Chapter 23 Seraphine

Chapter 23 Seraphine

When Sera returned to House Armand, most of the Cloaks were in the dining hall, enjoying a dinner of roast turkey with herb stuffing, spiced cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. She ducked her head in to wave at Bibi and Val before continuing upstairs with Pippin, leaving him to tackle the giant turkey leg Rupert and Bianca had set aside for him. She didn't return to the dining room, instead heading to the basement to find Theo.

After several insistent knocks, the door opened to reveal the Shadowsmith in all his rumpled glory. His silver hair was ruffled and he was wearing loose-fitting trousers, a black vest, and his feet were bare. He blinked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

‘Sorry to interrupt your nap,' said Sera, brushing past him. ‘You missed dinner, by the way.'

Theo frowned. ‘Not again.'

‘If you ask nicely, Pip might share his turkey leg with you.' That earned her a sluggish smile. ‘What are you working on down here anyway?'

‘A hideous failure.' He sighed, gesturing to the mess of tools on the island. ‘A compass that can detect unusually high concentrations of Shade. Spikes of magic.'

‘You mean monsters.'

He nodded. ‘It is not going well.'

Sera almost felt bad about adding another task to his workload. ‘I went back to the plains today, to see if I could find out anything about Mama's necklace.'

His eyebrows shot up. ‘That was reckless.'

‘Everything I do these days is reckless.' She shrugged off her satchel, then crouched to rifle through it. She was glad not to have to look him in the eyes when she said, ‘Today was… illuminating.' A colossal understatement. She had found answers in the plains, but they were not the kind she had been hoping for. At least, not the kind she could be proud of. To think that Mama decided to make monsters out of ordinary people… and all so she could punish Gaspard Dufort for his own depravity.

What good was an antidote now that the monsters were already scattered across Fantome, stalking and killing at will? How could they make the antidote if Mama had taken its secret to the grave?

Mama had gone too far. She had taken everything too far and made a mess she was no longer here to fix.

Lorenzo might have been a coward but he had been right about one thing: Sylvie Marchant had had it coming. But this awful mess was not entirely Mama's fault. Dufort had murdered her, unwittingly setting her unfinished plan into motion. And Maria had fled instead of destroying that damn shipment of wine. She should have poured it into the river and been done with it all.

‘Seraphine?' Theo was on his knees before her. ‘You're a million miles away.'

She rolled back on her heels and buried her head in her hands. ‘I'm spiralling.'

‘I see that.' He gently removed her hands from her face. ‘Can you be more specific? What did you find, out in the plains?'

Sera raked her hands through her hair, wishing she could forget everything Lorenzo had told her. But the truth was a storm in her heart, and it had grown wilder with every step towards home.

‘Whatever it is, you can tell me,' said Theo. ‘I promise I won't judge.'

Sera blew out a breath. ‘I wouldn't be so sure about that.'

‘You'd be surprised at the secrets people have spilled down here. Even Madame Mercure.' He winked. ‘Try me.'

Despite her burgeoning shame and anger over what Mama had done, the burden was too great for Sera to shoulder alone. She found she did want to try with Theo. What else did she possibly have to lose?

‘I'll be right here,' he said, kicking his legs out and leaning back against the glass island. ‘Whenever you get done wrestling with your indecision.'

Sera sat beside him. In the falling quiet of the cloakroom, as night yawned across the city of Fantome and the distant sound of howls hitchhiked on the wind, she confessed everything that Lorenzo had told her about the monsters of Fantome, about Mama's role in their creation and how her plan had been set in motion too soon.

Theo listened in contemplative silence, his face a careful mask of impassivity.

When it was done, Sera didn't feel any better. She felt sick. As though she had stuck a knife in Mama's memory and drained all the goodness out. ‘She wasn't a bad person,' she added, desperately. ‘She just…' she trailed off.

‘Wanted to destroy Dufort and his Daggers by any means necessary,' said Theo, with the kind of casual acceptance that made Sera want to hug him.

She nodded. ‘I guess so.'

‘Why?'

