Page 61 of The Dagger and the Flame
Lorenzo knew her too well. ‘I wouldn’t have thrown that trowel if you weren’t sneaking up on me,’ she snapped.
‘I wasn’t sneaking up on you,’ he said, rising to the argument, like he always did. Lorenzo Verga was as fiery as the sun. ‘Since when are you so jumpy?’
She folded her arms. ‘Take a guess.’
Now it was his turn to flinch. His face fell, the fight seeping out of him. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’ He passed a hand over the fair stubble on his jaw. ‘It’s good to see you, Sera. I’ve been so worried. By the time I saw those flames…’
‘Mama was dead.’
‘And you were long gone.’ He dug his hands in his pockets. ‘I’d hoped you’d made it to the city, found a place at House Armand like Sylvie wanted.’
She swallowed thickly, stung by a sense of betrayal. So he remembered what she had confided in him about Mama’s fear, her warnings. He had known – or at least guessed – where she’d been all this time. ‘And it didn’t occur to you to come looking for me?’
A beat of hesitation. ‘Mama said it was too dangerous to try and find you. You might have been marked too.’ He looked at his boots, shame colouring his cheeks. ‘The night of the fire, we left the vineyard and travelled to cousins in Farberg. We haven’t been back long.’
‘You ran away from me?’ said Sera, blinking in disbelief.
He frowned, then offered weakly, ‘Only for a little while.’
She gave a mirthless snort, no longer regretting the trowel. ‘I should head back.’ She whistled for Pippin, who was sniffing about in the lavender, then grabbed her satchel from the shed, before turning to leave.
Lorenzo slid in front of her, his hands coming to her shoulders. ‘Wait.’
‘Don’t,’ she said, quietly.
He dropped his hands, but didn’t move out of her way. ‘You have to understand that all of this… this recklessness…’ He gestured to the burnt farmhouse, then the shed. ‘There was always a chance it would end badly. Sylvie knew it. Mama knew it too. The risks… If I had known then what I do now, I never would have let them go through with it.’ He sucked on a tooth. ‘It was only a matter of time before Gaspard Dufort got wind of it.’
Sera frowned, losing her footing in the conversation. ‘What are you talking about?’
He stared at her blankly. In the sheen of his cornflower-blue eyes, she saw the reflection of her own confusion. ‘Do you really not know what Sylvie was up to? I thought I was the only one out of the loop.’
Sera’s blood chilled. Even Pippin had stopped his inspections, attuned to the sudden shift in her mood.
Lorenzo stepped in close and for a heartbeat she thought he was going to snatch her necklace. She covered it with her fist but he hardly noticed. Lorenzo was only a few inches taller than her, but as he pressed her back against the side of the shed,he covered her with his shadow. His voice dropped like he was afraid the lavender was listening in. ‘The wine, Sera. You know what your mother was planning to do with the wine, don’t you?’
She glanced around. Suddenly, the garden felt too quiet. She grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him into the shed, rounding on him in the dimness. ‘What are you talking about?’ she hissed. ‘Stop dancing around it.’
‘The wine,’ he hissed back. ‘Sylvie poisoned the latest batch!’
Sera blinked, the words rushing over her like floodwater. No, she must have misheard him. He snatched up a label and waved it around – the gilded words glinting in the half-dark:Nectar of the Saints.‘Haven’t you heard about the monsters, Sera? Haven’t you been wondering where they come from? All those twisted vicious creatures made of Shade. The stories have reached us even out in the plains.’
Sera shook her head, a manic laugh building in her throat. ‘That’s absurd, Lorenzo.’ She used her foot to shove the crate back down into the crawl space. Pushing it away, just as fervently as she was pushing away his words. ‘I’veseena monster with my own eyes. It was made of more than just Shade. It wasn’t even human.’ She shuddered at the memory of it chasing her down. ‘It had no shape. No soul. Shade doesn’t do that.’ She tried to slam the trapdoor shut, but his foot shot out, stopping her.
‘Not on its own,’ he conceded. ‘But what if it was mixed with something else?’ He pulled the jar of berries from the crate. ‘You know better than I do how Shade is made.’
‘Of course I do,’ she said, eager to prove her greater knowledge of the subject. ‘You dry it out, then grind theroot into a fine dust, shake the light particles loose and mix in a pinch of salt to stabilize the dust. Bottle and stopper immediately.’ The words tumbled from her mouth in one breath, but her gaze never left the jar in Lorenzo’s hand. This thing that was so significant – or perhaps dangerous – that Mama had hidden it in the shed, somewhere Seraphine – and Pippin – couldn’t get at it.
She knew exactly what those berries were.
And then Lorenzo said it. ‘Do you know what happens when you mix in heartsbane instead of salt? When you combine the purest of nature’s poisons with the darkest of its magic?’ When Sera said nothing, he went on. ‘And then you decide to tip it into a cheap bottle of fruit wine?’
Sera slammed the trapdoor down, pulling the rug over it. ‘You’re making up fairy tales again. I forgot how you love to do that.’
He went on as if he hadn’t heard her. ‘It doesn’t just poison the body, Sera. It poisons the soul. Itchangesyou. It takes away the bridge between magic and mortality, until there’s no going back to who you were before.’ He set the jar down with a determined thud. A crack spiderwebbed across the glass. ‘That is how you make a monster, Sera. That is what your mother intended.’ His lips twisted. ‘And for some reckless reason, my mother got sucked into her deranged plan.’
‘You’re lying,’ fumed Sera.
‘IwishI was lying,’ he said, ruefully. ‘Mama only admitted it to me when we got back from Farberg and found the poisoned batch gone from our barn. The delivery wagon must have come while we were away and taken it into the city. Mama wassupposed to wait for the signal from Sylvie. She wasn’t ready yet.’ He raked his hands through his hair, and Sera watched fear flicker in his eyes. Fear for his mother, and fear of what their trip to Farberg had unwittingly set in motion. ‘Now it’s too late.’
