Page 66 of The Dragon and the Dove

She rifled through the possibilities. She didn’t know the Silver-tongue well, but she had had the distinct displeasure of once finding herself inside his head. In a dream, not long ago, she had been Prince Andreas, a thirsty young scholar clambering up the Appoline clock tower, screaming desperately into the storm, begging for power.

‘The clock tower,’ she said with a jolt. ‘That’s where everything changed for him.’

Ransom turned on his sister. ‘Find the other two and get out of here. Tear the place down if you have to; just don’t spend another minute in this ballroom.’ Whatever Andreas had planned, they weren’t sticking around for it. ‘We’ll meet you by the clock tower.’

Anouk melted into the crowd with a whisper of indigo.

They made for the doors, Ransom unfurling his shadows as they went. The guards there never saw his adders strike. They were dead when Sera reached them, slumped together in the doorway. She flinched as she stepped over them.

Ransom didn’t look back.

She knew. Saints, she knew, there was no other way, but these soldiers weren’t in their right minds. They were puppets.

She fingered the necklace of Lightfire under her collar. ‘Next time, can we try to—’

‘I won’t risk it.’ His eyes blazed. ‘I won’t risk you.’

He was so deep in thrall to his magic Ransom wouldn’t even hear of it. When the next pair of guards fell, choking on the dark, she fisted her necklace, hating herself as she stepped over them.

Guilt prickled under her skin as they made for the next corridor. Six more soldiers collapsed in the blink of an eye, and the Saint of Nightmares never even broke his stride. It was terrifying this version of Ransom.

A mercenary on the hunt for his prey, those golden eyes like warning lamps in the gathering dark.

You made him.

She huffed a breath, trying to push the dead bodies from her mind.

Ransom’s brow rippled. ‘This is war, spitfire.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not going to apologize for it.’

‘I don’t expect you to.’

But don’t you feel it? she wanted to ask. Doesn’t it hurt you?

He reached for her hand and she gave it, pressing her lips together. She had pulled the darkness from his soul. She had no right to ask him to shove it back in.

They walked on, down one meandering hallway after another, where even the sconces recoiled from him.

More pyres greeted them in the inner courtyard. A light rain was falling, as though the heavens were trying in vain to extinguish them.

The clock tower appeared across the quadrangle. The roof was still shattered from where the lightning had struck it, the top floor cracked open like an egg. A noose hung from an exposed beam there.

‘That must be where Andreas hanged the Proctor.’ Sera’s voice was hollow.

‘Good of him to leave it up there for us,’ said Ransom. ‘We can hang him like a bauble from his own clock tower.’

Gripping his dagger, he kicked the door in, bracing himself as he stepped over the threshold. ‘Stay behind me,’ he said, sending out a raft of shadows. Adders skittered up the spiralling stairwell, and they followed close behind, their footsteps whispering on the stone.

In the distance, thunder rumbled.

Twin blades sliced through the dark as a pair of Rose-bearers leaped from an alcove halfway up the stairs.

‘RANSOM!’

He dodged the blow. By the time their swords landed, their wielders were dead. Darkness consumed them, licking the light from their eyes.