Page 9 of The Rebel and the Rose (The City of Fantome #2)

Sera raced through the winding catacombs of Hugo’s Passage, desperately trying to find her way out. Her feet squelched, the endless puddles of blood clinging to her boots like oil. Somewhere close by, a monster roared .

She pivoted, turning into a narrow side passage, and came upon Gaspard Dufort. Her father. Silver-eyed and seething, he was on his knees, choking on his own blood .

‘Traitor!’ he hissed at her. ‘ Murderer!’

Panicking, Sera spun around. She tried to retrace her steps but the tunnels were changing.

The walls huddled closer, darkness enveloping her like a shroud.

When it cleared, she was alone again. Standing in the crypt of Lucille Versini, looking down at the skeleton of a long-dead girl. The tiara on her head still glittered .

Sera reached out to take it .

‘Spitfire.’ She froze as familiar hands came around her waist, drawing her backwards. Ransom’s warm breath caressed the shell of her ear, his voice gruff with want. ‘Let’s play again.’

She closed her eyes. ‘You were supposed to come to me.’

‘I’m here now, Seraphine.’ His lips brushed against her neck. ‘Can’t you feel me?’

Desire seized her, stoking the heat of her magic. She whirled around, twisting her fingers in his collar. ‘Ransom, I—’

A scream built in her throat, and she stumbled backwards, away from the arms that held her .

Lark Delano stood before her, bare-chested and sneering. ‘Murderer.’

Blood seeped through his teeth, and that golden handprint on his skin flared, pricking tears in her eyes. ‘He’ll kill you before he’ll have you.’

He lunged and she recoiled, hitting the edge of the coffin. She had forgotten about it entirely, but now she was stumbling .

No, falling—

Something crackled underneath her, soft velvet caressing her arms as she tried to sit up. There were bones everywhere. She tried to claw her way out, but the spindly arms of Lucille’s skeleton folded around her .

She was tugged down into the coffin .

‘Murderer,’ the skull of Lucille Versini whispered in her ear. ‘You are no better than them.’

The coffin lid slammed shut .

Darkness swept in, the smell of wet earth and rotting wood filling her nostrils.

Sera opened her mouth to scream, but dirt poured in, muffling the sound.

There was a terrible burning in her chest, as though the skin there had caught fire.

Her lungs swelled with the damp earth, and still she breathed, clawing desperately at the wood above her until her fingernails bled.

Ice seeped into her bones, freezing her hands and numbing her toes .

‘I’m not dead,’ she choked out, in a voice that did not belong to her. ‘Let me out!

‘Let me out! Let me out! Let me out!’

Sera woke with a jolt, her hand coming to her mouth just in time to strangle her scream. It eked out in a pathetic whimper. Silent tears streamed down her cheeks as her magic rioted inside her.

Maker , it hissed. Let me out!

A burning scent filled her nose, and she looked down to find a blackened hole in her sheets. She must have fisted them in a panic. Stifling a curse, she glanced around the bedroom. Silvered moonlight streamed in through a gap in the curtains, illuminating her best friends’ faces.

Val and Bibi were fast asleep in their bunks. Val was snoring softly, and Bibi’s slackened jaw was just visible through her spill of red hair.

On his little bedroll between them, Pippin was wide awake, his shaggy head cocked in concern.

Sera waited for the sparks in her hands to wink out. When her magic quietened, she leaned over to scratch behind his ears. ‘It’s all right, Pip,’ she whispered. ‘It was just a nightmare.’

She should have been used to them by now. But this one was new… Her breath rattled in the yawning silence, as though that cloying wet earth still clung to the insides of her lungs.

She rolled out of bed and shrugged on her dressing gown.

In the kitchen, she fetched a glass of water and gulped it down, but her heart was still beating wildly.

Air. She needed air. She crept outside into the back garden and stood on the wooden deck, silently begging the midnight wind to tug her back to herself.

Looking up at the spill of silver peaks, she let herself feel small and insignificant.

Seraphine. Just Seraphine.

Spitfire .

Fragments of her nightmare floated at the edges of her mind.

It hadn’t been all bad. There had been a moment when she’d felt Ransom’s hands on her, the nearness of his lips like a promise that still ached somewhere deep inside her.

She had wanted that kiss, those breathy words in her ear.

If she was honest with herself, she wanted them even now.

Her cheeks warmed at the memory – false and fleeting as it was. If he ever saw her again, he’d likely throttle her. If she didn’t throttle him first. Her hands tingled.

