Page 13 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

‘The big blue one,’ Bibi hissed back. ‘She even drew a diagram for us.’

‘Good,’ said Theo. ‘I pity the fool who tries to break into House Armand without a cleverly thought out—’

‘Then you are a fool indeed, Theodore Branch.’ A familiar croaky voice made them jump.

‘Madame Fontaine?’ Bibi whispered. ‘Are you out here somewhere?’

‘Sabine Fraser, you shameless sneak. I taught you better than this.’

‘This is exactly what you taught us,’ Val piped up. ‘Sneaking. Spying. General subterfuge.’

‘Which is why you little miscreants should know I intercept all mail that comes and goes at House Armand.’

At their shared looks of alarm, the old crone cackled. The sound scattered a nightingale in the back garden.

‘Well, now I feel like a prize idiot,’ muttered Bibi.

‘You should.’ The clouds parted, and a slant of moonlight danced across the garden. They saw her then, as clear as a spectre. The old bat was sitting on a windowsill, smoking her pipe.

She eyed the space where they were standing, like she could spy them through their Shade-coated cloaks. Impossible. And yet… ‘Give it up, then. I don’t have all night.’

Theo was the first to remove his cloak. ‘Caught,’ he said, with his usual good-natured charm.

Val went next. Then Bibi, freeing her spill of long red hair. ‘It’s good to see you, Madame—’

‘You lie like a lazy cat, Sabine. I read your note, remember? You are not here to see me at all.’

Bibi knew better than to correct her. She was, in fact, chiefly here to see Alaina.

Fontaine rolled her eyes, then gestured with her walking stick, dismissing her.

Tossing an awkward smile over her shoulder, Bibi promptly scooted off round the side of the building, leaving the three of them to deal with Fontaine.

Seraphine was still considering whether or not to remove her cloak when Fontaine blew a ring of smoke directly at her.

‘If you think I can’t see the fire in your eyes, you’re a witless wonder, Seraphine Marchant. There is no disguise that can hide you from me now.’

Sera cast off her cloak. ‘Better?’

‘Not particularly,’ said Fontaine. ‘I’d rather you weren’t here at all.’

‘I came to see you.’

‘No shit.’ She beckoned them closer. They stopped a cane’s length from her. Just in case she tried to swat them. Fontaine took a long drag of her pipe. The smoke was sweet and cloying, and it made Sera’s stomach turn. ‘Well? Get to it, turncoats.’

Without preamble, Sera said, ‘What do you know about Saint Oriel’s final prophecy?’

Fontaine’s brows rose. ‘What makes you think I know anything about it?’

So she was going to toy with them first. Great.

‘You’re a descendant of Oriel Beauregard,’ said Val flatly. ‘All the years I was at House Armand, you never let me forget it. I swear I used to think you could read my mind.’

Fontaine smirked.

‘The cards you play with,’ said Sera. ‘They tell you things.’

‘You seem to know a lot about me.’

‘Not as much as you seem to know about me.’

Fontaine gave a rasping chuckle. ‘I suppose it makes sense… this sudden eagerness to learn of our great saints. Or indeed the ones yet to come.’

‘Why do you say that?’ said Theo warily.

‘Look at her.’ Fontaine didn’t take her milky eyes off Sera.

‘You couldn’t hide that new blood in your veins even if you tried, Seraphine.

I can see the sheen of it behind your eyes.

’ She bared her greying teeth. ‘Gold blood, they used to call it. The blood of the saints. Fate has bound you with its thread.’ With surprising sprightliness, she pitched forward, blowing a ring of smoke right in her face. ‘And it terrifies you.’

Sera took a step back, the grass whispering under her feet. Just like the other night with Theo, a part of her wanted to outrun the accusation – the inherent truth she felt in it – but another part of her was eager to grasp for more.

Theo inhaled. ‘So Sera is a saint.’

Humming to herself, Fontaine said, ‘It would appear so. The second coming is finally upon us. I was hoping I’d be dead by now.’

‘Why do I feel like you’re going to outlive us all?’ muttered Val.

Fontaine kept her penetrating gaze on Sera, like she could see the war raging inside her head: fear giving way to wonder, only to be snatched away again. ‘No need to look so disturbed. You haven’t made any choices worth making yet. And for that matter, neither have the rest of you.’

‘What does that mean?’ said Sera warily.

‘It means in this new age you don’t know what kind of player you are.

