Page 116 of The Dagger and the Flame
‘Free it!’ cried Seraphine.
‘How?’ yelled Ransom, slamming his elbow into the monster’s skull. Its jaw unhinged in an ear-splitting howl.
‘Put your hands on its face! Release it!’
He grabbed the creature by the head. It went still, its chest heaving as they locked eyes. In that strange and deadly moment, Ransom didn’t feel afraid. He felt… hopeless.Exhausted.But this pain was not his own, he realized. And he had the power to do something about it.
‘Rest,’ he murmured, the word pouring from him like a prayer.
His hands tingled, his blood warming as the cloak’s magic flowed through him. It was so different from the cold heaviness of Shade, the usual choking taste of ash and the awful twist of his stomach. Lightfire was a balm. It trickled through him like a sun-warmed stream, filling his bones with gentle, searching heat. It soothed his heart, laved the far, ragged reaches of his soul.
If Shade was death, then Lightfire was peace. It was freedom.
The monster groaned in relief. Its shoulders sagged as the shadows around it fell away, revealing the body of a woman with cropped white hair. She was barefoot and still wearing her sailor’s uniform. She curled up on her side beside the grate, her final breath leaving her in a sigh.
A shiver passed through Ransom. Not Lightfire, but sorrow. ‘I killed her.’
‘No,’ murmured Seraphine as she crawled to his side. ‘My mother killed her. You freed her.’
He looked at her, and the agony in her face cleaved something in his chest.
He turned, scanning the cavern. It was thrumming withmonsters, and echoing with the screams of his friends, his family. Every monster that fell got back up again, more vicious and deadly than before. Lightfire was the one thing that could stop them but the creatures were now roaming throughout the catacombs and the humans only had a single cloak of it between them.
His thoughts spun, trying to come up with a plan. Seraphine stiffened at the sight of Dufort flitting across the cavern. The doorway to the north passage was clear and he was running for it.
‘NO!’ Forgetting the cloak and the promise they had just made, she shoved past Ransom and bolted from the fireplace, leaving him grasping at thin air.
‘Seraphine!’ He leaped to his feet and went after her, only to skid at the sound of Nadia’s scream. She was ten feet away, trapped under a monster three times her size. Its jaws were inches from her neck, its shadows pinning her to the ground.
Ransom charged at the beast, sending it crashing into a broken table. It bucked beneath him, but Ransom struck fast, grabbing the creature’s face. His palms buzzed, the flow of Lightfire filling his body as he gritted out, ‘Let go.’
There was a flash of light and the shadows disintegrated. The monster twitched once, twice. And then it was no longer a beast. It was only a boy. He looked to be thirteen or so, wearing a stained T-shirt and a grubby bandana. A swabbie, Ransom guessed, and not long into his first taste of cheap wine. Poisoned wine.
He climbed off him, and helped Nadia to her feet. She stared at the cloak. ‘That was… effective.’
He tugged her close, casting it around her. ‘Stick with me. We need to get these monsters out.’
She nodded, pushing the hair from her face with trembling fingers. ‘Where’s the girl?’
He turned on his heel, frantically searching the cavern. ‘She’s—fuck.’
Seraphine was on the ground by the doorway, fighting for her life.
Lark was killing her.
Chapter 44Seraphine
The sight of Dufort running for the tunnels spurred Seraphine into action. She didn’t even bother to wrestle the cloak from Ransom – it would only waste more time – as she vaulted past him, scrabbling to her feet.
Adrenaline pounded in her veins as she weaved across the room, narrowly avoiding a brawl of monsters tearing each other limb from limb. They snapped their heads up as she flew past, sniffing the air.
They must have sensed the handful of pearls in her pocket, the smallest shield of Lightfire now protecting her. She didn’t know how potent they would be in a room of a hundred rabid monsters but she gathered half the pearls in her fist and, with her free hand, swiped a discarded blade from the floor, trying to ignore the dead Dagger bleeding out beside it. She hastilyslid it into her waistband, replacing the one she had flung at Dufort.
Screams were a chorus around Sera, bouncing off the domed ceiling, the sound of bones shattering adding a sickening counterpoint. She pushed it all away – the noise and the panic and the fear paling against the blood-red promise of revenge. She darted between shadows and ducked under swinging punches as she made her way towards Dufort. He was ten steps from the doorway, and she was ten steps from him.
Nine steps. Eight. Seven. Hatred burned in her chest, quickening her pace. Six steps. Lightfire glowed in her fist, urging her on. Five steps. Dufort pivoted, flattening himself against the wall to dodge a stampeding monster. Four steps and she would be on him. She climbed onto an upturned chair, gaining the upper ground. He reached the doorway and Sera pounced.
For a heartbeat, she flew. Teeth bared and roaring, as if she was a monster herself. Then a figure swung in from her left, side-swiping her in mid-air. She landed on a broken table, the impact knocking the breath out of her.
