Chapter 48 Ransom
Ransom was alone on the roof when his sister found him. It had been hours since they’d burned Lark’s body in a field outside the Hollows and trekked home together in strained silence.
Back at House Armand, Nadia had gone straight to her room and Caruso had gone straight to Val.
Ransom had come to the roof to seethe. The Necromancer was dead, but the darkness inside Ransom was getting worse.
It ached, this yawning need to kill and kill and kill again. To lose himself to the dragon.
A shiver wracked him. The beast in him was sharpening its teeth. More and more, he fantasized about giving into it, letting it devour everything in its path.
‘Don’t you dare jump! I’m too full of rhubarb crumble to knit your bones back together.’ Ransom turned at the sound of his sister’s voice.
Anouk, who had climbed up the fire escape, approached him in a careful crouch, as if he were a wild animal. ‘Easy, brother.’
His brows lowered. ‘Don’t talk to me like I’m a rabid dog.’
‘What are you then? Flying that dragon over the city like a lunatic?’ With her mouth pursed into a frown, she reminded him of their mother.
Chiding but still soft. Mama had always been gentle with them as children.
Perhaps to make up for their father, a man who moved through the world like a thunderstorm.
A man like you.
He turned back to the Hollows. ‘I came up here to be alone.’
‘Is your ruinous mood about the Necromancer? I thought you’d be happy Lark’s finally dead.’
‘This isn’t about Lark.’
‘Is it about Caruso? Are you angry he’s a saint?’
‘No.’ He thought again of Lark’s threat. Andreas has thousands of Rose-bearers at his beck and call. A skyful of Strix… And don’t forget the soul-eater. ‘We need all the saints we can get.’
Except—
Except…
His lips twisted.
‘It’s hurting her, isn’t it?’ she said quietly. ‘Val’s worried too.’
‘Just leave it, Anouk.’
More shadows spilled, seeping over the edges of House Armand.
Kill, kill, kill.
Let the dragon out.
Anouk edged closer, looking down on the swelling crowd. More refuse flew, their chant changing to demon, demon, demon when they spotted her.
‘We’ll win them back. Once Andreas is dead and the Strix have been banished, they’ll return to their senses and see us for who we really are. We’ll show them.’
‘Maybe you will.’ Ransom chewed on the inside of his cheek. ‘In time you can rebuild this city, rebuild their trust… but I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
Because I am the dark they fear.
‘Ransom,’ she said, softly. ‘What’s going on?’
Night pooled at their feet. A midnight sky without stars, a bottomless well of fear, a black hole waiting to swallow him.
He said, ‘Seraphine is dying.’
The silence roared. The wind picked up, burying the baying crowd in a shroud of mist as if this terrible revelation demanded privacy and Saint Maurius had deigned to give it to them.
Ransom had known it for some time, the thought so terrifying, he’d buried it in the furthest reaches of his soul, smothered it with snakes and hounds and a mad devouring dragon.
Then he started to feel it, the subtle fraying of the thread that bound him to her.
Every saint, every gift. As that vine of thorns spread across her body, the bridge between their souls weakened.
Seraphine was leaving him.
It was the first time he’d ever uttered it aloud. It felt like he had gutted himself with a knife, wrenched the words out of his soul and hung them like bunting between them.
Anouk said in a small voice, ‘How do you know?’
‘Because she knows. She’s just afraid to tell me.’
Anouk was shaking her head. ‘Tell her to stop, then. We have enough saints.’
But there stirred another vicious truth. ‘For Andreas to be defeated, he must first be unmade.’
One more ritual.
One more thorn.
‘There must be another way.’
‘Fate is not that kind, Anouk.’ No, fate was not kind at all. He could see it now in painful vivid clarity. Oriel had not blessed Seraphine. The Saint of Destiny had blessed the city. Seraphine was merely her vessel. Her sacrifice.
Anouk wilted.
‘I don’t know what I’m supposed to be without her,’ he confessed. ‘The thought of it… it makes me feral.’
‘You’re not a monster, Bastian.’
Not yet.
But he was close.
Too close.
‘We’re meant to protect this city. We’re meant to save this kingdom.’
But why would I want to? hissed the bitterness inside him. What good is a new kingdom if she has to die for it?
Ransom turned from the edge before he did something he’d regret.
‘I’m losing my grip on myself, Anouk. The dark in me, it’s vicious.
Impetuous. Angry. More and more, I feel that way too.
Like I want to tear down the world just to keep it from hurting the people I love.
I don’t know how to change that. I don’t know if I can. ’
Anouk drifted with him, neatly sidestepping the stream of shadows that followed. ‘I understand. When I get into a temper, I get this itch to—’
‘Level a building?’
‘Sometimes.’ A sheepish smile. ‘But I know that’s not all I’m good for.
I’m a Saint of Clay. I can tear things down, but I can rebuild things too.
I didn’t know that at first. When I came to after the storm, everyone at the priory was terrified of me.
Mother Madeline called me an abomination.
But I knew the force inside me was good.
That there must be more to it – more to me – than just…
mindless destruction. All magic is a gift.
You just have to find the goodness in it. ’
‘She is the goodness in me, Anouk.’
‘Like hell she is.’ Their mother’s frown returned to her lips. ‘You can sulk and brood all you like, rail against Oriel and curse every single saint of old, but do not lie to me, brother. Do not lie to yourself.’
His own anger flared. Jaw twitching. Fingers curling. Shadows spilling.
Kill, kill, kill.
Darkness spilled over the roof, creeping towards that baying crowd.
Craft the dragon.
Set it loose.
‘Do you remember when we were little?’ Anouk’s voice pulled him back to her.
‘How we used to hide under your bed when Papa came home steaming drunk from the tavern? You made up fairy tales to try and distract me.’ Her smile was small, a secret shared between just the two of them.
‘You created worlds far kinder than our own.’
‘I remember.’
His shadows stilled.
‘You’d grab the oil lamp and a journal from your bedside table and sketch out all kinds of silly creatures until we were both snorting with laughter.’
Slowly, the darkness spooled, crawling back to his feet like a chastened dog.
‘You were always good at that, finding colour in the grey. Casting light in the dark.’
His heart was a boulder in his chest. ‘What’s your point?’
‘You’re an artist, Bastian. In your soul, that’s what you’ve always been. Your beasts … your dragon is … impressively terrifying.’ Her smile was crooked. ‘But what about hope? What about beauty?’
‘There’s no beauty in war, sister.’
There’s no beauty in me.
She reached for his hand. It was so small, so soft, inside his own. ‘We have known war all our lives, Bastian. It lived under our roof for many years. It wore our father’s face, echoed in our mother’s cries. You were the one who protected me from it.’
His shoulders slackened, the beast inside him quietening at her words.
‘And you did it with light. Not darkness. You did it with love.’
Silent tears striped his cheeks. He scrubbed them away, feeling unsteady as the last rays of sunset streamed over them. His shadows were gone. When did that happen?
She gripped him tighter, the sudden fierceness in her face making her seem older. ‘You might think the dark is all you’re good for. But I know there’s light in there too. No matter what happens next, don’t let your doubt devour what’s good in you.’
As her hand slipped from his, he was seized by a memory of Fontaine’s tarot card, of that little boy peering up at a skyful of stars. The Dreamer. Something flickered in his chest. A whisper of warmth, a candle flame burning in the hollow dark.
When he turned, Anouk was gone.
But her words lingered long after.