Chapter 58 Seraphine
Sera crawled to Theo. He was alive but barely. She pressed her hand against the wound in his neck, staunching the blood, willing his magic to knit him back together.
‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘It’s all right.’
He was shaking his head, his teeth chattering too violently to speak.
In the sea green of his eyes, Sera saw light reflected. Warmth danced along the back of her neck, blanching the shadows over Traveller’s Arch. A gold shape moved across the sky. And there, right above them, she swore she glimpsed the shape of wings.
Not of shadow but light.
‘Look, Theo,’ she said, her voice cracking. ‘The shadows are breaking apart.’
He didn’t look. Perhaps he couldn’t see.
‘There’s light, Theo. The light is coming.’
Return to the prince, screamed the old voice.
Pull out the thread.
She shoved it away. ‘We just have to plug the wound until you heal. Your magic will help.’ Why did she sound so hysterical? Why were her cheeks so wet? ‘Just hang on. I’ve got you. I’m with you.’
Faintly, she was aware that Andreas was crawling away from her. That his magic remained within him. Frayed but not yet broken.
And yet…
She couldn’t bear to tear her hand from Theo’s. If she removed the pressure from his wound, he would bleed out. If she stayed… if she just stayed a minute more, his blood would heal him.
He would live.
One of us has to live.
‘You’re going to be all right, Theo.’
His blood was clotting, turning tar-like. But he was pushing her away, panic flaring in his eyes.
Go, he was telling her.
Go after him. Before it’s too late.
The arch began to tremble.
Dust rose like smoke, turning the air grey. A figure stood just beyond the gathering haze. Anouk had come. There were others too, climbing over the dead Strix. Lost to the haze of her power, the Stone Maiden seemed not to notice Sera. Her gaze was fixed on the retreating prince.
Her eyes burned gold.
‘ANOUK, NO!’ Sera’s cry was lost to a thundering roar as Traveller’s Arch cleaved in two.
‘We have to move,’ said Sera urgently.
Theo’s head lolled. ‘Go,’ he said feebly.
She fixed his arms around her neck and stood on trembling legs. She wasn’t faring much better, but she had strength enough to drag him five feet. Then five more.
All the while, rubble rained down. Pillars groaned as they caved, the ground shuddering with each new impact. The dust thickened, blanketing them in a swirling silver fog.
Sera pushed on, clearing the arch and making it to the cobbles beyond.
Tobias came through the mist. Sera entrusted Theo to his cousin, then turned back to the crumbling arch as Anouk smashed the final pillar into smithereens.
Rock pounded divots in the cobbles as the Stone Maiden buried the unmade prince with his magic still inside him.
Sera squinted through the dust, searching for signs of Andreas. Praying that he was still clinging to life by his fingernails.
Please, Oriel.
It can’t end like this.
There. A flash of gold between the rocks. The prince’s breastplate. And underneath a blood-streaked face peering out at the destruction.
Andreas was alive.
Sera had wrenched the breastplate off the prince and Andreas had used it as a shield from the falling rocks.
Ignoring the tug of her own exhaustion, she picked her way through the rubble. When her legs gave out, she crawled to him on bleeding palms.
Andreas had survived the falling arch but not the dead weight of its carcass. He was buried up to his waist. Sera flung aside the breastplate, fisting the prince’s collar with one hand and pressing the other against his chest, where the skin was red and bubbling.
‘Where we were?’ she ground out.
‘Dying,’ he spat. ‘Is it really worth it, Saint-maker?’
Sneaking one last glance at that glorious light-filled dragon, Sera shoved aside her grief and gave in, at last, to the pull of destiny.
‘I guess we’ll find out.’
‘You won’t.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘But it’s not about me.’
And that was the simple truth.
This was not about her. It was not about any of them. She had played her part, but a cost was owed. She felt the sting of it above her heart.
It was the end for both of them.
And, she hoped, a new beginning for Valterre.
‘So the dove has flown all this way just to die,’ sneered the prince. ‘What will your precious kingdom do without you?’
Sera leaned close until he could see the gold of her eyes and the promise therein. ‘We don’t need a dove, Andreas. We have a dragon made of light.’
Andreas looked up just in time to see the beast circle them. His eyes widened and for a fleeting moment Sera swore there was wonder there.
He blinked and it was gone.
She closed her eyes and summoned her magic.
The well of Andreas’s power had almost run dry. She could see it in her mind’s eye, the final gold ripple in the dark pool of his soul. It only took a breath to dissolve it.
The thorn that followed plunged deep into her heart.
Sera swallowed her scream.
Andreas did no such thing. As his magic was ripped from the tapestry of fate, he howled and howled and howled. The sound of his agony was so loud it drowned out the rush of soldiers returning to their own minds and the shouts of Seraphine’s friends across the rubble.
Soon, the clamour was replaced by the slowing drumbeat of her own heart.
This is it, Maker.
We have come to the end.
Darkness crept in.
As a terrible coldness spread through her body, Sera was struck by sorrowful mourning.
All her life, death had nipped at her heels.
It had sat in black vials in her garden shed, taken her mother from her at eighteen, then her father in the dark of the catacombs, and Bibi, poor innocent Bibi.
Sera had spent so much of her life running from death, she’d forgotten to live.
Now there would be no life. No love. No future.
The cliff edge she’d walked on for eighteen years was finally crumbling beneath her.
Don’t give up, whispered a small familiar voice. Not her magic now but the child who cowered in the soft corner of her soul. The girl she used to be. Afraid of the world, afraid of her place within it.
Fight back, she begged.
You’re not done.
We’re not done.
Andreas went first. With a cry that splintered into nothing, his eyes glazed and the last flicker of gold there winked out. He surrendered to his wounds, his head falling back on the rocks, where he stared, unseeing, at the sky.
The Silver-tongue was dead.
His magic unmade.
The War of the Saints was over.
Sera took a shallow breath. She was so very cold now. She couldn’t feel her feet or the jutting rocks under her, cutting into her skin. Her mind began to drift, the world fading to a faraway voice. It was as gentle as a parting kiss.
Rest now.
There was a strange relief in it, that final thorn pricking a terrible pressure inside her, as though she was letting out a breath she’d been holding all her life.
The world went dark and soft and quiet. There was a kindness to the silence, to the way the edges of her thoughts began to blur. She was too tired to feel sad, too spent for last goodbyes.
Sera was almost gone when she felt it. Not the prick of a thorn but the pull of something else – something ancient and vital and true.
Seraphine.
Her name was a howl on the wind. The thread inside her strained. Ransom was here, calling her back to him, tugging on the last of her senses – the string that bound them.
And, saints, how badly she wanted to go to him. To hold his face in her hands and kiss his lips one last time, to sit in the autumnal light of his gaze and tell him she loved him. She loved him. She loved him. With her weak and fluttering heart. With her last dying breath.
‘Seraphine!’ He was closer now, rock and shale sliding under his feet. ‘I’m here!’
‘Seraphine.’
‘Seraphine.’
‘Please.’
Please, Oriel, she whispered.
It’s too late, Maker.
Too late to undo what she had done.
Too late to outrun the cost.
Too late.
Too late.
Too late.