Page 184 of The Dragon and the Dove

Purpose.

The black vine crawled over her heart.

This is the cost, Maker.

It occurred to Sera that she should say something while she still had the energy to speak.

‘Theo,’ she whispered. ‘I’m …’ She felt cowed by the weight of everything she wanted to say. Of all the people who wouldn’t hear her goodbye.

And Ransom.

Bastian.

Her Bastian.

How could her soul simply wink out when he was the other half of it?

Sera’s skin grew hotter still, and yet the grief inside her was so very cold. The world above so very dark now…

‘Seraphine.’ There was a note of fear in Theo’s voice. A trepidation that hadn’t been there a moment ago. She lifted her head, finding him above her.

Horror flickered in his gaze. ‘Sera…’

‘It’s all right,’ she said.

‘You have to stop.’

‘It’s almost done.’

Andreas had stopped fighting. He flopped underneath her, a fish flung too far from the ocean of his power, his bright scales dimming.

Sera was dimming too.

‘You don’t look right,’ said Theo.

She closed her eyes.

Pull out the thread.

‘Sera, stop.’

She would outlast Andreas, if not by much. It would be enough. To shred his power, to unbind every one of his compulsions and free the kingdom.

It would be enough.

Theo was shouting now.

We are coming to the end, Maker.

It was getting hard to think. Hard to breathe. The pain in Sera’s chest was so deep it felt like the thorn there was etched into the surface of her heart—

There was a blinding snap.

An arrow struck her shoulder with such force that she was thrown sideways. Her magic stuttered as the connection broke, and Andreas bowed upwards, gasping new breath.

Blood poured from her shoulder as she wrenched the arrow free. All around her, Rose-bearers trembled where they stood, caught between the Silver-tongue’s weakening compulsion and their own rising will.

The arrow had not come from a soldier.