Page 91 of The Dagger and the Flame
Saints, she was infuriating.
Ransom raked his hair away from his face. ‘Let’s just… take a breath.’
‘Fine by me.’
She tipped her head back. Her gaze fell on the tapestry over his shoulder, and he watched that tell-tale curiosity flare in her eyes. ‘That must be Halbracht.’
‘So I gather,’ he said, still looking at her.
‘Have you ever been?’
‘To Halbracht? Of course not.’
‘Is that such an odd question?’ she said, letting her gaze fall to his. ‘Your beloved leader Hugo grew up there.’
‘I don’t give a shit where Hugo Versini grew up.’
She quirked an eyebrow, a smirk dancing along her lips. Irritating. Beautiful. He truly was in hell. ‘Careful what you say in these tombs, Dagger.’
‘Careful what you ask, spitfire.’
‘The time for being careful is long past.’ Her eyes fell on the golden plaque. Her shoulders sagged and for a moment, there was such sadness in her gaze, he couldn’t stand to look at her.
So he said the first thing he could think of. ‘Halbracht is a notoriously secretive place. You can’t just stroll up to the Pinetops and knock on the gates.’ She looked up, distracted. ‘It’s heavily guarded.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Maybe they’re hiding something.’
‘Everyone’s hiding something,’ she murmured.
Those three words raised the hairs on the back of his neck. ‘What does that mean?’
‘It means I want my journal. Let’s just get this done,’ she said, pushing against the coffin lid. This time, they didn’t stop straining against the granite, both of them sweating and panting as the skeleton of Lucille Versini appeared between them inch by inch. She was little more than a collection of old bones, a small skull surrounded by white silk. Her bejewelled necklace remained, and Hugo had buried her in a tiara that still glittered under the lamplight.
But her greatest treasure was that journal. Now yellowed and crisp, it lay on her chest. Even in death, she was clutching it like a teddy bear.
Ransom looked up, wondering why Seraphine hadn’t yet snatched it, but she was standing with her back against the wall now, and there were silent tears streaming down her cheeks. He went rigid, trying to work out what he had missed in the last thirty seconds of their excavation. ‘Are you hurt?’ he said, looking her up and down. ‘If it was too heavy, you should have—’
‘It’s not that.’ She shook her head, trying to swallow the crack in her voice. ‘It’s just… she’s real.’ She scrubbed her cheeks, looking everywhere but at him. She was embarrassed, he realized. ‘She’s a skeleton.’
‘Were you expecting her to sit up and shake your hand?’ he said, striving for lightness, but it only worsened the discomfort on her face. ‘Lucille has been dead for hundreds of years. Wherever her soul is, it’s in a better place than this.’
‘She was always a story to me. An untouchable… A legend.’ Her voice was small, frightened. ‘I just wasn’t expecting this…feeling.’
He cocked his head, searching her face for the foolish bravado that had propelled her into the heart of Hugo’s Passage to begin with, but there was no sign of it. It belatedly occurred to him that while Seraphine Marchant might have grown up in the house of a smuggler and had handled her fair share of Shade, she was not used to dead bodies.
Perhaps a part of her looked down at Lucille and saw herself. Someone young and clever and beautiful, with the world at her feet. Lightfire at her fingertips. Both of them hunted by the Head of the Order of Daggers. One dead, and one still just clinging to life. He saw that fear – knew it as intimately as his own. And he wanted to take it from her. To shoulder it, until she could breathe again.
‘It wasn’t right, what Hugo did to her. He was a terrible man.’
She looked up at him, eyes wide. ‘Do you really believe that?’
He nodded without even thinking about it. ‘I’ve always believed that.’
She frowned. ‘That doesn’t make sense. You don’t make any sense.’
Ransom smiled, ruefully. ‘Do you want the journal or not?’
