Page 21 of The Rebel and the Rose
Sera stilled, the echo of her own heartbeat thrumming in her ears.
‘Many are looking to him to lead them out of rebellion. Into a new age.’ Slowly, he turned to look at her.
‘Asaint,’ she repeated weakly. ‘How absurd.’
‘Is it?’ he said quietly.
No, came a whispering from behind the door inside her.
Yes, screamed the girl that guarded it.
‘The saints are dead, Theo.’
He looked at her for a long moment, curiosity and trepidation warring in his gaze. And there was something else there, too. A kind of hunger that made the turquoise of his eyes shine a little brighter. Then he said, in a whisper, ‘Haven’t you ever considered the possibility of a new age? Haven’t you wondered about the power inside you? What it trulymeans?’
Sera stared at him, waiting for that rogue dimple, a flash of teeth in the dark, but he was more serious now than she had ever seen him, carefully plucking at the thread of her own suspicions… her own fear.
No.
No.
She was the same Sera she’d always been. Wasn’t she?
Was she?
Theo went on, oblivious to the tornado spinning inside her. ‘When I was a young boy growing up in Halbracht, the elders here spoke of the Second Coming of the saints. A lasting antidote to the man-made darkness that has plagued Fantome for centuries. The darkness that began in our village… that grew from the ambitious minds of Hugo and Armand Versini.’ His lip curled over his ancestors’ names.
‘Before my grandmother died, sometimes she would sit outside and watch the clouds on restless nights. So certain that one day a storm would come, and that it would change everything. My father said it was because she ate the wild mushrooms down by the river, but my grandmother never seemed mad to me. Just… hopeful, in the way that hope can be maddening sometimes.’
‘I know that feeling,’ murmured Sera, thinking of her mother.
‘My grandmother believed in the last prophecy of Saint Oriel. The last words uttered by the Saint of Destiny on her deathbed. When she spoke of the Second Coming of the saints.’ He swept his silver hair back from his face, looking at the single golden nugget. ‘It’s only recently I’ve begun to wonder if it might be true.’
Sera looked at her hands, so small and pale in the moonlight.Could it be true?Was it madness to even consider the possibility? She shook her head vigorously. ‘I can’t be a saint, Theo. Whatever this is… it feels like a mistake.’
‘Maybe that’s because you’re afraid of it.’
She opened her mouth to argue, but the words died in her throat. Theo was right. Shewasafraid, and she couldn’t seem to break the spell of that fear, to trust the magic in her veins not to hurt her. Or the people she cared about. Because if shewasa saint, she was a broken one – her magic rebelling against her. Perhaps it had been meant for someone else, someone worthier.
‘Let’s keep trying to understand it,’ said Theo for the hundredth time. ‘We can have our sessions in the mornings before anyone else—’
‘We’vetried. Doing breathwork with you in knee-high grass isn’t going to get us anywhere.’
Not unless he could plunge his hand inside her and rip out her fear. Shake some bravery into that little girl who trembled before the door to her magic, and the secrets that glittered therein.
‘Something vital changed for you that night on the Aurore, Sera. Something vital changed for the whole bloody kingdom.’ He couldn’t keep the bite from his voice, the frustration from curling his fists. ‘You owe it to yourself and Valterre to figure it out. You owe it tous.’
Raking her hands through her hair to keep from shoving him, she swallowed back her retort. He was right and a part of her hated him for it. Failure was a boulder in her stomach, and the weight of it made her feel unbearably tired suddenly. Between the nightmares and the gnawing waking anxiety, Sera felt more at sea than ever.
Who could help her now?
Who would pull her back to shore?
Somewhere in the distance, a bird cackled, the sound just like a madwoman’s laugh. She jerked her chin up, an idea striking her like an arrow. Perhaps she didn’t have the answers. But she knew someone who might.
She turned to Theo. ‘Hear me out…’
‘Three dangerous words,’ he said warily.
