Page 142 of The Rebel and the Rose
All three of them gone in ten heartbeats.
Sera’s knees buckled, but Lark only tightened his hold. Refusing to let her kneel by the body of her friend. Refusing to let her hold Bibi one last time, to whisper to herI’m sorry, and pray that somewhere in the heavens she could hear her.
When she raised her chin, Lisette was smirking at her.
In the space of one breath, Sera imagined ten different ways of killing her. ‘There goes the fate of the kingdom,’ she said, her voice cracking through her teeth. ‘I hope it was worth it.’
Lisette’s silver eyes were cruel and taunting. ‘It’s called survival, Seraphine. You never did get the hang of it, did you?’
With a pained grunt, Andreas dragged himself to his knees. His face was a gruesome patchwork of red and blackened skin, that once-sneering mouth now bloody and swollen. It was a beautiful sight, but Sera was too broken to enjoy it.
The prince’s rage pulsed like a heartbeat between them. As cold and deadly as the look in his eyes.
She let her own rage lash out, the taunt coming through her teeth. ‘What’s the matter, Andreas? Fate got your tongue?’
His fists curling at his sides, he shifted his gaze past her, managing to eke out a single garbled word. ‘Cull.’
It was not a compulsion but an order.
‘With pleasure,’ purred Lisette.
With ruthless efficiency, the Daggers went to work. Theshadows obeyed their silent commands, peeling off the walls and slipping from the second-floor balcony. They dripped from the chandeliers and crawled out from under the dais, reaching towards the oldest and most powerful families of Valterre.
On their knees on the floor, they could only watch in muted horror as death came for them.
Saints above.
Andreas hadn’t welcomed in the king’s guests to witness a changing of power. He had corralled them all here to kill them. And the cull was startingnow.
Lark gripped Sera in a vice as death filled the king’s ballroom. When the shadows struck, the first line of nobles fell in tandem, twenty bodies swallowed up in a black wave. Still compelled to her knees, Val met Sera’s eyes over the rising swell, the look of crushing defeat on her face saying what her lips could not.
So this is goodbye.
No.
No.
Screaming out, Sera twisted and thrashed, clawing uselessly at Lark. The angle was all wrong, the magic razing along her skin unable to touch him. To harm him.
More nobles fell. Ten bodies, then twenty more, strewn like gilded petals across the black-and-white tiles.
Sera couldn’t stop it. Not with all the magic in her blood.
‘HELP!’ she screamed, desperately. ‘SAINT ORIEL, HELP US!’
TheBOOM!came out of nowhere, so loud and close it shook the floor. The shadows faltered, the Daggers snapping theirchins up as a series of loudpops!rang out. Fireworks exploded across the ballroom, shattering the darkness, replacing death’s reaching shadows with a fanfare of searing golden light.
The scent of lemon blossoms filled the room, the air glimmering with the sparks of magic. Good magic. Familiar magic.
Lightfire.
The Daggers staggered backwards, the last of their shadows dissolving as the hail of Lightfire leeched the silver from their eyes. The walls trembled, sending oil lamps across the floor. More fireworks went off, arcing over them like shooting stars. The Lightfire shattered the binds of the prince’s compulsions, returning his victims’ free will.
Screams erupted throughout the ballroom as the surviving nobles scrabbled off their knees. They scattered in panic, the chaos so sudden and acute that Lark slackened his hold on Sera. Spinning on her heel, she punched him square in the jaw, making his head snap to the left. Shoving him off her, she threw herself at Val, both of them grabbing onto each other for dear life.
‘Are you all right?’ they said at the same time.
No, no. Not even close.
