Page 62 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

With ruthless efficiency, the King of Valterre took the sword and drove it into his own chest. Falling to his knees, he continued his impossible task, attempting to cut through muscle and bone and sinew, but there was so much blood pouring out, his grip slackened.

The sound of retching filled the ballroom. Guests began to faint, hitting the floor in a chorus of dull thuds. Bibi was hyperventilating, clutching onto Val for dear life.

Digging her fingernails into the armrests, Sera fought to hold her nerve. Even as her magic became a furnace in her chest, burning hotter than ever before.

Pull it out! Pull it out! Pull it out!

Wrinkling his nose at the growing pool of blood, Andreas stepped backwards. ‘Watch the boots, Uncle.’

The king swayed, his hands falling to his sides. He looked up at his nephew, and with his mouth full of blood, drew a final, wet gasp.

His body hit the ground like a sack of grain.

There was a deep, dread-filled silence.

Returning his attention to Sera, Andreas canted his head. ‘Changed your mind yet?’

‘End this horrible spectacle, Andreas,’ she urged him. ‘Let these people go. You and I can talk in private.’

And I swear I’ll find a way to kill you .

‘But wait…’ He feigned a sigh. ‘What good is it removing the king if I let his bastard heirs live on?’

Sera heard their whimpers before she spotted them. The king’s young sons were being shoved through the crowds by a pair of soldiers. The queen was with them, her beautiful face stricken as she pushed her boys behind her, trying to hide their view with the swell of her skirts.

Her grey eyes were wet, the noise that burst from her at the sight of the dead king halfway between a howl and a sob. ‘ Oh blessed saints! ’ she cried out. ‘What have you done?’

‘Andreas, don’t .’ Sera bucked and thrashed against her binds. ‘They’re innocent!’

In the chair across from her, Lark stiffened behind his mask, revealing a hint of his own discomfort. ‘Stop him,’ she hissed. ‘You’re not bound to that chair. You can take him. You can stop whatever he’s about to do.’

But the Necromancer simply shook his head. The minute movement signing three more death sentences in Andreas’s bloody theatre. The prince could not be stopped. He was about to murder the king’s heirs in full view of his court, and smile while he did it.

The question of how was answered by the name he called out. ‘Come out, Lisette,’ he crowed. ‘Let us put the loyalty you have pledged to me to the test.’

The doors to the ballroom opened. An icy-looking blonde woman arrived in a gown of glittering silver, leading a crowd of thirty or so people.

Not soldiers, nor nobles. Not mercenaries nor would-be revellers.

Dressed in black, and prowling among the kneeling guests with predatorial ease, they gathered in the middle of the ballroom.

If they noticed the king’s bloodied corpse or his four hanging advisers, they made no sign of it.

Not a flinch among them, but then, Sera supposed they were used to the casualness of murder.

They were Daggers, after all.

There was no mistaking the silver of their eyes, or the sinister black whorls darting across their skin.

Shadows gathered where they stood, poised like adders waiting to strike.

Sera vaguely recognized the icy blonde and assumed that in Ransom’s absence she had been the one left in charge. Lisette, the prince had called her.

Lisette, who, under no obvious compulsion and at the lure of ever more power, had turned her Order over to the silver-tongued saint.

‘Andreas.’ The queen’s voice broke. She rushed forward, grabbing onto the front of his frock coat. ‘Andreas, they’re just boys. You were like them once.’

Uncurling her fingers with exaggerated slowness, he said in a voice dripping with scorn, ‘Yes, I was, Odette. And you weren’t very nice to me, were you?’

‘Andreas! Please! ’ The queen was screaming now, begging on her knees, desperately clutching at the hem of his coat. Behind her, her sons stood stock-still, staring horror-struck at their father’s dead body.

Sera’s magic was in her throat now. She couldn’t talk.

Couldn’t think. Every inch of her pulsed with a dangerous mix of panic and rage, the force of a tornado quickly rising inside her.

Power gathered in her hands, sizzling across her palms. She dug them deeper into the armrests.

