Page 65 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

Things were bad. Extremely, harrowingly, unavoidably bad. Not only had Seraphine not succeeded in killing Lark Delano that night on the Aurore, now the ungrateful bastard was sending a graveyard’s worth of corpses after them.

Royal corpses. Not that it mattered, she supposed.

A reanimated skeleton was just as terrifying without a crown.

It just so happened that these ones were glittering in their horror.

Like spectres shot through with moonlight, the skeletal remains of the royal house of Rayere drifted towards them on bone-white toes.

‘This is a nightmare,’ huffed Sera, as they retreated up the bank towards the others, who were watching on in wide-eyed terror. ‘Any minute now, we’re going to wake up.’

‘I’ll admit this is disturbing as hell,’ muttered Ransom. ‘And I grew up in the catacombs of Fantome.’

Sera risked a glance over her shoulder, instantly regretting it. The corpses were much closer now and gaining far too rapidly. She stumbled, coming to her knees. Pain lanced through her ankle. It was getting worse.

‘Come on, spitfire.’ Ransom’s voice was low and urgent as he hoisted her back to her feet. ‘We’re almost there.’

Almost where? she wanted to scream. They were languishing in the moonshadow of the Summer Palace. Miles from Fantome, and hundreds more from Halbracht, where she wished she was now with all her heart. Somewhere safe. Somewhere far, far away. Somewhere saints didn’t exist.

Too late for all that now.

Keeping his hand on her lower back, Ransom urged her on. The land climbed, the riverbank growing sheer and rocky as the Verne slowly dropped away.

The corpses drew closer still. Sera could smell them, that unmistakable rot skating on the river wind. Somewhere beyond it, Lark Delano was laughing.

The land was too steep. Their strength was flagging. The third time Sera fell, she couldn’t get up, even with Ransom’s help. Her ankle was badly twisted now, too weak to bear her weight. Ransom wasn’t faring much better. His shoulder had dislocated, and the backs of his legs were badly burned.

Cursing, he tried to lift her anyway. ‘Come on, Seraphine.’

‘I c-can’t,’ she said, fisting the grass.

The corpses were at their backs, the smell overpowering. Her eyes streamed, her voice breaking. ‘I can’t .’

‘Then crawl,’ he begged. ‘ Please .’

She knew it was a wasted effort, a three-legged deer trying to outrun a hundred mountain bears, but for the imploring look in his eyes she dragged herself up the hill on her hands and knees.

After a minute or so, she noticed Ransom was no longer with her.

At the dull thwack of steel meeting bone, she stole another glance over her shoulder.

He was standing alone on the riverbank, taking on an entire army of skeletons by himself.

Swinging fast and violently, he lopped off skull after skull, sending them plummeting into the Verne.

For every skeleton that collapsed, another took its place, testing the last of his strength. Sera was frozen, too weak to stand up and fight, too stricken to go on without him. She could hear her friends up ahead.

‘Move!’ Val was screaming.

Tobias too. ‘Hurry! While they’re distracted!’

‘Don’t look back!’ yelled Theo.

Sera couldn’t tear her gaze from Ransom. He was barely holding his own against Lark’s macabre spectacle of power. Her heart thrummed with fear, and deep inside her spent and aching body, her magic sparked. A new strength gripped her, that tug in her chest growing stronger. Urging her back to him.

Ransom was still swinging. Bones were crumbling, skulls flying. Swords and crowns littered the high riverbank like discarded pennies.

Lark was still laughing. ‘Give it up, brother! Come back to us! See the fun we’ll have together!’

It was all a sick game to him. And Ransom was fighting for their lives. Sweat slicked his hair and poured down his face, his shoulder so twisted, his left arm hung limply at his side.

The skeletons kept coming, some rising again even without their skulls. Moving in a circle, they pushed him back towards the river’s edge.

Panic shoved Sera down the hill, fanned the spark of her magic into a flame. She gathered that strength inside her, and used it to haul herself to her feet.

Ransom stumbled on the slippery rocks. His own sword fell from his grasp.

He kicked out, shattering the ribcage of an advancing skeleton, then swung, upending a skull and crown with his right fist. Six more came, making a wall of their bodies.

He was teetering on the riverbank, too close to the water – much too close.

Plucking a rusted sword from the riverbank, Sera staggered on. Five steps, then five more, held upright by the furnace of her own magic.

Ransom was up again, the sword heavy in his hand. The river wind rippled up the back of his shirt.

Her heart lurched. ‘RANSOM!’

The corpses edged closer, no longer attacking. But taunting.

Lark’s little power game.

Sera flung herself into the fray, swinging with everything she had. Bones shattered, falling around her like confetti as they went to work, fighting side by side. After a while, the bodies stopped rising. Unseeing skulls stared up from the grass, the odd finger twitching, before falling still.

Without an army of skeletons between them, Sera saw Lark more clearly now. Standing alone with his hands in his pockets, he looked out over the debris of bone and metal, and shrugged, as though he had simply got bored.

Was it a reprieve or another one of his games?

Sera was so busy glaring at the Necromancer that she missed the sight of Andreas leering at them from the outer parapet of the Summer Palace.

‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us, Saint-maker!

’ yelled the soldier at his side, acting as his temporary mouthpiece.

‘We won’t let an enemy as powerful as you simply walk away! ’

Andreas raised his hand, and a volley of arrows arced through the sky.

Sera dropped to the grass, covering her head in her hands. The arrows struck, plinking off metal and bone. But there came no pain. No wounds. Drawing a careful breath, she peered through the crook of her arms. Arrows littered the ground around her. Missed, all of them.

There was a deep, sucking gasp.

Sera’s heart stopped.

No .

A few feet ahead of her, Ransom was doubled over, clutching at an arrow in the centre of his chest. The one he had taken for her.

Sera’s scream split the night in two.

He stumbled backwards, blindly reaching for her. ‘ Seraphine .’

The word was blood-soaked and far too quiet.

It sounded like goodbye.

‘ No .’ She lunged for him, but he was already falling.

It only took a stumbling misstep.

He went over the riverbank.

She screamed again, reaching the edge just in time to watch him fall. Down, down, down into blackness and oblivion and cold, unforgiving water.