Chapter 36 Seraphine

Chapter 36 Seraphine

The cloakroom at House Armand was locked when Seraphine returned from Hugo's Passage. She restrained herself from bursting into Theo's bedroom and waving Lucille's journal in his face, deciding she'd better make sure there was something useful inside it first.

Down in the kitchens, Val was sitting on the windowsill nursing a cup of tea as she watched the midnight rain. Thankfully, Sera had missed the worst of it on her way home, and the journal had stayed safe and dry under her clothes.

Pippin, who was snoozing at Val's feet, raised his head when she arrived.

‘That took a lot longer than you said it would,' said Val, looking her up and down. ‘How did it go?'

Sera sank into a chair, resolving to skate over the details for both of their sakes. ‘I got the journal. But I don't know how useful it is yet.'

‘You are a good Cloak.' Val smirked. ‘How was your Dagger?'

Seraphine's cheeks burst into colour. The memory of their kiss struck her like a bolt of lightning as it had many times on the way home, her footsteps so light she felt like she was floating.

Val chuckled into her tea. ‘You need to work on your poker face.'

Poker body . Even her toes were curling.

‘You'd better hope Mercure doesn't find out. You're not supposed to sleep with the enemy.'

‘We didn't.'

She slurped her tea. ‘How exactly did you get the journal?'

‘Please don't interrogate me. I'll fold like a napkin.'

‘I'm not sure I even want to know,' she said, chuckling. ‘You certainly look exhausted.'

‘I am,' Sera admitted.

‘Don't let me keep you up.' Val rested her head against the window, turning her gaze to the crescent moon.

Sera stood up, and Pippin hopped off the bench to join her. She paused on the threshold of the hallway, drawn to the faraway look in Val's eyes. In the fractured moonlight, her tinted hair shone violet, her brown skin glowed softly.

‘Are you all right, Val?'

She nodded, absently. ‘Just daydreaming.' Then as if remembering herself, she shot Sera a warning glance. ‘Do not tell Bibi.'

‘I think she already knows you're human.'

‘It's my birthday tomorrow.'

‘Oh. I had no idea.'

‘I hate birthdays. They just remind me that I'm still stuck here.' She blew a curl from her eye. ‘When I would rather be anywhere else.'

‘Really?' said Sera. ‘You seem so at home here.'

‘You get tired of it after a while. This place stops feeling like a castle and starts feeling like a prison. And all these riches…' She jerked her chin towards the chandelier, gestured at the priceless vase by Sera's left elbow. ‘They don't make up for what we've lost.'

Sera edged back into the room, careful not to break the spell of vulnerability that seemed to shimmer between them. All this time, she'd thought Val was impenetrable, unshakable. That she was born to be a Cloak and loved every minute of it, but now she could see they were more alike than she thought. Both of them were stuck in a place they didn't truly belong. ‘You don't have to be a Cloak if you don't want to be, Val. You're smart enough to make it anywhere in the city.'

Val huffed a mirthless laugh. ‘I'm not talking about House Armand, Sera. I'm talking about Fantome.' She looked up, fear pooling in her eyes. ‘Can't you feel it? These creeping tendrils of darkness. They were here long before the monsters. If you ask me, this whole city is rotten to its core. The Cloaks are just one part of the problem.'

Sera was struck by Val's candour, how her words sounded so much like the things her mother used to say. On the surface, Fantome glittered like gold dust, but beneath the gleaming fa?ade, the city reeked of fear and avarice. After all these centuries, it still languished in the long shadow of the Versini brothers' legacy. It had been damned long before Mama made those monsters. All they did was drag the terror of this place into the light, made it so that people could no longer look away from it.

‘I didn't know you felt that way.'

‘Most people feel this way,' said Val, with a shrug. ‘They just make do with their lot in life because they're too afraid to try to change anything.'

‘Why don't you leave Fantome? You must have saved enough money by now.'

Val's lips twisted. ‘Being a Cloak is the only thing I've ever been good at.'

‘It's also the only thing you've ever tried,' said Sera gently.

‘Maybe I'll move to the plains.' Val conceded a fleeting smile. ‘Do you reckon I'd make a good farmer?'

‘You could try your hand at being a scarecrow. Just wave your arms about and scream really loudly whenever you see a blackbird.'

Val snorted, then chewed on her lip, as if she was really considering it. ‘I suppose I can't decide which is better,' she confessed. ‘Being alone somewhere beautiful and free. Or being with the only people I've ever loved, here in the darkness.' She looked up at Sera, as if she was waiting for the answer.

‘I don't know either, Val.'

‘Never mind. I'm overthinking everything. Birthdays always make me misty-eyed.'

‘I can stay a while,' offered Sera. ‘If you want to talk some more?'

Val waved her off, reaching for that mask of invulnerability, the careful smirk and deadpan voice, the veneer that told the world everything was all right, even when it wasn't. ‘Go get your sleep, monster slayer. Sounds like things are about to get interesting.'

‘Tomorrow's going to be a big day,' said Sera. ‘I've got to make Lightfire and a birthday cake.'