Sera chewed on her lip, unsure of how to answer him. There was so much uncomfortable truth between them that already the air felt heavier. She couldn't bring herself to add to it, to fully illuminate the long shadow Dufort had cast over their lives. But then Theo spoke again, muddling out his own answer. ‘It's not like she was alone in that desire. Back where I come from, the villagers speak of Dufort like he's the devil himself. Most are too terrified to speak of him at all, to venture as far as Fantome in case they come face to face with a Dagger. To be a Cloak is one thing, but….'

He frowned, and Sera sensed he had been wrestling with the immorality of his position here long before this conversation. ‘But to be a Dagger… They're an abomination. A stain on the goodness of this city. They've turned the Age of Saints into an Age of Darkness. Your mother was hardly the first person ever to dream of destroying them. She was just the first to come up with an effective way to actually do it.' He paused, voice tightening. ‘Only, the problem is, those monsters aren't killing Dufort's Daggers. They're killing…'

‘Anyone,' said Sera grimly. ‘Everyone.' She rolled to her feet. ‘It's one big devastating mess. And now, she's not around to fix it.'

‘So, we'll fix it,' said Theo, as if they were talking about repairing a ripped seam and not reversing the plague of monsters that now terrorized their city. He grabbed her satchel as he stood up and set it down on the glass island. A head of boneshade tumbled out. He set it aside, then peered in at the rest. ‘Why do you have a satchel full of bloom?'

‘I found them stashed in our shed back at home.' She turned her satchel upside down now and the pamphlet about Lucille Versini slipped out. ‘I found this too,' she said, sliding it towards him. ‘I think it might be a clue to the magic I wear around my neck. Mama was working on some kind of antidote to the monsters.'

He opened the pamphlet, squinting to make out the print. Much of it had been faded by time, some sentences trailing into nothing. But the Shadowsmith rose eagerly to the challenge, fishing a pot of ink from a drawer. As he unscrewed it, she caught the unmistakable whiff of Shade. ‘I call this cloying ink,' he said. ‘It clings to darkness, pushes the light away.'

He stoppered the bottle with his thumb, then tipped it over the pamphlet, letting the ink out, drop by drop. Sera watched it fall onto the lines of faded text, clinging to every word. In a matter of seconds, the entire page became legible, that word Lightfire so black, it seemed to leap from every paragraph.

‘You really are clever,' she said, leaning closer until their heads touched.

‘I know.'

They read a while in silence, Sera carefully turning the pages while Theo tipped cloying ink onto each new paragraph, painting the words back into place. ‘Look. There.' She traced a paragraph that Mama had underlined almost in its entirety, reading the words aloud.

‘In the last days of her young life, Lucille Versini was entrenched in her research, spending long nights in the library of the Appoline, edging ever closer to a new kind of magic. Not the Shade that her brothers had discovered almost a decade earlier. Rather, it was the antidote to such darkness, the secret of which, according to Lucille's journals, resided in the bloom of the very same plant. She called this magic Lightfire, and she sought to extract it, but the art of alchemy is never quite so simple.

The pursuit of Lightfire was to be her undoing. For there was nothing in all the world that frightened Hugo Versini so much as his little sister's avid mind. Some believe that Lucille discovered how to make Lightfire just before her death. A secret that Hugo Versini made sure to bury with her.'

‘He killed her for it,' Sera murmured. ‘His own sister.'

Theo curled his lip. ‘There's nothing more dangerous than a frightened Dagger.' He reached for a head of bloom, holding it up to the light. It shone like a fallen sun. ‘At least we know why your mother was storing these.'

‘She was trying to make Lightfire.' Sera couldn't tear her gaze from the glinting bloom, caught suddenly in a surge of hope. ‘She was trying to finish what Lucille Versini started.'

‘Not just trying.' Theo looked meaningfully at Sera, his gaze falling to the bead at her throat. ‘She had succeeded.'

She grasped her necklace, feeling the teardrop warm up in her fingers, as if agreeing with her. With a jolt, she remembered what Ransom had called her magic – an antidote . Mama had managed to make it after all – this little spark of Lightfire. It was not enough to protect Fantome, but it had protected Seraphine, hadn't it? It had fought the Dagger's Shade and saved her life at Villa Roman. ‘But how did she do it?'

His face fell as he set the bloom down. He didn't need to say it – they both knew that the answer to that question had likely gone up in flames along with Mama.

Sera stilled, caught in the grip of another realization. ‘He must have known.'

