and started shaking me like one. He got cruel… violent.’ A shudder wracked her, and Ransom jerked forward, his hands outstretched, before remembering the poison inside him.
He stalled a foot away.
‘Mama kicked him out. She kept working but she refused to sell to his Order. She didn’t want him anywhere near me. Near her. We moved again and again, but he always found us. He wanted her to know that no matter where we went or how far we travelled, we still belonged to him. Sometimes, I think it was a game to him. A chase.’ Her voice broke and shepressed her fists against her eyes, trying to blanch away all those memories of him stomping back into their lives, sending the birds skittering to the skies with the boom of his voice. ‘I wish we’d gone further. Gone north over the mountains and through the low hills, travelled until the road ran out and taken a boat over the horizon. But Shade was all Mama knew. It was our livelihood. And he would have found us eventually.’
Ransom was so still, he looked like a statue, but the sadness in his eyes told Sera he was listening, that he understood.
‘At first, Mama thought she could save him from himself.’ It was so crushingly obvious to Sera now, so heart-rendingly simple… That light in her mother’s heart, the flame thathehad kindled in that tavern all those years ago had become the first spark of her ambition. ‘When that didn’t work, she tried to save us from him. I think that’s why she became so obsessed with Lucille Versini, why she was so hell-bent on rediscovering Lightfire.’
‘An antidote,’ said Ransom, softly. ‘All Lucille ever wanted was to save her brothers from the darkness.’
Sera nodded. ‘But the closer Mama got to that recipe, the closerhegot to her…’ She lifted her chin, finding the silver in his eyes fading, shards of green and gold shining through. ‘My father didn’t want to be free, Ransom. He didn’t want to let go of his power.’ She raked her gaze over the black marks on his neck, the inky spill across his hands, and knew that while Ransom had grown to hate his shadow-marks, Dufort wore his own like badges of honour.
‘When he changed – when he got cruel – that hope in Mama turned to rage. She realized that the man she fell in lovewith was never coming back. That this new one, this Dagger, was a danger to us. And as long as he lived, we would never truly be free of him.’
Ransom was nodding now. Hadn’t he lived through some version of this himself? Hadn’t he killed his own father for the same reason?
‘Mama knew she would have to destroy Dufort to save us. So, she made monsters to bring him to heel. Discovered the secret of Lightfire and set the stage for his demise.’ Sera’s heart felt so hollow now she pressed a hand against it just to feel it beat. ‘But he got to her first.’
Ransom looked away, hissing a curse.
