Page 169 of The Dragon and the Dove

It was good news, hopeful news, but Ransom’s mood was bleaker than ever.

‘I saw your dragon,’ Sera recalled.

‘It was a message for Andreas.’ He raised his hand, and her heart seized at the sight of the pale blue note half crushed inside it. ‘It seems he has a message for you, too.’

There was a note of accusation in his voice.

‘It fell out of Fabian’s fist,’ she said.

‘Were you going to tell me about it?’

‘You were otherwise engaged.’

His eyes flashed. ‘Seraphine.’

‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘I hadn’t got that far.’

He frowned as he looked again at the note. She wondered how long he had been standing there staring at it. Waiting for her to wake up. ‘Andreas wants you to go alone.’

‘I have to get close to him, Ransom. I can’t unmake him unless I touch him. It’s the only way to undo his hold on the kingdom. To win this war.’

He looked to the shadows, his gaze turning vacant. ‘I know.’

There was a world in those two words: worry and fear and rage and anguish, frustration tinged with the dark edge of despair.

‘So you won’t stop me?’

Slowly, he shook his head, an air of defeat coming over him – the realization, perhaps, that what came next was bigger than both of them. ‘But I won’t let you go alone either. I won’t let you be a martyr.’

She didn’t know what to say to that. How to tell him her fate was beyond his wishes. She had seen it in the eyes of the saints, heard it in the whisper of Oriel’s voice. Her role was almost at an end. Her power was almost spent.

But this wasn’t about her. Or him. Or the tenuous thread that bound them to each other.

It was about war, and Valterre, and the fight for everlasting peace.

‘Together, then,’ she offered into the silence.

He dipped his chin. ‘Always.’

She went to him just as the door to her bedroom flew open. Fontaine filled the door frame, looking thoroughly undisturbed by the pool of shadows at her feet.

Sera glared at her. ‘Do you ever knock?’

‘Not in matters of life or death.’

‘What is it?’ said Ransom, stiffening at the look on her face. It was paler than usual, the crevices so deep it was hard to make out her frown.

‘Our spies have sent reports from Merchant’s Way. There’s been an incident.’

Sera’s pulse roared in her ears. ‘What?’

‘A mass drowning,’ she said, grimly. ‘A hundred or so. They climbed the Bridge of Tears when the evening bells rang out. Perched there until the last bell chimed. They didn’t make a sound. They didn’t even look down. When the last bell tolled, they jumped as one, and let the river swallow them whole. No one swam.’

Sera’s breath swelled in her chest. No one swam. No one even tried. The Verne was slow, the current forgiving. They could have tried.

Andreas told them not to.

She swayed on her feet, thinking of the words in his letter.