Page 63 of The Dagger and the Flame
‘Move,’ she fumed. ‘Or I swear I’ll choke down that jar of heartsbane just to get the hell away from you.’
‘That’s not funny,’ he snapped.
‘At least we agree on something.’ She marched away from him, Pippin scurrying to keep up as she clenched her firsts, trying to shove down her grief, but it was becoming hard to see. She wiped her cheeks, scrubbing away the tears, but they kept coming.
‘Seraphine! Wait!’
She paused to look over her shoulder. ‘For what?’
Under the afternoon sun, Lorenzo’s hair shone burnished gold, his boyish face a heartbreaking portrait of regret. Despite his fevered protestations, he was standing still. Watching her leave. Just as he had watched Gaspard Dufort come for Mama. He had done nothing then. And he was doing nothing now.
‘To… talk?’ he said, weakly. ‘I miss you. I…’
‘I’m done talking.’ This time, when Sera turned away,she didn’t look back. The truth was, Lorenzo was a coward. And in this game of revenge – of strange magic and twisted monsters – there was no room for cowards.
When she reached the gate, she scooped Pippin into her arms. They turned for the hills, heading back towards Fantome.
‘It’s just you and me now, Pip,’ she said, pressing a kiss to his shaggy head.
He licked a tear from her cheek and she smiled, adjusting her satchel. It was heavier now. At least their trip home hadn’t been a complete waste of time. Sera hoped she had found a clue hidden in the floorboards. She intended to follow it, all the way back to the time of Lucille Versini if she had to. Because even in her despair, a glimmer of hope was flickering. She was going to find out if that faded word –Lightfire– meant what she thought it did: Magic.
Chapter 22Ransom
In the back garden of Seraphine Marchant’s burnt-out farmhouse, Ransom plucked a fig off a tree and ate it. Delicious. It was soft and sweet as honey, the syrupy liquid staining his lips. He licked them clean, then reached for another.
Seraphine was in the shed, with the boy whose head looked like a cabbage. Lorenzo. His shirt was too big and his trousers were too long. All wide eyes and bumbling apologies. He deserved that trowel to the face, though it had nearly revealed Ransom when he had to clap his hand over his mouth to trap his laughter.
After watching her cry for over an hour, kneeling on the burnt floor with her arms wrapped around herself, he almost cheered when that fire inside her sparked to life once more.When her grief hardened into anger and sent that trowel whistling through the air. Meant, of course, for him. He would have taken ten trowels to the face over another minute of those deep, gasping sobs.
Ransom had come all the way out here to confront Seraphine, but the sight of her bent double on the floor had done something unexpected to his chest. It had tightened it to the point of pain and he could not now bring himself to face her, to intrude on an aching loss that so closely mirrored his own.
So he resolved to stay and watch her instead. To see what clues she might dig up for him in the rubble of her old life.
Now she was arguing with cabbage-head. Good. It made a welcome shift of mood from the moment he had pushed her up against the shed and covered her body with his. If Ransom had taken Shade today, he would have leaped at golden Lorenzo like a panther and torn him off her.
Threatening Seraphine washisjob. This hapless farmboy had wandered into his territory. But without Shade, Ransom was a reasonable man. He had resolved to let the situation play out, to see if he might glean something from it. The spitfire had come back here for a reason, after all. He intended to find out what that was.
Her mutt glowered at him from the flowerbed. Ransom bit into his fig and tossed him the other half. The dog sniffed at the fruit suspiciously, then barked at him.
Ransom clucked his tongue. ‘And after I went to all that trouble to save your life.’
The argument in the shed ended. Seraphine stomped out ina rage, while cabbage-head shambled after her, pathetic as a lost puppy. The mutt went after her too.
While they continued sniping at each other in the front garden, Ransom crept behind the lavender bushes and slipped into the shed. He kicked the rug aside and rifled through the crate. Nothing of note. He frowned, unsure of what he was expecting to find down here anyway. Seraphine had already been through it, filling her satchel with whatever secrets Dufort had missed the first time.
He stood up and kicked the rug back into place. There was a cracked jar of berries on a nearby shelf. His eyes narrowed at the dark red juice smeared along the glass. Heartsbane. Ransom stilled, a part of him hurtling back to twelve years ago, when he had found a cluster of the same berries wrapped in cloth under one of Mama’s flowerpots. He thought they were jam currants left by a kind neighbour who had heard Mama screaming the night before. Only the juice was darker, the same red as the cut on her lip.
He could still remember how her hands trembled when he brought the berries to her, how her eyes had rounded with horror as she snatched them from him.Did you take any of these? Open your mouth, let me look inside.Later, he watched her bury them in the garden, her fingers scrabbling in the dirt as she kept one eye on the door, sure Papa would come swaggering home at any moment.We won’t tell a soul about this, darling boy. Especially not Papa.It was an easy thing to promise. Anouk was too young to understand, and Ransom never told Papa anything.
He wished his mother had found the courage to go throughwith her plan. To use those berries instead of burying them. But fear was a noose around her neck even then, and the risk of failure was too great. If Papa had found out, he would have killed her for it. He would have killed them all.
Ransom set the jar down, blinking himself back to the present moment. What business did Sylvie Marchant, a Shade smuggler, have with a poison such as this? His gaze roamed, falling on the half-crumpled label beside it. He picked it up, recognizing the outline of a five-leafed clover. But – no. It was not a clover at all. It was boneshade, the golden bloom obvious to him now.Nectar of the Saints.The same wine they served at the Lucky Shell.
Ransom brushed his thumb over the emblem, thinking again of Kipp. The man, then the monster. He looked from the berries to the wine label, and back again.
‘Who the hell are you?’
He jerked his chin up.
