Chapter 47 Nadia
Lark was so cold. His skin was ice, the hard line of his jaw a blunted blade.
His eyes, the most beautiful green eyes, had lost their lustre.
Or perhaps it was the way he was looking at her that felt different.
For the first time since they’d met as kids at the gates of the catacombs, Nadia glimpsed revulsion in Lark’s gaze.
He knew what she had become and he hated it. Her magic wounded him, just as the nearness of his power raked claws down her soul.
The old voice hissed, Run.
‘Oriel has a cruel sense of humour,’ said Lark.
Nadia stepped back, taking her hands from his face.
‘Don’t,’ he said, lurching forward, shoving Caruso’s blade even deeper into his hand. ‘I want it still.’
Her touch. Her warmth.
Saints, her heart was bleeding, and Caruso and Ransom were watching it all. Lark’s executioners hovered just over her shoulder, waiting to finish the job.
She cupped his face. ‘Would you go back if you could? If there was a way to be unmade?’ Her voice was urgent.
Loud enough that Ransom and Caruso could hear her.
This wasn’t just a proposition for Lark.
‘Sera has to unmake the prince before she kills him. Otherwise, all Andreas’s compulsions will remain, even after his death. ’
‘You’ll never get that close,’ said Lark, curling his lip.
‘Andreas has thousands of Rose-bearers at his beck and call. A skyful of Strix.’ He smiled, fondly.
‘And don’t forget the soul-eater.’ His gaze slid over her shoulder, finding Ransom’s in the dark.
‘You can kill me, Hale, but you won’t kill the movement.
You don’t stand a chance against the Silver-tongue. ’
‘Stop,’ hissed Nadia. ‘I’m trying to help you.’
‘My love,’ he crooned. ‘I’m beyond help.’
‘Just listen to me,’ she pleaded. ‘Sera doesn’t know how to unmake a saint. She doesn’t know if she can. But you can help her.’ Her voice climbed, shrill with fear and grief. ‘You can go back, Lark. You can be just like you were before.’
Caruso clucked his tongue. ‘Nadia Raine, you manipulative little shrew.’
She shot him a look. ‘It’s a logical plan.’
‘Even if it is woefully transparent,’ said Ransom, flatly, ‘this isn’t about the good of the kingdom.’
She didn’t deny her true intentions. She was pitching for Lark’s life, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t merit in her method. Seraphine loved this city and Ransom loved her enough to consider it. He might have said yes, stowed his vengeance for another day, if Lark hadn’t ruined it all by laughing.
It was a wretched choking sound.
‘No,’ he said.
The word echoed.
Nadia frowned. ‘No?’
‘You’re on the losing side, darling. Don’t you see? If I help you, I’ll lose too.’ His smile was rueful. ‘And Hale will kill me anyway.’
‘Lark—’
‘Even a rat knows when he’s caught in a trap. The bridge has been burned to cinders. My card is marked.’
She hung her head.
Walk away, hissed the old voice.
Or better still – run.
He wasn’t going to help himself.
He wasn’t going to help her.
He wasn’t going to fight.
‘Your time is up,’ said Ransom.
Nadia raised her chin, meeting the emptiness in Lark’s eyes, and saw now what she had missed before. It was already too late. Lark’s magic had chewed through his mind. The glimmers of him that remained were fading too.
Death had claimed its Necromancer.
He was no longer hers to save.
Lark’s jaw tightened as he looked over her head. ‘Make it quick. For her.’
Ransom stepped forward, but Nadia refused to move aside. She held on to Lark, sliding her hands into his hair. Grief spilled, stirring the magic in her soul.
Power danced between them.
His chest barrelled with new breath, the grey of his face deepening to sun-warmed skin, and freckles.
His cheeks filled and then flushed. His eyes turned as green as the moss of Old Haven, and his hair sprouted into generous tufts of auburn curls.
His teeth, half rotted, turned white, and his dimples returned.
It was only an illusion – a kiss of magic – but, oh, what a kiss it was.
His hand, still skewered by Caruso’s blade, began to bleed.
‘Ah,’ he said, closing his eyes.
‘I can’t keep you like this,’ she whispered.
But she tried anyway. She poured out her magic, that endless font of bloom and life, into his withered body so that when death finally turned on him, it would meet him as Lark Delano, handsome and bright and vibrant with colour, and not as the Necromancer, grey and cruel and terrible, he had become.
She pressed her lips against his and tasted the warmth of before, when they would hold each other down in the catacombs, whispering of dreams that had come to nothing. Then she slid her dagger from her waistband and pressed it into his hand.
Without opening his eyes to meet the grief in hers, Lark drove it into his own heart.
His head dropped forward and she stepped back, watching his blood paint the cobbles between them. It lapped at Ransom’s boots.
His voice was as cold as his shadows. ‘I wanted to do it.’
‘No you didn’t,’ she said quietly.
That knife had been a kindness to all of them. To the kids they used to be.
The silence thickened. Even Caruso was quiet as he retrieved his sword.
Lark slumped to the floor. Kneeling in the pool of his blood, Nadia held his body until it turned cold, watching the last of the light leave his eyes, feeling the brush of his soul as it left his body.