Page 28 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

Stepping into the library at the Appoline was like straying into a dream.

Vaulted ceilings crowned stone walls hung with beautiful oil paintings, each one depicting a venerated Saint of Valterre.

Arched stained-glass windows looked out over the courtyard below, their generous sills lined with velvet cushions.

Oil lamps flickered on the low reading tables, casting shadows across endless rows of walnut shelves.

They towered so high, each bookshelf had its own reeling ladder to reach all the way to the top.

The wooden floors were polished to shine and carpeted with generous woven rugs, and the air was heavy with the scent of beeswax and parchment.

This place was a cathedral of learning, brimming with so many leather-bound books and weighty tomes, a part of Sera wanted to curl up and stay here for ever. No wonder Mama always dreamed of this place. It was a haven for scholars, a place that smelled like history and secrets and possibilities.

She fell behind, idly trailing her fingers across a wing-backed reading chair. Tipping her head back, she let the stained sunlight dance along her face, and imagined the library was welcoming her. Come and gaze upon our treasures. Come and see what secrets we hold .

All around the grand chamber, dedicated scholars did their best to continue their work, despite the gawking visitors in their midst.

‘If I lived here, I don’t think I’d ever want to leave,’ said Theo, as he wandered next to her. ‘No wonder this was Oriel’s Sanctuary. They say most of her prophecies are stored here.’

‘Been brushing up on the saints, then?’

He gave her a knowing look. ‘The old and the new.’

She thought again of Fontaine’s tarot cards.

Stone Maiden, Necromancer, Silver-tongue .

They played over and over in her head, these clues that prowled at the edges of her mind.

Sera and Theo weren’t the only ones ignoring the impatiently beckoning provost. Ransom and Nadia had drifted towards an oil painting of Calvin, Saint of Death, an unnervingly handsome figure with ice-pale skin, thick black hair and green eyes.

And yet, despite his unsettling beauty, the saint’s face was grave, those green eyes haunted.

It occurred to Sera that not all powers are blessings. That to oversee death was a curse in itself.

She turned away, weathering a twist of discomfort.

She tried not to wonder if she had been cursed too, if she would be able to endure the full flush of whatever magic lived inside her.

Perhaps that’s why it often hid from her, only emerging in answer to the nearness of Shade or her own rioting emotions.

Brushing past her, Caruso wandered over to Cadel, Saint of Warriors, gazing up at him the way a child might regard a lion at the Menagerie Zoo.

A black cat watched him from a nearby windowsill, holding court beside the tapestry of Serene, Saint of Animals.

Sera found herself drifting towards a tapestry of Saint Oriel.

It was three times her own height, and so intricately braided it must have taken years to complete.

The oracle’s beauty shone out from every strand, the delicate folds of her pale gold dress cascading along her lithe form.

Her deep brown skin was unlined, her black hair falling to her waist in thin beaded braids.

She wore a simple gold necklace, and around her arm a circlet that looked like three waves rising from the sea.

In her right hand, she held a single red rose, the oldest symbol of Valterre. Not of the kingdom but the land itself, the true soul of the country. Sera’s cheeks prickled, her thoughts turning to the tarot card she had pulled from Fontaine’s deck.

The rose is both soft and dangerous. It can mean great beauty or untold destruction. It depends on the soil in which it grows .

Oriel was smiling in her portrait, the light in her burnished brown eyes hinting at all the secrets she kept.

Or perhaps it was simply a show of her ease – with herself and her destiny.

Sera stared up at the saint, wondering how she could ever be worthy of a tapestry such as this?

A reputation that spanned centuries. She was just a barefooted farmgirl from the plains, an orphan and a chancer. A smuggler, even now.

The mere idea of sainthood made a laugh bubble out of her.

The black cat offered a scolding meow.

‘ Sorry ,’ she said, sheepishly.

The provost, who had been barely enduring their slow-footed curiosity up until now, cleared his throat, pointedly. A fair protest. They had all but prodded him here under duress, and now they were perusing the library like tourists in a museum.

‘This way, please. Time is of the essence.’

They followed him down to the lower chamber of the library. Here was a more modest space, which housed a row of private alcoves, and at the back of the room, a large sequestered hall where the scribes of the Appoline worked from noon to night, preserving the living history of the kingdom.