Theo cocked his head. ‘Who?'

‘Dufort,' she said, half-choking on the name. ‘You said it yourself. There's nothing more dangerous than a frightened Dagger. When Hugo discovered what his sister was working on, he killed her for it. Lightfire was the only thing that could beat Shade. It was the same for Dufort. He knew the rediscovery of it would destroy his reign over the underworld. It would destroy the entire legacy of Hugo Versini.'

Theo's face tightened. ‘Do you think Dufort was watching her?'

‘Yes,' said Sera, without a beat of hesitation. The truth was a horror inside her. Dufort had been watching them all their lives. Watching Mama, a lot more closely than she'd thought. Perhaps he had always known what Seraphine knew – that Mama's ambitions stretched far beyond the petty act of smuggling, that Shade was merely a gateway to another, greater dream – another, better, version of Fantome. ‘Maybe the monsters evaded him. That wine was made on Maria Verga's land, bottled in her barn. But Lightfire…'

Lightfire was Mama's life's work.

Memories flooded Sera. All those hours spent in bookshops and libraries, the stacks of encyclopaedias that teetered in the corners back home, the smell of herbs and spices that always clung to her, the plants that lined their kitchen shelves, the stray cats that disappeared as quickly as they came. Those endless nights at her workbench where she tinkered beneath the light of the moon, the permanent hunch in her shoulders, the spark of every untried idea kindling in her eyes and tearing her away from conversations at dinner, from mugs of coffee and warm bubble baths, from bedtime stories and half-sung lullabies.

Those flashes of golden light that came in the dead of night, jostling Sera from her slumber, sending her to the window to search for falling stars. It was not the sky that sent those lights. It was Mama, always working, always reaching beyond the dark. Up, and up, and up.

Magic. It was all suddenly right there in front of Seraphine. As loud and bright as the fire that had come afterwards. ‘Mama spent her whole life chasing the memory of Lucille Versini. Chasing Lightfire. And…' She tipped her head back, trying to breathe.

‘And when she finally found it, Dufort killed her for it,' Theo finished quietly. There was a heavy beat of silence. ‘But he didn't kill you.'

Sera started to pace. Trying to calm down, to subdue the sudden urge to scream and smash everything in sight. ‘I'm going to kill him, Theo. I'm going to find him and I'm going to tear him apart. And I swear to Lucille and the rest of the saints that I'm going to do it with Lightfire.'

‘Breathe, Sera,' he said, watching her battle through the storm of her emotions. ‘Let's start with the magic. Once we figure that out, we can talk about the rest.'

She could have kissed him for his calmness, for not shaking her and telling her she was idiotic to consider moving against Dufort. But he had already returned his attention to the pamphlet, his brows knitting as he flicked through the rest of the pages. There was nothing more about Lightfire, no other clue beyond the bloom glowing dimly between them.

‘I could try grinding the leaves,' he murmured after a while. ‘Experiment with the dust.'

‘That sounds like shooting an arrow in the dark,' she said, finally coming back to herself.

‘But it's a start.'

The door flew open with a sudden whoosh , startling them from their conversation.

‘Whatever this is, I'm part of it too,' said Val, hobbling inside. ‘Monsters. Lightfire. Revenge. I'm in.'

Theo released a long-suffering sigh. ‘What have I told you about eavesdropping?'

‘What have I told you about keeping secrets from me?' she shot back. ‘If you two little whisperlings have found a clue to destroying these hell-born monsters then I want to know about it. I want to help.' She cleared her throat, looking a little sheepish. ‘And honestly, I only crept down here because I wanted to catch you two making out.'

Sera glared at her. ‘How is that any better than eavesdropping?'

Val shrugged. ‘I was bored. I hardly expected to stumble upon a secret magical plot.' She hopped up onto the island, nearly creasing the pamphlet. ‘And since I'm brain-meltingly clever, I have a killer suggestion.'

‘Go on,' said Theo, snatching the pamphlet and placing it on a nearby shelf for safe keeping. ‘Since apparently this is now a three-way conversation.'

‘We should pay a midnight visit to the Grand Versini Library,' said Val. ‘I bet you five silvers Lucille's journals are somewhere in the archives.'

Sera looked to Theo. ‘Do you think it's worth a try?'

He chewed his lip. ‘Well… What have you got to lose?'