Or what you’re truly capable of.’ A long pause then, her lips twisting and twisting.

‘And neither do I.’ She leaned back against the window, setting her pipe to one side.

‘I will tell you what I know about the Second Coming. If only to keep you from seeking the same answers from those who would use you for their own nefarious means.’

Without meaning to, Sera drifted closer.

‘The original twelve saints of Fantome were made under the same storm over a thousand years ago. Each one struck down and remade by the kind of lightning that cleaved the entire sky in two, erupting from the ether like a long golden finger,’ Fontaine began, looking up to the stars as she weaved her tale.

Sera’s cheeks prickled at the memory of the fork of lightning that had skewered her just the same not half a year ago.

She had never wondered how the saints of Valterre had come to be, only that they were , and that they had lived with the soul of the kingdom in their hearts, striving always to protect and serve its people in their own varied ways.

‘During the first coming of the saints, the storm raged for three days and three nights, as though a vengeful god was shaking the heavens. In that time, twelve strikes skewered the kingdom. Twelve different magical gifts were gifted to twelve plain folk. Golden-gazed and gold-blooded, they rose up, one by one, discovered the new power slumbering inside them, and eventually became the saints of Valterre.’

In barely more than a whisper, Sera said, ‘How did they know what they were meant to be? What magic they possessed?’

‘They opened their souls,’ said Fontaine, like it was as simple as that. ‘They welcomed their gifts with gratitude for what it meant for their kingdom, not the small-minded fear of what it meant for them.’

The barb stung all the worse because it was unintentional. And it was true. Sera couldn’t see how to change that, to welcome the very thing her own consciousness rebelled against. How to tame a beast that so easily overwhelmed her. How to trust it.

All her life, she had never known a benevolent power. Not the cold deadly dust of Shade that used to stain her mother’s fingers, or the kind her own father, Gaspard Dufort, wielded over Fantome as Head of the Order of Daggers.

How could Sera trust the power that now slumbered inside her? The twisting, burning, hissing thing that she didn’t understand? If her own father had turned on her, what was to say the magic inside her wouldn’t, too?

Reaching into her shawl, Fontaine removed her tarot deck. The gilded cards shimmered in the moonlight. She closed her eyes as she shuffled, her lips tightening.

They stepped in close, drawn to the whispering cards.

‘ The storm will choose new saints to crown, where three stone towers crumble down… ’ Fontaine muttered, her frown deepening. ‘Let’s see what shapes our figures take…’

Fontaine drew three cards and placed them on the windowsill.

The silence thickened as they stared down at them. The first card portrayed a figure in a plain brown tunic, kneeling over a slab of clay, with an axe in one hand and a chisel in the other.

‘The Stone Maiden,’ said Fontaine, distantly. ‘Both builder and breaker of clay.’

It meant little to Sera.

The second card revealed a skeletal figure dressed in rags.

‘ The Necromancer .’ Theo read the words at the bottom.

‘Death’s right hand.’ Fontaine suppressed a shudder. Then, more to herself, she muttered, ‘Different saints this time around… different tasks, perhaps… hmm …’

‘That one sounds more like a curse than a gift,’ said Theo under his breath.

The third card was a man with tousled hair and wide, gleaming teeth. He was staring right out of the portrait, like he could see them.

‘ The Silver-tongue ,’ read Sera.

‘A charmer versed in the art of persuasion,’ said Fontaine. ‘Intriguing.’

‘I don’t think that’s our Sera.’ Val patted her on the shoulder. ‘No offence.’

Sera’s gaze remained on the cards. Her eyes burned, as though her magic was peering out, too. ‘Is one of these supposed to be me?’

The crevices in Fontaine’s face shifted until she looked impossibly old. ‘There is a wrongness in this reading. Something hidden. Something missing …’ She snapped her chin up, her milky gaze narrowing. ‘Or perhaps it is you who feels wrong.’

Sera took a step backwards. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

Like a marble in the pit of her soul, her magic roiled, as if to say, That’s the problem .

Fontaine’s eyes glazed over. Her lips moved soundlessly, as though she was having an argument with someone inside her own head.

Sera tried to look at the cards again, but Theo had already pocketed them.

‘Draw one more,’ she pleaded. ‘It might make things clearer.’

Fontaine returned to herself with a withering scowl. To Sera’s surprise, she shoved the deck at her, then took a long drag of her pipe. ‘Draw for yourself. The cards are addled.’