‘I didn't know you could bake,' said Val, almost suspiciously.

‘I grew up on a farm in the middle of nowhere. What do you think I was doing all that time while Mama was making Shade?'

‘Poisoning the wine?'

‘Ha ha.' Sera stuck her tongue out. ‘Laugh it up, but tomorrow, I'm going to bake the best damn cake you've ever had.'

‘Looking forward to it,' said Val, a smile, true and beautiful, blooming across her face. Sera turned to leave, when she spoke again. ‘I'm glad you came to House Armand, farmgirl. For however long, for whatever reason. It was getting boring around here. I reckon we needed a bit of excitement.'

Sera smiled. ‘Thanks, Val. You're a good friend.'

‘You too, Sera. Sleep well.'

Upstairs, with the embers of Val's words still warm in her chest, Sera washed and got ready for bed. Then she turned on her lamp and began to flick through the journal. It appeared to be a mix of Lucille's personal musings as well as notes on her studies at the Appoline – the contents varying from daily observations of her new life in Fantome to feverish scribblings about magic.

In the village, the elders speak of boneshade in hushed tones as if they're terrified that my brothers will hear them from half a world away. The plant comes from Halbracht, but it does not belong to us any more. Even Papa does not whisper of it. His eyes have grown tired, wary. He is as afraid of Hugo now as he is of the brown bears that stalk the Pinetops. The boneshade grows all around us, but we are forbidden from touching it. Even Armand will not suffer my curiosity about it.

That's how I know there are more secrets to be found. Not in the root, where the dark magic grows. But in the bloom, golden as the summer sun.

When I was a girl, Mama used to cut and dry the leaves, and lay them out along the chicken coop, until they grew crisp at the edges. Then she ground them into dust and stored the vials in the back of her closet, along with her treasured pearl necklace and the sapphire Father gave her the day they married. ‘We must take care to hide the light, my little firefly,' she whispered to me once. ‘Just in case the darkness returns…'

I know now what darkness she meant. It only occurred to me after her death that Mama knew of the properties of boneshade long before the rest of us. She must have known about the power of its bloom, too. Only she took that secret to her grave.

Sera's fingers were trembling so badly, the pages shook as she turned them. Lucille Versini had spent her short life chasing the secrets her mother had taken to the grave. In her neat, looping scrawl, Sera saw her own frustration and determination reflected back at her.

In Athapales' Study of Ancient Alchemy, the truth is set out plainly: there must be balance in all things. Every force of magic has its equal and opposite. We have known that since the Age of Saints. If darkness can grow from an ancient plant, then so, too, can light. I am surer now than ever before that this light magic – this antidote – resides in the bloom of boneshade. And more than that, it can be extracted just as Shade is. All it takes is an enquiring mind and a dauntless spirit.

I will bring the truth into the light, and shatter the darkness that hangs over my family name. And when I find this secret – this old magic made anew – I will call it Lightfire.

Sera turned the pages until she found the next mention of Lightfire. It was near the end of the journal.

Each day brings me closer to Lightfire. Today, with this mix of charcoal and bloom, I'm sure I felt a spark between my fingers – the warmth of something more than just heat. It was magic. I almost caught it. Tomorrow I will try again.

She turned to the last page, its edges crumbling in her fingers. Her eyes darted around, scanning the final feverish scrawlings of Lucille Versini, while the last embers of hope flickered inside her. And then she saw it, a single word circled under a list of crossed-out ingredients. It was darker than the others, as if it was demanding to be read:

Gunpowder

Sera reeled backwards, as a memory exploded into her mind. A cloudless summer's day, the sun beating down on the plains and bleaching the stones in the garden. Her mother was hunched over her workbench, sweat matting her dark curls. She was tinkering with a strand of gold wire, surrounded by the remnants of the day's experimentation. And there, by her elbow, the head of a boneshade plant. Bloom. The leaves were dried and curling, shining golden in the sunlight. The smell of gunpowder lingered in the air. Sera knew it from the shotgun Lorenzo used to scare off the crows in the cornfields, but she couldn't seem to place it in their garden between the peonies and the honeybees. What's that strange smell, Mama?

Mama had smiled, excitement trilling in her voice. That, my little firefly, is the smell of creativity.

‘No,' Seraphine muttered, with a sudden shock of clarity, and Pippin looked up from the end of the bed, to see if she was talking to him. ‘That was the smell of Lightfire.'

Gunpowder and bloom. It was beautifully, blessedly simple.

A manic laugh bubbled out of her. ‘I think we've cracked it, Pip.'

Pippin blinked once, then promptly fell asleep. Still fizzing with the triumph of her discovery, Sera ran to the window and peered out into the night. All was quiet, still. She reached for her pen and paper and scribbled a note.

Are you out there?

The dart soared over the hedge. She waited for ten minutes, then ten more. His reply never came. Ransom was not there, and his sudden yawning absence might have unsettled Sera if her thoughts weren't already turning to tomorrow, to the beginnings of hope rising before her like a new sun.

But when she dreamed, it was not of Lightfire, but the solid darkness of the catacombs and the feverish heat of his lips moving against her own.