Page 53

Sera didn’t get out of bed for a week.

In fairness, she spent the first two days of that week unconscious. So did Albert. When she woke at last, he was back at Grey Manor, powerless and disgraced, and she was in her bed at Batty Hole, powerless and pretty much a Guild hero.

She had no interest in being a Guild hero. She had no interest in anything, really. When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the dark of a starless sky. It was heartbreaking. It was hard .

She was a mess.

What this feeling was, she wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel as wild and dark and dangerous as the depression that had come so often a few years ago, and she was fairly certain this time wouldn’t involve any broken toes, but whatever this was hurt just as much in a whole other way.

Maybe this was grief.

She slept a lot and cried quite a bit. Jasmine barely left her side in the day, rocking quietly in the chair beside the bed, and Luke stayed with her all night, holding her when she cried, but she didn’t say much, not even to them. What was there to say?

She slept some more.

Gradually, bit by bit, she began to feel like the dark behind her closed eyelids wasn’t quite as desolate and lonely as she’d thought.

Even in the dark, after all, she could hear the noisy, chaotic inn.

Theo’s chatter, the boing boing of the trampoline outside, the clank and clatter of Nicholas’s armour, Matilda and Malik bickering over companion planting, Jasmine’s cane, Posy putting farmyard animals to bed on her tablet, conversations, laughter, rousing Viking battle songs, and the comforting rustle of pages turning, always, all the time, as Luke worked or read or just stayed beside her.

On the fifth day, Matilda entered the room and threw back the curtains to let the light flood in. Sera winced.

“Hmm,” said Matilda. She put something on the nightstand. Sera saw that there were a handful of carrots poking out of the chest pocket of her dungarees. “You look like you need a gentle talking-to.”

“What I need,” said Sera, “is to wallow. Let me wallow.”

Matilda nodded in an understanding way that usually meant she was about to do the exact opposite of the thing she was nodding at.

Sera sighed. “Jasmine thinks you ought to let me wallow. She said so just yesterday. I could hear her.”

Matilda did not seem impressed by this argument. “The fact that I am quite wildly in love with her does not preclude me from recognising she can be wrong.”

Sera scowled. “Matilda, I barely have the energy to brush my teeth right now, let alone argue with you. I just want to—”

“Wallow,” Matilda finished for her. “Yes, you said. You have wallowed.”

“I want to wallow some more.”

“Wallow all you like,” said Matilda. “And while you do that, why not have a tiny listen to what I have to say?”

Sera considered this proposition. “I accept your terms. I’ll need tea. To facilitate the wallowing.”

“Very sensible, dear,” Matilda said, promptly retrieving a steaming cup from the nightstand.

She’d come prepared. “Now, what you did the other night was difficult and important and incredibly brave of you, so I don’t want you to think I’m not sympathetic to that.

I am. I do, however, feel that you cannot heal properly without fresh air.

A shower wouldn’t go amiss either. Without wishing to be hurtful, Sera, you smell like a sewer. ”

“I’m not hurt,” Sera assured her. “I am, in fact, proud of my seweriness.”

“Duckling.” Matilda’s face grew serious. “Tell me how to help.”

Sera smiled faintly. “I’m just a bit sad and a bit tired. I don’t know how long the sad will last, but I promise I’ll get up when I’m not tired anymore.”

“Hmm,” Matilda said again. “Tired, you say? In the bones or in the brain?”

“Both, I think.”

“And given how you’re always running around this inn doing this and that, might I hazard a guess that this is the first proper rest you’ve had in years?”

“Er, I suppose so?”

“Well, why didn’t you say that in the first place?” Matilda demanded. “Wallowing is up for debate, but rest is essential . You rest as much as you need. Never mind me.”

And with a brisk, triumphant air, Matilda picked up the empty teacup and trotted away.

The next day, Luke came in with a peculiar expression on his face. Settling into what was now very much his side of the bed, he gave her a searching look as if to decide how much she could handle, kissed the top of her head, and said, “There’s good news and there’s bad news.”

“I want no news,” Sera said at once.

“The Cabinet has reshuffled.”

Sera frowned. “Isn’t that what the Prime Minister’s always doing in London?”

“Well, the new Chancellor’s decided to do some reshuffling in Northumberland too. Howard’s the only one from the old Cabinet to make it into the new one. Verity’s in it too.” Luke cracked a smile. “I wouldn’t start celebrating a new and improved Guild just yet, but it is a start.”

“Er, you’re going to have to rewind, Luke. What do you mean, the new Chancellor?”

Luke’s mouth twitched. “That’s the bad news.

In a manner of speaking. Francesca resigned.

Happily, I gather. She says she never wanted to be Chancellor in the first place.

She’s taken a position in the new Cabinet instead.

And, er, over the last few days, there was a snap election for a new Chancellor and, well… ”

Sera suddenly saw where this was going. “ Luke. Don’t fucking say it.”

“Clemmie,” said Luke, sounding both highly entertained and highly appalled, “won.”

“Clemmie. Clemmie. Is the new Chancellor.”

Luke sighed. “I keep checking the sky for flying pigs, but no luck yet.”

Sera collapsed into helpless laughter.

Clemmie. Chancellor of the Guild.

After a while, she said, “I haven’t forgiven her yet. Not completely.”

“I know.”

“But she chose us. In the end. When it counted. She chose us.”

“She chose you.”

Abruptly exhausted, which was happening a lot at the moment, Sera tucked herself into Luke’s side and lapsed back into silence. He stroked her hair.

“I spoke to Zahra,” Luke said after a minute. “Verity’s friend, the one who was going to tutor Posy in magic. She’s agreed to work with Posy and Theo a few times a month. I’ll take them to Edinburgh every other Saturday, they’ll see Zahra, and I’ll bring them back in the evening.”

“That’s good. It’s a lot of time in the car, but it does mean they’ll get some proper magical instruction. It’s more than you or I ever had.”

Luke looked down at her, catching her halfway through a yawn, and kissed the top of her head. “Go back to sleep. I’ll see you later.”

“Will you stay for a bit?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

She snuggled into his side and closed her eyes.

She missed the stars.

After a full week of wallowing (and/or rest), Theo bounded into the room and asked her, with great expectation, if she was all better now.

“I feel like I could sleep for another week.”

“I guess you can if you really, really want to,” Theo said with an air of tragic martyrdom. “I’ve just missed you, that’s all. Everyone has.”

Sera couldn’t quite bring herself to refuse him, so she said she’d get up after she’d had another few hours of sleep. She didn’t know if she felt ready to face the world again, but maybe no one ever knew if they were ready for something until they tried.

She closed her eyes, but there was nothing to see. No galaxies of light. No starbursts. No stars at all.

It felt a little like dying.

Wait.

Wait.

There was something. A single flicker of light. A twinkle.

A solitary star.

She would never be able to cast another spell, but that single, lonely star was still there because, if you know where to look for it, there is always a little magic in the heart of a person who loves it.

So that star would stay for Sera, always, flickering in the dark, letting her know she had not been abandoned.

Like the old Seras, who hadn’t abandoned her either. They’d stayed with her all this time to tell a story, every time she forgot it, about flying and defying and what an incredible, joyful act of resistance it was to simply exist.

You’re still here, they said, those echoes of all the Seras that ever were. You went up in flames, but you’re still here. You’ll go up in flames again, but that’s okay, you know what to do now. You’ve done it already.

The dying wasn’t what mattered. Unfurling your scorched feathers from the ashes and getting up again. Growing. Staying. That was the part that really mattered.

So Sera slept. Woke. Unfurled.

And got up again.