Chapter 21 Seraphine

Chapter 21 Seraphine

As the morning mist clung to the rain-spattered rooftops of the Hollows, smearing the greying dawn light, Seraphine grabbed her satchel and her dog and set off for the plains, Dagger be damned. He had to sleep some time.

She went by foot into the heart of the city before heading north, to where a towering stone arch marked the border between civilization and wilderness. There, she managed to hitch a ride on a passing milk wagon returning from the city. Soon, the plains unfurled before her, the sky rendered in lavish strokes of amber and pink, the yawning sun stretching its golden fingers over the horizon, beckoning her home.

When the farmer dropped her off a couple of hours later at a familiar fork in the road, Sera offered him three coppers and thanked him for the ride. The wagon trundled on, and so did she, letting Pippin lead her towards their little farmhouse which had, for many years, squatted amidst a patchwork of cornfields and vineyards, overlooked by rolling green hills that belonged to wandering sheep and bleating goats.

Sera knew it was gone. Burned to ash and embers. And yet, a small, wistful part of her hoped it might appear once they rounded the hill, her heart gladdening at the sight of its modest white frame and bright yellow door, the wooden porch-swing creaking in the wind. But when she cleared the hill, her heart sank. The blackened shell of her house marred the picturesque landscape behind it. The thatched roof was destroyed, the beams straining against the mild breeze.

Pippin stopped, sniffing at the air like he could smell the wrongness of what had happened here. She picked him up, holding him against her chest to soothe the ache in her heart as she drifted up the garden path.

Mama's body was long gone, burned to ash and swept away in the wind. All that remained was the burn mark in the wood, a reminder of where she had died with her hand flung out towards the garden as if, even in death, she was warning Sera to run.

Run little firefly, and never look back.

Sera sank to the floor beside that awful black mark, dropped her head into her hands and wept. Hours passed without her noticing. She wept until her tears ran out and her throat ached, until her eyes stung and her chest loosened. She wept until the little bead at her throat pulsed, its quiet warmth kissing the space above her heart until Sera remembered why she had come here. Until she remembered that she must go on.

She stood up and began carefully picking through the detritus of her former life. Everything was destroyed: their furniture and food, their clothes and books, even Pippin's chew bones. The fire had demolished Sera's favourite fairy-tale books and maps of the world as well as Mama's most treasured tomes on alchemy and artifice, greedily devoured the towering stack of encyclopaedias she had spent decades collecting.

Sera gripped the straps of her satchel as she followed Pippin into the back garden, where a handful of lavender bushes had survived the fire. Pip relieved himself in one. She turned away, and noted with some surprise that their garden shed was still standing.

She kicked the door until it yielded. Pippin scurried inside and she followed, leaving the door ajar. There wasn't much in here except for Mama's old tools: two shovels, a rake, a couple of trowels and a stack of baskets they had used to collect grapes in the vineyard. The rest was in the Vergas' barn a half-mile away. Save for a couple of misshapen wine bottles and crooked labels that bore the name of Mama and Maria's wine, Nectar of the Saints, there was little else to look at. Certainly no Shade. Though Sera doubted any of Mama's vials would have survived the fire. The Daggers weren't foolish enough to burn the house and leave the magic behind.

And anyway, Sera hadn't come back here for Shade. She frowned. What had she come for? Answers. A sign from Mama. A pathway out of the ruination around her, and a reason to walk it.

A flicker drew her eye to the teardrop glowing at her throat. Theo had forged her a better chain for it two nights ago, after inspecting it at length to no avail. It was double-clasped and made from true gold. Near-impossible to break. She smiled now at the gesture, relieved to have shared her secret with someone she could trust, even if it mystified him.

Pippin pawed at the threadbare rug, until a corner of it came away. Sera sank into a crouch. There was a crack in the floorboards, just wide enough to slide her thumb into. She did so, pulling until three of them gave away at once. A trapdoor.

She glanced up at Pippin. ‘Clever mutt.'

The door hid a small crawlspace, just wide enough to fit a crate. Sera pulled it up, surprised to find it stuffed with five leafy heads. Boneshade. She might have mistaken them for cabbages had it not been for the golden glint of the bloom. The roots were gone, long ago ground into Shade, but strangely, the leaves were still perfectly intact, and glowing faintly in the half-light. Why had Mama kept them down here? How had they survived so long?

A better question: why had Mama hidden them in a place that not even Sera knew about? The bloom of the boneshade plant was always discarded. It wasn't remotely valuable.

Sera's frown deepened. It must have been valuable to Mama.

She stuffed the blooms into her satchel, then rifled through a set of jars until she came to the one Pippin was growling at. It was chock full of round berries. Pippin barked when she tried to open the lid so she set it aside, obeying the instinct that told her not to open it.

