Page 59 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

Stopping, Anouk curled her fists. She closed her eyes, but not before Ransom caught the golden glint of her eyes and felt the bench tremble underneath him.

‘Breathe,’ he said, softly. ‘It’s not your fault, Anouk.’

She puffed her chest up, her breath whistling through her nose. Once, twice. The bench stopped trembling, and when she opened her eyes again, they were clear. In a quiet voice, she said, ‘I don’t understand why this has happened to me, Bastian. I didn’t want it. I still don’t want it.’

‘I think that might be why,’ he said, gently. ‘You have power precisely because you don’t covet it.’

‘What am I supposed to do with it?’ She looked so lost now, as young and uncertain as that day she had fled from Everell.

‘You’ll find out, Anouk,’ he said, and he was suddenly sure of it. ‘We’ll find out together.’

Ransom couldn’t guess at the inner workings of destiny – he had stopped trying months ago – but he no longer believed in coincidences.

The threads of fate were growing stronger, moving faster, getting tighter, like gossamer threads shimmering in the air, binding him – binding all of them – to a future that was yet to unfold.

He could see now that he could leave the Daggers but he could not outrun the change that was about to befall Valterre, not when the two women he loved most in the world were tied to the very fate of the kingdom.

In being chosen by Saint Oriel, Anouk and Seraphine were a part of something grand and vital and urgent, and if this kingdom truly was to be remade under the Second Coming of the Saints, he would have his own part to play in it.

For their sakes, and for his own.

There was no walking away now.

Fate had claimed his sister and his lover.

It could have him too.

Edging closer, Anouk looked down on him, her expression turning quizzical. ‘Have you been a Dagger all this time, Bastian?’

He nodded. ‘Since the day we parted.’

‘You don’t look like one.’ Her brows knitted. ‘The others… Nadia and Caruso. They have those marks all over their hands. I know what they mean.’ Each one, a death. The shadow of every vial they’d swallowed. ‘But your hands are clean.’

A part of him wanted to laugh but when he lifted his hands to the moonlight, he remembered that she was right. ‘They weren’t always like this,’ he told her plainly. ‘For a long time, they were worse than most. Deep and dark and painful.’

‘But now they’re gone? How?’

‘There’s a woman, Anouk.’ He smiled without meaning to. ‘Another touched by fate. Her name is Seraphine, and the day she stumbled into my life, it exploded into colour. She saved me, heart and soul.’

And now I have to save her .

Anouk’s face lit up. ‘Tell me.’

‘Come,’ he said, rising from the bench. ‘I’ll tell you everything on the way to Marvale.’

After eating their fill in a nearby inn and telling Anouk of the insidious threat of Prince Andreas and the rebellion he was brewing in the heart of Valterre, they returned to the carriage, eager to be free of Ra’azule and the island skulking in the mist. Having seized the opportunity to wash and change at the inn, Anouk gratefully accepted a spare outfit from Nadia, before chucking her own ruined robes in the lake.

Now, with her long dark hair clean and braided away from her face, and her cheeks scrubbed of silt and dirt, she looked more like herself than ever.

She was older by some years and changed by the hand of fate, but was still the same Anouk.

Soft yet fearless, and ever eager to be at her brother’s side.

They rode out front together, Ransom taking the first shift, while Caruso and Nadia polished off a bottle of wine and slept in the back of the carriage.

They journeyed on through the night. Guided by clear skies and a generous moon, they were kept awake by the chatter of their own voices as they swapped stories of their last ten years, painting in the edges of each other with the kind of giddy excitement Ransom hadn’t felt since he was a child, swapping fairy tales with Anouk under the duvet.

And when Anouk said, ‘Tell me about Seraphine,’ an entire world poured out of him.

He barely took a breath, frustration pricking at him as he tried to put into words the very music of his soul, to explain that insistent thread in his chest that always tugged when she was near.

The searing sense that she was his, and he was hers.

Talk of his spitfire only made his desire to return to her greater, his eagerness to face the prince making his throat tight. Never again would he let Andreas twist the fabric of his mind, not now he knew what the Silver-tongue was capable of. Not while he had Anouk at his side.

Sister .

Saint .

Secret weapon .

No. When Ransom returned to Marvale, their meeting would be quick and bloody.

It was a relief when dawn came, the waning moon fading in the sun-blushed sky.

The red mills crowned the distant hills, farmland spilling out on either side of them, knitting a patchwork of green and gold.

Sheep and cows slumbered in the yawning quiet, which was punctuated by the occasional cry of a rooster and Caruso’s gruesome snores.

Ransom’s sense of urgency gnawed at him, his heart pounding when the archway to Marvale finally appeared before them.

He had forgotten to warn Anouk about the nightguards that hung from it.

Retching at the sight, she leaned over the side of the carriage and vomited.

‘What is this?’ she managed between heaves.

‘Andreas has a flair for dramatics.’ Ransom could forget sometimes how startling a dead body was to someone so unused to seeing them. Making them. ‘Sorry. I should have told you.’

