Page 15 of The Rebel and the Rose
‘Fuck,’ he hissed, falling to his knees.
Fuck.
As the light cleared, he spied the broken vial on the floor, the label as small as his thumbnail. A single burning flame. He blinked up at Renard just as the bastard swung the brass poker. It smashed into the side of Ransom’s head. He sagged against the bedpost, barely dodging the next blow. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled backwards, hitting the windowsill.
‘Where did you get that Lightfire?’ he said, half slurring.
Renard paused, poker raised. ‘Bought it from a trusted trader yesterday morning. Cost a pretty penny. Though I’ve been assured the next batch will be cheaper.’
Seraphine. Ransom swallowed the name like a bitter pill as he slipped another vial of Shade from his pocket.Always bringa spare. He resented the waste, but he was not losing his mark tonight.
Renard reached for another vial. This one exploded in his pocket. He cursed, desperately swinging his poker.
Ransom ducked. By the time Renard swung again, the Shade was already working its way down Ransom’s gullet. Renard drew back, his hands trembling. All out of Lightfire, then.
Ransom pulled every shadow off the wall and smothered the screaming merchant, brass poker and all. He collapsed in a sea of blackness.
Rubbing the growing welt on his head, Ransom perched on the windowsill and counted to ten.
When he pulled the shadows off, the whites of Renard’s eyes were black, his mouth still open mid-scream. Ransom looked away, his stomach turning. Every kill – every mark – took him one step further from the freedom he had almost won all those months ago. From the one who had believed he was worth saving.
How wrong she had been about him.
‘Where is your precious People’s Saint now?’ he muttered, bending down to take Renard’s signet ring. A gift for the king. He pocketed it, then paused, taking a piece of the broken vial of Lightfire too. On the way home, he stuffed his hands into his coat pockets, idly running the pad of his thumb over that tiny golden flame.
So, Lightfire had finally made its way to the city. He wondered how long it would be until it flooded the streets, filling the cupboards and pockets of criminals and townsfolk alike? Until it suppressed Shade for ever.
A familiar bronze-flecked cerulean gaze flooded his mind, his thoughts turning to the music of her laugh and that smart, curving mouth. His spitfire was quicker than he thought… but for all her boldness, she was not yet winning. The Order of Daggers had never been busier. With the growing unrest caused by the monsters of Fantome, and the rise of the mysterious People’s Saint, enemies of the Crown were cropping up like cockroaches, and the king was keen to stomp them all out. Ransom was the boot, and the coin had never been better. It would take more than a few vials of Lightfire to topple the Daggers.
But Seraphine was clever enough to know that.
And strangely, he found himself welcoming her next move.
It gave him something to look forward to.
As he neared Old Haven, his thoughts returned to Renard, whose dying threat had sounded so eerily similar to the last words of Ravi Dyrren. Dyrren was a prisoner who had spent over a decade in the king’s dungeon, and a decade more on the king’s battlefield before that. War had turned him bitter, the lack of coin that came after a gruesome leg injury on the Urnica border igniting a desperation that made him dangerous to the Crown. Dangerous to the city. He was one of many former soldiers who nursed long-worn grudges against the king.
Dyrren had been in the Iron Keep, the oldest prison in Valterre, until two weeks ago, when out of the blue, the doors had been thrown open, the head guard freeing hundreds of prisoners and scattering seasoned mercenaries and deadly enemies of the Crown across the plains of Valterre.
He’d been hanged for it the next day, but by then it was too late.
Like Renard, Dyrren had gone down swinging, spittle foaming through the gaps of his missing teeth as his eyes turned black. And still he managed to hiss a parting shot that now haunted Ransom.
Where one of us falls, ten more will rise.
The Age of Kings is coming to an end.
The People’s Saint is rising,
And we will follow him into fire and death.
Well, Dyrren had been right about the death part. But had a brand-new saint truly come? Could such a magic be real? Or did they have a trickster on their hands?
The question nipped at his heels as he neared the catacombs. Already Ransom could feel his new shadow-mark taking root. It licked the skin of his lower left rib like a cold flame. A familiar hollowness yawned inside him, turning his steps sluggish.
The clouds over Old Haven were soft, the air balmy with the beginnings of spring. But there was a coldness here that had nothing to do with the seasons and everything to do with death: the nearness of it in the graveyards, the promise of it slumbering down in the catacombs.
Up ahead, the statue of Saint Lucille edged into view. Ransom stripped a shadow from a nearby lamp post and cast it around her neck. A sharp tug revealed the entrance to Hugo’s Passage, the doorway groaning as it opened.
