Chapter 55 Seraphine
Every muscle in Sera’s body screamed. Weakened from her fall, she could only manage a breath. His name.
‘Ransom.’
He went to her, like he always did, shoving aside those tar-black feathers and running quick gentle hands along her face. ‘I’m here, spitfire. I’ve got you.’
Andreas’s mocking voice crowded her senses. An argument floated over her head and then Ransom was gone again, leaping at the prince like a maddened beast.
Theo came, crouching down. His armour was as silver as his hair, and his eyes – they were clear and as green as the South Sea. She recoiled from his touch.
‘Sera, hey, hey, it’s all right.’
Traitor.
Liar.
Soul-eater.
She screamed for Ransom.
‘Listen to me. I need you to listen to me.’ He bowed over her, eclipsing the light. ‘Andreas must be unmade. You have to unmake him.’
She frowned, trying to untangle her confusion.
‘Sera. Can you hear me?’
Hearing was not the problem. Theo was telling her what she already knew. He was talking fast and low, a familiar conspiratorial look on his face, like he was on her side. Like he had been on her side all along.
Understanding trickled in.
Theo had played his part well. He had bided his time in Bellevue, all for this moment. Unable to kill the Silver-tongue, he had brought Andreas to her instead, leading him over the bridge like a pig to slaughter.
He kept talking. ‘You need to do it now. Before Ransom loses his head and kills him.’
She crunched upwards, wincing. The pain was everywhere. Her ribs were fractured from the fall, her lungs seizing from the effort of sitting up. Her magic was too weak to mend her. She coughed, hacking up a mouthful of blood.
Before she could make it to her feet, a Strix crash-landed at the foot of the arch. The world exploded into feathers and dust. Ransom was thrown backwards, the sickening crunch of his body hitting the pillar reverberating through her bones.
His dragon disintegrated in the sky, and that thread in her chest frayed down to the quick.
In the clearing dust, Andreas appeared, shiny and gold in his blood-stained armour. His face was a patchwork of gruesome bruises, his jaw so swollen it rendered him almost unrecognizable. He was limping, dragging his sword tip along the cobbles.
‘That’s the last time I’ll ever trust a Versini,’ he slurred.
Theo picked up a sword and rolled to his feet. ‘Why don’t you try fighting one?’
Sera coughed again, spewing blood.
Pull out the thread.
Unmake the prince.
Andreas was injured. If Theo could distract him long enough…
If she could just get close enough…
Their swords met in a violent clash. Andreas shoved, forcing Theo to concede a step. He hissed through his teeth, ‘You gutless turncoat.’
‘I never turned,’ Theo shot back. ‘You were just too stupid to see it.’
Andreas roared, swinging again. Despite his injury, the Silver-tongue was fast on his feet and ruthless with his strikes. There was an anger in him that Sera hadn’t glimpsed before. Theo’s betrayal had unravelled his careful composure.
Theo held his own, weaving and dodging as he drew Andreas further into his web. Taunt by taunt, he led the seething Silver-tongue away from his army and towards the arch. Sera pulled up the hood of her cloak and crawled into a shadow as they disappeared under the arch.
The prince swung at Theo, knocking the sword from his grip. The Shadowsmith only smiled, and as Andreas released a roar of fury, Sera struck from the back, sinking her blade into the fleshy part between his shoulder and his neck.
Andreas howled as he fell to his knees, his agony twisting into a rallying cry. ‘Attack!’
Across the bridge and all along the northern hills, his army juddered into action.
Theo grabbed his sword from where it had fallen. ‘Hurry,’ he said, leaping over the prince’s body. ‘I’ll hold them off.’
It was madness. Impossible, reckless madness, but there wasn’t time to argue.
Sera cast the end of her cloak over the prince, dragging him into a dark corner. The dark bloomed to welcome them, while Theo stepped out into the light to guard her.
Ever since Oriel had reached down from the ether and changed the course of Sera’s destiny, she didn’t feel sure of anything.
Not her magic or her future. But right here, in the blood-stained dirt under Traveller’s Arch, with the Silver-tongue pinned underneath her, she was unerringly certain that only one of them was crawling out of here alive.
Pull out the thread.
As she fought to undo his breastplate, he reared up, smashing his forehead against hers. Blood poured from her nose and filled her mouth.
She slammed the heel of her palm into his nose. There was a satisfying crunch. His eyes rolled back in his head. Shoving his chest and pinning him to the dirt, she grabbed her knife and brought it to his neck. She pressed it down until blood beaded onto the blade.
‘Hold still,’ she growled through her teeth.
‘Why? So you can kill me in peace?’ he snarled.
