Page 52 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

‘How is this possible?’ said Theo, the minute they stepped into the Rose Garden and saw who awaited them there.

Sitting in an armchair beside the dance floor, as though he had been holding court all morning in the deserted mill, Prince Andreas lazily waved them over.

Maskless now, Lark was perched on his right, as stiff as the skeleton glimmering under his taut, greying skin, while Talisa Mondragon – the prince’s cousin, occupied the chair on his left.

An hour had passed since Sera had bolted from the graveyard at the sight of the Necromancer, overwhelmed by the startling realization about what it meant about her own magic.

About her . Enough time to find her friends back at the Paramour and tell them everything she’d witnessed in a half-garbled hysterical rant that made Val rush to fetch her a shot of whiskey, while Theo took her pulse, sure she was about to keel over.

After a fruitless return trip to the graveyard, they had come to the red mills to see the truth for themselves.

However out of place Lark Delano had looked in the cemetery, he looked even stranger in the empty Rose Garden, an apparition conjured from the worst of Sera’s nightmares, occupying a high-backed velvet armchair like the king of death.

‘Told you I wasn’t crazy,’ she said now.

Val bit off a curse as they drifted closer. ‘I really thought you had hallucinated him. But that is definitely Lark Delano, undead Dagger.’

Theo shuddered between tentative steps.

‘I prefer the term “ saint ”,’ Lark called across the empty dance floor. ‘I do have feelings you know.’

‘Well, at least being dead all that time hasn’t affected your hearing,’ Theo called back.

‘Not for Seraphine’s lack of trying,’ parried Lark.

‘I feel for you, Saint-maker. I can’t imagine there’s anything more infuriating than going to the trouble of killing someone only to have their corpse rise from its fancy coffin newly imbued with unfathomable magic.

’ He flashed his teeth. Despite the rest of him, his smile was pearly white, that shit-eating grin all but blinding under the low lighting.

‘All things considered, I’m grateful for the accidental sainthood.

Even despite the unfortunate downturn in handsomeness. ’

Val wrinkled her nose. ‘That’s one way of putting it.’

Andreas rolled his hand, gesturing impatiently. ‘Enough squabbling. Come in and be civil. We’re all on the same side. And we have work to do.’

Sera marched across the dance floor. In the last hour, she had had some time to digest this shocking turn of fate, and she had a bone – or in fact several – to pick with Lark Delano. ‘You tried to kill me in that graveyard yesterday. You tried to kill Nadia. One of your own.’

Lark raised a warning finger. ‘Ah-ah. I think you’ll find you are mistaken.’

Sera’s fingers twitched into fists. If she had any idea how she’d accidentally made this prick in the first place, she’d be unmaking him right now.

‘I was trying to speak to Nadia. Alone ,’ Lark clarified. ‘The bones were a misguided attempt at distraction. I was hoping to chase you off. I didn’t think she’d spook so easily.’

Sera curled her lip. ‘Next time, try using your words.’

‘Andreas told me not to speak to you until we were together,’ said Lark, sounding petulant. ‘He said you’d need time to adjust to my identity.’

‘Insofar as it revealed your own,’ Andreas supplied.

Accidental saint-maker .

How could she forget?

‘And I suppose he was right about that, considering you bolted from us only this morning like a frightened rat,’ Lark went on. He pulled a long, gruesome face. ‘Am I really so hideous?’

‘Yes,’ said Sera through her teeth. She would not soon forget the skeleton he had sent after her, or the bones that still littered that graveyard.

‘How the hell did this guy get to become a saint?’ Theo despaired. ‘Saint Oriel must be laughing at us.’

Lark winked at Sera. ‘Ask her assistant.’

‘I have no idea,’ she said quietly, the full repercussions of what she had done still dawning on her. She wondered if she’d ever get used to it. ‘It was a mistake.’

A colossal mistake.

‘I was confused at first too,’ said Lark, shrugging.

‘When you scoured your handprint into my chest and sent a thousand bolts of pure white-hot magic right into my heart, I was sure I was dead. I felt myself die.’ He flinched at the memory, roughly scrubbing at his jaw.

‘For months, I lay in the frozen earth of Old Haven, caught somewhere between life and death with my memories flitting just out of reach. And all the while my magic grew inside me, flickering, writhing, begging to be used. I just… didn’t know how. ’

Sera hated that she recognized that sense of power and powerlessness, the endless push and pull fear and confusion.

‘ Wake , it whispered to me over and over again,’ said Lark. ‘ Rise .’

She knew that feeling all too well, the echo of another’s voice calling from somewhere deep within.

