Page 90 of The Rebel and the Rose
It’s no picnic for me either. Sera swallowed her retort.
Progress. They were making progress.
‘I know I’m the reason he’s dead. I’m never not aware of that.’
She couldn’t bring herself to apologize for it. All she had done was defend herself on top of the Aurore that night.
‘He tried to kill you that night,’ said Nadia, as if reading her thoughts. ‘We both did.’ Her slender brows hunched and for the first time since Sera had met the enigmatic Dagger, she looked ashamed. ‘Different sides. Different stakes. We thought it was the right thing.’
‘Why?’
‘Because that’s what we were told by Dufort.’ A mirthless smile. ‘In truth, we never really thought about right and wrong. That’s not how we were raised. Or trained. We just took our orders like soldiers, and spent the coin well.’
‘Well, at least you’re honest about it, I suppose.’
‘It’s easier to grieve Lark when I can blame you for his death,’ Nadia went on. ‘It means I don’t have to blame myself for egging him on that night. It means I don’t have to blame him for the life he chose. The risks he took. It means I don’t have to blame Saint Oriel.’
But wasn’t it always Saint Oriel in the end?
‘I get it,’ said Sera.
And more than that, she didn’t blame the Dagger for it. Sera was the villain in Nadia’s story, just as Lark was the villain in her own.
‘It was a game. The same one Lark and I played every night for nearly ten years. Kill or be killed. This time, you won.’ She gave a heavy shrug. ‘And Lark lost.’
It didn’t feel like absolution, or forgiveness. But Sera wasn’t seeking those things from her. ‘I wish it had all gone differently,’ she offered. That much, at least, was true.
‘So do I.’
Nadia kicked a stray pebble, watching it plink off a nearby headstone. ‘We were going to leave the Order together. We’d been saving up for a patch of farmland. We were going to keep chickens. Sell their eggs at the local market. He wanted cows and sheep too, but I told him I wasn’t made for shovelling shit. My clothes are too fine.’
Sera gave no argument. Even here, after days of travel with little rest, Nadia was unbearably chic, clad in a sleek black coat, narrow leather trousers and a lethal pair of boots.
‘I wish I had said yes to it all now.’ She shook her head, her voice turning rueful. ‘Maybe we would have left sooner. Maybe we’d be there right now. Shovelling shit. Free of our pain, atlast.’ She turned her hands, tracing the slender shadow-marks there. ‘I was always the realist. I struggled to see another life beyond the catacombs, but even as a boy, Lark was so sure we could remake ourselves. That we could be something else. Something better.’
Sera tried to hide her surprise. She had spent so much of her time with the Daggers thinking about Ransom’s desire for freedom, she never imagined the others might feel the same way. That there could be a different life outside the catacombs for Nadia, too. That she might covet it just as badly as he did.
Suddenly, her meeting with Andreas felt more vital than ever.
‘You can still strive for something else, Nadia. There’s so much waiting for you outside Old Haven. You could do anything.Beanything.’
Nadia looked away, trailing her fingers along a passing headstone. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet, and Sera got the feeling she was talking to herself as much as her. ‘Without Lark, what’s the point?’
There was such sadness in her now, it made Sera’s heart clench. ‘I used to feel the same way about Mama,’ she confessed. ‘After she died, I didn’t see the point in going on. It all felt so impossible. The world was so large and so bleak without her.’
Nadia glanced sidelong at her. ‘So what changed?’
‘I made friends. I considered the world, not for what it had taken away from me, but for what it might yet give me if I just hung on long enough. Freedom. Family. Purpose.’ She shrugged. ‘I suppose I found the point.’
Nadia hmm’d, digesting the words. She didn’t look convinced, but these things, big things – like grief and uncertainty – took time to overcome.
Nadia bent down to pull a weed from a nearby grave. When she stood up, she looked at Seraphine –reallylooked at her for the first time – without an ounce of hostility. The brown of her eyes glimmered in the afternoon sun. ‘Can I admit something that’s probably going to hurt your feelings?’
Sera shrugged. ‘Only if you promise to say sorry after.’
‘I wish that night in the storm that Saint Oriel had chosen Lark instead of you.’
Sera had braced for the words and found they didn’t hurt at all. They were human, and honest. In return, she offered her own truth, ‘Sometimes, I wish that, too.’