The wood of her chair began to smoke, her magic desperate to be free at any cost.

Andreas shoved the queen off him. ‘If you want mercy, crawl to my Daggers and kiss their feet. You will find none here.’

With an anguished cry, the queen turned for Lisette.

A shadow crested from the floor, drowning her on her hands and knees. Her scream cut out with chilling abruptness.

Lisette didn’t even blink. But she smiled like a serpent when, after ten quick heartbeats, she tugged the shadow away. There lay the Queen of Valterre, devoured by Shade. As dead as her husband.

Her sons’ screams echoed from every corner of the ballroom.

The ropes around Sera’s wrists went up in smoke as the boys rushed to their mother.

‘NO!’ With an anguished cry, Bibi lunged from the crowd and threw herself on top of them, making a shield of her body.

Another wave crested – and shattered in a hail of golden light.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ fumed Lisette. ‘Get that Lightfire off her.’

Ripping her hands free, Sera leaped off the dais.

She went instead for Andreas, seizing upon the momentary distraction.

In the absence of thought – all those old festering fears that so often held her back – Sera gave herself over to emotion.

To that gathering tornado of rage and pain and determination.

Her magic bellowed from the far reaches of her soul.

Maker! it cried.

But Sera’s target was already made. By his own hand, he had cheated fate. Taken something from that storm that did not truly belong to him.

Unmake him , she cried to her magic and to Saint Oriel.

Pull out the thread .

Take out the pretender .

Power emanated from her like dragon fire, her body glowing like a lit flame as she landed on the prince.

They fell to the ground together. Ignoring the rising shouts behind her, Sera pinned him there, pressing her hands into his face.

He bucked and screamed, the scent of his burning flesh invading her nostrils.

Not enough .

Take his power .

Unmake him .

Plunging her fist into his mouth, she reached for that serpent’s tongue. She caught his scream in her fist and crushed it with her magic. It was wet and slimy in her grip, even as it sizzled.

Hands on her shoulders now.

Almost there .

More around her neck.

So much blood .

A blade at her throat.

Rip it out .

She was dragged away, into a swell of soldiers.

No .

No!

Convulsing from the pain of their encounter, Andreas rolled onto his side. Soldiers alighted on him like fretful butterflies, using their coats to mop up the blood pouring from his mouth, holding his head steady as he retched and vomited.

Wild-eyed and panting, it took Sera a moment to get her legs beneath her, to realize that Lark was the one restraining her.

‘ Fool ,’ he hissed in her ear. ‘Don’t you know a beast that can’t be trained will be put down.’

She slammed her head backwards, shoving that gaudy mask into his nose until it crunched. ‘Enjoy your leash, dog.’

‘At least I know how to keep my friends alive,’ he sneered, spinning her around.

Sera saw Val first. Bent double on the floor, she was keening like a wounded animal. Reaching towards a familiar slip of emerald satin.

It took Sera longer than it should have to follow that green ribbon. To bring herself to look at the body lying next to her own feet. The body she had abandoned when she threw herself at Andreas.

Bibi.

There was such a tearing in Sera’s chest. A deep, sucking sob burst from the puncture wound in her heart. She gasped for air but there was only pain.

Bibi was dead .

The bead of Lightfire at her throat lay shattered on the floor beside her, her once vibrant blue eyes turned black from Shade. Curled up on either side of her, as if they were simply sleeping, were the young princes of Valterre.

All three of them gone in ten heartbeats.

Sera’s knees buckled, but Lark only tightened his hold. Refusing to let her kneel by the body of her friend. Refusing to let her hold Bibi one last time, to whisper to her I’m sorry , and pray that somewhere in the heavens she could hear her.

When she raised her chin, Lisette was smirking at her.

In the space of one breath, Sera imagined ten different ways of killing her. ‘There goes the fate of the kingdom,’ she said, her voice cracking through her teeth. ‘I hope it was worth it.’

Lisette’s silver eyes were cruel and taunting. ‘It’s called survival, Seraphine. You never did get the hang of it, did you?’