Provost Ambrose stopped at the third alcove, gesturing towards the room inside. It was a small study chamber, the desk here littered with papers and ledgers. A satchel hung from a hook on the wall and a crumpled cashmere sweater had been slung over the back of the wooden chair.

‘You may look at your own discretion. I’ll be back within the hour .’ He leaned on the last word, making his intention more than clear. ‘In the meantime, please keep your voices down. There are scribes at work down here.’

‘Don’t worry, Provost. The Daggers are nothing if not discreet,’ said Ransom, waving him off.

Now that he wasn’t wreathed in all those menacing shadows, he was more like himself.

Unhurried, easy-going… almost normal. This was the version of Ransom Seraphine found herself most drawn to, the one she watched from the corner of her eye when she was supposed to be ignoring him.

The one she dreamed of kissing whenever she nodded off in her carriage, her skin growing clammy at the thought.

Left to their own devices, they started rifling through the prince’s effects, looking for clues of his grand plans for Valterre, and where he might have disappeared to.

The tight space was improved by Caruso’s swift exit, who cried boredom after three minutes and went off to chase the black cat who had come by to spy on them.

Most of Prince Andreas’s scribblings were indeed illegible, ordinary sentences trailing off into feverish ramblings, while in places entire paragraphs were repeated.

It soon become clear that before his disappearance, the prince had been trapped in a kind of loop – one that began and ended with the saints.

Pages upon pages of parchment had been dedicated to their birthplaces and early childhoods, their familial relationships and notable feats of power, as well as any rumours that had circulated around them during their lives.

There were maps, too. So many they littered the floor.

Ransom looked up from the ledger he was thumbing through. ‘This whole book is full of Beauregards. Births and deaths. Their final resting places.’

‘Saint Oriel’s descendants,’ said Sera. She wondered if Fontaine was in there somewhere.

‘Maybe he was after her final prophecy. He was clearly obsessed with the second coming,’ said Nadia, who had just pulled a biography about Saint Oriel from the prince’s satchel. ‘Spare me these spoilt rich men and their never-ending quests for greatness.’

Theo leaned in to have a look, his shoulder brushing hers as he examined the cover.

Annoyance prickled at Sera. Whatever merriment he had enjoyed with Caruso and Nadia in their carriage three days ago had dissolved their ire towards him.

But every time Nadia locked eyes with her, Sera felt like the Dagger was imagining her slow and painful demise.

‘So many Havelocks,’ Theo muttered, turning back to the ledger he had been flicking through. ‘Why is that name so familiar?’

‘It’s the family name of Saint Maurius,’ said Ransom, setting down a raft of papers.

Sera’s brows rose. If Oriel was her own favoured saint, then Maurius, Saint of Seafarers and Travellers, was Ransom’s.

She had watched him pray to him once, in Our Sacred Saints’ Cathedral.

Not for himself but for his mother and his sister Anouk.

That they had found safe haven somewhere far beyond the cruel fists of his father and the dark underbelly of Fantome, that one day he might be reunited with them again.

As the Head of the Daggers, and a slave to the thrall of Shade, he was further from that dream than ever.

Theo scrubbed his jaw. ‘The Oriel obsession makes sense to me, but why the interest in Maurius?’

Again, it was Ransom who answered. ‘Maurius was Oriel’s scribe. In the last days of her life, he came back to her, here in the Appoline. Maurius wrote down Oriel’s final prophecy when she was too weak to write it herself.’

‘Why?’ said Nadia.

Ransom looked right at Seraphine. ‘Because they were lovers.’

Oh .

She looked away, sharply. It was strange to imagine Saint Oriel like that.

Not as some untouchable, divine being, but as a hot-blooded woman who was loved and cherished by another, kissed and caressed, and even tended to by him in the last hours of her life.

There was something so gently human about it.

‘How do you even know that?’ said Theo.

Ransom shrugged. ‘My mother told me a long time ago.’ And then quieter, as if more to himself, he added, ‘She was a hopeless romantic.’

Theo was stunned into silence. Sera couldn’t tell if it was the revelation about Maurius and Oriel, or the fact that Ransom Hale had just revealed something incredibly personal to a man he openly loathed.

In a handful of words, he had revealed the glimpse of a mother who had once confided things in him.

Someone who had loved him, when he was a boy and not a Dagger.