Chapter 20 Seraphine

Chapter 20 Seraphine

As part of her nightly routine, Sera sat cross-legged on her bed, staring at the golden teardrop. Pippin sat beside her, wearing the same look of fierce concentration. What are you made of? And what am I to do with you?

The bead was dim tonight, hiding its power. Biding its time. Sera prodded it. Clamped it in her fist. Pressed it to her lips. Prayed to it. Threatened it. Threw it at the wall.

Still nothing.

‘Wake up,' she hissed. ‘Do something.'

She chewed on her frustration. She wished – saints , how she wished – she knew what this tiny bead was and why Mama had made it. What had she been working on all those late nights at her workbench when Sera was asleep, dreaming of far-flung adventures…?

A part of Sera was afraid to dwell on it. Afraid to think of Fig's distorted body and compare it to the monsters she had seen in the Hollows. She was afraid of her mother's secrets, the good and the bad…

Next time, we're going to talk about that antidote.

She turned the Dagger's words over in her mind for the hundredth time. What did he mean by that? What did he know ? And what the hell had possessed him to kill her mother but go to all that trouble to save her dog?

The bead warmed up, echoing the flicker of her frustration. She closed her eyes and held it against her heart. Sera knew Shade. She had known it all her life. The cold lick of that black dust beneath her fingers, the yawning hollow in every vial she used to bottle, as if the magic inside wanted to reach up through the stopper and take something vital from her.

But this teardrop was different. The magic inside it didn't feel cold or foreboding. It felt like a promise of hope, like a kiss from the saints. A shield against the rising dark.

It was a gift.

Sera wished she could go back to the day she had received it. She ached to return to the plains, to her mother and their quiet little life that had never seemed quite enough for either of them. Now it was all Sera wanted.

To return to the first snowfall of winter when they used to race their horses to the low forest and back, a cream bun for the winner. Always halved. To the spring when the daffodils bloomed in the garden, and they feasted on grapes and cheese until their bellies ached. To lazy summer evenings in Ploughman's Lake when they swam out on their backs to gaze at the stars, divining their futures in imaginary constellations. To autumn when the first leaves fell, amber and green and gold, and they made great piles of them to jump in.

All their wild and joyful living, Sera knew now, had unfurled under the dark shadow of Dufort's gaze. Yet she never felt it. And if Mama did, she never showed it. But this necklace… It said Mama knew something bad was coming. It said she was trying to prepare for it. Trying to protect Sera from it.

Maybe all that time Dufort was watching Mama, Mama was looking back at him.

Sera's cheeks prickled. ‘I could go back,' she whispered. ‘I should go back.'

Her farmhouse had been burned to cinders but she might find something in the ashes. A clue to this strange magic. A whisper of what she could do with it. The bead tingled against her fingers, a faint glow pulsing as if to say, Yes, there is more to know. More to do.

Sera returned it to her neck and went to extinguish the oil lamp on the wall. Something made her pause at the window. She turned, peering into the mouth of the Hollows.

She spotted him almost at once, that familiar pair of quicksilver eyes shining in the dark.

Her Dagger was pacing in the shadows just beyond the boundary of House Armand, as if he was hoping she would simply surrender her mistrust and stroll outside to meet him. Hand over her necklace and bare the column of her neck, let him rip her throat out and be done with it.

She raised her middle finger, hoping he could see it.

He stopped pacing, angling his head to one side.

She raised her other middle finger, for good measure. Then waved them back and forth.

His teeth gleamed in the dark. He raised his own hand, crooking his finger at her. She read the invitation in the slow taunt of his smile. Come here, Seraphine.

Like hell she would. Insufferable asshole.

She turned around and grabbed her book, refusing to be drawn into his obsessive little game. She started to read, eager to lose herself in someone else's adventure. It was no use. The Dagger was ruining her concentration, and clearly incapable of taking a hint. Every time she glanced up from her book, she saw that moon-bright gaze shining in the dark. She read the same page three times, and still had to go back over it.

Enough.

She grabbed her notebook from her dresser. It had been a gift from Bibi following their success at the apothecary, the cover engraved with an etching of Saint Oriel. She ripped out a page, grabbed her pen and wrote:

Get a hobby, stalker.

She folded the paper into a dart and opened her window, firing it with the skill she had honed back in the plains when she and Lorenzo used to exchange notes across the study room whenever their tutor was distracted. It glided over the garden path and across the hedge, disappearing into the shadows beyond.

She returned to her book, reading the same page for a fourth time. Three minutes went by, and embarrassment roared in her ears. What had she been thinking, trying to write to an actual assassin ? Making a pen pal out of Mama's murderer and expecting him to reply! How utterly, completely—

There was a soft rap at the window. Pippin barked. Sera leaped to her feet. The paper dart had returned to the windowsill. He must have placed it there with a shadow.

She snatched it up, scanning the words scrawled beneath hers in small, neat script.

You are my hobby, Seraphine. Do you want to come out and play?

Sera slammed the window shut with such force, it rattled in its frame. She pulled the curtains, then leaped away from them for good measure. She crumpled the note and flung it at the wall, her cheeks so hot, she felt like an ember.

Bad idea. Terrible plan. Foolish game.

She flopped back into bed, setting her book aside. She pulled the duvet up to her chin, staring blankly at the ceiling. Trying not to think of his beautiful cruel face, hear the purr of those words in his gravelly voice. Do you want to come out and play?

‘No,' she said, to the ceiling. And herself. ‘I don't want to play.'

The teardrop at her throat tingled, reacting to the flood of her adrenaline.

She scrunched her eyes shut, willing sleep to find her. When it did, she was back in that alleyway by the Aurore. Ransom was there too, pressing her against the wall with the hard planes of his body, his broad hands on her waist, her blood on his lips.