Maker , whispered her magic. Soft and keening. Please .

‘Please, what ?’ she hissed at herself. Saints , she was exhausted, and the last thing she needed was this thing inside pulling at her. Slumping onto the wooden steps, she picked up a rough grey stone. Closing her eyes, she held the stone in her fist, letting it ground her as she stilled her mind.

That insistent tug found her again, born of this strange other force that now lived inside her.

She was pulled inwards, through the addled maze of her own worries.

Down, down, down, she tunnelled, through pain and grief and loss and hope as delicate as a bee’s wing.

She reached beyond it all, searching for a whisper of the magic that slumbered in her soul.

Where are you? she called into the unending dark. What are you?

As if in answer, memories crowded in on her.

That night on the Aurore replayed itself in sharp, searing clarity.

She smelled the rain on the wind, glimpsed the lightning streaking above the tower, then the menacing glint of Lark’s teeth as he bore down on her.

She felt the pulse of her hand against his chest, the push of something else moving between them.

Death. Magic . That strange heat in her bones, cradling her as she fell…

The memories washed over her like a tide of shadows.

And there, in the darkness of all that pain, she sensed a gossamer thread of light.

Tugging on it, she followed it down, and down again.

Deeper than she’d ever gone before. Lost to the world far above her, she tiptoed around the edges of her own soul.

There was a door here. And in front of it, a little girl, sitting with her knees tucked into her chest. Blonde hair and scrawny limbs, eyes as blue as the sky, save for a fleck of bronze.

Sera peered down at her younger self, recognizing all too well the fear shining in those wide, bright eyes.

The door behind her was ajar, magic streaming through a crack there.

Look and learn , it purred. Let me out .

Sera reached for the handle, imagined herself shoving it open, but the little girl shot to her feet, slamming it shut.

Frustration hissed from deep within.

‘No, no, no’, cried the girl. ‘It’s too much. Too soon.’

Sera made to try again.

‘I can’t—’ pleaded the girl. ‘We can’t.’

The girl was weeping now, and the sound was so gut-wrenchingly familiar, Sera drew back from it. Into the winding dark of her childhood, where her parents’ screams echoed in the stillness. There was grief here, and it was clawing at her.

She was afraid now. Scared of the world that once bowed to her father. Frightened of a world without her mother, and the weight of what Sera was destined to become in her absence. Something so much more than what she once was. Something even Mama had never dreamed of.

But what ?

And how ?

That door inside her was bolted shut now, the little girl pressed against it like a starfish. Her fear was a fog between them. Sera lost herself to it. She became it.

Too much .

Too soon .

Back-pedalling now, she turned from the search, and the cloying shadows of her own mind, and reached up, up, up, to the cool kiss of the midnight wind and the scent of pine trees, the night call of the loon and the hardness of the wood under her bare feet.

She was gasping when she opened her eyes, her cheeks damp as the great bowl of the stars poured their silvered light over her. Good light. Safe light. Starlight.

Coward .

Failure .

Scrubbing the wet of her cheeks, she shook away the shame of another failed meditation, the uneasy sense that her magic was angry at her.

In the warmth of her fist, the stone had changed from grey to gold. It hadn’t been for nothing, then. But it didn’t feel like nearly enough either.

‘Is this what you wanted?’ she said, holding the golden stone up to the sky.

There was such a silence inside her now, the stillness unnerving in its own way.

She tossed the stone into the grass, where it shone like a nugget in the earth.

Another cheap trick, just like the rose.

A morsel of light that would eventually crumble to ash.

When she tried to make another, nothing happened.

Her magic had gone quiet again, that door inside her firmly closed.

What was the point of it?

Was there a point at all?

‘Did I just see you shaking your fist at the sky?’ Sera jumped at the sound of Theo’s laughter. ‘What did that bastard moon do now?’

Saints, save me . ‘You’re hallucinating,’ she said, turning to look up at him. ‘What are you doing up?’

Theo was in his nightshirt and a pair of cotton trousers; his feet bare on the wooden slats. ‘Paola returned from the city an hour ago. We were talking in her bedroom.’

Sera perked up at this morsel of news. ‘How did the trial shipment go?’

‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ When she didn’t answer, only groaned, he said, ‘Half the batch made it to the city. The other half exploded on the drive.’

‘It’s still too volatile,’ muttered Sera.