She tugged roughly at his breastplate. The metal was slick beneath her hands, the smeared blood ruining her grip. She slipped forward, and her knife bit in.
The prince roared. ‘GET THIS BITCH OFF ME!’
The first line of Rose-bearers reached the arch, searching frantically for the prince. But the spill of her cloak hid them well. They skidded to a stop in bewilderment.
Sera tore off the prince’s breastplate just as he ripped off her cloak. Their shadow collapsed, revealing them in a sudden wash of sunlight.
Soldiers swarmed the arch.
Theo swung, beating them back.
Sera ripped the stained collar of Andreas’s undershirt and pressed her hand against his chest. His heart thundered madly under her palm.
His terror was so human, so close to her own that she might have felt sorry for him if he wasn’t such a tyrant.
All she had to do was think of Bibi and Fabian, to listen to the cries of a city on its knees, to remember why she had fought to come this far. Why she must go all the way to the end.
‘SERA!’ Theo was falling back. Still swinging but losing ground. ‘NOW!’
Magic roiled inside her. This time, instead of the rampant flow of her own power, she felt a strange juddering, heat gathering in the liminal space between her and the prince, as though it wasn’t quite sure what to do.
Pull out the thread, she whispered to the force inside her.
Break him.
Unmake him.
Take back what he stole.
Her body jerked. It felt for a moment as though an invisible fist was squeezing her insides. It tugged. The prince bowed upwards, arching towards her touch.
All around them, his soldiers stilled.
Theo heaved, steadying himself against a pillar. Sweat soaked his hair, mixing with the blood on his jaw. His armour was badly dented, his sword arm heavy at his side.
Sera’s hand on Andreas’s chest sizzled. He screamed, the scent of burning flesh filling the air. Agony suffused her, snatching the breath from her lungs. She gasped out.
‘It’s working,’ said Theo, who hovered just beyond her bubble of pain.
The heat was unbearable. She felt, rather than saw the hole burning in the prince’s chest, then the flood of his magic pouring out into the ether. The problem was, it was burning her too. Unmaking Andreas’s gift was taking every last drop of hers.
This is the cost, Maker.
Tears streamed down Sera’s cheeks. For the first time, she felt the bottom of the well inside her, the dregs of her power turning to wisps. It was the last of it.
Swords clattered to the ground as Andreas’s soldiers stirred from their compulsions.
‘Keep going,’ urged Theo.
Her soul buckled. Something vital was leaking from her, and it was more than blood. More than tears.
It was life.
Destiny.
Purpose.
The black vine crawled over her heart.
This is the cost, Maker.
It occurred to Sera that she should say something while she still had the energy to speak.
‘Theo,’ she whispered. ‘I’m …’ She felt cowed by the weight of everything she wanted to say. Of all the people who wouldn’t hear her goodbye.
And Ransom.
Bastian.
Her Bastian.
How could her soul simply wink out when he was the other half of it?
Sera’s skin grew hotter still, and yet the grief inside her was so very cold. The world above so very dark now…
‘Seraphine.’ There was a note of fear in Theo’s voice. A trepidation that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She lifted her head, finding him above her.
Horror flickered in his gaze. ‘Sera…’
‘It’s all right,’ she said.
‘You have to stop.’
‘It’s almost done.’
Andreas had stopped fighting. He flopped underneath her, a fish flung too far from the ocean of his power, his bright scales dimming.
Sera was dimming too.
‘You don’t look right,’ said Theo.
She closed her eyes.
Pull out the thread.
‘Sera, stop.’
She would outlast Andreas, if not by much. It would be enough. To shred his power, to unbind every one of his compulsions and free the kingdom.
It would be enough.
Theo was shouting now.
We are coming to the end, Maker.
It was getting hard to think. Hard to breathe. The pain in Sera’s chest was so deep it felt like the thorn there was etched into the surface of her heart—
There was a blinding snap.
An arrow struck her shoulder with such force that she was thrown sideways. Her magic stuttered as the connection broke, and Andreas bowed upwards, gasping new breath.
Blood poured from her shoulder as she wrenched the arrow free. All around her, Rose-bearers trembled where they stood, caught between the Silver-tongue’s weakening compulsion and their own rising will.
The arrow had not come from a soldier.
Theo cursed, spinning on his heel. He spotted the archer the same moment she did. An Urnican Stargrazer, crushed under the body of his own Strix, had used his dying breath to make use of the last two arrows in his quiver.
The first had gone through her shoulder.
The second—
‘THEO!’
Thwack.
An arrow struck him in the neck. Blood streamed as he fell to his knees.
In the distance, a wave of black shadows rolled over the hills.
Shade.
Death.
Sera’s scream split the world in two.