Sera shuffled clumsily. She didn’t know when to stop or where to pull from, but then a card leaped from the deck all by itself. Val snatched it in mid-air, turning it over.

It was a single red rose.

Not a figure this time but a symbol.

Fontaine canted her head. ‘The rose,’ she said, tracing the gilded petals. ‘The official flower of Valterre. A symbol of rebirth and renewal.’ She traced the thorns along the stem, miming pricking her finger. ‘But not without pain. Without sacrifice.’

She snapped her gaze up, and the darkness that gathered there made Sera shuffle closer to Theo. ‘The rose is both soft and dangerous. It can mean great beauty or untold destruction. It depends on the soil in which it grows. The forces that surround it.’

Sera wanted to ask her more, about the cards and the saints and the prophecy – about what it meant for Valterre, and for her – but Bibi reappeared at that same moment, coming around the side of House Armand with a look of stark worry on her face. ‘I’m afraid we’ve been rumbled.’

Theo stiffened, his hand flying to Sera’s elbow. She jerked her chin, following his gaze, and caught sight of Madame Mercure’s withering grimace in a second-storey window. There was no mistaking the threat in her dark eyes.

‘We should get out of here,’ Theo said, urgently. ‘Looks like we’ve outstayed our welcome.’

‘You never had one to begin with,’ said Fontaine, returning to her snarky form with impressive ease. ‘Cordelia has had eyes on you since you set foot in her garden.’

‘We’ll go,’ said Sera, backing away now. ‘We really don’t want any trouble.’

The others turned, promptly bolting from the garden, just as Fontaine called after her. ‘Seraphine!’

Sera realized she was still holding the tarot deck.

She doubled back to return it. ‘Honest mistake.’

‘You seem to be full of those.’

Sera bit back her retort. No point. No time. Leaving the wily old Cloak with the last word, she turned to go, but Fontaine pitched forward, dropping her voice until she alone could hear it.

‘Fear is a fog you cannot see through. Only the light of bravery can banish it,’ she said, urgently. ‘When you decide what you’re willing to sacrifice for your gift – your unwritten destiny, your own self-control – it will reveal itself to you.’

The others were at the gate, calling for her.

‘I don’t know how to do that,’ said Sera, desperately.

‘Think less. Look to the future, not the past. Otherwise, you’ll be lost in the fog for ever.’ Madame Fontaine made a shooing motion with her hands. ‘Now run. Before it’s too late.’

Sera caught up with the others out on the street. They broke into a jog, forgoing the cloaks they kept tucked under their arms.

‘I don’t know why we’re running so hard,’ said Val, between gasps. ‘Mercure isn’t going to chase us. She’s too dignified for that kind of thing.’

‘And she doesn’t have the right kind of shoes,’ added Bibi.

Even so, Sera quickened her pace. She was eager to get back to the Rose and Crown so they could pick through Fontaine’s words, and look more closely at the cards Theo had swiped. She was so focused on getting out of the Hollows that she barely registered the carriage trundling towards them.

It screeched to a halt.

Bibi lunged, grabbing her arm. ‘Something’s wrong.’

They spun around, looking for Val and Theo, several steps behind. ‘Put your cloaks on,’ said Sera, urgently.

Too late. Footsteps pounded through the dark.

Theo yelled, ‘RUN!’

Sera turned back a heartbeat too late. Something hard slammed into the side of her head. The world turned sideways as the ground rose to meet her. Someone caught her before she fell, a breathy chuckle raking down her spine. Somewhere nearby, Bibi screamed. Theo’s shouts grew more distant.

Bucking blindly, Sera kicked her legs and swung her fists. Her captor hissed as she connected with his jaw. ‘You little bitch.’

She reared up just as he slammed his head down, cracking her nose. Pain spiderwebbed across her face, making her eyes stream.

‘Nnngh. Get. Off.’ She bucked again, but a broad hand closed around her throat, choking the air from her. Her thoughts swam, the stars in the faraway sky slowly winking out.

Blackness rose like a wave, until there was only the dying shouts of her best friends and the cruel laughter of their captors rippling over her.

In those final moments of flickering awareness, Sera realized she’d been kidnapped. Amidst her panic and confusion, she couldn’t tell whether the enemy who had moved against her was a Cloak or a Dagger.

She hoped she lived long enough to find out.