She continued her excavation, still unsure of what she was looking for. She had the uncanny sense that she was peering into a secret pocket of Mama's life and she couldn't help hoping there might be something in here that was meant for her. A note, perhaps. Or an explanation for the magic she wore around her neck. A map of the world without Mama.

No such luck.

Nothing here meant anything to Sera. At the bottom of the crate, wedged between two slats, she found a narrow book that looked almost like a pamphlet. It was so old and well thumbed, the binding had come apart. Now it was more of a scattering of yellowed pages and faded ink. Sera had to squint to make out the title.

The Lost Days of Lucille Versini, Saint and Scholar

The book was ancient. At least two hundred years old judging by the print and size. Sera turned it over, examining it. Mama had often spoken of Lucille Versini, not as the saint she had become after her untimely death but as the scholar she had been – however briefly – in life. The youngest person to ever study at the Appoline, and to spearhead her own research. Sometimes, Sera got the sense that Mama was jealous of the young Versini girl, not for her fame but for the opportunity she had been given – to go to a place where knowledge was treasured, and innovation was celebrated.

Lucille's story had always struck Seraphine as unbearably tragic. She had barely scratched the surface of her own potential when her life had been cut short, her research extinguished as easily as blowing out a candle. What did Mama have to be jealous of?

She flicked through the pamphlet, intrigued by the pencil marks inside. Entire passages had been circled and underlined, sometimes two or three times. Most of the ink was too faded for words to be discerned, but her gaze snagged on one word – Lightfire.

The back of her neck began to prickle.

She heard a crunch. A sound she had heard a thousand times before. Someone was moving – no, skulking – through the flowerbed.

Ransom was here.

Sera slipped the tattered pages of Lucille Versini's life into her satchel with one hand, and, as she stood up, reached for a trowel with the other. Another crunch, closer now. She leaped outside and hurled the trowel.

There was a clunk , then a strangled shout. ‘Agh! What the hell, Sera?'

She blinked the figure into focus. He was bent double, with one hand clasped over his eye and the other braced on his knee. She flinched as she noticed the generous crop of golden curls, his fraying blue plaid shirt, those long suntanned arms. They had wrapped around her more times than she cared to count.

She flung her hands up. ‘I'm sorry, Lorenzo! I thought—Never mind. Are you all right?'

Lorenzo straightened. ‘I figured you might be angry with me,' he said, dropping his hand to reveal an angry welt above his left eye. ‘But I wasn't expecting assault.'

‘It was an accident.'

He pressed his lips together. Full lips that tasted like sunlight and cider. ‘There was nothing accidental about that aim.'

She swallowed. ‘Pip—'

‘Don't blame the dog. You always blame the dog.'

Lorenzo knew her too well. ‘I wouldn't have thrown that trowel if you weren't sneaking up on me,' she snapped.

‘I wasn't sneaking up on you,' he said, rising to the argument, like he always did. Lorenzo Verga was as fiery as the sun. ‘Since when are you so jumpy?'

She folded her arms. ‘Take a guess.'

Now it was his turn to flinch. His face fell, the fight seeping out of him. ‘Sorry. I shouldn't have said that.' He passed a hand over the fair stubble on his jaw. ‘It's good to see you, Sera. I've been so worried. By the time I saw those flames…'

‘Mama was dead.'

‘And you were long gone.' He dug his hands in his pockets. ‘I'd hoped you'd made it to the city, found a place at House Armand like Sylvie wanted.'

She swallowed thickly, stung by a sense of betrayal. So he remembered what she had confided in him about Mama's fear, her warnings. He had known – or at least guessed – where she'd been all this time. ‘And it didn't occur to you to come looking for me?'

A beat of hesitation. ‘Mama said it was too dangerous to try and find you. You might have been marked too.' He looked at his boots, shame colouring his cheeks. ‘The night of the fire, we left the vineyard and travelled to cousins in Farberg. We haven't been back long.'

‘You ran away from me?' said Sera, blinking in disbelief.

He frowned, then offered weakly, ‘Only for a little while.'

She gave a mirthless snort, no longer regretting the trowel. ‘I should head back.' She whistled for Pippin, who was sniffing about in the lavender, then grabbed her satchel from the shed, before turning to leave.

Lorenzo slid in front of her, his hands coming to her shoulders. ‘Wait.'

‘Don't,' she said, quietly.

He dropped his hands, but didn't move out of her way. ‘You have to understand that all of this… this recklessness…' He gestured to the burnt farmhouse, then the shed. ‘There was always a chance it would end badly. Sylvie knew it. Mama knew it too. The risks… If I had known then what I do now, I never would have let them go through with it.' He sucked on a tooth. ‘It was only a matter of time before Gaspard Dufort got wind of it.'

Sera frowned, losing her footing in the conversation. ‘What are you talking about?'