With a pained grunt, Andreas dragged himself to his knees. His face was a gruesome patchwork of red and blackened skin, that once-sneering mouth now bloody and swollen. It was a beautiful sight, but Sera was too broken to enjoy it.

The prince’s rage pulsed like a heartbeat between them. As cold and deadly as the look in his eyes.

She let her own rage lash out, the taunt coming through her teeth. ‘What’s the matter, Andreas? Fate got your tongue?’

His fists curling at his sides, he shifted his gaze past her, managing to eke out a single garbled word. ‘Cull.’

It was not a compulsion but an order.

‘With pleasure,’ purred Lisette.

With ruthless efficiency, the Daggers went to work. The shadows obeyed their silent commands, peeling off the walls and slipping from the second-floor balcony. They dripped from the chandeliers and crawled out from under the dais, reaching towards the oldest and most powerful families of Valterre.

On their knees on the floor, they could only watch in muted horror as death came for them.

Saints above .

Andreas hadn’t welcomed in the king’s guests to witness a changing of power. He had corralled them all here to kill them. And the cull was starting now .

Lark gripped Sera in a vice as death filled the king’s ballroom.

When the shadows struck, the first line of nobles fell in tandem, twenty bodies swallowed up in a black wave.

Still compelled to her knees, Val met Sera’s eyes over the rising swell, the look of crushing defeat on her face saying what her lips could not.

So this is goodbye .

No.

No .

Screaming out, Sera twisted and thrashed, clawing uselessly at Lark. The angle was all wrong, the magic razing along her skin unable to touch him. To harm him.

More nobles fell. Ten bodies, then twenty more, strewn like gilded petals across the black-and-white tiles.

Sera couldn’t stop it. Not with all the magic in her blood.

‘HELP!’ she screamed, desperately. ‘SAINT ORIEL, HELP US!’

The BOOM! came out of nowhere, so loud and close it shook the floor.

The shadows faltered, the Daggers snapping their chins up as a series of loud pops!

rang out. Fireworks exploded across the ballroom, shattering the darkness, replacing death’s reaching shadows with a fanfare of searing golden light.

The scent of lemon blossoms filled the room, the air glimmering with the sparks of magic. Good magic. Familiar magic.

Lightfire .

The Daggers staggered backwards, the last of their shadows dissolving as the hail of Lightfire leeched the silver from their eyes.

The walls trembled, sending oil lamps across the floor.

More fireworks went off, arcing over them like shooting stars.

The Lightfire shattered the binds of the prince’s compulsions, returning his victims’ free will.

Screams erupted throughout the ballroom as the surviving nobles scrabbled off their knees.

They scattered in panic, the chaos so sudden and acute that Lark slackened his hold on Sera.

Spinning on her heel, she punched him square in the jaw, making his head snap to the left.

Shoving him off her, she threw herself at Val, both of them grabbing onto each other for dear life.

‘Are you all right?’ they said at the same time.

No, no. Not even close .

But they were alive, by the skin of their teeth. By the grace of destiny, and all those blinding fireworks. Chandeliers tumbled from the ceiling, their lit candles rolling to meet the growing puddles of spilled oil. Fires sprang up in every corner and thick smoke began to billow.

Releasing Sera, Val fought her way through the sea of bodies to get to Bibi, leaving her to find Andreas in the fray. To finish what she’d started before those shadows struck.

There was no sign of the prince. But someone else appeared like an apparition in the smoke. There, on the other side of the ballroom, Sera spied a tell-tale glint of silver hair. Theo.

Theo had come back for them. Armed with a daring plan and a crate full of Lightfireworks, and he had not come alone.

Ransom was here, too. Stalking through the smoke like a predator on the hunt.

Sera had never seen such rage before. But when their eyes met across the room, and he saw that she was still standing – still breathing – relief blanched the violence from his face.

Raising a hand to his chest, he clutched at the space above his heart, like he was trying to stop it from leaping through his ribcage.

With tears streaming down her face, she went to him. Through fire and smoke, and death and chaos, following that insistent tug in her chest. The one that filled her with new hope.

The one that whispered, Mine .