‘Over time, it got louder. It became the only thing I could focus on, the only thread binding me to this world. One night, in the thaw of a vicious winter, I opened my eyes and I knew what I was. What I could do.’ He turned his face up to the light so they could better see the shadows around his eyes, the full horror of what he had become.

‘I knew I was a Saint of Death. Not quite like Calvin. Something new. Something… even more powerful.’ He huffed a mirthless laugh.

‘I suppose, after all those years of being a Dagger, how could I be anything else?’

‘Why did you run away?’ challenged Theo. ‘Why didn’t you return to the catacombs instead of leaving an open grave and a shit-ton of questions behind?’

‘Are you familiar with the concept of emotional adjustment?’ Lark shot back.

‘The first time I glimpsed my own face in a moonlit puddle, I nearly crawled back into that grave. If I could barely face what I had become, how could I expect my oldest friends to accept me? How could I face the woman I love as this… this monster dredged up from the earth? This corpse who thinks himself a saint. Nadia would have lost her mind.’ His voice quietened and he looked away. ‘By then, she had already lost enough.’

‘So you ran away instead and decided to play walkabout with other people’s corpses?’ said Val, incredulously. ‘That’s so… gross .’

Lark tensed at the accusation. His grip on the armrests tightened, his sharp fingernails digging into the fabric.

‘I kept to the shadows of Fantome, listening to whispers of the People’s Saint.

Another who sounded just like me. Someone I hoped would understand what I had become.

’ He looked now at Sera, as though searching for a shred of empathy.

Hadn’t she come to Andreas for the same reason? Didn’t she know the fear he spoke of?

She looked away, catching Talisa’s eye. The Mondragon princess was smiling broadly, a strange look of eagerness on her face, as though something else was coming. Something big.

‘With Andreas’s help, I grew to fully understand what I had become.’ Lark opened the top of his robe, baring the pallid planes of his chest. The outline of Sera’s golden handprint shone out from it like a beacon. Even now, it seemed to smoulder. ‘What you had made me.’

Maker . Her magic purred in answer, its languid heat unfurling in her chest. It was pleased with her, pleased with this… this unholy accident. Yet all Sera wanted was to take it back.

‘Lark found his way to me just as you did,’ said Andreas, as pleased as the hum of her own magic.

‘All of this, you see, it was for you.’ He splayed his hands, looking to the ceiling.

‘These long nights of laughter and dancing, of freedom flowing like fine wine… I chose the birthplace of Saint Oriel, made Marvale bloom like a rose of the north, hoping it would draw you out. Hoping you would come to me.’

And she had come, like a moth drawn to a flame. Knowing that the spectacle last night, and all the ones before it, had been carefully designed for her – like a glittering snare – made her stomach clench. Had she already been caught in the prince’s trap? Was it too late to wrench herself free?

Andreas was still smiling, oblivious to the war in her head. ‘We are, after all, bound by the same destiny.’

Again, his words struck true, but they didn’t feel right to Sera. They felt… foreboding . A warning rather than an invitation. One look at the grimace on Val’s face confirmed she was not alone in her discomfort.

Andreas stood up. ‘Do you see how special you are now? Do you understand the role you’re meant to play? My precious rose. My saint-maker.’

Sera took a careful step back. ‘I don’t belong to you, Andreas. And neither does my magic.’

‘Don’t be scared,’ he said, those gold eyes flashing. Whatever magic he was using slid off her like water. ‘It’s time to begin.’

‘Begin what?’

That smile again, so sure and wide. ‘Building our kingdom.’

Another step away, her hand finding Val’s behind her. ‘What are you talking about?’

It was Theo who answered. Theo who had been watching their exchange with rapt attention. Theo who hadn’t moved an inch. ‘He wants you to make another saint.’

There was a loaded silence, broken by the rustle of Talisa’s dress as she rose to her feet. She floated towards Sera with all the grace of a ballerina, her eyes wide and hungry. ‘Well? Are you ready?’

‘You can’t be serious.’ Sera might have laughed if the mood hadn’t turned so stark. ‘I have no idea how to make a saint!’

‘Well, that’s not strictly true,’ remarked Lark.

She glared at him. ‘You don’t count.’

‘I’ll help you,’ said Andreas, unerringly calm, like they were talking about making a pot of raspberry jam, and not completely rethreading the tapestry of someone’s soul. ‘Talisa has volunteered herself for the experiment.’

Sera spluttered a refusal, even as her magic gathered new heat, the fire inside her licking at her bones. Crooning to her.

Maker, the time has come .

‘You’re mad. You’re both mad.’