Page 73 of The Dagger and the Flame
So, Seraphine ran, and Ransom chased her. She nearly crashed head-first into the door, her hands trembling as sheunlocked it. It swung open and she launched herself into the night, her sun-bright hair flying out behind her as she took the marble steps two at a time. Ransom jumped the balustrade and landed at the bottom.
‘Seraphine!’ He skidded to a halt in the middle of the courtyard, shadows trailing in his wake. ‘Don’t make me drag you back to me!’
She spun around, wild-eyed and breathless. Beautiful.Fuck.Behind her, the statue of Saint Celiana spouted water into the air, the stream shimmering under the star-filled sky. Seraphine blew a strand of hair from her eyes, glaring at him with the heat of an inferno. ‘Don’t you dare.’
‘Tell me about the monsters,’ he said, daring a step towards her. ‘If you made them, then you must know how to stop them.’
She tensed. ‘I didn’t make them.’
He was surprised at the relief he felt at those words. How they confirmed his suspicion that she was better than the murky games that played out in the underworld, that she was no more a monster than a maker of them. That she was good, and Dufort was wrong. That he had been right not to kill her. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Then tell me about your magic.’
She hesitated, a frown knitting her brows like she was teetering on the precipice of confiding in him. Then the darkness behind her rippled. A shadow emerged, large and loping. Ransom couldn’t see through it, and that told him exactly what it was. The bead glowing at her throat confirmed his guess.
‘Seraphine,’ he said, in a low voice.
She opened her mouth, but it was already too late to warn her.
The monster charged.
‘MOVE!’ Adrenaline flooded Ransom, propelling him towards her. She gaped in frozen horror as he pulled a shadow from the fountain and leaped clean over her, colliding with the monster in mid-air. The creature roared as Ransom tackled it. They crashed to the ground together, but the monster was bigger, faster. It jumped to its feet and drove him back into the fountain.
Seraphine’s scream faded as they tumbled into the cold water. The monster came up for air and Ransom headbutted it, wincing at the thud of bone on bone. The creature fell backwards, dazed. Ransom leaped to his feet, claiming the higher ground, but the monster rose to its haunches, matching his height.
Ransom swung, finding its jaw, but even with Shade inside him he was no match for the hulking creature. It bared its fangs and lunged. Its gnarled hand found Ransom’s throat, shoving him down, down, down, into the water, where there was no sound, no breath. Coppers shifted beneath him as he lay on a bed of spent wishes, trying to kick his way back to the surface, but the monster was a dead weight on his chest.
Ransom swung, but his fist moved in slow motion. He bucked as the creature added another hand to his throat, squeezing until he felt his eyes bulge. The world darkened as the last drops of Shade left his body. His breath followed, rising in a stream of bubbles.
Ransom had the sudden, unnerving realization that he wasabout to die. After ten long years of clinging to life by his fingernails, of doing unthinkable things to survive, he had given it all up for the mark he was supposed to kill. For hair that shone like the sun rising over Everell, and eyes as bright as the sky he used to walk to school under. For a smart mouth and a brave heart. An unblemished soul. Like Anouk’s. For a spirit fighting tooth and nail to survive. Like Mama’s. And the secret of a magic that might have saved him too. The girl would live – and perhaps laugh – as he died. He might have laughed too if he had a morsel of breath left, but he was so cold now. So utterly, terribly cold.
And the world was fading away…
In the blackness of his mind, Ransom saw his little sister. Anouk beckoned for him to follow as she turned to run, the old walls of their house crumbling away to reveal a field of wildflowers. Mama was there, too, wearing her favourite blue linen dress, the black coils of her hair falling to her shoulders. She was picking blackberries, her hand outstretched, reaching for his.
Come, my darling, Bastian. We’ve been waiting for you.She smiled as she uttered his name, the one he had surrendered nearly ten years ago on the banks of the Verne. Now it floated between them like a spell, calling him home. Ransom was dimly aware that none of this was real, that the vision dwelled in some unreachable pocket between his heart and his soul, but he didn’t care.
He just wanted to go home. That’s all he had ever wanted.
And he was close now, so very close…
He reached for his mother’s hand, his olive skin smoothand unmarked once more… and the meadow erupted into fire. Ransom blinked, and when he opened his eyes, he was drowning again in Saint Celiana’s fountain. The weight on his chest was gone, and he was looking up at an angel wreathed in bright golden light.
For a fleeting moment, he thought Saint Celiana herself had come to rescue him from the precipice of death, but then a hand plunged into the water and curled inside his shirt. He was pulled from the stillness, up to starlight and air and the ragged sound of panic. ‘Wake up! Breathe!’
Ransom coughed as he emerged from the water, convulsing as he tried to expel the fluid from his lungs. He collapsed over the side of the fountain, straining to breathe. Straining to think. Something was wrong. Although the night was dark around him, there was sunlight in the fountain.
He turned, resting his cheek on the stone rim, and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. The monster that had nearly killed him had not fled. It was still here, stuck in the same fountain, only it wasn’t fighting now.
It was kneeling, head bowed, at the feet of Seraphine Marchant.
Chapter 27Seraphine
Sera didn’t even notice the monster until Ransom tackled it in mid-air. She thought he was charging at her, readying the final death blow, but then he leaped right over her head and for a baffling moment it seemed he had taken flight. Then he crashed to the ground behind her, dragging the monster with him. She had stood on the edge of it all, frozen in shock. For the second time that evening, the Dagger had saved her life.
Now he was scrapping in Saint Celiana’s fountain. Or perhapsdyingwas a more accurate term.
Sera could have left him there to drown, let him succumb to the fate he deserved. She could have turned and run from the fight, back to the Grand Versini to bolt the door and wait for the creature to lope away, sated by its kill, but somethingstopped her. Perhaps it was honour. Or guilt. Or some other more dangerous feeling she did not wish to confront.
But as she watched Ransom fight a creature three times his size, kicking and swinging even as he went down into the water, even as the monster climbed on top of him, its shadows writhing like tentacles, she was seized by a rush of empathy. She recognized that same impulse inside herself – the urge to keep swinging even as the world shoved you underwater and choked the hope from your lungs.