He stared at her blankly. In the sheen of his cornflower-blue eyes, she saw the reflection of her own confusion. ‘Do you really not know what Sylvie was up to? I thought I was the only one out of the loop.'

Sera's blood chilled. Even Pippin had stopped his inspections, attuned to the sudden shift in her mood.

Lorenzo stepped in close and for a heartbeat she thought he was going to snatch her necklace. She covered it with her fist but he hardly noticed. Lorenzo was only a few inches taller than her, but as he pressed her back against the side of the shed, he covered her with his shadow. His voice dropped like he was afraid the lavender was listening in. ‘The wine, Sera. You know what your mother was planning to do with the wine, don't you?'

She glanced around. Suddenly, the garden felt too quiet. She grabbed his shirt collar and pulled him into the shed, rounding on him in the dimness. ‘What are you talking about?' she hissed. ‘Stop dancing around it.'

‘The wine,' he hissed back. ‘Sylvie poisoned the latest batch!'

Sera blinked, the words rushing over her like floodwater. No, she must have misheard him. He snatched up a label and waved it around – the gilded words glinting in the half-dark: Nectar of the Saints. ‘Haven't you heard about the monsters, Sera? Haven't you been wondering where they come from? All those twisted vicious creatures made of Shade. The stories have reached us even out in the plains.'

Sera shook her head, a manic laugh building in her throat. ‘That's absurd, Lorenzo.' She used her foot to shove the crate back down into the crawl space. Pushing it away, just as fervently as she was pushing away his words. ‘I've seen a monster with my own eyes. It was made of more than just Shade. It wasn't even human.' She shuddered at the memory of it chasing her down. ‘It had no shape. No soul. Shade doesn't do that.' She tried to slam the trapdoor shut, but his foot shot out, stopping her.

‘Not on its own,' he conceded. ‘But what if it was mixed with something else?' He pulled the jar of berries from the crate. ‘You know better than I do how Shade is made.'

‘Of course I do,' she said, eager to prove her greater knowledge of the subject. ‘You dry it out, then grind the root into a fine dust, shake the light particles loose and mix in a pinch of salt to stabilize the dust. Bottle and stopper immediately.' The words tumbled from her mouth in one breath, but her gaze never left the jar in Lorenzo's hand. This thing that was so significant – or perhaps dangerous – that Mama had hidden it in the shed, somewhere Seraphine – and Pippin – couldn't get at it.

She knew exactly what those berries were.

And then Lorenzo said it. ‘Do you know what happens when you mix in heartsbane instead of salt? When you combine the purest of nature's poisons with the darkest of its magic?' When Sera said nothing, he went on. ‘And then you decide to tip it into a cheap bottle of fruit wine?'

Sera slammed the trapdoor down, pulling the rug over it. ‘You're making up fairy tales again. I forgot how you love to do that.'

He went on as if he hadn't heard her. ‘It doesn't just poison the body, Sera. It poisons the soul. It changes you. It takes away the bridge between magic and mortality, until there's no going back to who you were before.' He set the jar down with a determined thud. A crack spiderwebbed across the glass. ‘That is how you make a monster, Sera. That is what your mother intended.' His lips twisted. ‘And for some reckless reason, my mother got sucked into her deranged plan.'

‘You're lying,' fumed Sera.

‘I wish I was lying,' he said, ruefully. ‘Mama only admitted it to me when we got back from Farberg and found the poisoned batch gone from our barn. The delivery wagon must have come while we were away and taken it into the city. Mama was supposed to wait for the signal from Sylvie. She wasn't ready yet.' He raked his hands through his hair, and Sera watched fear flicker in his eyes. Fear for his mother, and fear of what their trip to Farberg had unwittingly set in motion. ‘Now it's too late.'

Sera shook her head, hating that quiver in his voice. No, no , it couldn't be true. ‘Why would Mama have any interest in making monsters?'

‘You know why,' he said, softly.

Sera hated how her mind jumped back to last year when she had watched Mama experimenting on a stray cat in this very garden. Even now she could hear the echo of Fig's growl, then Mama's scream cutting through the night. By the way Lorenzo was looking at her, she knew he was thinking of it, too. She regretted ever confiding in him about it.

‘Because sometimes it takes a monster to destroy a monster,' he said quietly.

Sera stared at him, and knew they were thinking of the same man. The only man her mother ever spoke about with spit and rage and fire.

‘Your mother always longed to destroy the Daggers,' he went on, with a rueful smile. ‘She talked about it more than the weather. But to do it, really do it, she had to find the kind of creature that even Dufort could not hope to kill. And when she couldn't find one, she decided to make one. We both know she was clever enough to do it.'

Sera swallowed back her revulsion, trying and failing to see her mother's grand vision. ‘But the monsters aren't killing Daggers, Lorenzo,' she whispered. ‘They're killing everyone .'

