Page 135 of The Dragon and the Dove

‘That’s the idea.’ She closed one eye to better her aim. Not that she needed to. They were less than eight feet apart.

‘Wait.’ Sera drew back, laying Tobias on the ground. He slumped over with a wet groan, and she stepped in front of him.

Nadia’s finger hovered on the trigger. ‘I’m supposed to kill both of you.’

‘He’s a child.’

‘I’m fourteen,’ he protested weakly.

She shot him a warning glance.

At least he was coming to. The wound between his shoulder blades was slowly knitting itself back together, but the blood loss had stolen most of his strength.

Nadia narrowed her eyes. ‘He looks like he’s dying already.’

‘So don’t waste your bolt.’

The Dagger hesitated. ‘You can make saints.’

Keeping her eye on the crossbow, Sera gave a slow nod. ‘You already know that.’

Nadia’s throat bobbed. ‘Can you unmake them?’

Sera blinked. ‘What?’

‘The saints you make. Can you turn them back?’ There was a note of desperation in her voice. ‘Can you make them how they were before?’

Sera might have assumed the Dagger was asking for Andreas’s sake, but Nadia didn’t care much for matters of peace, or for whoever ruled over this kingdom in the end. She never looked at the bigger picture. Her world – the only one she truly cared about – revolved, singularly, around one person.

‘You’re asking for Lark.’

‘It’s killing him. His magic.’ She lowered the crossbow, pointing her arrow at the cobbles between them. ‘He’s not himself any more.’

Sera frowned. ‘Does Lark want to go back to who he was?’

‘I want him to go back.’ Grief moved in her dark eyes. ‘You could help him. I know you could.’

Sera hesitated, all too aware of the precarious tightrope she was walking. ‘He’s not here, Nadia. He’s not the one pleading for redemption.’

Her shoulders dropped. ‘He doesn’t want it for himself. It’s like he doesn’t even remember what he used to be.’ There was a stretch of silence, broken by a flock of gulls coasting in from the harbour. Nadia frowned, the crossbow going limp in her hands.

Sera sensed her loyalty wavering.

‘There’s a place for you in the Order of Flames,’ she said, trying to snare it. ‘A place with us.’

Nadia chewed on her fingernail. Once filed and freshly painted, now they were all worried down to stubs.

Sera pressed on. ‘Even Mercure sees the sense in it. She and her Cloaks have allied themselves to our—’

‘I can’t just leave him,’ Nadia cut in.

‘If you leave, maybe he’ll follow. Didn’t you do the same for him back at the Summer Palace?’

More gulls filled the greying sky. Sera’s magic prickled, aware of another’s power in her midst. Tobias remained carefully still at her feet.

Nadia was a world away, reliving that night at the Summer Palace. ‘When I watched Lark raise those dead kings and queens from their graves, I nearly fled along with you. But I couldn’t walk away from him. Not after getting him back. It felt like a miracle… Now I wonder if it was a curse.’

‘Come with us, Nadia.’ Sera spoke urgently. They were too exposed out here, overlooked by a ring of rooftops and vulnerable without their weapons.