Page 45 of The Dagger and the Flame
Lark, who had been hovering close behind him, stepped forward. ‘Nadia and I were following a lead down by the Scholars’ Quarter when we heard the screams up on Merchant’s Way. When we came across Ransom, he was half dead.’
‘Tell me everything,’ Dufort growled. ‘Leave nothing out.’
Ransom left a lot of things out, but he gave Dufort what he most wanted: every detail he could recall about the monster; the way it moved, how it looked, even its sulphuric stench. Dufort sat in stony silence, while the other Daggers left their own conversations to listen in.
The story wasn’t long – after all, Ransom had left out the first part entirely and he had been unconscious for most of the rest – but before he could finish, young Collette arrived in a clatter of footsteps.
‘Mister Dufort! This just arrived for you.’ She waved an envelope sealed with dark green wax. ‘It’s from House Armand.’
Dufort leaped to his feet, snatching the letter. Silence rippled through the Cavern as the Daggers watched him read it, Dufort’s eyebrows lifting higher with each word. Then he crumpled the parchment with a rasping laugh. ‘Looks like hell has frozen over,’ he said, flinging it into the fireplace. ‘Cordelia Mercure wants a meeting.’
Ransom got a proper look at himself when he went to bathe later that afternoon. His dark hair hung in damp tendrilsacross his forehead and there was a waxy sheen to his olive skin. Even his eyes looked tired. And yet, as he stood shirtless in front of the mirror, tracing the shadow-marks that marred his chest and shoulders, he saw that his right hand was different. He peered at the knuckle where a shadow-mark had once been. Hisfirstmark. For nearly ten years, that whorl had curled around his fingers like a branch of inky thorns. It had stung like them, too.
Now, it was gone. The skin there was unblemished, smooth and new, and when he pressed it, there was no pain. Not even the faintest tingle. He stared and stared, his heart swelling in his chest as he examined the hand that had killed so many, including his own father. The hand that had dangled Seraphine like a puppet on a string. The hand she had burned on that balcony. And now it was… clean.
He pressed it to his chest, inhaling deeply as he searched the dark reaches of himself, prodding at the heaviness that lingered there. Was it his imagination or had it lessened? Had some of the darkness inside him been burned away too? He traced his knuckle again, this new marvel before him, and remembered that bright light shining out of Seraphine’s necklace. In her desperate haste to free herself had she accidentally healed some old wound of his without even realizing it?
Another question gripped him, so tight he couldn’t breathe from the hope of it… Could she burn all the poison away, so that he could crawl out of this cruel place and leave behind the yawning hollow of darkness that would one day swallow him whole?
As Ransom watched himself in the mirror, his eyes grew,the gold inside them hungry and bright, as though another version of himself was peering out of them.What would you give for another chance at freedom? What would you risk to go all the way back?
He dropped his head, caressing that little patch of unblemished skin.
Everything.
The meeting of the Orders took place the following Sunday at the bottom of the Aurore Tower, where the dusky autumn sky flickered with firelight. Dufort chose three Daggers to accompany him – Lisette, Lark and Ransom. By then, the pain in Ransom’s side was less of a constant ragged shriek and more of a dull groan. Present but manageable. Still, it wracked him in the night whenever he turned on his side, or when his dreams conjured up that damn spitfire and her wicked little smile.
What an extraordinary secret she possessed. What life-changing power. It had come to plague his every thought.
When the Daggers arrived at Primrose Square, the rolling gardens within which the tower stood, Cordelia Mercure was already waiting for them. She was wearing a long violet coat, a wide-brimmed black hat and a scowl that could sink a ship. No cloak, but that was the rule.No cloaks, no Shade.
Dufort chuckled under his breath. ‘If looks could kill…’
‘That scowl is nearly as good as mine,’ said Lisette, waggling her fingers in greeting.
Mercure stood with her arms folded, pretending not to see the gesture.
Ransom’s heart pounded as he scanned the Cloaks on either side of Mercure. There was no sign of the spitfire. He chewed on his lip, unsure if he was relieved or pissed off. It wasn’t like he could confront her, with an audience present.
‘Surely you didn’t think she’d be here,’ whispered Lark, reading his mind like he always could. ‘She’s been a Cloak for all of a month.’
Behind Cordelia stood a tall, muscled man with cropped black hair, brown skin and keen brown eyes that assessed them with militant calm. To her right, a young tanned man with slicked-back silver hair and eyes so bright Ransom could see the hatred in them from all the way across the square. On her other side, a pale old woman with a cane, her face so wrinkled, she looked like a walking scowl.
‘Fontaine,’ muttered Dufort, voice rippling with disdain. ‘I thought the old bat was dead.’
They came to a stop twenty feet from the Cloaks. High above them, three huge troughs of flames flickered along the stone scaffolds of the Aurore, the light from them melding into a single soaring glow.
‘Beautiful,’ murmured Lark, looking up at it. ‘We should come here with Nadia some time.’
Ransom smirked.Sap.
‘Gaspard,’ said Cordelia in a cold voice.
‘Cordelia,’ he parried, colder still. ‘Always a displeasure.’
Fontaine leaned on her cane. ‘Hateful creature.’
Dufort sneered at her. ‘Good of you to crawl out of your grave to join us.’
