Page 106 of The Rebel and the Rose
They had been here once before. Now they were here again.
‘Run away with me, Bastian.’ The imploring look on her face said the rest, the enormity of the plea too heavy to voice.Leave your old life behind – the skulls and the catacombs, the marks and the guilt, and the pain of the past. Run away with me, and be the man you were always meant to be.
His reply came at once. ‘I’m already running, spitfire. Tell me where to go.’
Giddiness suffused her, a laugh pealing through her chest.
He tugged her against him, enfolding her in the warmth of his strong arms. ‘Marvale. Halbracht. The frozen tundra of Borea. Just name the destination.’
‘You’ll have to win Pippin over.’
‘I’ll bring treats.’ She heard the smile in his voice. ‘Whatever it takes. Wherever you choose.’
‘You,’ she whispered, as her lids drooped. ‘Wherever you are, is where I want to be.’
‘Then we’ll work out the rest.’ She heard the smile in his voice as she dropped off. ‘So long as we’re together.’
Chapter 27Ransom
Ransom couldn’t remember the last time he’d watched someone sleep. Not since he was a boy, standing guard over his younger sister Anouk on the nights his father came home steaming drunk, smashing up everything – and everyone – in sight. As a Dagger, he always slept alone. Deep and fitfully, his head full of monsters, as if some primal part of him was still rebelling against what he had become.
In the waning moonlight, he watched over Seraphine. Years had passed since he’d felt contentment like this. Like everything he cared for was still within his grasp. Like, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t too late to have it. As he slipped off the skull ring he had inherited from Dufort and placed it on his nightstand, along with his book of nightmares, he wasn’t thinking about before, or what was yet to come, only thewarmth of Seraphine’s body curled inside his, and the slow thud of his own settled heartbeat. It lulled him to sleep – this creeping sense of possibility – and when the darkness found him, for the first time in forever, he didn’t dream at all.
He woke to the sound of weeping. Dawn was sweeping across the sky, misting the clouds pink. Seraphine was sleeping on her back beside him, an arm slung over her eyes to block out the encroaching light. Following the unsettling sound, Ransom slipped out of bed and went to the window. There was a woman crying on the street below. Barefooted and bent double on the kerb, she held her head in her hands like she was afraid it might shatter. Further on, by the shoemaker’s, a man in a top hat was slumped on his side, the street around him painted with vomit.
In the dawning light, the cobbles were stained and strewn with fallen rose petals. The garlands above were withering. The music had stopped some time in the night, replaced now by the distant cawing of a crow.
Up on the hills, the red mills were still turning, but all the laughter had died away.
Gone was the night magic of Marvale.
Here was its true face. The starkness of it made Ransom’s stomach churn.
You’re being paranoid, he told himself.Looking for cracks already.
Can’t you ever just be happy?
He crossed to the bathroom to examine himself in the mirror. The planes of his chest were still smooth. His arms and hands too, the whorls there washed away in the tide of theirpleasure. Much of the heaviness inside him had lifted, so why, then, did he feel so on edge?
Seraphine had scoured his soul clean, taken the deepest pain from his body and scattered it to the wind. She’d reached beyond the Dagger to find the man beneath it. His spitfire. Flame or saint, he didn’t give a rat’s ass. He’d spent his entire adolescence worshipping at the altar of Saint Calvin. Now he had someone else – someone true – to love. To protect.
It was that vital, keening instinct, and not the creeping mist of his own pessimism that sent him back to the window. The hairs on the back of his neck rose when he saw the streets were empty now, the people there wiped away as if he had imagined them.
The vomit remained.
Something wasn’t right.
Leaving Seraphine to sleep, Ransom got dressed and slipped out of his bedroom. He went first to Nadia’s room and then to Caruso’s, but there was no sign of either of them. That grumble of suspicion quickly rising to a roar, he took the stairs two at a time.
Down in the lounge, he came across Caruso. Still dressed in last night’s outfit, he was wide awake and sitting on one of the couches. Val was curled up against him in her gown, her head resting on his shoulder. She was snoring.
Ransom frowned. ‘Well, this is odd.’
‘Keep your voice down.’ Caruso was stiff as a statue, either from the sheer discomfort of actual human touch, or in an attempt not to disturb her slumber.
‘What’s going on here?’
‘Too much drinking and dancing. Val took against the stairs when we got in. Insisted she had to sit down first.’