The horse slowed as they drew closer. There was another body on the ground. Not a nightguard, but an older man in a flat cap, brown trousers and a crumpled work shirt. He was slumped on his side in the middle of the archway, blocking the way ahead.

Hopping down from the carriage, Ransom made his way towards the body. It whimpered as he approached. Coming to his knees, Ransom said, ‘You’re alive?’

Another whimper.

He rolled the man over, noting the deep bruises on his face, the bloodshot vessels in his eyes. He had been beaten to a bloodied pulp. With a struggling wheeze, he answered, ‘ Barely .’

‘Ransom.’ Anouk was standing behind him. ‘There’s blood everywhere.’

Blood on the stones. Blood near the bridge. Blood dripping from the arch. ‘I know, Anouk.’

He turned back to the man. ‘What happened to you?’

He took three breaths to answer. ‘F-f-failed g-getaway.’

‘ Ransom .’ Anouk’s voice was shaking now. It took him a moment to realize the cobbles were trembling too. Something groaned overhead. He looked up in time to see a crack fissuring down the middle of the arch, the stone on either side slowly giving way. ‘I c-c-can’t stop.’

‘ Breathe , Anouk,’ he called over his shoulder. Her eyes were bright gold. ‘It’s all right. Just breathe .’

Too late. The nightguards fell, crumpling on either side of him. The archway shook, the joins in the grooves coming apart. Grabbing the old man under his arms, Ransom dragged him backwards with barely a heartbeat to spare. The entire structure came down with a deep, rattling boom.

Covering his head with his hands, Ransom threw himself on top of the old man. Dust showered them, shards of rock and shale nicking his arms, his hands.

Anouk’s cry rang out, her footsteps thundering closer. ‘I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to! I saw the bodies and I panicked!’

Somewhere over her shoulder, Caruso stuck his head out of the carriage window. ‘Some of us are trying to sleep!’

Sitting up, Ransom swept the dust from his hair and sighed. ‘You’re really going to have to get a handle on that,’ he told his sister. ‘Preferably sooner rather than later.’

‘I just… I got spooked.’ Her forehead creasing, she knelt down beside the old man. ‘You don’t look so well, sir.’

Gross understatement. The man was half dead.

She flexed her fingers. ‘Maybe I could try and help—’

‘Wait.’ Ransom eyed him with mounting suspicion. ‘He could be one of Andreas’s mercenaries.’

The old man puffed out a denial. ‘ Postmaster .’

‘A postmaster! That’s hardly sinister.’ Anouk laid her hands on the man’s chest, swatting Ransom away when he tried to stop her. ‘Just let me try. He’s at death’s door anyway.’

Closing her eyes, Anouk began to breathe deeply and slowly, her fingers twitching as they skated across his ribs, as if drawn there by some invisible magnet.

While she worked, Nadia and Caruso emerged from the carriage in matching states of bewilderment. Leaving his sister to her mending, Ransom stalked to meet them.

‘Remind me to never get on her bad side,’ said Nadia, surveying the ruined arch. ‘That’s quite an entrance.’

So much for the element of surprise.

‘We’ll have to go in on foot. Find the shadows and keep to them.’ It was early still, the streets beyond the shattered arch eerily silent. High on the hills, the red mills were still turning but Marvale was fast asleep.

‘Ransom.’ Anouk’s voice drew him back to her. The old man was sitting up now. His face was still every shade of purple and he was clutching his ribs, but there was colour in his pallor now, and strength in his wheezes.

‘Punctured lung.’ Anouk beamed. ‘This makes up for the arch.’

‘That depends on how useful he turns out to be,’ said Caruso, coming up behind Ransom.

‘You saved my life, girl,’ said the postmaster, ignoring them entirely.

‘Let me thank you. I have to thank you.’ He patted his pockets frantically and, before Anouk could stop him, he pulled out a large silver ring and folded it into her hand.

‘Take this. Please, just take it. Too big for those dainty fingers, but I was told it’d fetch a pretty penny in the market. Belonged to Hugo Versini so it did.’

With blood roaring in his ears, Ransom stared at the skull ring in his little sister’s hand. The one he had worn for months already, binding him to a life of death and shadows. The one he had taken off and left on the bedside table the morning he walked out on Seraphine and didn’t look back.

The one she must have found when she’d awoken alone in that bedroom, wondering where he was.

In a low voice, he said, ‘Where did you get that?’

‘They gave it to me. Three runaways, they were. Said they had to get to the next town right quick. Bartered it for safe passage out of Marvale so they did.’

All those gruesome bruises on the postmaster’s face were starting to look a lot more sinister now. ‘Looks like you didn’t get very far,’ said Ransom, carefully.

He shook his head. ‘Surprised I got away with my life.’

Ransom’s heart climbed up his throat. ‘What about the runaways?’ It was a struggle to keep his voice even, to push back the sudden clamour of his panic. ‘What became of them?’

The postmaster shrugged, looking back towards the slumbering village. ‘They’re all gone now. Everyone is gone.’

‘Gone where?’ chorused Caruso and Nadia.

‘South. To the Summer Palace.’ At their looks of confusion, he added, ‘The People’s Saint has gone to kill the king.’