Chapter 35 Seraphine
The crossbow trembled in Nadia’s hands. She looked like hell. Strung out and exhausted, eyes bloodshot, sleek black hair thinning at the temples.
‘That weapon looks familiar,’ said Sera, evenly.
Nadia sneered, ‘Half your Order fled the rooftops and left their weapons behind.’
‘So you decided to shoot me with one?’
‘That’s the idea.’ She closed one eye to better her aim. Not that she needed to. They were less than eight feet apart.
‘Wait.’ Sera drew back, laying Tobias on the ground. He slumped over with a wet groan, and she stepped in front of him.
Nadia’s finger hovered on the trigger. ‘I’m supposed to kill both of you.’
‘He’s a child.’
‘I’m fourteen,’ he protested weakly.
She shot him a warning glance.
At least he was coming to. The wound between his shoulder blades was slowly knitting itself back together, but the blood loss had stolen most of his strength.
Nadia narrowed her eyes. ‘He looks like he’s dying already.’
‘So don’t waste your bolt.’
The Dagger hesitated. ‘You can make saints.’
Keeping her eye on the crossbow, Sera gave a slow nod. ‘You already know that.’
Nadia’s throat bobbed. ‘Can you unmake them?’
Sera blinked. ‘What?’
‘The saints you make. Can you turn them back?’ There was a note of desperation in her voice. ‘Can you make them how they were before?’
Sera might have assumed the Dagger was asking for Andreas’s sake, but Nadia didn’t care much for matters of peace, or for whoever ruled over this kingdom in the end. She never looked at the bigger picture. Her world – the only one she truly cared about – revolved, singularly, around one person.
‘You’re asking for Lark.’
‘It’s killing him. His magic.’ She lowered the crossbow, pointing her arrow at the cobbles between them. ‘He’s not himself any more.’
Sera frowned. ‘Does Lark want to go back to who he was?’
‘I want him to go back.’ Grief moved in her dark eyes. ‘You could help him. I know you could.’
Sera hesitated, all too aware of the precarious tightrope she was walking. ‘He’s not here, Nadia. He’s not the one pleading for redemption.’
Her shoulders dropped. ‘He doesn’t want it for himself. It’s like he doesn’t even remember what he used to be.’ There was a stretch of silence, broken by a flock of gulls coasting in from the harbour. Nadia frowned, the crossbow going limp in her hands.
Sera sensed her loyalty wavering.
‘There’s a place for you in the Order of Flames,’ she said, trying to snare it. ‘A place with us.’
Nadia chewed on her fingernail. Once filed and freshly painted, now they were all worried down to stubs.
Sera pressed on. ‘Even Mercure sees the sense in it. She and her Cloaks have allied themselves to our—’
‘I can’t just leave him,’ Nadia cut in.
‘If you leave, maybe he’ll follow. Didn’t you do the same for him back at the Summer Palace?’
More gulls filled the greying sky. Sera’s magic prickled, aware of another’s power in her midst. Tobias remained carefully still at her feet.
Nadia was a world away, reliving that night at the Summer Palace. ‘When I watched Lark raise those dead kings and queens from their graves, I nearly fled along with you. But I couldn’t walk away from him. Not after getting him back. It felt like a miracle… Now I wonder if it was a curse.’
‘Come with us, Nadia.’ Sera spoke urgently. They were too exposed out here, overlooked by a ring of rooftops and vulnerable without their weapons.
Shaking her head, Nadia took a measured step back. ‘I can’t come with you. He wouldn’t come… I just… I can’t.’ She let the crossbow fall. ‘But I won’t kill Oriel’s dove. I won’t stand against fate. Not for him. Not for anyone.’
It was no life to live as a puppet in Andreas’s court. To love a man with a rotting heart. But the Dagger had made her choice.
How could Sera save her if she wouldn’t save herself?
She turned back to help Tobias just as an arrow whizzed over her head.
It struck a drain between them and she jerked her chin up, frantically searching the rooftops.
By the time she spotted the lone figure on the roof of the rectory, they were already firing another arrow.
Nadia pounced, knocking Sera out of the way. They fell in a heap.
Tobias crawled out from under them, raising his hands to the sky. Gulls swarmed the square, flocking over the rooftops in a plague of grey feathers.
‘Move!’ he hissed. ‘We need to get to the cathedral.’
Sera scrabbled to her feet, reaching for Nadia’s hand. But the Dagger lay eerily still.
‘Nadia.’ She shook her shoulder. ‘We have to go.’
She saw the blood, then. It ran like syrup, staining the cobbles red. Tobias turned the Dagger over, finding the arrow sticking out of her side.
Sera bit off a curse.
Nadia whimpered and blood dribbled from the edge of her mouth.
‘She’s dying,’ whispered Tobias. ‘It’s in her lung.’
Another arrow flew, striking the streetlamp to their left. The gulls were thinning as Tobias’s strength waned. The cathedral, a hundred paces away, might as well have been in Urnica.
‘Help me get her to that bench.’ Sera marked an easier destination, less than twenty paces away.
Carrying Nadia between them, they made it to the bench, where they sheltered from another slew of arrows. There were more Daggers on the roof now. Soon, they’d be in the square.
Tobias removed the arrow and plugged the wound in Nadia’s side while Sera patted the Dagger down, hoping to find a vial of Shade in her pockets. There was nothing.
It occurred to her that they could simply leave Nadia here. Make for the cathedral and barricade the door, let the Dagger die on the streets she used to terrorize.
‘Can you help her?’ asked Tobias.
‘I don’t have any Lightfire.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
Nadia lurched, coughing up more blood.
Tobias stared at the red streaming through his fingers. ‘She just saved our lives.’
‘She was the one threatening them.’ But Sera’s thoughts turned to another memory. To Bellevue Castle, when she’d found herself alone in the lion’s den, and the vial of mistbane that had secured her freedom. Nadia had risked her life to help her. Couldn’t she do the same for her?
Should she?
Her magic purred in answer.
There is more to do, Maker.
There were a hundred reasons why Sera should walk away, but here in the Saints’ Quarter with her palms aglow with fate’s light, she couldn’t think of a single one.
Moving quickly now, she unbuttoned Nadia’s coat. To Tobias, she said, ‘Go to the cathedral. Tell Mercure. Once the ritual begins, we’ll both fall unconscious. Daggers will come for us when the last of the gulls scatter.’
With a dip of his chin, Tobias took off. He hobbled across the square like a dutiful soldier, his blood a bright red target on his back.
Sera set to work on Nadia, whispering a prayer to the Saint of Destiny. ‘Please, Oriel, guide my hand.’
Nadia’s eyelids fluttered.
Hurry, Maker.
Magic poured from her like a font, painting gold rivers under Nadia’s skin. It was the last thing Sera glimpsed before the world went dark. She dropped off to the patter of oncoming footsteps.
After that – sweet, blessed nothing.