He rubbed the spot between his brows. ‘I told you. She never finished her plan.'

Because Dufort got to her first.

The bead pulsed at Sera's throat, sharing her anger and confusion.

Silence hung like a storm cloud between them. In that moment, Sera hated Lorenzo. Not because of what he was saying, but because in her heart, she knew it was true. Her mother was capable of anything. And the teardrop around her neck was proof of that. If Sylvie Marchant had crafted a new kind of magic, then what was to say she hadn't made these monsters too? What was to say they weren't connected somehow?

‘Mama hated the Daggers but she would never have endangered Fantome. Innocent people have died, Lorenzo. They're still dying. Mama would never have let that happen.' Of that, Seraphine was sure. She had to be sure. Because the alternative – that Mama was somehow a greater danger than even Dufort – was too sickening to consider. ‘Whatever her plan was, she would have avoided that.'

Mercifully, Lorenzo nodded in agreement. ‘Mama says Sylvie was working on an antidote too. Magic that would help the monsters.'

Sera's eyes widened at that word – antidote . The Dagger had used it too, had wanted to talk to her about it. But she had taunted him and sent him away.

Lorenzo was shaking his head. ‘Then Dufort came for her and everything went wrong.'

She closed her eyes, trying to take it all in. But the enormity of his confession was so daunting, she was afraid it might overwhelm her.

‘When he came over that hill, we grabbed the shotgun and ran,' he went on, his voice stricken. ‘We didn't know how much he knew, what he was coming here for. We thought it was about the poison. About the wine. Mama was part of that too. For all we knew, he had marked us just the same.'

Sera's eyes flew open. ‘You saw Dufort?'

Lorenzo stilled, realizing his mistake.

Out in the garden, Pippin started barking.

Sera ignored him. ‘You just said it was Dufort that came over the hill. That Dufort killed Mama.' But that was not who she had seen in the house, standing over her mother's body. The man had been much taller and broader than Dufort. Had the smoke played tricks on her mind? Had Ransom told her the truth after all?

It didn't matter just then, because Lorenzo had let slip a graver truth. ‘You knew she was going to die,' she said, reading the guilt on his face. ‘You saw him come to kill her and you fled.'

His silence was answer enough, his expression so crestfallen she thought for a moment he was about to cry. But then he rolled his shoulders back and squared his jaw. ‘She was marked. That's what happens when you mess with Dufort. Sylvie knew the risks and didn't care. In the end she…' he trailed off.

Pippin was pacing by the bushes, a growl rumbling in his throat.

‘She what?' Sera prodded. ‘Don't hold your tongue now; you've already said everything else.'

‘She had it coming, Sera.'

Without thinking, she slapped him. His hand flew to his face, his eyes going wide. She shouldn't have done it, but she didn't regret it either. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks as she stormed away from the shed. He followed her across the garden where Pippin rushed to meet her. ‘It's all right, Pip,' she said, scratching behind his ears to calm him down. ‘We're going now. For good.'

Lorenzo lunged, grabbing her hand. ‘Don't just walk away.'

She shook him off. ‘This is what you want, isn't it? Nothing to do with Mama. Nothing to do with me. Well, your wish is my command.'

‘There's no need to be so… so… final about this.'

‘Move,' she fumed. ‘Or I swear I'll choke down that jar of heartsbane just to get the hell away from you.'

‘That's not funny,' he snapped.

‘At least we agree on something.' She marched away from him, Pippin scurrying to keep up as she clenched her firsts, trying to shove down her grief, but it was becoming hard to see. She wiped her cheeks, scrubbing away the tears, but they kept coming.

‘Seraphine! Wait!'

She paused to look over her shoulder. ‘For what?'

Under the afternoon sun, Lorenzo's hair shone burnished gold, his boyish face a heartbreaking portrait of regret. Despite his fevered protestations, he was standing still. Watching her leave. Just as he had watched Gaspard Dufort come for Mama. He had done nothing then. And he was doing nothing now.

‘To… talk?' he said, weakly. ‘I miss you. I…'

‘I'm done talking.' This time, when Sera turned away, she didn't look back. The truth was, Lorenzo was a coward. And in this game of revenge – of strange magic and twisted monsters – there was no room for cowards.

When she reached the gate, she scooped Pippin into her arms. They turned for the hills, heading back towards Fantome.

‘It's just you and me now, Pip,' she said, pressing a kiss to his shaggy head.

He licked a tear from her cheek and she smiled, adjusting her satchel. It was heavier now. At least their trip home hadn't been a complete waste of time. Sera hoped she had found a clue hidden in the floorboards. She intended to follow it, all the way back to the time of Lucille Versini if she had to. Because even in her despair, a glimmer of hope was flickering. She was going to find out if that faded word – Lightfire – meant what she thought it did: Magic.