Chapter 46 Seraphine

Chapter 46 Seraphine

Sera dodged Lark's answering swing, leaping backwards along the stone beam. Her cloak was no good against a Dagger without Shade, but she could tell by the force of her punch that wearing it brought some benefits.

He turned to spit out a glob of blood. ‘You're a lot stronger than I recall.'

‘And you're a dead man walking,' she hissed, searching for a weapon to use against him. But Mama's monsters were gone, and her friends were down in the square, unable to see her plight through the wall of flames. Sera's great spectacle had trapped her. ‘Who are you to measure the worth of every person who draws breath in this city?'

Lark glared at her. ‘If you want to be a moralistic bitch, then give back the Rizzano tiara.'

‘I hope Mama gave you hell,' she spat.

‘Oh, she did,' he said with a chuckle. ‘Cursed me in a hundred different ways. Cursed Dufort for not doing it himself. She swore she'd haunt him for it.'

Sera curled her lip. ‘He always was a coward.'

‘He wasn't scared.' Lark shook his head. ‘He was in love with her.'

Sera stared at him, her stomach lurching so violently, she nearly retched.

‘He went to that farmhouse of yours three times, you know. And three times, he turned back. In the end, he dragged me with him. Gave me a heap of coin to do it and then keep my mouth shut afterwards.' Another devasting shrug. ‘If it helps, he couldn't stomach killing you either.'

It didn't help. It only made the roaring in her head worse. Sera was almost at the end of the beam now, and Lark was still prowling towards her. She had to shove him off, to keep her balance long enough to ruin his. Her mind reeled through all the manoeuvres Albert had taught her.

Focus… Think.

‘You won't get a reward for this,' she said, to keep him talking. ‘Dufort is dead.'

If Lark cared he didn't show it. He lifted his hand, revealing the gaudy ring on his fourth finger. The same one Sera had slapped out of Dufort's grasp right before he died. ‘I already have my reward.'

At her look of disgust, he went on. ‘I'm hardly a graverobber, Marchant. He promised it to me when we went to Bellevue Castle together. He knew Ransom was wavering, losing interest in the Order. You were his final test, you know.' He sighed, raking his sopping hair back. ‘Dufort was going to kill him if he didn't kill you. So Nadia and I decided to help him out.'

‘You're not helping him,' said Sera. ‘If you kill me, Ransom will never forgive you.'

Lark smiled. Without those violent eyes, the expression might have been beautiful. ‘After you left Hugo's Passage with all your little monsters, how will he ever know it was me?'

Sera bared her teeth as she sank into a fighting crouch, the thunder adding its own growl. ‘You'd better not miss.'

He mirrored her stance. ‘I never do.'

Lark swung his fist as the sky ignited. Sera jerked backwards, and his knuckles grazed her jaw. He stole another foot of ground. Her fingers worked the knot at her collar, deftly freeing her cloak. He struck again and she ducked, swinging her foot around in an arc. It was a risk on the narrow walkway, but she caught his ankle.

He barely teetered. ‘Pathetic.'

She leaped back to her feet, whipping her cloak free in one fluid movement. She raised it between them, taunting him like a bull.

Lark frowned, hesitating, and she seized the moment. She lunged, casting the cloak over him. It covered his head, momentarily scrambling his senses. Sera shoved with all her weight and he careened backwards, arms pinwheeling as his heels met the lip of the platform.

But Lark was not going down alone. His hand shot out, grabbing her injured arm. Without her cloak the pain surged, wrenching a scream from her. She reeled backwards, dragging him away from the precipice of death.

He ripped the cloak off, casting it away. Sera bucked against his grip but he slammed his head into hers, knocking her to the ground. He was on her in the next heartbeat, crushing her windpipe.

‘Well, this feels familiar,' he said.

She fought with all the strength she had left, bringing her knees up to strike his lower back again and again. She fisted his hair and yanked. His head snapped backwards and his grip slackened. She hinged upwards, jamming her thumbs into his eyeballs.

He screamed, twisting away from her. She came up onto her knees, roaring. The sky roared with her. Years of pain and anger poured out of her like a battle cry. She freed it all from her heart: her lifelong hatred for her father, her disappointment that he had not been braver or better, that he hadn't fought hard enough against the thrall of Shade, that he hadn't loved them enough to come back. Then there was rage at her mother for ever loving him, for not running fast and far enough away, for falling into an obsession that killed her and so many others. And finally Sera's grief at the loss of both of them, the loss of what they might have been to each other in another lifetime, in a kinder city.

Sera was so lost in the storm in her soul that she didn't notice the lightning splitting the sky behind her. Not as it forked through the clouds and turned the world silver, not as the spike of all that blazing power reached towards the tower like a finger, towards the girl kneeling on the second tier.

It struck her spine like a hot poker. Sera screamed, the pain so devastating it arched her back and dragged her to her feet. She stumbled, gasping, as heat flooded her body, boiling her blood and searing her bones. She collapsed over the trough, desperately sucking air into her shrivelled lungs. Flames of Lightfire twisted to lick her arms, her neck, her face, as if they were trying to soothe the terrible inferno inside her.

And all the while, Lark dragged himself towards her, unharmed, although every hair on his head was standing on end. She was as good as dead anyway. The pain was already gone, and there was such peace inside her now, as if her body knew it was time to give up. It was all she could do to fling her palm out and hold it against his chest.

He choked on a gasp, and when she turned her head to look at him, she saw that his eyes were wide. Frozen. Her gaze fell to where her hand pressed against his chest. It was bare. She had burned his shirt away. Had burned his skin bright gold, branded it, and as he heaved a final strangled breath, she realized she had scoured his heart too. She felt it stop. A final judder and then – nothing.

She snatched her hand back. He swayed, then slumped onto the stone, his unseeing eyes staring past her. Slowly, Sera turned her hand, tracing the crackles on her palm. She watched the raindrops sizzle as they fell onto it, her brows knitting in confusion. There was silence in her head, as though a mist had fallen over her thoughts. She couldn't make her brain work. All she knew for certain was that she was breathing. She was alive .

How the hell was she alive?

She stood on trembling legs, and heard her name on the wind.

‘SERA! GET DOWN!' Someone was yelling at her. Theo. Then Val. Bibi too. She looked out over the flames to see her friends frantically waving. ‘IT'S GOING TO FALL!'

Sera's frown deepened. She realized too late that the rumbling she heard was coming from below, not above. And that the trembling she felt was not her legs. It was the stone. The lightning hadn't just struck her. It had travelled through her to strike the whole damn tower. She saw now it had cleaved the scaffolds, shattered two pillars at the base and blasted the entire third tier apart.

The Aurore was coming down.

By the time she realized, Sera was already falling.

Down, down, down she went, lost in a sea of rubble and rain, the world spinning about her in whips of black and gold. Light and dark, flame and shadow. Time moved so very slowly. The wind sang to her as she fell, that strange magic still crackling in her palms as great pillars of stone crashed to the earth and exploded into smithereens.

The sky shook and the city trembled. Sera closed her eyes, bracing herself for death, and in the sudden quiet of her mind, she heard a faraway voice.

Live , it whispered from the deepest reaches of her soul. Live and burn the darkness away.

The voice did not belong to Mama. It was older, softer… born of another age entirely. As Sera hit the grass with a hard thud, blackness crashed over her like a wave, and in it, she swore she glimpsed the face of Saint Oriel.

She swore that she was smiling.