Val blew a stray curl from her eye, lounging across the glass island like a cat. ‘A better question is, what do you have to gain?'

Everything , whispered a voice inside Sera's head.

A short while later, Sera left the cloakroom, feeling emboldened. While Val took herself off to bed and Theo returned to his never-ending research, she went to the kitchens, where she devoured a bread roll stuffed with turkey in five bites. Her hunger sated, exhaustion crept in.

On her way up to bed, she took a detour to the music room, where she found Bibi sitting in a pool of firelight, playing the piano. Her long red hair was wound into a loose bun, and she was wearing her pyjamas. Long, pale fingers danced along the keys, filling the room – and the halls – with a melody so pleasant it made Sera smile. The chords were buoyant, embroidered with tinkling trills that reminded her of the dawn birds, singing to welcome the day.

She rested her head against the doorframe, every note a balm to her sore heart. Hope , they sang. Hope dances along the horizon. And its name is Lightfire.

Sera was going to reach for that hope with both hands.

The music stopped. Bibi looked at her over her shoulder. ‘I'm afraid that's all I've come up with.'

It was only then that Sera noticed there was no sheet music. She edged into the room. ‘You composed that yourself?'

Bibi nodded sheepishly. ‘I couldn't sleep.'

‘It's beautiful.'

‘It's not finished yet,' she said, blushing at the compliment.

Sera shook her head, wonder warring with surprise. Bibi could have been a musician in another life. A composer to rival the best in Valterre. If this was the scope of her talent at barely seventeen, what would a handful more years do for her?

‘You're frowning,' said Bibi, yanking her hands back from the keys. ‘It's not supposed to be a sad song.'

‘It's not sad,' said Sera quickly. ‘It's incredible. It's joy in its purest form.' And it was joy, uncomplicated and uncompromising, exactly like Bibi herself. ‘I was just thinking of how talented you are, how much you could learn in a place like the Appoline. Not the pitiful Hollows of Fantome, but somewhere that could truly nurture your creativity.'

Bibi smiled. ‘I like it here, Sera. It inspires me just fine.'

She frowned. There was nothing on Bibi's face of the internal struggle that Theo dealt with, no sense of the restlessness Sera sometimes sensed in Val. ‘What, stealing?'

‘Living.' That smile remained. ‘I have everything I could ever wish for at House Armand. Safety. Security. Beautiful clothes and a warm, cosy bed. Books to read and music to play. Food to savour and money to spend as I like. People to eat with, to laugh with. A family all of my own.'

Sera looked again at the piano, the ghost of her song still lingering in the air. She thought of the cool slick of Shade against her skin and the guilt that came with taking and taking , but never giving back, the risk of every Sleight and Break and Heist, and the grimy greyness of the Hollows. Then she pictured Bibi sitting at a grand piano in a sparkling ballgown, the notes of her song soaring through the oldest music halls in Valterre, gracing the ear of the king and winning the favour of the queen, and said, quietly, ‘Is it enough?'

Bibi thought about it a moment. ‘For me, it is.'

Sera nodded. She believed her. Bibi had come to this place as a child and found contentment here as she grew. She was happy, and it was simple, and a part of Sera envied her for it.

The truth was that for all the comfort and protection she had found at House Armand, Sera could not help the yearning in her heart to go further than Shade would take her. To eventually free herself from the darkness that had nipped at her heels her whole life. She wanted the brightness of tomorrow, complete freedom from the underworld, from Dufort and the price he had placed on her head.

For Bibi, freedom was House Armand. She wasn't straining for anything beyond these four walls. She had already found whatever peace she sought within herself.

‘I'll let you return to your music,' said Sera softly. ‘Let's chat tomorrow at breakfast? I've got a Heist in mind.'

‘Can't wait,' said Bibi, smiling as she turned back to the keys. ‘Goodnight, Sera.'

‘Goodnight, Bibi.'

Sera was at the door when her friend called after her. ‘You could be happy here too, Sera.' She ran her hands along the keys, sending a cheerful trill after her. It made Sera think of starlings, moving in a great ribbon across the sky. ‘Home is not just a place. It's people. It's family.'

Sera knew that was true, but there could be no home without freedom. And while Dufort stalked this city, she would never truly be free.